Aldo Leopold, visionary - we need him now

Did you see Green Fire?
We need Aldo Leopold a hell of a lot more now, than we did when he was alive.

Climate hero Anjali Appadurai calls her...elders to account, at Durban climate talks

Edited; I wasn't comfortable with the tone.
Next time, let her speak - and rouse the old guys from negotiating business as usual - first.

"It always seems impossible, until it's done."

The high cost of inaction. Estimate: Last 7 years' inaction means roughly 3/4 degree F additional warming

Update: to help your well-meaning friends who could contribute effectively, pair this "high cost of delay" info with Steve Easterbrook's The power to change systems, on the need to find & use leverage points for solving systemic problems. To "work smarter not harder" is essential now.

See RealClimate for the story: The high cost of inaction. The post - on an update of an earlier article by Pacala & Socolow in Science - buries the lede, which is:

"[The 2004-2011] seven years of inaction, even if we immediately begin implementing the ["wedges" climate action] strategy now and fully carry it out over the next century, have larger climatic consequences over the next century than one might expect (namely, "an additional ~50 ppm of CO2 would be added to the atmosphere by 2111.)"

- which they estimate would translate to ~0.4 degree C global temperature increase, or .72 degree F.


Inaction today has major repercussions; it's another point unknown to the average citizen.


"Democracy doesn't work if people don't know what is going on."

Email to an intelligent climate doubter

Since this missive is general & could be of use to others, here it is (slightly edited). One Q to ask doubters, gently: "What other sciences do you understand better than 97% of the experts in the field?"

("Pat" was not my correspondent's name)

Hello again Pat ...

If you'd like general perspective from scientists (the "diamond planet" guys) from outside the "climate debate" fray, try Diamond planets, climate change and the scientific method

Here's what I found out when I checked out the "Mars is warming" claim you'd heard (I checked by doing a science-aligned climate info search, at bit.ly/w101search ; there are probably other such website aggregations to search, and definitely better ones, but it's the one I put together); came up with these:

Most concisely, "Mars is not warming globally." (from the Skeptical Science "arguments"(links + 1-liner responses) page)

Or detail, from the climate scientists' blog here:

"Globally, the mean temperature of the Martian atmosphere is particularly sensitive to the strength and duration of hemispheric dust storms ... to the extent it is sensible to speak of a mean temperature for Mars, the evidence is for significant cooling from the 1970′s, when Viking made measurements, compared to current temperatures. However, this is essentially due to large scale dust storms that were common back then, compared to a lower level of storminess now. The mean temperature on Mars, averaged over the Martian year can change by many degrees from year to year, depending on how active large scale dust storms are. ...[R]apid shrinkage of the South Polar Cap... trend ...continued... [but] The shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere. Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 (subscription required) showed, using the Mars GCM, that the south polar climate is unstable due to the peculiar topography near the pole, and the current configuration is on the instability border; we therefore expect to see rapid changes in ice cover as the regional climate transits between the unstable states."

Pat, you strike me as an intelligent person, someone who wouldn't take kindly to being fooled - so you might consider whether news sources that suggest this "Mars is warming" (& thus that current Earth climate change is due to natural causes) thing, without bothering to check it out first with credible experts, have credibility on matters of science, or if they're just hoping to get their audience to engage in motivated reasoning.

Good talking to you -
Anna
(presuming that some variant of "Tikkun olam" is part of [church]'s fundamental philosophy, but I could be mistaken)

...which brings up a question: which religions do teach that we have no responsibility to others, and are free to let the place go to rack&ruin?

Venue ideas? Wed eve starts 24 hours of climate reality - for your bemused friends

Can anyone suggest a gathering place that's free tomorrow evening, where we could join together to watch this? We would need a large screen with internet connection; and NC Library community room & Seaman's Lodge are both taken.
and I, so far, am drawing a blank.

Email from 350.org - Wednesday Sept 14 - yes, tomorrow - starting at 5pm, for us - begins 24 Hours of Reality from the Climate Reality Project -

"a 24-hour worldwide marathon all about the reality of the climate crisis. Around the world, from New York City to South Africa to the Solomon Islands, people will use the power of the Internet to present their stories of living with climate change, and make clear the connection between extreme weather and the corporate carbon pollution that's changing our climate.

All the presentations...will be streamed live at ClimateRealityProject.org."

Best points made:

"The timing of 24 Hours of Reality couldn't be more perfect -- it's just 10 days before Moving Planet, the global day of bike rallies and on-the-ground events to call for climate action. It's that one-two kick of awareness and activism... "

and:

"Many of us within the 350 movement already get the basic science and reality of climate change -- yet we sometimes struggle with getting our friends to really grasp the urgency. This event is a great opportunity to help your friends see why you care so much (plus, you can always pick up a new communication tip or two)."

Stories from each of the world's time zones will be featured, starting at 7 pm in that time zone.(*)

Machinery of Climate Denial - on KVMR today, Mashey's talk via Radio Ecoshock

Why is this message news, to people who encounter it?
If you'd listened to KVMR today at noon(*), you'd already know it - and you'd know why it's news to others.

Ken Caldeira, reframing the climate problem. Ask your conservative friends this.

From 2009 in The Economist's Is it worth it? What economists have to say about mitigating climate change :

"Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution, puts the same point a different way. “If we already had energy and transportation systems that met our needs without using the atmosphere as a waste dump for our carbon- dioxide pollution, and I told you that you could be 2% richer, but all you had to do was acidify the oceans and risk killing off coral reefs and other marine ecosystems, risk melting the ice caps with rapid sea-level rise, shifting weather patterns so that food-growing regions might not be able to produce adequate amounts of food, and so on, would you take all of that environmental risk, just to be 2% richer?” He has, he says, often asked audiences this question; nobody has ever answered “yes”."

Bryan Welch (of Utne & Mother Earth News)

At the New Life Eco Fest last weekend I caught the Saturday talk by Bryan Welch, publisher of magazines Mother Earth News, Utne Reader (e.g.: Get the Koch Brothers Out of Your Gear ), & Natural Home and Garden.

Critique my Ben Santer "how to get reliable climate info" intervew, please

Dear reader, I have a favor to ask: I need feedback on this interview, which I'd like to optimize for airing on KVMR. It won't take long, it's only about 6 1/2 minutes.

See over here at my other blog for details, links, feedback so far, etc.

(I've also got material for another Santer piece, and for one or more (equally) short pieces featuring Ken Caldeira; stay tuned.)

Climate science exchange with TPP's Mark Meckler, and Qs for y'all

Minor edit, May 5 (added "analogy" quote)
Tea Party Patriot co-founder Mark Meckler shared the stage with Tom McClintock at Wednesday's TPP Town Hall Meeting, and afterward he spoke with me for a few minutes about climate science and credibility.

The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science - Mooney, in MoJo

How our brains fool us on climate, creationism, and the vaccine-autism link; in the latest issue of Mother Jones.
"...motivated reasoning... our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts..." etc.

Very much worth reading.

For KVMR folk, on science communication - excellent piece by Chris Mooney

Excerpts from Good Communication is Good Scientific Practice:

An appreciation - Tom Grundy, and Reinette Senum of APPLE

APPLE - our local Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy - came out against Proposition 23 last fall, and Tom Grundy [speaking for APPLE at the time] stepped up to the plate and spoke effectively against it on KNCO. And Reinette Senum's just a powerhouse in making things happen - the Alpha building renaissance, our Saturday morning Farmer's Market, local educational events, etc. I also commend APPLE for their educational efforts in bringing Richard Heinberg and others to speak to our community. Thank you, folks.

But...

Time to fight back: confronting the climate cranks

How We Can Take on Those Who Are Sabotaging Our Response to the Climate Crisis
by Mark Hertsgaard; required reading for anyone with children.

Cutting through the climate messaging fog - Nov 2010 Nevada City Advocate column

A comment from Jon Shilling made me realize it's worth reprinting this column - which appeared in the October November 2010 issue of the Nevada City Advocate - on how to know what to think about climate change, when you hear Russ Steele saying one thing about climate, Al Stahler saying another, and Anna Haynes saying something else entirely. I need to incorporate (more) links in it though, to make it more useful.

Excellent KVMR climate interview with "Rough Guide" author Robert Henson

Edited with followups - and podcast link - on Wed Jan 12, 13, 18.
There was an extremely fine interview on KVMR's science show Soundings today with UCAR's Robert Henson, author of the Rough Guide to Climate Change; it's available as a podcast.

"Climate Hawk" logo; plus other imagery

I've added a Climate Hawk logo to this blog's sidebar (though it makes the mouse a bit nervous) - David Smith of Stockbridge Green architects designed it, and Gail is making lapel pins.

As for other imagery, I'm working on a (Creative Commons-licensed) climate communication "salient climate imagery & quotes" page/poster; drafts of it are up & I'd welcome feedback on it from science-aligned folk.

Impressions of last night's Sierra Foothills Audbon Soc. talk

Last night's Audubon Society talk was generously provided by Morgan Tingley of U.C. Berkeley, on his doctoral research on changes in avian ranges along Sierra transects since Joseph Grinnell first surveyed them a hundred years ago.

Tingley's work was part of the Grinnell Resurvey Project - and egads, what vision Grinnell had, saying:

“This value [of the Museum collections and other data they collected] will not, however, be realized until the lapse of many years, possibly a century... And this [value] is that the student of the future will have access to the original record of faunal conditions in California and the West, wherever we now work.”

The talk was good, Tingley knew his material, although - since it was about his research - it wasn't a "what seems to be in store and what we should do" talk, which - even from some audience commentary last night - seems to be what we in Nevada County most need to grasp, and is something we really, really aren't getting, from the local science folk.

Findings in a nutshell (filtered through my cranium) -
Compared to Grinnell's early-1900s surveys, Tingley's "maximum elevation" end of bird species ranges, like the ranges of Sierra mammals, has shifted upward for significantly more species than downward - which is also consistent with shifts in phenology (seasonality/timing) and in birds' latitude(northward)-range data. But he encountered lot of other variability in the results, it was by no means "ok everybody, take 10 steps uphill", so in no single instance can you attribute it to climate change. It's a pattern.

As for the talk we haven't been getting - calling Climate Central....

Quick report on Shibatani talk on climate change & Sierra water resource management, at Fri May 21 Sierra Club meeting

(The talk was announced here (fixed link))

We need climate communication that tells citizens what they need to know, to make informed and responsible decisions.

But as with just about all communication on climate that's gone on in this county, I found Friday's talk frustrating - largely because it was a talk on what Shibatani has to offer, not on what we-the-public need to know; and he's a hydrology consultant for organizations like NID, so his talk was geared toward their issues. Its two themes were uncertainty and the need for adaptation - I didn't hear much if anything about topics like the following: the fossil-fuel-funded effort to confuse the public about climate, evaluating whose interpretation of the science to trust, ocean acidification, weather vs climate, the difference in robustness of global vs. regional predictions, insurance against risk, uncertainty not being our friend, signal vs. noise, the "bathtub" metaphor, lag time (largely due to the persistence of CO2 in the atmosphere), the fossil-fuel-funded effort to stop AB32, mitigation (prevention) as economically far preferable to adaptation, or where we-the-public should be focusing our efforts.

The talk was aimed at water managers, not at citizens.

...and from the content of the Q&A, IMO the citizens badly need to hear what the talk didn't deliver; "straining at the mosquito while the elephant is running wild" comes naturally when you're in an "act-locally"-oriented mindset, but if it's not countered, it's going to trample us.

And a fair amount of disinformation did slip in - primarily but not entirely in the "uncertainty of climate models" section, since to emphasize what's uncertain without also addressing what's robust & why, doesn't serve the audience well. And I heard mention of cooling in the last 10 years, when actually we've just had thehottest 12-month period in recorded history (plus heat's still going into the ocean (img)). And the talk implied that the climate threat's been oversold, when in fact it's been undersold.

Recommended for those who don't think CO2 is as important as it's cracked up to be: Richard Alley's "CO2- the biggest control knob" AGU lecture.

I also got the impression this was a talk by a consultant (tone: "this topic is complex so if you can't follow it, you need me") not by an educator (tone: "here are the important things for you to know"); though others may have come away with a different impression.

A good general presentation on climate change is the Hayhoe slideshow, followed by Krugman's climate economics and Begley's what-we-should-do, & then as needed, Coby Beck, SkepticalScience.com or the EPA "CO2 endangerment" responses to comments (pdf for now), for addressing commonly held (and promulgated) misbeliefs.

(E.g. to counter the monckton/sppi "29 year temp rise has undershot the IPCC prediction" graph (top one here) from the talk, you can go to EPA Response (4-26) (pdf) ( "Two recent studies have addressed whether recent temperature trends are consistent with model runs, and both...find that the recent trends are well within model variability." )
(plus, as mentioned above, the oceans - where most of the heat goes - have continued to warm.)

This isn't an issue we can afford to stay uninformed about.

Reflecting on No Impact Man Q&A at Wild and Scenic Film Festival

Colin Beavan is here for the festival, and spoke this morning in our City Council chambers about his book, his approach and his experiences interacting with the public.

He is a very appealing man, with a very appealing speaking style - in that he doesn't have one, he just talks to us, and not from a one-up position, it's as if he doesn't have an ounce of social dominance in him. And it's clear that his unassuming attitude, his disinterest in conflict, lets him touch people that head-butters can't.

(But in large part I think that this is because personal-action folks don't pose a threat to the fossil fuel status quo; I'm pretty sure if he became one, their PR machines could mount as effective an offense against him as they've done against others.)

His message: that the no-impact lifestyle enriched his family's life; that he's not encouraging people to be like him, he's encouraging them to be like his wife Michelle, who was willing to explore and be open to the journey; that the goal isn't to move forward not making mistakes, it's to act and to try.

But he was uncomfortably naive about the opposition, saying his blog was "one of the few places" where the commenters still argued about the reality of climate change; and he viewed it as a good thing, that they were doing so.

he's such a sweet guy, with such an appealing story, that you hate to tell him he's wrong, or throw spanners in the mental works. He'd fit in well here in Nevada City.

Qs I would have liked to ask - or rather, Qs I'd like to know the answers to:

* how he reconciles his encouragement to others to take personal carbon-footprint action, with the harsh reality of single-action bias - i.e., that the personal action risks being taken at the expense of the actions that are most needed, namely getting people clued in about the threat we're up against and about the curtailment of freedoms that we're laying in place, if we keep putting off the creditors. (and that what's most needed is govt regulations to shift the economic playing field to encourage&reward desirable actions.)

* whether it's more effective - in terms of shifting the cultural amoeba - to try to reach and redirect someone who's at the leading fringe of a pseudopod headed toward amoebic disaster, or whether it's better to cut your losses & marginalize his actions, tag them as alien/harmful/socially-deviant, immunize the rest of the amoeba against them - and perhaps even set him up as a stereotype of social undesirability.

(This being, of course, something that Beavan would never do...but I have a feeling something much like it sits in the pro-disaster folks' toolbox, showing signs of wear.)