Sinks Or Swim

Knocking Down The Box

There was an excellent Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post this morning by Kristen Sheeran and Mindy Lubber that puts the reverse spin on economist Robert Samuelson's piece there on April 27th was itself a take-down of a number of models proposed for re-engineering the economy.

His argument -- as they note -- behind the pundirty is basically head in the sand:  don't know, don't do; until we know how to proceed, we shouldn't change anything. As I noted at the time, that is not how the most effective bureaucracy we have (the military) works.

As one general was quoted as saying about climate change: if we waited for total certainty before we acted, we'd be dead. There is never "enough" information.

One of the odd things is that what Sheeran and Lubber point out is standard market lore -- that given distortion free signals, markets adapt, and so do the consumers that drive them. That Samuelson would not agree with that is astounding to me.

This piece is simple and to the point, and the core concept of it is indeed the core of our problem: carbon (and other ecosystem resources and services) have been priced at zero, and that distorts the market that so the cost of doing nothing about CO2 emissions is too cheap (in market terms) while fixing the problem is by definition more expensive.

As a rule, I always check my spreadsheets for common sense before I rely on them to make important decisions becauuse the assumptions you make, and the formulae that calculate the results often contain hidden errors. (Oddly, that is the structure of Samuleson's piece: don't trust models.) I'm sorry, but common sense -- and my own 35 years working outdoors -- tell me we need to do something, and forward looking economists have known what it is for a long time: knock down the economic transaction box that creates externalities by excluding some classes of sources and sinks (ecosystemic, mostly) and separates micro from macro-economics (and both from the still more inclusive ecological economics.

We need to, as Sheeran and Lubber say in The Cost of Climate Inaction, start down a greener road, and the first step is setting a price on carbon. Once the market swallows that we need to move on to others kinds of emissions, like nitrogen, and then further still to price all ecosystem services. Only then will we have the Great Economy of Berry, that truly reflects the cost of our lifestyle.

Silver Bullet Turns To Iron

A BBC report yesterday noted that a controversial German-Indian experiment in the Southern hemisphere ocean found that a scaled up algae seeding project on 330 sq km did not lead to the increased carbon sequestration that the researchers had expected from earlier, smaller experiments.

The idea was relatively straightforward, though the implications of full scale deployment of the strategy alarmed some critics. Here is how it was to work: seeding iron filings into the ocean would stimulate phytoplankton (algae), which would extract CO2 from the atmosphere, then die and settle to the ocean bottom, where that carbon would become tied up in sediments and remain sequestered for long periods, reducing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Based on those earlier experiments, at least one commerical company is planning much larger -- up to 40,000 sq km -- experiments using funds from the global carbon offsets market. As one critic cited in the BBC article (from Greenpeace) noted: "if we're going to be pursing this as a climate mitigation strategy, then we're looking at a state of the world where we rely on manipulating the ocean on a truly huge scale." Manipulation is about dumping and treating, whereas finessing is about fine tuning existing systems for optimality. These are, at the heart, two very different approaches.

Now, recognition of the need to actually remove historical CO2 from the atmosphere was one of the reasons that prompted me to start this blog, and doing so via plants seems to me the best, most natural way to do so. But this "seeding" strikes me as too much of a silver (iron?) bullet approach. It doesn't really recognize the complexity of interaction in natural systems, and long term, recognition, acceptance and finessing of those systems (to which we belong) is the only answer that is going to stick -- and it is going to involve lifestyle and consumption changes, too --- du-uh!

What really gets me about this kind of idea is the silver bullet mentality, the Oh-Mi-God, just buy the right lottery tickey, Hail Mary approach.

So what actually happened? They spread six tons of iron filings. There was a burst of algal growth. The algae were eaten by copepods (I'll spare you the recitation of the food chain but it is -- not surprisingly -- as complex and interesting as that in the soil), which were eaten by amphipods, etc, etc, and so the desired "desposition" didn't happen.

Oh, well.

BTW, there are a lot of "whatever-e-pods" in the ocean food chain, species after species of mini-crustaceans -- some with barely a shell to deserve the term -- that are the heart of that food chain, the base of that food pyramid (of which, again, we are at the top...don't forget that) and these many diverse species have a real dependence on the pH of the ocean, which is changing as it absorbs more CO2 directly (chemically) and is becoming more acidic. I will try to come back to this post to link to some of that stuff in a day or so....

Here's a link to BBC report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7959570.stm

Local Coverage of Climate Change

As I noted yesterday, it was great to see the Washington Post editorialize about the necessity dealing with the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change. At lunch, I did go out and buy the two of our local dailies they sell downtown, and sure enough neither of them had anything to do with it.

There was one article, though -- in fact the lead article of the Health section of one of them (I'll spare them the naming and you the linking) -- about at motocross motorcycle rider getting back into the game after a bad injury.

Now THAT's news! <G>

Earth Aboil

That's the headline on an Op-Ed in this morning's Washington Post. "A new study raises the imperative to get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions" is the subhead. The op-ed references a new study by an Australian think tank, The Global Carbon Project, and their lastest estimates of the changes we can expect to see if we don't change our profligate ways.

It's great to see the WaPo paying attention, because policy makers in DC pay attention to the Post. Now let's hope it -- the reality of climate change and our need not only to reduce emissions, but to lower existing CO2 levels in the atmosphere -- starts getting some attention from the newspapers most Americans read.

It's interesting being in the Washington media market (I live 75 miles up the Potomac river in Jefferson County WV) because the Post really is a local paper for us (DC and Baltimore (which has the Sun) are the two nearest large cities) and yet we are surrounded by smaller papers: the Martinsburg (WV) Journal, the Hagerstown (MD) Herald-Mail, the Frederick (MD) News-Post, and the Winchester (VA) Star all carry local and national news, and their delivery boxes are a fixture on the rural roads in region. (And of course we have a couple of weeklies -- the Spirit of Jefferson Farmer's Advocate and the Shepherdstown Chronicle, not to mention a free monthly called The Observer.)

I wouldn't expect many of these to give much ink -- only the Observer seems to follow climate change on a regular basis. I'll have to check...and post what I find!

Green Guilt and the Carbon Offset Market

The post says it all...the Washington Post that is, and what it says is not just that the voluntary carbon market is, so far, as unsettled as the financial markets...it says reams about changes we still need to make in how relate to this world we live and our inherent responbilities to it.

For a front page story October 6th, followed on at few pages further in, the Post's editors chose a pair of winning headlines:

There's a Gold Mine In Environmental Guilt

and

Still a Bull Market In Climate Guilt

Don't get me wrong, I (obviously) am a fan of the way offsets use the market to fund necessary innovation in combating climate change, and I'll let guilt be the motivator (for now) is that is the only way it is going to happen, but I think in the long run we have to get away from the "bummer" of guilt and get to a positive, stewardship view of the relationship.

Overall, the article notes, prices of offsets range from as little as $1.80 per offset ton, all the way up to almost $300, with an average of just over $6. That is essentially wholesale, as CarbonFund.org, one of the larger providers sells its carbon offsets for $10 and another, about to launch -- and specializing in our favorite type: carbon sink offsets -- comes in around $18.

One thing we don't much care for, but comes with the system, is tradeable offsets, which are really just another financial instrument -- not unlike the infamous credit default swaps that are largely responsible for the financial mess that is unrolling around us -- rather than an environmental action.

Arctic Ice – Pattern Recognition vs. Pattern Confusion

 Our long slow slide toward Babel, and our slow submersion by the accumulated effects of our blindness to the big picture do have a connection. Actually the connections are all around us if we could only pick out the salient points, the subtle repetitions – or rhymes, as an article in this morning's Washington Post called them – and have them click into place.

For more than a week I've had an article I clipped from the NY Times sitting on my desk, waiting for me to get a moment (it's Fall, and firewood time) to pop it up here. The headline reads “Arctic Ocean Ice Retreats Less Than Last Year.” As the article relates, that is apparently a fact. Okay.

It's not even a very long article (seven paragraphs) and throughout this decrease is implied to be an aberration. In the first paragraph, the season “ended with the ice not quite matching last year's extraordinary recession.” (I love the use of the word “recession.”<G>)

But it is not in the headline.

Why, and why does matter; why does it rate a post?

Two things. One has to do with headlines and their relationship to actual content. This is no great new observation, and is the print equivalent to the sound bites of television. The other has to do with how the meme of climate change has become sufficiently pervasive that anything that seems to contradict it becomes an item of note to the newserati.

In the seven paragraphs of the article there is evidence of this meme in virtually every one. While those of us who see the evidence of climate change as irrefutable might be pleased that we have gotten this concept squarely planted in the public mind, there is a feedback that is also a slashback. Once the headline writer has a sophisticated (to our view) understanding of the issue, his/her response in the headline will come from that viewpoint and may well confuse the issue for those not yet informed.

So the headline, read quickly, might make it seem like there is some question about the long term trend of global warming and climate change when in fact it is the aberrant deviation from that trend that is the real news here.

In that sense, the condensation of content in a headline is not unlike the compression of an image in the digital world, but seems more easily to slip into a transformation that, in a world where many take only the headline, might convey the opposite impression of the article itself.