How much would it cost to dim the sun a little with a dusty layer of aerosol particles in the stratosphere? The service comes for free if you can find an obliging volcano, like Mount Pinatubo, but they can hardly be relied on in the long term. Some schemes for doing it to order, though, could be pretty cheap, according to an analysis by Alan Robock and colleagues at Rutgers.

In the 1990s a National Research Council panel in the US estimated the costs of delivering dusty particles ito the stratosphere from big guns like those on old battleships. The panel came up with a figure of $30 billion a year: a lot cheaper than most proposals for carbon cutting, but still a fair chunk of change. Robock looked at the costs of getting into the stratosphere by the more orthodox means of aircraft. Near the poles, where the bottom of the stratosphere comes closest to the ground, big aircraft like Air Force tankers can get high enough to inject aerosols. Robock calculated that getting a billion tonnes of sulphur up to the stratosphere would take just three flights a day by each plane in a nine or fifteen plane squadron (nine if you use KC-10s, which are basically LD11 TriStars, fifteen if you use KC-135s, derived form the original design of the Boeing 707; plane spotting interlude ends here). That represents a purchase price of a billion or so and operational costs of well under $100 million.

If you want to take the sulphur higher, Robock says, think about F15-C Eagles (now we're talking...). With the smaller planes you need something more like a whole wing than a squadron -- 167 planes doing three flights a day. That's a purchase cost of about $6 billion, and an ops cost more like a billion a year.

As David Keith of the University of Calgary points out, though, no serious geoengineering scheme would really do this. Among the many hurdles such a scheme might face, designing planes optimised to its needs rather than buying them off the peg (or at the Air Force surplus store) is a no-brainer. For an example of the sort of thing you might go for, Keith points to the White Knight Two, a jet which will be put to use hauling Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip 2 up into the stratosphere before disengaging so that the spacecraft's rockets can take it up into space. White Knight Two is a lot less noisy and environmentally obnoxious than an Eagle, gets higher into the stratosphere and carries more cargo. If you want a sulphur deliverer, start from something like that and ask designer's like White Knight 2's Burt Rutan to optimise it for the task at hand.

Not all geoengineering requires aircraft. John Latham of NCAR has long touted a scheme for making the clouds over the ocean thicker and more reflective by kicking up particles of sea salt that will cause more droplets to form in them. He and his colleagues think that if you could build a specialist sea-salt-kicking-up ship every week, for a cost of a maybe three million dollars, that would be enough to offset that week's carbon emissions. So you need a fleet that grows at a rate of about 50 ships a year.

But Daniel Rosenfeld of the Hebrew University, Jersualem, who has devoted his life to studying various forms, thinks that might be overkill. According to his analysis, if you pick the right places to seed the clouds (he didn't call them tipping points, and neither will I, but the idea is not dissimilar) you could create enough added reflection to counterbalance two degrees of global warming with just 50 specially designed fast hydrofoils. That would be cheaper than the cheapest aircraft option, for a far more powerful effect.

None of this, as Robock in particular is keen to point out, means that a schemes that made use of such techniques would work as advertised and be a good idea. There may well be all sorts of other reasons why such schemes are a bad idea. But there do seem to be some pretty low cost options around.

Posted by Oliver Morton on December 19, 2008
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Cities often take a lot of heat in environmental discussions. All that pavement and pollution damages human lungs and warms the climate. But a few sessions this week suggest that cities may be part of the greenhouse solution.

First a few challenges: Cities are carbon bombs. In the United States, urban areas cover less than 3 percent of the land area but account for 70 to 80 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted by fossil fuel burning. And cities are growing. By 2030, 60 percent of the world population will be urbanites.

Now some of the good news: Cities are carbon vaults. They and other human settlements store a surprising amount of carbon—to the tune of 18 petagrams in the United States. That’s almost 10 percent of the total land carbon storage in the conterminous US, according to Galina Churkina of the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Germany. The carbon is locked in everything from landfills to the books lining library shelves.

Question: What has a higher carbon density--a city or a tropical forest?
Answer after the jump.

According to Churkina, they are about the same. That brings new meaning to the term ‘urban jungle.’

Some cities are strengthening their roles as carbon sinks. Phoenix is doing it inadvertently, as its residents replace desert scrubland with trees and lawns. Los Angeles has plans to plant a million (give or take) trees, in part to mitigate global warming. Once fully grown, the trees will have absorbed enough carbon dioxide to offset only 1 to 2 percent of the annual emissions from LA, but they will also help cool the city with their shade and the process of evapotranspiration, says Diane Pataki of the University of California, Irvine.

As a resident of the Washington DC metropolitan area, I can vouch for the value of urban greenery. When I bicycle home during the summertime, the temperature drops several degrees as I enter Rock Creek Park, a splendid forest that cuts through the city.

Posted by Richard Monastersky on December 19, 2008
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This according to Stanford University researcher Mark Jacobson, who has compared various energy technologies in terms of not only greenhouse gas emissions but also conventional pollutants, land use, water resources and more. Speaking after a news conference here, Jacobson said he is trying to provide a more holistic analysis of the various energy options. "There's a lot of misinformation out there," he said.

A few of the key results follow:

Life cycle emissions -- Wind and solar thermal come out on top; tidal, wave and hydro all beat out solar photovoltaics, geothermal and nuclear, thanks to energy spent on equipment and installation; coal was the big loser, even with carbon sequestration (CCS), thanks to energy spent on mining and transport.

Mortalities due to air pollution from US vehicles -- For gasoline, projected deaths drop from 20,000 to 15,000 annually in 2020 due to improved technology and air quality standards. That figure would remain steady or perhaps even rise if ethanol (corn or otherwise) made up 85 percent of the transport fuels. Assuming electric transport takes off, wind reduces mortalities to almost zero, although the full suite of renewables fared almost as well. Coal with CCS would cut mortalities by upward of two-thirds. Nuclear falls between coal and renewables (assuming non-proliferation regimes hold and there aren't any explosions).

Footprint required to power US vehicle fleet -- Accounting for the base of the turbine alone (not roads), wind could power the entire vehicle fleet using less than 3 square kilometers of land. Corn ethanol and concentrated solar power are the big losers, with each requiring a chunk of land that is larger (and perhaps significantly larger) than the state of California.

Water usage -- Wind, solar photovoltaic, geothermal, tidal and wave all come in around zero; coal, nuclear and concentrated solar do well; hydropower gets a poor rating, thanks to evaporation rates from reservoirs (Jacobson divvies up the losses among energy and other uses). But the clear loser is ethanol, whether the source is corn or something else.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 18, 2008
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You won’t find his name in the program, but his teacher and colleagues think Andy Olander – a 13-year-old student from Albuquerque, New Mexico – may be the youngest poster presenter at an American Geophysical Union meeting. Olander and five “colleagues” at the James Monroe Middle School developed a project on comparing the length of the sun’s shadow in summer and winter at different locations globally. Over time, “the shadow team” grew as they tapped the knowledge of professional scientists at the US Geological Survey and the Raytheon Polar Service in Colorado. Then their science teacher, Turtle Haste, and Mary McGann of the USGS office in Menlo Park, California, struggled with how to credit the abstract for the AGU autumn meeting poster. Initially, they assumed he was too young to be an author. Then they checked around and found there appeared to be no lower age limit. But by then, the report was accepted for presentation without any of the student names as authors. The eighth-grader then got the call to describe the professionally done poster’s graphs on shadow length. Dressed smartly, he looked viewers in the eye and verbally projected well – something some of his more senior presenters down the row weren’t doing. The AGU public affairs office wasn’t sure if he indeed was the youngest. It even was a bit of a problem for them to determine who to ask if there Was a lower age limit. They are checking. We’ll see. And we may see Andy again. “It’s really fun,” he says.

Posted by Rex Dalton on December 18, 2008
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Five years ago, Bill Ruddiman came to the AGU with a bold idea: That humans caused significant global warming with the advent of agriculture 8,000 years ago, long before our ill-fated love affair with fossil fuels started in the Industrial Revolution. That proposal has prompted dozens of studies, a book, and intense debate, so researchers gathered Wednesday afternoon to assess the state of the evidence.

Ruddiman’s basic argument goes like this: Although the climate has cycled through a series of ice ages and warm interglacial periods for more than a million years, none of those warm spells looks like the one we’re in. In all previous cases, carbon dioxide and methane concentrations peaked just after the preceding ice age ended and then levels of those greenhouse gases dropped until the planet slipped again into a new glacial epoch. The planet seemed to be following the same routine since the last ice age ended about 11,000 years ago. But then something funny happened. After falling for a few thousand years, carbon dioxide levels started to rise about 8,000 years ago and methane values swung upward 5,000 years ago.

As an explanation, Ruddiman suggests that carbon dioxide concentrations started to grow when early farmers cleared vast stretches of forest to plant crops, thus reducing the planet’s ability to sop up carbon from the atmosphere. Later, when people learned how to irrigate rice 5,000 years ago, the paddies created for that purpose led to a jump in methane emissions. Those changes prevented the planet from slipping into an ice age, he suggested.

At Wednesday’s session, Ruddiman took the provocative stance of saying that the case is closed.

“I think we are at the point where it is a dead end to claim that natural [processes] explain the Holocene trends,” said Ruddiman, an emeritus professor at the University of Virgiinia. If you look at the previous interglacial periods, none show the rising pattern of carbon dioxide and methane. Q.E.D.

But others at the session and in the halls afterward were not so sure. “I’ve spent a lot of time lately considering the meaning of the term agnostic,” said Edward Brook of Oregon State University, who, studies ice cores. Ruddiman’s idea is “provocative and good for the field, but I’m not convinced yet,” he added.

Jean Jouzel, director of the Pierre Simon Laplace Institute in Paris, said “the change in methane is huge. It’s difficult to think it’s not natural.” There were so few people alive 5,000 years ago that it would be hard for humans to account for the methane changes, he said. Jouzel was part of a group that examined the interglacials and made the point that they are each unique in some way. So arguments about the uniqueness of the current interglacial leave some researchers cool.

Posted by Richard Monastersky on December 18, 2008
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Roughly a thousand people squeezed into a hall to see James Hansen talk this afternoon. They occupied all of the seats, then lined up along exterior walls. The aisles filled up with squatters, and dozens stood on tippy-toes outside trying to get a peak. At one point Mascone Center organizers forced dozens of people out, threatening to call the fire marshal and shut down the talk altogether. Then they gave up, allowing this intrepid reporter to sneak in.

There's some rumbling within the scientific community about the way Hansen is mixing his science, as director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, with his activism, but clearly this has not eaten into his star power. Hansen talked about his latest research, which suggests that goals of limiting atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to 450 parts per million are too tame. He is advocating an upper limit of 350 - 35 below current levels - at a time when many are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to stabilize at 450, or even 550.

To illustrate the dangers, he talks about the "Venus Syndrome," which is essentially runaway warming that eventually boils off the oceans and makes the planet uninhabitable. At least with a snowball earth scenario - which is, admittedly, equally bad for humanity - greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere by volcanoes would eventually trap enough heat to melt the ice and start the whole experiment over again. "There is no escape from the Venus Syndrome," he says.

How close we are to the brink is not clear. "Our model blows up before the oceans boil," he says, but the results suggest that runaway warning could be a factor of 5-20 beyond the current climate forcing.

Doomsday scenarios aside, Hansen covered a range of impacts already being felt and said even more are built into the system, which means we need to go in reverse to preserve the planet we all know and love. And that means halting the use of fossil fuels, particularly coal (for more on that, check here). He made a pitch for nuclear power and said things like biochar and better agriculture and forestry practices would enable society to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. How to get it all done? He recommends instituting a strong carbon tax and returning revenue to people on a per-capita basis in order to get them to buy in.

Sounds good. But overhauling the entire energy sector will take time, not to mention coordination with other countries. And it's not clear which technologies can scale up how far, let alone how fast. Citing some of these problems, one questioner got right to the point: "Is the planet really just doomed?"

Pausing to let the chuckles die down, Hansen tried to put a positive spin on things. "I think we will solve the problem, but it does probably require a carbon price," he said. "And politicians are just not willing to do that."

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 18, 2008
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With the many concerns over climate change, scientists are submitting a growing number of reports on extreme weather events – cyclones, droughts, or gales of 100 mph winds. These abstracts provide access to details not easily available to researchers, historians or journalists; particularly, if the events occur in countries that sometimes control the media. Consider reports of a devastating ice storm in south China early this year. A team at the Research Institute of Subtropical Forestry in Zhejiang presented reports at the American Geophysical Union meeting on the widespread damage. The extent of the economic impact of the harsh and unexpected freeze is just now being tabulated by researchers like the Institute’s Benzhi Zhou; Zhou and colleagues were assisted in San Francisco by Lianghong Gu of the Oakridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Zhou’s report noted the damage: at least 125 people dead; costs of $22 billion yuan; more than 19 million hectares of forests in 19 provinces damaged; more than 14 million hectares of crops (oilseed rape, vegetables, fruits) affected; and 30,000 protected wildlife threatened. The team offered suggestions for damage control. But they aren’t sure the government is listening, as the gravity of the event isn’t fully acknowledged or appreciated.

Posted by Rex Dalton on December 18, 2008
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It may be a bit of poetic fancy, but aeronomers (those who study the upper atmosphere) are talking these days about watching the earth breath. More specifically, a few researchers think they have discovered a “breathing mode” of the upper atmosphere—during which the planet’s gaseous blanket expands and contracts regularly about once every 9 days in a previously unrecognized cycle.

The evidence comes from satellite observations of the thermosphere, the region of sky extending from 85 kilometers to roughly 1,000 km above the surface. Data obtained from Germany’s CHAMP satellite indicate that the density of the thermosphere doubles about every nine days, according to Jeffrey P. Thayer of the University of Colorado at Boulder, one of the researchers who presented data on this newly observed pattern. Geoff Crowley, president of Atmospheric and Space Technology Research Associates in San Antonio, Texas, found a similar 9-day cycle in chemical data taken by the Global Ultraviolet Imager on NASA’s TIMED satellite. Measurements made by the SABER instrument on the same satellite also revealed the 9-day cycle, reported Martin G. Mlynczak of NASA's Langley Research Center.

Aeronomy researchers were well aware of longer cycles, such as the 27-day pattern that corresponds to the rotational period of the sun, but nobody had looked for shorter patterns, said Thayer. He and his colleagues hypothesize that the sun is also driving the 9 day cycle, as well as some weaker, even shorter period, ones that have emerged from the data.

And who says there’s nothing new under the sun?

Posted by Richard Monastersky on December 18, 2008
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Here are some other blogs and posts coming from AGU.
Erik Klemetti is blogging on matters volcanic at the suitably titled Eruptions. An interesting tidbit:

the Kasatochi eruption released the most sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere since the 1991 Pinatubo eruption

"short of being on Mars, picking up a piece of rock and seeing fossil impressions of raindrops on it, this is the best evidence for actual rainfall on Mars in the past."

"Everywhere we look, we're seeing x-rays and gamma rays flying out of thunderstorms and lightning," said Joseph Dwyer, a physicist at the Florida Institute of Technology and lead author of the study. "The gamma rays coming out of thunderstorms are so intense we can measure these 600 kilometers away and so bright that it almost blinds the spacecraft."

I was struck by something that one of the Cassini spectroscopists, Tom McCord, said as he opened his talk: that even though Cassini has now completed its primary mission at the Saturn system, which included dozens of Titan flybys over four years, and has now gone on to an extended mission, "the science is the least mature of any [extended] mission I've ever worked on." It's not for lack of effort; it's just that Titan is fiendishly difficult to study.

Decision-makers need information on a local and regional scale that climate models can't always provide. So UCAR-member universities have started discussions with decision-makers about their requirements; these discussions were extended to other academics at an AGU session.
"We need more user/stakeholder-driven research, not curiosity-driven research," agreed Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona, who has been considering what a national climate service could offer decision-makers.

Posted by Oliver Morton on December 17, 2008
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On Thursday and Friday there will be some sessions on "geoengineering" -- intervening in the climate deliberately in an attempt to counteract greenhouse warming. One of the presentations, previewed at a press conference today, was an idea for a way of cooling the earth I hadn't come across before: stripping off some of the high cloud.

David Mitchell, of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, points out that cirrus clouds warm the earth by letting light come in but detaining longwave radiation on its way out. (Clouds in the lower atmosphere are cooling, because they reflect back sunlight more than they trap heat). To get rid of them he suggests, a little counterintuitively, adding particles that will encourage water vapour to freeze into ice crystals.

You'd think that would make more clouds, and you would be sort of right. But the processes by which ice grows around these nuclei will outcompete the processes that make up the ice particles normally found in cirrus clouds; instead of getting lots of little ice particles in a cloud you'll get a few bigger particles -- big enough to fall down to the lower atmosphere.

The nuclei would make some clouds where you wouldn't otherwise get them, because they will allow particles to grow in places where there is not enough water vapour for cirrus clouds to form normally. But the net effect, according to Mitchell's models, is to dry the upper troposphere out, decrease the amount of cirrus and cool things down.

How well it would work in practice is unknown. It would almost certainly have some effects beyond just letting more outgoing radiation to leave the planet unmolested, and as yet no one knows what those might be. Mitchell wants to do some more model work to address some of those questions, and then -- perhaps, maybe -- some small-scale experiments. Unlike the much more widely discussed idea of putting aerosols into the stratosphere, the cirrus-busting technique could be tried, and indeed continued, at a regional level, if that was desired; it could also be stopped in days if it was suddenly not wanted.

So if you think geoengineering is worth doing research on, then it looks like this idea should be added to the list for a preliminary look-see. If you don't, it's another thing to worry about.

I'll try and blog a bit more about geoengineering tomorrow.

Posted by Oliver Morton on December 17, 2008
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The power of the HiRise camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter continues to amaze. Its latest trick, PI Alfred McEwen just told a session here on MRO results, is to look at buried ice in Mars's mid latitudes.

Seeing ice that's half a metre or so beneath the surface of flat plains might seem hard even for eyes as sharp as HiRise's. The trick is to spot small impact craters just after they have formed. Small craters get made on Mars at a reasonably high rate, because little impactors that would just be pretty lights in the sky on earth make it all the way through Mars's thin atmosphere. So HiRise is already spotting craters that have been made since it got to Mars a few years ago. In one of these, which they know was made in the summer of 2008, HiRise saw a couple of little white dots.

Because the craters were less than 5 metres across, the McEwen and his colleagues reckoned that this put the white dots about 50 centimetres down. They've now found four other more or less contemporary craters on the Arcadia plain which have similar white patches, and the spectrometer on MRO, CRISM has confirmed that the largest white patch is water. Over time the patches fade as the ice turns to water vapour, or gets dusty, or both.

There's nothing new about finding water on Mars, and I haven't yet had a chance to find out whether ice in these latitudes (about 45 degrees north) is a surprise to people who think about such things. But as McEwen pointed out, it makes it all the more likely that Viking 2, which landed at a similar latitude not that far away, might have been sitting on ice, if only it had been able to scrape down a little farther. It also means anyone with future interest in ice would not necessarily need to go as far north as Phoenix did.

Posted by Oliver Morton on December 17, 2008
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Nature's Rich Monastersky has a full story on what happened in the Arctic this summer - including melting in Greenland and methane bubbles in Siberia -- available here.

Posted by Alex Witze on December 17, 2008
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The US Climate Change Science Program released its latest report at the AGU meeting today, taking a deeper look at several potential disaster scenarios that fall under the rubric of "abrupt climate change." The outlook is mixed, so we'll start with the good news, move through the bad and end with the ugly.

So. A rapid and massive methane release from sea floor or permafrost hydrates is unlikely this century, which is good news as methane is, pound-for-pound, a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. [Editor's note: see related story here.] Same story for the prospect of a halt to the ocean circulation (portrayed, rather loosely, by Hollywood) that pumps warm surface water into the north Atlantic, which in turn provides much of Europe with a surprisingly warm climate given its latitude.

The bad news is that global warming is likely to increase the chances of "severe and persistent" drought in the southwest United States (this report focuses on the US, though its implications are in many cases global). In fact, we may already be witnessing just this. Or not. Things like tree-rings tell us that such droughts have happened independent of human-induced global warming, so it's tough to pin down what's driving the current drought. But modelling suggests that global warming will only make the situation worse.

And now for the ugly: Sea-level rise this century is likely to "substantially exceed" the 0.18 - 0.58 meter projections released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year. In truth, this isn't a surprise. Even when the IPCC released its report, observations of ice-sheet loss on Greenland and Antarctica had already led many to the conclusion that the numbers were overly conservative, but the IPCC found its hands tied by the cutoff date for science that could be included in the assessment.

This report comes courtesy of the US Geological Survey, which took the lead in producing the document. As mentioned, it is one of many under a program that has a long and at-times-controversial history. For a little background (and a taste of the aforementioned controversy), check an earlier post on our Climate Feedback blog. WWF also put out a statement on the report today.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 17, 2008
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The downside of bumping into old friends and acquaintances, as you do constantly at a meeting like this, is that you will occasionally hear sad news. Today I learned that Steve Ostro of JPL had died at the weekend, of complications related to cancer. Steve was a pioneer in the radar mapping of asteroids, leading a team that got most of the firsts in this field. As he told David Chandler in our feature on near-earth asteroid hunting last summer:

Observations of near-Earth objects were growing ... and we started getting some radar opportunities on newly discovered objects. In 1979, I met all the asteroid people and got very enthused, and then I was pretty sold on asteroids and wrote my own observing proposals. Within a year I was basically doing that more than anything else.

Posted by Oliver Morton on December 16, 2008
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Nature reporter Rex Dalton has a full news story on the dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago -- and one woman with an alternative theory -- here.

Posted by Alex Witze on December 16, 2008
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Michael Jones, Google's "chief technology advocate," is ready to make a deal: Money for data.

In a rambling, philosophical and frequently humorous talk on the nature of information Monday night, he chided a room full of scientists for hoarding data and discoveries as they work on interpretations worthy of certain prestigious science journals. When that approach fails, the science often gets lost in any number of niche journals. The result is a "spiral of information death," he says, that can only slow scientific progress at a time when speed is needed.

"It's your business, not mine," he said. "But I live on the same planet as you, and I would like to see it all work."

His solution? Boost funding, and then require scientists tapping into these new funds to share their raw data and discoveries as they become available. That way the critical information is out there, and the discoverer can compete along with everybody else on the interpretation, which Jones believes would hasten competition and produce useful results in a more timely fashion. "The privilege of being paid to discover comes with an obligation to share with mankind," he said.

Without going into specifics, he said Google's philanthropic arm tends to think along these lines when scientists request money. He also said the Google team presented these ideas in a meeting with US President-Elect Barack Obama's transition team, which is mulling an expansion of the science budget. It wasn't clear what kind of reception they received.

The picture is undoubtedly a bit more complex than he suggests, of course, but Jones was out to provoke. Whether he convinced anybody is another question. His call for openness drew a sudden round of applause at one point - from a half-dozen people, give or take one or two.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 16, 2008
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Cross-posted from Climate Feedback, on behalf of Olive Heffernan

This evening at AGU there was a special screening of Crude, a film about our love affair with petroleum– oil that is, black gold, Texas tea.

The documentary won Richard Smith of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation this year’s AGU Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism, a prestigious prize for outstanding reporting that makes geophysical science accessible and interesting to the general public. In Crude, Smith explores the geological formation of oil, its discovery and ascendancy in society and the potentially catastrophic consequences of our absolute dependence on it. Ironically, the very conditions under which oil was originally formed – a greenhouse world with elevated CO2 levels – are exactly those that its consumption could return us to.

Smith does an excellent job of conveying how oil, formed from the compressed remains of tiny plants and animals, could cause the demise of the most sophisticated species to have ever lived. And although we may be running out of the stuff, its pervasiveness in society means that weaning ourselves off oil will be no mean feat. There are no clear estimates of exactly how much oil is left in the ground, but the overwhelming message in Crude is that there are easily enough fossil fuel reserves to radically alter our climate should we use them all.

Overall, well worth a watch…

Posted by Alex Witze on December 16, 2008
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Cross-posted from Climate Feedback, on behalf of Olive Heffernan

Over the past 24 hours, some 15,000 earth scientists descended on San Francisco for the annual Fall conference of the American Geophysical Union. Delegates were a dead give away at the airport and on the BART yesterday with their large poster tubes in tow. It’s my first AGU and it could be the jet lag, but I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed by the sheer size and number of parallel sessions; at any given time I could be at one of at least four climate-related talks and invariably find myself wondering why the session next door is receiving louder applause.

A number of talks today focused on the need for climate science to become less curiosity driven and more specific to the needs of stakeholders such as local authorities and natural resource managers.

This is a topic that’s been getting a lot of attention recently. Earlier this year, for example, scientists called for a billion dollar investment in climate computing facilities to enable regional scale climate predictions on decadal time scales. At a press conference this morning, scientists including Jonathan Overpeck from the University of Arizona and Jack Fellows of UCAR highlighted the importance of partnerships between universities and decision makers in enabling states and regions to plan for climate change.

Throughout the day, scientists and resource managers spoke of their first-hand experiences of such collaborations. In a session this afternoon, Phil Mote of the University of Washington talked about their interaction with decision makers and utilities through NOAA’s (Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments) RISA program. In its fifteenth year, RISA supports research that can provide regional-level information to policymakers in various states throughout the US. While massive inroads have been made in raising awareness of climate change in recent years, only now is that information being incorporated into decision making at local scales.

‘Actionable science’ was a particularly illustrative phrase to come out of the session, with utilities and resource managers calling for the kind of information that can be used to make investments. This kind of research can be expensive though, and there’s a need for further investment in the science itself – particularly to overcome some challenging bottlenecks in climate observations and modelling. Aside from the need to fine-tune regional predictions of change, climate scientists are facing the challenge of collabarating with scientists outisde of their field and of communicating with a variety of stakeholders.

But it seems as though an applied climate science is evolving here that could ultimately aid adaptation. More later…

Posted by Alex Witze on December 16, 2008
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A vast room of poster presentations greeted thousands of scientists at the American Geophysical Union’s annual autumn meeting on Dec. 15 in San Francisco – including one offering an “experimental hydrology Wiki” website. The website was created last year by Theresa Blume of the University of Potsdam in Germany and Llja Tromp-van Meerveld of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. While designed to meet a need they had as doctoral students, the website now is seeking more posted articles to assist a range of environmental researchers, from hydrology to fields like forest engineering. The website is: www.experimental-hydrology.net.

Posted by Rex Dalton on December 16, 2008
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Lots of interesting stuff from Titan on Tuesday (forgive late blogging -- my computer was knackered). The Cassini spacecraft has finished its primary mission, and its science team is understandably proud of its discoveries. What caught my eye, though, were three not-yet-quite-discoveries: things to follow up on with further data analysis and more observations in the extended mission.

Volcanoes! Robert Nelson of JPL talked about data from Cassini's infrared instrument, VIMS, which show what seem to be brightness changes in a couple of regions. Rosaly Lopes described radar images of the regions that seem to show lobate flows of some sort of stuff. Together, they make a case for cryovolcanism -- eruptions of water/ammonia lava. Here's the JPL press release. Not so fast, said Jeff Moore, a planetary geologist from NASA Ames happy to play devils advocate at the associated press conference. Things can look volcanic without being volcanic, he warned, and things can change their brightenss, too -- look at the wind streaks on Mars, for example. Listening to him it was hard to see the volcano case as beyond reasonable doubt. A nice bonus after the press conference was listening to Moore and Lopes discussing which of them was using Ockham's Razor better: Moore, who was suggesting that everything on Titan can be explained with just the three surface and atmospheric factors known to be at play (wind, methane rain, and impact cratering) without invoking internal factors? Or Lopes, who was seeing ways to explain with one cause, volcanism, things that Moore would need to invoke a variety of causes for?

Titan as Mars Mars's orbit and inclination mean that the southern hemisphere's summer is shorter and hotter than summer in the north. As a result there's a net transfer of volatiles -- water -- from one end of the planet to the other. Saturn's orbit means that something similar applies to Titan, and Oded Aharonson of CalTech has a nice story to tell about how that, too, could lead to a net transfer of volatiles -- in this case, methane.

Titan's lakes are apparently restricted to high latitudes, and there are many more of them in the north than the south. At one point people wondered if the methane moved from one pole to another on a seasonal basis, but it turns out that the seasons on Titan are not long enough for that to work. They're long season's by earthly standards, to be sure -- it takes Saturn almost 30 years to get round the sun, and that's what sets Titan's seasons -- but transporting methane through Titan's atmosphere takes a very long time; the time it takes a methane molecule evaporated from a Titanian lake to fall back as a raindrop is centuries. Instead, Aharonson suggests, the volatiles move from pole to pole according to a 30,000 year cycle that swaps the short hot summers from one hemisphere to the other. Nice supporting detail: this would explain why the only big lake in the south, "Lake Ontario", is rich in ethane -- which doesn't evaporate, and thus would make up a sort of lag deposit as the methane evaporated away over the millennia. Neat implication for further research: could this explain why Titan's craters seem to be mostly in the tropics, more or less -- does the methane flip flop mean that erosion/resurfacing is orders of magnitude faster at the poles than at the equator?

Titan is Buffalo. In the north there are clouds of ethane and also, it appears, of methane. Is it possible that the methane clouds are "lake effect" clouds like those you get when cold wind passes over the warm great lakes in winter and hits high ground on the other side? This idea of Mike Brown's got some press when it was first suggested, but I missed that, so I came across it fresh. Whether this particular idea holds up or not, there's something about seeing people like him and Aharonson and Moore and many others take ideas from one planet with hydrology and weather and apply them to another that is really inspiring.

Posted by Oliver Morton on December 15, 2008
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Delegates filed out of the Poznan International Fair early Saturday, ending two weeks of talks with a series of documents that lay the groundwork and set the schedule for negotiations next year (AFP).

In other words, the delegates have merely agreed to what is on the table and when to discuss it. Doesn't sound like much, but, in truth, that is pretty much what they were hoping to do. I talked to more than one observer who said their main objective going into Poznan was to ensure the talks didn't get derailed altogether by the financial crisis. Calls for a "Green New Deal" became the rallying cry.

UN officials are billing the meeting as a success, though many environmental groups say delegates ended up kicking far too many issues into next year. Indeed, Poznan represents the midway point between Bali and Copenhagen, where the talks are scheduled to conclude, but it's not at all clear that half of the work has been done. Aside from launching the adaptation fund (without an expansion of funding), no major issues were resolved.

Negotiators made some progress on deforestation, though not as much as hoped. They also made some modifications to the program that developed countries use to offset their emissions in developing countries, but could not agree on whether to wrap efforts to bury carbon dioxide into the list of eligible technologies for doing so. Instead, they called for a report on the matter.

As things would down Friday night, the conference shifted to Stary Rynek, the square in the centre of Poznan. Bars and restaurants filled up as delegations, lobbyists, advocates and, yes, media gathered for a final set of informal talks before heading home.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 12, 2008
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Things are wrapping up in Poznan, but it's tough to assess the mood. The European Union's last-minute climate deal was certainly welcome news, but the process by which EU leaders got there - and the concessions they made along the way - have left a bitter taste in the mouths of many. A speech by Al Gore, the Nobel-prize winning climate advocate and former vice president of the United States, inspired a standing ovation with a not-so-veiled reference to the new US leadership: "Yes we can!"

Shortly afterward I talked to the delegation from East Timor, whose assessment of the ongoing battle over the launch of the new adaptation fund might be better described as "no we can't." But in truth it's tough to keep track of what's happening here, as information always seems to be shifting depending on whom you are talking to and when. Shortly after my conversation with the crew from East Timor, I encountered a few others who said "eventually, they will."

And indeed they did. We received word a short while ago that negotiators produced an agreement on adaptation, which was billed in advance as a showcase issue for the convention. Developed and developing countries had spent the past two weeks talking about access and verification issues as well as ways to provide additional resources, but the fact that they reached a deal so quickly still came as a bit of a surprise.

It appears that developing countries won out on the question of access: The fund will be administered by a board within the United Nations climate convention, allowing poor countries to bypass entities like the World Bank when they seek money. Industrialized nations wanted some kind of mechanisms in place to ensure the money is spent properly, and it's not yet clear how that debate came out. Nor have negotiators reached a deal on how to secure more money for the fund, which currently contains some $200 million, a paltry sum when you figure that estimates on costs range from tens of billions, or even a trillion, dollars annually.

One of the outstanding issues is whether to include carbon capture and sequestration - burying carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants) in the list of technologies that developed countries can finance in order to offset their emissions in the developing world. There is also talk of various reforms that would make the CDM faster and more reliable, but energy seems to be waning for that debate.

As the talks wind down, the question is what kind of a ribbon delegates can tie around the final documents. Word has it that Poland entered on of the "mini-ministerials" (high-level meetings outside the main plenary) today with a new document titled the "Poznan Solidarity Partnership," which tried to overlay some kind of grand vision over all of the negotiations (it was rejected). Some have pushed for the inclusion of goals for emissions reductions in developed countries, but that idea has encountered resistance as well.

The final plenary session is supposed to take place this evening - and some think it might even end this evening as well. We'll see what happens.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 12, 2008
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European Union officials waltzed into a press conference in Poznan this afternoon and proclaimed, once again, that their latest climate proposal was in no danger. Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas called failure "inconceivable." Hours later, in Brussels, where EU leaders are gathering today and tomorrow in hopes of reaching such an agreement, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi threatened to veto any deal that harmed Italy's interests.

The way Dimas explains it, the debate is over implementation and concessions sought by various countries and not the proposal itself, which would reduce emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 (or 30 percent, if comparable goals are agreed to in an international treaty). Regardless, Berlusconi is driving a tough bargain.

The outcome could weigh heavily on the ongoing United Nations climate talks, where the EU has historically played a leadership roll. Ministers from developing countries laid out various ideas and proposals during a high-level session at the conference this afternoon, but virtually all of them called for bold commitments from industrialized nations.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon began the day by calling for leadership in a "Green New Deal" in response to the financial crisis. "We look for that leadership from the European Union," he said. "The decisions currently being made by European leaders in Brussels are at great consequence for the whole world."

On a lighter note, Berlusconi's comments earned Italy first place in the "Fossil of the Day" competition in Poznan, a daily award that environmentalists give to those who exhibit particularly bad behavior. For kicks, the second and third place awards follow:

-- Australia took second place for a plenary speech that was "stunning in its substancelessness." Environmentalists criticized the Aussies for calling for "collective actions" - and then waiting until Monday to formally announce their new climate policy.

-- Canada eked out third place for ordering the UN Secretariat to tear down a photo exhibit on the tar sands in Alberta. The exhibit was set up by the youth delegation at the US Climate Action Network booth.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 11, 2008
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Even if the international community is able to sign a global warming treaty in Copenhagen in 2009, ratification and implementation could take years. This inevitable lag is reviving interest in various fast-track strategies that could slow the rate of warming today, providing a little breathing room for the carbon dioxide regulations to kick in.

Leading the charge is Durwood J. Zaelke, a man of many titles, one of which is president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. Zaelke begins his talks by citing recent research by Veerabhadran Ramanathan at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography indicating that we are already facing warming of 2.4 degrees Celsius - based on greenhouse gases that have already been pumped into the atmosphere.

He quickly slides into a host of impacts, from melting glaciers and ice caps to droughts, storms and the like, rattling off various unpredictable "tipping points" that could lead to irreversible damage. "Climate is no longer just a mid- to long-term problem. The fact is, it's a problem for us today," he says. "That changes the focus."

So what to do?

Zaelke has a list of ideas that he's been sharing with folks here in Poznan. At the top is "black carbon," or soot, particularly from things like internal-combustion engines and cook stoves in the developing world. He says it is second only to carbon dioxide in terms of its heat-trapping potential (many put methane in that slot). And when this dark soot falls on ice the Tibetan Plateau and in the Arctic, he says, it also lowers the albedo and promotes melting.

The good news is that the problem is theoretically easy to solve - given money and the will. Start by scrapping old vehicles, installing filters, and cleaning up the fuel. Shipping regulations could be strengthened to conserve fuel around the ports, he says, and efforts to replacing old cook-stoves in Asia could be accelerated. The United States and Europe have already shown it can be done, Zaelke says, and the pay-off is quick as soot only stays in the atmosphere for a matter of weeks. Healthy air is a bonus.

Moving down his list, Zaelke advocates biomass-based charcoal - or biochar (subscription required) - to lock up carbon dioxide in soils and methane recovery from farms and waste facilities, a relatively simple and increasingly profitable venture. Zaelke also believes more resources should be put into the already-successful Montreal Protocol, which was created to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals but has recently expanded its mission to include greenhouse gases (more on that later).

Zaelke and others believe these strategies could fit under the climate convention’s umbrella, but delegates themselves are focused on other things. Ana Maria Kleymeyer, who represents Argentina’s Ministry of Environment under both the Montreal Protocol and the UN climate convention, says these types of activities might need to be kick-started outside the UN process first.

"We thought the idea would have legs,” Kleymeyer says. “Here are some opportunities to take on some really early actions, but it's not happening. It’s pretty frustrating.”

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 11, 2008
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Climate negotiators will take an official break today as global environmental ministers sit down for a high-level session in an effort to hammer out a broader agreement on where to go from here. The United Nation's top climate official, Yvo de Boer, says the goal is to establish a "shared vision" to underpin discussions in 2009.

Early reports indicated little evidence of a major breakthrough, but there might yet be room for surprises - or at least an interesting debate. The Guardian is reporting that the European Union has upped its ante with a pledge to cut emissions by 80-95 percent below 1990 levels - if developing countries will in turn agree to curb the growth in their emissions 15-30 percent over the next decade.

Perhaps the message being delivered by Martin Parry and others is getting through. Unfortunately, this kind of horse-trading might be a bit premature given that the United States remains in limbo until January. For their part, countries like China have adamantly opposed signing up to numeric targets, which isn't to say that they are unwilling to commit to anything.

China has already implemented a policy to boost energy efficiency by 20 percent by 2010, compared to 2005 levels, and if that works out it plans go much further. Earlier this month, Brazil released a formal climate plan laying out, among other things, how it plans to reduce deforestation by 70 percent by 2017. The plan doesn't quite deliver on previous promises to halt deforestation by 2015, but Bloomberg reported Environment Minister Carlos Minc saying it also involves massive reforestation efforts as well, suggesting that net deforestation could be attained by that date.

(As it happens, I asked Paulo Adario, Amazon Campaign Director for Greenpeace, about the issue this week in Poznan. He says the plan is based on some funny numbers and logic - including the baseline used for measuring the reductions and an implicit assumption that new plantations in one part of the country make up for slash-and-burn in the Amazon - but nonetheless represents "a step forward".)

All of this is to say that there is evidence that some of the biggest emitters in the developing world are already taking climate seriously, even if they don't want to bind themselves to specific commitments. It's a point that UN climate chief Yvo de Boer drove home again yesterday, highlighting climate plans that have already been put in place by China and Brazil as well as Mexico, India, South Africa and others.

"One of the things that has constrained this process in the past is the impression that developing countries are doing anything," he said. "Nothing could be farther from the truth."

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 11, 2008
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One of the ongoing debates in Poznan is whether to enumerate some kind of goal for emissions reductions, at least in the short term. The usual number that comes up for Annex I countries - the industrialized world - is 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and the EU has been pushing for a 50-percent reduction by mid-century in order to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. The scientific basis for this, however, is unclear at best.

The United Kingdom's Martin Parry, who co-chaired the impacts and adaptation group for the International Panel on Climate Change's 2007 assessment, reiterated his position that the policymakers are aiming too low. "The 50-percent pathway won't do what they think it will, and that's a pity," Parry said after his presentation this afternoon. "The problem is they are working with old information."

Parry crunched some numbers before the conference and determined that the odds of staying under 2 degrees of warming are only slightly better than 50/50 even if emissions peak in 2015 and then decrease to 60 percent below 1990 levels by mid-century. (Because the climate takes time to respond to greenhouse gases, the full impact of warming in this scenario does not occur until 2100; Parry addressed this issue in Nature Reports Climate Change in June). If you want to increase the odds of coming in under 2 degrees and avoid the most serious impacts of global warming, you need an 80-percent reduction by 2050.

Individually, some nations are looking at 80-percent figure. The United Kingdom’s climate plan shoots for 80 percent, and US President-Elect has called for 80 percent in his climate plan. But there’s another twist in Parry’s numbers: Each decade that the global peak is delayed, the temperature increase goes up by .4 to .5 degrees. According to this model, an eighty percent reduction by mid-century delivers 1.4 degree of warming with a peak in 2015; 1.8 degrees if the peak is in 2025; and 2.4 degrees with a peak in 2035. In other words, there is a penalty for delayed action.

The 25-40 percent goal is discussed as if it were an IPCC recommendation for limiting atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to 450 parts per million (they are currently around 385 ppm and rising at a rate of around 2 ppm annually). In fact, these numbers were more of an assessment of options, not a recommendation. Almost by extension, the 50-percent cut by mid century is often linked to the IPCC as well, but this story is a bit murkier. Although a group of some 200 climate scientists penned a letter last year calling for cuts of “at least” 50 percent by mid-century, the most recent IPCC report actually gives a range of 80-95 percent by mid century for the 450-ppm scenario.

To be clear, Parry’s model shows substantial climate impacts even under the strictest scenario, and Parry believes policymakers have not even begun to understand the scale of the problem. “The adaptation funding needs to be cranked up measurably, probably an order of magnitude,” he says, suggesting that $1 trillion annually might be a good target. “And the research needs to start now.”

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 10, 2008
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Things weren't looking good on deforestation last night. Delegates cancelled a public session yesterday afternoon, presumably to keep from airing their dirty laundry, and then got bogged down in a closed-door session that lasted until 10 p.m. Things weren't looking much better this morning, but they reached a decision a short while ago that seems to have everybody - including environmentalists - moderately satisified.

"It's not as much as we would like to see, but it does represent some forward progress," says Stephan Schwartzman, a deforestation expert with the Environmental Defense Fund.

First, we need to reiterate a bit of background: This decision comes out of a technical body, not the entire Conference of the Parties (or COP, in the local lingo). The document says in so many words that the methodologies for tracking and assessing emissions from deforestation are ready to go (specifically citing work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). That kicks the issue up to the COP, which will need to settle on a system for wrapping them into the treaty itself.

Advocates had been pushing for a decision by COP itself, one that would formally put the issue on the larger agenda and give a date for somekind of feedback. The delegates eventually decided not to push for a COP decision, electing for wishy-washy language suggesting that guidance from the COP "would facilitate" progress as the technical folks continue sorting out the details in meetings next year.

Believe it or not, just getting this represented a major breakthrough. Objections of one sort or another came from all over the map. The US delegation initially balked because it didn't want to tie the hands of the Barack Obama administration next year, for instance, while Brazil raised questions about whether the science is actually ready.

The delegates also came under intense pressure from indigenous groups to include language on the rights of native people. Many of the parties would like to see something on the matter, but linking to something like the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples presents a host of legal issues, given that many signatories to the climate convention are not signatories on the declaration. Language on the issue was removed from one of the early drafts, sparking protests outside the press room yesterday. In the end, delegates settled on language calling on parties to submit ideas for later discussion.

It's not clear exactly how all of these impasses were breached, but the international spotlight undoubtedly played a role.

"The world is watching," Schwartzman says. "They didn't want to leave here looking like do-nothings, bickering about parochial issues while the world around them burns."

No word yet on whether delegates will be able to bridge an impasse on the other big issue in Poznan: Launching the adaptation fund to help poor countries prepare for a warmer world.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 10, 2008
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UN climate chief Yvo de Boer was again hit with questions during today's news conference regarding the goal for Copenhagen. As with the Kyoto accord, it could take multiple years to get all the details worked out, he said, but an overarching, ratifiable treaty must be signed. De Boer didn't flinch when asked whether it would constitute "failure" if said agreement does not include specific commitments for developed nations to reduce greenhouse gases (which is farther than many believe Barack Obama will be able to go his first year in office).

"Yes."

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 09, 2008
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The notion that it will be difficult to complete a global warming treaty next year in Copenhagen is hardly controversial in the United States, but it still doesn't sit well with many in the international community. Indeed, Reuters has reported that UN climate chief Yvo de Boer went so far to dismiss such statements by Eileen Claussen at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change as "unhelpful and incorrect."

But from Claussen's perspective, now is the time to talk about what is possible, so as to avoid misunderstanding and recriminations down the road. She isn't alone. The Environmental Defense Fund and the International Emissions Trading Association hosted a side event last night featuring several staffers representing both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.

People flocked to the room, and many ended up sitting on the floor when chairs and standing room filled up. The congressional aides' carried a simple message across the Atlantic: Legislating is a complex affair in the United States, due in large part to founding fathers who distrusted government and therefore created a system rife with checks and balances. Expediency was never the goal.

"You need to understand the process, so that if it takes longer than you would like you don't take away the wrong message," said Lorie Schmidt, counsel to outgoing House Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan. (Schmidt has headed up the issue under Dingell, but it's not clear what kind of staffing changes might be in order when California Democrat Henry Waxman takes charge of the committee next year.)

At this point, it's not so much a question of will on the part of the new Democratic leadership in Washington as the sheer volume of work that needs to get done. The process is even more difficult because ratifying a treaty requires 67 votes in the Senate, which means the leadership will need to build a broad bipartisan coalition. The congressional aides were optimistic, but very blunt about the challenges ahead.

"There's a lot of us with good will," said Mark Helmke, counsel to Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee. "Bear with us."

I asked the Finnish gentleman sitting next to me what he thought. He said the debate in the United States is "very different" from the debate in Europe, "but they are getting there."

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 09, 2008
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I found myself sitting on the floor with John O. Niles Monday evening in front of a bank of computers just outside the Elk Room. He was walking me through a two-day-old draft decision document on deforestation from a technical working group, which was busy debating the latest draft inside.

“For people like me who follow this process, this is like crack,” Niles joked, hardly taking a breath between a series of explanations that rolled off his tongue in a passionate, yet controlled, manner. “They had a huge argument about semicolons versus colons versus commas.” “That’s awesome,” I ventured, enthused by his enthusiasm. He concurred: “It’s really awesome.”

John O. Niles (also known as John-O) heads the Tropical Forest Group, one of those non-profit groups that keeps everybody on their toes by poring over every sentence that comes out of every meeting, with particular attention to things like punctuation. He pulled out another document under consideration within the Elk Room, an early draft proposed for a vote by all delegates at the conference. “It’s a 510 word sentence,” he said, this time disappointed. “There’s only one period, right there at the end.”

A week earlier, Niles had issued a press release saying the deforestation talks a were in danger of a meltdown, due in large part, he explained, to confusion about goals and process - as well as a little obstinacy on the part of Brazil and others. Similar reports were still circulating when I talked to him, but he seemed buoyed by the possibility that negotiators in the advisory group were at last on track to achieve an agreement on some of the technical details (say, how to measure and track carbon emissions from deforestation) and lay out a schedule for finishing things up next year. The language was close; he was picking bones with small – but perhaps critical – choices of wording.

To help me understand all of this, Niles drew a diagram to illustrate all of the parallel negotiations under way. First came the 1992 United Nations Conference on Climate Change; the Kyoto Protocol constituted the first major agreement under the convention. Kyoto signatories have one group on a successor treaty, but a second, parallel group was created to continue negotiations with the United States, which bowed out. A third track, dubbed the Ad Hoc Working Group, would create a separate protocol under the convention. But US opposition to various proposals on the table again led to a second ad hoc working group that included US negotiators.

Confused yet? "This is not one meeting - this is six meetings. They all move together," Niles says. "Even seasoned diplomats are saying, like, ‘This is really incredibly complex.’”

Niles was particularly concerned about whether the advisory group would “inform” or “be informed by” the ad hoc working group that includes the United States. In the latter case, Niles says, rather than just receiving a report, high-level negotiators would need to take the matter into their own hands and make decisions next year, thereby working out the kinds of details that would be necessary for any kind of agreement at the next meeting in Copenhagen. "No one expected a substantive decision here, but they wanted to see a clear process forward," he says.

Word had it that the final document came out later in the evening, but I haven't seen it yet. Stay tuned.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 09, 2008
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P.S. Scratch the questions about people not having fun, raised in my post yesterday. Many of the folks I talked to last night celebrated until 5 a.m. Saturday (Sunday morning, rather) at a party tossed by various non-governmental organizations. It's an annual event, I'm told, that takes place at the midpoint of the conference each year. And for the record, multiple sources reported seeing none other than UN climate chief Yvo de Boer on the dance floor. No idea when he went to bed...

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 08, 2008
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Adaptation is the only major area in which climate negotiators actually hope to strike a bargain before leaving Poznan this week, but judging by the tone of a panel discussion I attended last night, such an outcome is by no means assured.

The goal is to sign off on a new adaptation fund that has been collecting money from a tax on projects in the Clean Development Mechanism, which allows wealthy nations to meet their targets under the Kyoto Protocol by paying for clean energy and other such projects in poor countries. But negotiators from developing nations say their counterparts in the developing world, namely Europe, are insisting on overly burdensome requirements that will increase bureaucracy, delay projects and ultimately waste money.

That anger bubbled over on Sunday at a meeting held by the International Institute for Environment and Development and others. Bernaditas Muller, a lead negotiator for the Philippines, lashed out at developed nations for pretending that the adaptation fund is a charitable gift to the developed world. “This is not a donor situation – this is a debt owed,” Muller says, quickly citing UN convention language laying out the obligation. Moreover, she says, developing nations themselves took the lead in setting aside this particular pot of money for adaptation, because they recognized that many countries are in fact too poor to benefit from the CDM program (you can’t reduce emissions that you aren’t producing in the first place). “It’s our gift to our own people,” she told me later.

I tracked down Amjad Abdulla, director general of the Maldives Ministry of Environment, after the meeting as well. He put it in simple terms: “We feel that you don’t trust us."

Richard Muyungi, a Tanzanian official and chairman of the Adaptation Fund Board that has been studying the issue since Bali, says the board’s proposal is to set criteria and guidelines now. Anybody that meets the criteria, including a government agency, would then be able to access and dispense the funds beginning next year.

I haven’t yet talked to European negotiators about the issue yet, so it's not clear to me what wealthy nations are actually proposing (aside from some kind of protocols to ensure the money will be spent properly). But I bumped into UN climate chief Yvo de Boer at the Sheraton - a popular after-hours venue - and he was sympathetic to the developing countries pleas for "direct access" to the money. I asked if he was confident that the adaptation fund would be launched this week. “No I’m not,” he told me. “I’m not. I hope it will be launched, but I think developing countries are rightly concentrating on quality rather than speed.”

And this isn’t the only issue facing negotiators. Legal issues need to be worked out if the Adaptation Board itself is to distribute the funds, and of course there are the usual questions about money. The fund currently contains something on the order of $200 million; even with a doubling or tripling in the next several years, the numbers remain small. As such, there are proposals to increase funding as well, including one proposal to collect a fuel tax on international air travel.

More on all of that later. Negotiators are taking today off in honor of the Muslim holiday Eid Al-Adha, but I'll be busy with plenty of side events and news conferences.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 08, 2008
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“Heard it’s dark and rainy” a fellow traveller wrote in an email to me Friday, as I was finishing up preparations for the trip. Toss in a few logistical issues, including some long commutes from out in the suburbs, and you get a sober assessment: “People are not having fun.” So I wasn’t terribly surprised when I arrived this morning to find Poznan dark and rainy. To be fair, the sun has since made a brief appearance, and it’s not exactly cold. But Bali it’s not.

And I can’t yet testify as to people having fun or not, but I guess that’s not really the goal here. As for myself, I’m still recovering from a long transatlantic flight to Munich, which offered little in the way of sleep but plenty of time to catch up on reading, followed by a quick connection in a prop plane into Poznan.

I wasn’t the only Washingtonian on this particular itinerary - spotted a pair of Republican congressional staffers on the plane, representing Joe Barton, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. I also bumped into staff representing a pair of Democratic senators. All are here to watch, listen and learn, and the Democrats might even end up reporting back to President-Elect Barack Obama’s team, as requested by Obama himself.

So. I’m going to head over to the conference centre now to get my feet on the ground, but first a quick update on a related note: French President Nicholas Sarkozy failed to reach a deal yesterday with Eastern European leaders, including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, on the next phase of the European Union climate plan (BBC, Reuters)

Sarkozy will get another chance later this week, but his term as EU president is up this month. After that it goes to Czech President Vaclav Havel, who is mostly famous these days for his antagonism toward not only climate regulation but frequently the EU itself. His ascendancy to the six-month rotating post isn’t likely to halt discussions, but it could make them more difficult.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 07, 2008
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This meeting has seen loads of talks about solar power. Materials science can help harvest energy from the sun in many ways. I have learned about conventional silicon, with David Carlson from BP Solar predicting that crystalline silicon, despite its expense, will continue to dominate the photovoltaics market for some time. He also offered a gloomy prediction for solar start-ups. "A lot of companies won't survive" he says. "there are too many, that's just not stable," especially in the current economic climate.

I also learned about a process called up conversion. This is where a material can change the light that hits it from a fairly un-useful (to a silicon solar cell's band gap) reddish tinge, into blue or green. Much more helpful, apparently.

I also saw mention of plasmons - strange particles made when light and matrter interact at the surface of a metal. Usually the preserve of the optics community, Harry Atwater from Caltech says that these quasiparticles could be used to carry light in ultra thin films of photovoltaic material.

These sessions were incredibly well attended. Standing room only for Carlson. Maybe that miracle that Susan Solomon, from the IPCC, hoped for at the start of the week will come out of some of this work. If it isn't here, then I don't know where it might be.

I am flying back to London this evening. So farewell for now!

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on December 04, 2008
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I'm not sure how many stories Google News would have picked up searching for "Poznan" on a random day in, say, 2005. A city of some 561,000 people, Poznan has been around for about a millennium and claims to be the cradle of Polish civilization. The city apparently has a long history of trade fairs, and its conference center is the largest in Poland. But still. Google tells me it has found some 1,600 stories in the last 24 hours, and spurious though that number may be, my guess is that the media spotlight is certainly brighter than usual.

Anyway, I've sifted through some of them and picked out a few that caught my eye:

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Bloomberg is reporting that delegates from India and China are unimpressed with US President-Elect's call for a domestic cap-and-trade system that would reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The story compares Obama's proposal to a European Union goal of reducing emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. It's a stark contrast, and one that gets to the heart of a very old debate: What year do we use as the baseline for measuring commitments?

Interestingly enough, if you take those same commitments and push the baseline forward to the present, the numbers converge. Both the US and Europe are proposing a 15 percent reduction from 2005 levels, according to folks at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. That's because the US economy has grown much faster than Europe's since 1990. It's also another reason why the Kyoto Protocol didn't fly in the US: Meeting those objectives would be much more difficult for the US.

Predictably, the US prefers using a more recent baseline, while Europe has historically stuck with 1990. Both sides have a point. Going with the 2005 baseline basically lets the United States off the hook for the past 15 years of emissions. On the other hand, going with a 1990 baseline allows the EU to capitalize on historical happenstance.
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Meanwhile, the once-unified European Union continues to face difficulties in agreeing on the aforementioned proposal (Agence France-Press). With countries proposing their own protections for one industry or another due to their local circumstances, the EU is starting to look a bit like the US, where such regional disputes are the norm.
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The website earthtimes.org reports that the Alliance of Small Island States has blasted as too timid the EU's goal of limiting average global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius. Island nations have the most to lose (everything) and are pushing for a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
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And lastly, Reuters reports that Brazil is holding the line on its stand against proposals to integrate deforestation into carbon markets. While many other tropical nations are eager to go the market route, which would allow companies in developed nations to offset their emissions by paying for forest conservation, Brazil argues it would be easier and faster to create some kind of an international deforestation fund that could help pay for conservation and enforcement programs. It has gone so far as to propose its own fund and is currently seeking donors.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 04, 2008
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I just saw a really neat presentation, by Ying Li, from Stony Brook University. She is working on ways to clean up water contaminated with radioactive waste. It turns out that a certain type of microbe, Pseudomonas Fluorescens, can gobble up 98% of radionuclide contaminants.

Li has taken this and applied it to a flitration system. She has managed to trap the bugs in a polymer, which can then form part of a membrane filter. The reason this is hard is that microbes usually live in watery places, whereas most polymers are soluble in organic solvents only.

But some water soluble polymers do exist - which means microbe trapping can be done. The problem then is making the polymer insoluble in water again so that it doesn't get washed away when acting as a filter.

Li managed to trap the bugs in a polymer called F-127 DMA, a fibrous polymer. She showed nice electron micrographs of the fibres bulging, like a pea pod, where the microbes were encased. Amazingly the microbes can survive, dormant, in these dry, sometimes hot, nutrient-sparce environments only to spring back to life when placed back in a watery, foody place.

The next step was to make the polymer insoluble again, and Li did this by cross-linking the fibres - making a big messy ball that is hard to dissolve. Again, 40% of the microbes survived this process.

Because the polymer is based on a hydrogel, and is porous, this means that water can penetrate it. Which in turn means that dirty water can get into the fibres with their trapped microbes, and hey-presto! clean water.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on December 04, 2008
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Last night I poked my head into a debate about "Impediments to a renaissance of nuclear power in the US: discussion of materials science solutions". I expected a gentle natter between some nuclear power big wigs. This is not what i got.

Panellists included Chaim Braun, from the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, US; Claude Guet, standing in for Bernart Bigot from the French Atomic Energy Commission; Tom Cochran from the US's National Resources Defense Council; Rodney Ewing, a geologist from the University of Michigan; and Michael Mayfield from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The debate started fairly sedately, with panellists asked how materials research would make nuclear power safer. Cochran's view was that people, not materials, make a nuclear plant safe, while Ewing suggested a need to be able to predict better what happens to materials over long time frames. Guet said that when so-called 4th generation reactors are built, materials will need to withstand more heat and more radiation than every before, and that a good deal of research would be needed to get the very best materials for the job.

These 4th generation reactors could be fast reactors, which might require substantial amounts of uranium, or reprocessed uranium. And here the debate got lively. Cochran was very vocal about his feelings on reprocessing spent fuel - he thinks that there is no need to do it, and that it produces more waste ultimately.

Cochran then said just what he thought about the current French model - a country where 80% of its electricity comes from nuclear power. The system creates more low level waste from its reprocessing system, and is expensive, he said. "There's nothing positive to say about [the French] approach," he said, talking directly to Guet.

Obviously not one to mince his words, Cochran then added that transporting waste, and fast reactors are both schemes doomed to failure.

The debate turned to the status of current plants in the US, which was where we began, with Mayfield saying that current plants would keep going.

The closing moments of the debate saw an accusation by Cochran that the French energy group EDF's recent joint venture with US firm Constellation Energy to build new nuclear plant in the US was the French government making money from US tax payers. This ouburst left the panel somewhat tongue-tied, but Ewing finished things up by saying that the discussion is a good way of illustrating why nuclear power discussions in the US are failing. Bringing things back to science, his closing comments were that engineers urgently need to be educated in the long terms effects of mining uranium, and disposing of nuclear waste - the two things that sit at either side of actual nuclear power generation.

The debate was far more political, heated, and full of personal fire than I had imagined. Nuclear power, I had presumed, was a topic that scientists were agreed on, and was something that the politicians fought about. It seems I was wrong. What hope there is for the industry based on some of the potential stalemates displayed in this debate - who knows?

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on December 03, 2008
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This year at MRS there is a Science as Art competition. It's the sixth installment of the competition, and prizes are announced tomorrow. The winners are voted for by conference attendees, and will walk about with prizes of $400 and $200.

Here are some snaps of my favourites out of the 40-something entrants (sorry for the poor quality of the images).

This is a picture of stress-induced delamination of a CF4 thin film by Thomas Brunschwiler, from IBM research

Nano-Metropolis is a scanning electron micrograph image of monoclinic gallium oxide nanostructures, taken by Emilio Nogales, from the Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain.

Microscale Landscape by Jianping Ge, from the University of California, Riverside, US, is an image of self-assembly of colloidal polystyrene particles, in layers, and is rather pretty.

And finally, Coral Reef, by a reseracher from the University of Utah. It's not really a coral reef.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on December 03, 2008
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No major news out of Poznan yet, but there’s been no shortage of analysts and experts and panels addressing the topic here in Washington. The primary message is one of managing expectations, for both Poznan and next year in Copenhagen, such that “failure” doesn’t become the primary message if, as most expect, the talks stretch into 2010 and beyond.

In the meantime, I figured I would post a few links to some key documents, studies and analyses that might prove useful for those of you trying to figure out just what all of this means.

First, the current talks evolved out of the Bali Action Plan, which came out of last year’s meeting in Indonesia. The UN climate folks also have produced a nice summary of international proposals that are currently on the table. Given that there isn't much else to go on at present, this document is likely to be key in Poznan.

Perhaps poking fun at hard-line skeptics who claim climate change is a vast left-wing conspiracy, the Global Canopy Programme has released The Little REDD Book as a guide to negotiations over deforestation, which accounts for some 20 percent of global emissions. REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degredation. Its inclusion in the talks was a major breakthrough in Bali, led by many tropical countries who see an opportunity to cash in on conservation.

More broadly, the discussions to date are largely framed around how to create a single global cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases, like the European system established under Kyoto Protocol. The problem is that developing nations – the largest source of new emissions going forward – are legitimately worried that emissions caps would curb their efforts to escape poverty. Rich countries are willing to let that commitment slide in the early years and put money (amount to be decided…) on the table to coax them into the system.

But that begs the question: What can be expected of developing nations today? Countries like China, India and Brazil might be willing to adopt a suite of carbon policies that, say, promote clean energy. Or perhaps they would be willing to set require stricter environmental standards for various heavy industries. Both ideas are hot right now, although the United States and others are looking for ways to ensure that the resulting emissions reductions are, to use the UN lingo, “measurable, reportable and verifiable.” The Pew Center on Global Climate Change reviews these and other issues on its website.

And I’ll finish with a study posted last week by the Harvard Project on International Agreements. This document looks at four different architectures - only one of which is a global cap-and-trade system. Two other options include carbon taxes, widely applied at the national level, and a portfolio of treaties that tackle various problems one at a time. The fourth is based on linkages among separate cap-and-trade systems that are gradually popping up around the globe, a ground-up process that the Harvard folks believe is already under way.

The latter two scenarios might well serve as an optimistic assessment of what might happen if the pessimists - who believe that global warming is too big, too difficult and too complex to address in a single treaty - are right.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on December 03, 2008
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(Today's progress has been hampered by a dead laptop, but I am now fully functional again thanks to very kind colleagues.)

The plenary session on Monday, already alluded to on this blog, was given by Susan Solomon. She is from NOAA, and has a list of academic honours as long as my arm. Longer, actually. Her talk was nothing to do with materials science, but had a very relevant message to the throng of materialosi.

Solomon, a co-chair of working group 1 of the IPCC, spelled out in detail the reasons why the world is warming and will continue to do so, and the consequences of such warming. And for those of you freezing in London (I hear it is cold there) please don't think that a warmer future will be a more pleasant one: Drought; increased rainfall; more extreme weather events; rising sea levels, the list of catastrophe that will follow continued rising carbon dioxide levels is a long one.

So, what has this to do with a materials science conference? As i said: nothing much. That isn't materials science. But the key thing, and this is evident from leafing through the programme for the meeting, is that materials scientists have the power and knowledge to develop some of the new technologies that will help to curb, if not reverse the effects of increased carbon dioxide emissions. "I have before me the people who have the solution," said Solomon. "I'm hoping that one of you is going to come up with a miracle."

These words were ringing round my head this afternoon, whilst sitting in talks learning about surface plasmon polaritons and how they can change the properties of silicon, or how red light can be converted to more useful blue and green light in a solar cell. These are hard physics problems, of which more later, but the brain cells are greatly helped by knowing that the ultimate goal is to make a really efficient system that can produce energy without killing the planet.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on December 02, 2008
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Last night's plenary has provided me with a feast of numbers and facts for you.

Did you know, for instance, that the MRS is a mere 35 years old? So young, but such a fine age.

When the society was founded in 1973 it had just 215 members, compared to 16,000 today.

Other trivia from this meeting:
45 symposia are running concurrently
5100 materials scientists are here to take part
The MRS has two fellows posted to senators' offices in congress - this year's fellows are Amit Mistry, who will go to senator Edward Markey's office (Democrat, MA) and Ticora Jones who will be with Russell Feingold (Democrat, WI)

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on December 02, 2008
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Cross-posted from The Great Beyond, on behalf of Jeff Tollefson:

The United Nations global warming negotiations got of to a predictable start today in Poznan, Poland, with global leaders calling for urgent action to stem the rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

Day one also offered a taste of the antagonism that has become a hallmark of US relations with most of the world during the George W. Bush administration. This might make for good press, but everybody is already looking forward to President-Elect Obama, who has pledged aggressive regulatory action to curb emissions.

Polish Prime Minister and conference host Donald Tusk found himself in an awkward position as well. He called for action on global warming - and then had to answer questions about his opposition to a European Union proposal to begin a new round of emissions reductions in 2013. Tusk later cited his country's reliance on coal and said Poland is looking to "create and adapt the package, not to reject it," according to The Associated Press.

The United Kingdom also received a bit of a jolt Monday with the release of a new report documenting the early implications of its commitment to slash greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 2050 (see the Guardian's story here). Although the Committee on Climate Change led by Adair Turner was optimistic in saying that the proposed reductions are doable "without harming the UK's economy," Reuters reported that there will be consequences, namely increased energy costs that could push some 1.7 million homes into "fuel poverty."

Given the ongoing economic crisis, there are plenty of questions about how all of this will play out, both at the national and international levels. But one thing is clear: Poznan is unlikely to provide any concrete answers. The two-week conference is more of a preparatory forum for the nitty-gritty negotiations that will take place next year.

Posted by Alex Witze on December 02, 2008
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Cross-posted from Climate Feedback, on behalf of Jeff Tollefson:

Shortly after finishing up this week’s Nature story (subscription required) on the upcoming climate talks in Poland, I finally secured an interview with US Ambassador Harlan Watson, the United States' chief climate negotiator.

His folks gave me five minutes, and I began with the basics: What is your role in Poznan, given the pending administration change and the resulting shift in US position at the talks? Not surprisingly, if you ask an obvious question, you get an obvious answer. “This administration is in until January,” Watson reminded me.

Fair enough. But in a year like this one, marked by truly historic elections that have ushered in such a radical change in governing philosophy, it’s hard not to dispense with the present and begin thinking about what comes next: Barack Obama. Washington is abuzz with politics these days, very little of which pertains to President George W. Bush and his administration.

Given that President-Elect Obama has already promised to become a leader in the climate talks and overturn eight years of US opposition to mandatory carbon regulations, we’ll likely see the same phenomenon during the talks in Poznan. But in truth, this was never going to be a year for striking deals.

Watson says the US team will continue to work its way through the process, focusing on adaptation, emissions, clean-technology development and the like. “In general, our goal is to move the process along and keep all of the options open for the new administration,” he said.

So goes the peaceful transfer of power, always worth noting.

Keep an eye out for updates. In addition to this week's overview, I’ll be tracking things from afar next week and then flying into Poznan for the second week of the conference.

Posted by Alex Witze on December 02, 2008
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Jeff Tollefson, Nature's climate reporter, will be at the UN climate conference in Poznan, Poland, starting this weekend. He'll be posting updates from the meeting as they happen on this blog. For his preview of what to expect from the conference -- the last big step before negotiators convene in Copenhagen next year, hoping to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol -- see here (subscription required).

Posted by Alex Witze on December 02, 2008
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Hello from a very pleasant and sunny Boston (Massachussetts, not Lincolnshire). I'm here at the fall meeting of the Materials Research Society.

I have just arrived at the meeting, but check back for regular updates on what's going on in the materials world. I am looking forward in particular to seeing what advances have been made in silicon photovoltaic technologies. Someone here in this meeting must surely be able to improve on efficiencies of converting sunlight into electricity, currently languishing around 11%, which is never going to be enough to wean people away from petrol.

This year could also see materials scientists expanding their horizons beyond the atomic scale tinkering that they are famed for. This evening will be the first plenary session, and it is by atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon. Solomon works for the National Oceanic and Atmopsheric Administration, and is most well known for being one of the first to suggest that CFCs were causing the ozone hole to grow. I am not sure what materials science will be in her lecture, so I am looking forward to finding out. More on that tomorrow.

There are many more materials treats in store, including a debate about how materials science will be able to help push forward a nuclear power renaissance in the US. Some big wigs are taking the floor tomorrow evening for the debate, including the High Commissioner for Atomic Energy for the French Atomic Energy Commission. Materials science mingling with politics - could be interesting...

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on December 01, 2008
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