So this is what 352 parts per million looks like. If you want to see 350 parts per million, our natural state, then you have to get your politicians to act now.
Okay, a small caveat is in order.
Who ever said that 350 parts per million is our “natural state”? After all, the past million years or so has CO2 levels see-sawed between about 180 and 285 parts per million. The 350 is a ‘best estimate’, best calculation as to the safe level of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere for a prosperous human civilization.
Right now, humanity is adding enough Co2 into the carbon cycle (mainly, but not solely, from burning fossil fuels) to add about 2 ppm per year. We need to drive down our emissions that drive increased CO2 levels and then continue the process so that we are actually reducing CO2 levels.
And, well, who is to quibble with these women as to what is their ‘natural state’?
And, ask yourself: Do you want to get to 350 as badly as these women?
Interviewing the driving force …
This video was the conception of model Cameron Russell who blogs at Funny & Interesting with whom I just finished an email interview. From that exchange:
Q: Was this easy to put together?
Well, in reality it took about 2 weeks and 300 phone calls to pull together. I was inspired by the 350 idea and effort of each community creating its own 350 photo and video opp. So this was a video my community could contribute.
Q: Any thoughts about next steps? (Take the same theme and get male models to do it?)
One thing we’d like to see is copycat videos. People around the world putting on 40 articles of clothing and doing their own count down to 352 or 351. It was incredibly fun and funny to do. We were waddling out onto the set. I think people could have a lot of fun with this.
Q The fact is that ‘super model’ translates into ‘super traveler’. Many would see that as one of the great ‘benefits’ of being a top model. Yet, such travel creates a significant carbon footprint. How should we balance that? What are your thoughts? [Please note, we all face the reality of challenges in our lives, whether created by work or otherwise …]
It is an incredible challenge and definitely something I think about. Right now, I’m not in charge of where shoots take place. Even with a carbon tax of some kind, advertising will still likely be shot in beautiful places around the world. The cost of traveling to the location is a very small part of the whole. The good news is that there aren’t that many models or teams doing this work. At home, in Manhattan, I walk and bike every where. I don’t have a driver’s license and don’t have a plan for getting one any time soon.
Let’s be honest, here, it is hard to see that “modeling”, the “fashion industry”, and the concept of buying that latest fashion to add into the bulging closet is core to a sustainable human civilization. And, not having a driver’s license doesn’t real negate (could we say “off set”) that impact. On the other hand, these models action to use their celebrity to promote discussion of 350.org certainly has more power of wide communication than (yet) another A Siegel blog post to be read by 3.5 people.
Some thoughts about the video …
When I saw this, I had a couple reactions that included: Why all white? Why no men? Isn’t this so ‘politically incorrect’? ….? Then, I reminded myself: not everyone hears or sees things in the same way; not everyone is open to the same messages; and, well, this video’s buzz might gain a little bit of attention.
Just over the weekend, my inbox was filled with a discussion attacking climate science with assertions that “none of the models predicted the current cooling period” and, therefore, the entire concept of Global Warming rests on very shaky grounds.
Sigh …
Those involved in that discussion have now received links to an excellent article by AP science reporter Seth Borenstein. That article, Impact: Statisticians reject global cooling, merits praise because it is an excellent of inventive investigative journalism on a very public issue.
In the face of claims of cooling appearing in multiple venues and gaining visibility (such as via the truthiness-laden pages of Superfreakonomics (see here and here and, well, tens of other sites/posts )), being a centerpiece of misrepresentations by George Will and others, Borenstein decided to put metereological data under the searing examination of statisticians unaware of the data stream that they were seeing.
Berenstein (okay, “the AP”) gave the data to four statisticians and asked them to analyze the data. The result:
the experts found no true temperature declines over time.
Without knowing what the data referred to, one statistician called it “cherry-picking” to assert that there was any sort of statistically meaningful ‘cooling trend’.
“If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect,” said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.
The statisticians’ basic point: the starting date is key. If you play games and have 1998 as “the” starting point, there is a minor cooling in the intervening years. (Actually, not a cooling but a slight retreating, writ large, from very high temperatures.)
choosing a starting date can alter perceptions. Using the skeptics’ satellite data beginning in 1998, there is a “mild downward trend,” But doing that is “deceptive.” The trend disappears if the analysis starts in 1997. And it trends upward if you begin in 1999
Borenstein almost certainly will receit hateful (vitriolic) notes from deniers, self-proclaimed skeptics, and other anti-science syndrome sufferers who are unhappy with the results of a scientifically-sound path toward testing a hypothesis. Their loudly proclaimed hypothesis of a cooling globe since 1998 has, yet again, been tested and found wanting of a substantive basis.
October 26th, 2009 · Comments Off on Senator Alexander “believes an inconvenient reality …”
Earlier this afternoon, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) held a press call to discuss climate legislation. There were those who were holding their breath, seeing Alexander as moving toward supporting the legislation if it met his desires when it came to nuclear power development. Based on this press event, it seems that they might be holding their breath in vain.
Alexander spent much of the time repeating truthiness-laden talking points about Cap & Trade that rely on misrepresentations of government analysis and/or fossil-foolish think tanks that misrepresent reality. Thus, Alexander repeatedly attacked Cap & Trade on carbon emissions as a ‘jobs killer’, asserted that government analysis showed that it would send jobs overseas (‘in search of cheap energy’), that it ‘will raise energy prices’, take money out of the pockets of struggling families, and won’t have any impact. Simply put, none of this is a true representation of either the Waxman-Markety American Clean Energy & Security (ACES) Act that passed the House earlier this year or the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act (CEJAPA) that is being consider in the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, with hearings on this week.
Some of Alexander’s concerns and criticisms had more solid basis, such as stating that it was difficult to fully understand a 900+ page bill (even without the issue of it having been released only over the weekend) and that the CBO / EPA analyses have many inadequacies.
Senator Alexander strongly asserted this four-point plan for dealing with what he termed as the ‘inconvenient reality’ of climate change (which he stated he believes is a real threat):
100 new nuclear power plants by 2030
Targeting no less than 50 percent of US vehicles as electric cars
Offshore drilling
Manhattan Project style research program for clean energy
Alexander stated that this program would mean that the United States would meet Kyoto targets by 2030 (that is, I think, the 2010 Kyoto targets 20 years late) and emphasized that we need “cheap, clean energy”.
Reporters challenged Alexander in multiple ways, along the lines of:
‘Why would utilities buy nuclear power plants if there isn’t a restriction or price on coal? [His argument, here, was basically a Clean Air Act argument: that between Mercury and other pollutants, there more than enough reasons to get off coal without considering carbon.]
‘If you say you believe in the science and many scientists say the situation is dire, how can you advocate a plan which, you yourself state, might require putting in a cap or similiar additional levers in 5-10 years?’
Many of the questions focused on politics (‘Would Alexander join Jim Inhofe in a boycott of Senate EPW activities to undermine the bill’s progress forward?). Amid these questions, Alexander emphasized (multiple references) that what was required for serious action was Presidential leadership. Implied was that, for Alexander, that Presidential leadership meant moving forward with Alexander’s four-point plan.
If I had had a chance to ask questions …
As fun as it might have been to ask Senator Alexander what he meant by calling for President leadership, in terms of whether Senator Alexander would lead Republicans in following President Obama, if given a chance to ask questions, here are the two tacts/foci that I would have taken:
Every single expert study and energy expert emphasizes that the cheapest new energy is the energy you don’t require. Coined by Amory Lovins as “negawatts”, analysis after analysis show opportunities to cut energy demand by 20+ percent over the coming decade at costs of just pennies a kilowatt hour equivalent. Senator, you called for an emphasis on “cheap, clean energy” yet made no comment about energy efficiency. Why is energy efficiency not a fifth leg in your “plan”?
Just last week, the National Academy of Sciences released a report documenting that fossil fuel use (not extraction and production) has a health impact in the United States of at least $120 billion / year. This is just one example of what is described as externalities of energy use, with how CO2 is acidifying the oceans and driving climate change an even larger example. In your comments, Senator, you expressed dissatisfaction with CBO and EPA analysis of climate legislation. The CBO and EPA analyses explicitly do not consider such externalities. You discussed, as well, the value of nuclear power plants for cleaning up the atmosphere. The value of cleaning up the air would not, as an externality, be scored by CBO and EPA. Would you support a change in guidance to the CBO (and EPA) so that such ‘externality’ benefits (and costs) would be including in their scoring of legislation.
Bottled Water: I call it one of the greatest “con job” of the preceding 3 or 4 decades and a marketing dream…aimed at the gullible. It is also my main pet hate. One of the biggest untruth in our world is the following line: “bottled water is safer than tap water.” It is not. It is…errr…the same.
Here are the simple and undisputed facts: roughly 40% of ALL bottled water sold is nothing more than yer ole municipal tap water put into a fancy plastic bottle which may cost an arm and a leg and will find a way, one day, to add to our polluted planet (sadly only 1, maybe 2 out of 10 plastic bottles get recycled.) On ayearly basis, bottled water needs some 320 billion plastic bottles to accommodate multinationals such as Pepsico, Coca-Cola and a slew of others in order to what I call “double-taxing” the unsuspecting consumers (since you pay water taxes and various levies to your local government to acquire the certainty of untainted & safe water – though in most instances you are paying for recycled, treated and purified water).
Much noise is made over varying calculations associated with climate legislation. There is the disinformation fed from fossil foolish interests misrepresenting the situation. And, there are official studies from government institutions like the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that seek to do honest analysis but which are working within financial and policy analytical constraints that can create rather false pictures on the realities of complex systems-of-systems interactions.
Right now, the United States is amid the challenge of seeking paths forward toward something approaching sustainability in our financial systems/structure, health system, and, even more fundamentally, our energy system(s) and the impact of our entire society on the climate’s ability to support humanity.
While this has been greated as great news by many calling for passage of a climate bill, this excitement masks the fundamental flaws of the CBO, EPA, and, sadly, even many environmental organizations’ cost-benefit analyses related to action to mitigate climate change.
A simplified (al beit accurate) statement is that all cost-benefit analyses should have four basic quadrants which, together, provide the basis for meaningful understand of the totality of the result. When it comes to legislation, these could be stated as follows:
Cost of enacting bill
Benefits of bill
Costs of doing nothing
Benefits of doing nothing
Again, clearly, that four-grid description is a simplification of the situation (are there really just two options? costs to who?), but a useful simplification.
When it comes to climate legislation, quite simply, the CBO and, in this case, the EPA are solely operating in the first box: the costs of enacting the piece of legislation. This is a limitation that is put on the EPA by legislative mandate, but a serious limitation nonetheless.
For example, the EPA did not consider the health care implications of fossil fuel pollution and how moving forward with global warming mitigation will, as a necessary corollary, drive down the pollution that is so seriously costing American society. (According to a study recently released by the National Academy of Sciences, this is a $120 billion / year cost. Oh, by the way, that study limited its examination to the use of fossil fuels and did not count implications of its production.) Nor is there a valuing of the avoided risks of catastrophic climate change … Nor is there a valuing of the strengthened dollar due to reduced oil imports. Nor … The list of absent material is extensive enough to fill multiple books.
While this analysis doesn’t quantify the impacts of higher temperatures and other effects of increasing GHG concentrations, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (in its June 2009 report, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States”) described the impacts that we are already seeing and that are likely to dramatically increase this century if we allow global warming to continue unchecked. In the report, it documents how communities throughout America would experience increased costs, including from more sustained droughts, increased heat stress on livestock, more frequent and intense spring floods, and more frequent and intense forest wildfires.
Thus, those involved in this mandated analysis to support Congressional decision-making explicitly acknowledge that their work does not provide an accurate window on costs and benefits of climate legislation. Even with the undue focus on “costs” (and absence of valuing of avoided / reduced risks), the EPA finds that the costs of action are minimal on individual and societal levels. When one starts to count the excluded items, however, it quickly becomes evident to all open to honest analysis that the appropriate discussion focuses not on costs, but on benefits.
Steve Levitt‘s and Stephen Dubner’s Freaknomics was a great read. Interesting and provoking writing, underlining the value of taking commonly understood items, shaking the data, and seeing whether the common understandings could hold up to the light of day. Worth the read, especially because it is the sort of work where if you finish it not thinking and questioning things you obviously were snoozing in your speed read rather than paying attention. While there has been continued debate and analysis on many of Levitt’s conclusions (and approaches), this was a thought-provoking work that fostered intellectual engagement. In other words, you didn’t need to agree with it to gain from reading and thinking about it.
As an ‘analyst’ who values that sort of provocative challenge and who values windows to thinking in different ways, it came as welcome news that a follow-on book would come out this fall.
Sadly, however, this is one of those cases where the sequel isn’t just a disappointment but does a serious disservice to its predecessor.
As Levitt summarized his and Stephen Dubner’s book, “SuperFreakonomics, available this October, includes brand new research on topics from terrorism to prostitution to global warming.”
Superfreakonomics came out today and we’d all be better off if it just hadn’t …
Albatross Chick, Midway Island, Oct 2009, Chris Jordan
Courtesy of the camera and work of Chris Jordan, decaying Albatross chicks are sending a message from the Pacific gyre about the plastic footprint that humanity is leaving across the planet. Chris’ introduction to this searing set of photos:
These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.
To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.
This morning, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom J. Donahue will make a statement regarding the Chamber’s stance on pending climate legislation in Congress. Mr. Donahue will be available to answer questions regarding the Chamber’s position on the bill, as well as the recent departure of several prominent members of the Chamber.
So started the press release that came in to my email this morning.
The full statement, as prepared for presentation at the National Press Club, in Washington DC can be found here.
Pressure is mounting, from many sides, on the US Chamber of Commerce, which has been actively fighting moving forward with sensible climate legislation. The Chamber’s position is so severe that, in fact, multiple businesses (such as PG&E) have left the chamber, others have stepped down the board with public statements distancing themselves from the Chamber’s activities, and there is increasing criticism of the Chamber from voices across the United States. There have been quite strong articles appearing in the traditional media, such as this great Washington Post piece. And, there are campaigns being mounted calling on companies to leave the Chamber, such as Credo/Drinking Liberally’s calling out of Anheuser-Busch (see That Bud’s Not for Me …), against other companies.
MoveOn’s call re Toyota is a great social pressure effort that all Toyota owners (or prospective owners) are encouraged to consider joining.
The Chamber is spending millions fighting clean energy, and a long list of companies including Apple and Nike have backed away in protest.1
Toyota responded to our calls by shutting off their voice mail.
If Toyota’s really as green as they say, they should stop funding the Chamber’s anti-climate lobbying. But it’s clear that Toyota needs to hear it from their own customers.
Hundreds of Toyota owners have already printed out the sign, taken their photos, and uploaded them to the campaign.
Toyota’s US Chamber of Commerce members is at odds with their fluffy ads, sprouting flowers, promoting the Prius and their environmental claims
Green. That’s how we’d like the world to be. As an environmental leader, Toyota does more than meet industry standards – we seek to raise them.
Well, in terms of lobbying and relationship with the US government, the US Chamber of Commerce has focused on a quite dirty green (fossil-foolish profits based on pollution) rather than the sort of “Green” Toyota wishes to claim. As long as they’re members, Toyota’s US Chamber of Commerce membership dirties their “Green” credentials.
This guest post is from RLMiller [Subscribe]who is becoming a strong and impassioned blogosphere voice on climate issues, serving the organizing role in the “Adopt a Senator” effort to track positions taken by Senators on climate issues and pressure them to adopt reality-based policy approaches.
The key take-way from this post: Do not lose sight of the importance of 350.
Earlier today, the government of Maldives held a cabinet meeting. The meeting was remarkable not for who attended — the President, cabinet ministers, and assorted staff — nor for what was said at the meeting, but where it was held.
The meeting was set up underwater not to highlight the clear waters and snorkeling opportunities of the Maldives, but instead a lighter way to emphasize a very serious point: “We will die.”
them to analyze the data. The result:
Chamber of Commerce President Tom J. Donahue will make a statement regarding the Chamber’s stance on pending climate legislation in Congress. Mr. Donahue will be available to answer questions regarding the Chamber’s position on the bill, as well as the recent departure of several prominent members of the Chamber.
a great social pressure effort that all Toyota owners (or prospective owners) are encouraged to consider joining. 