It's getting later, day by day

Oh, Boy! What a Saturday morning this is turning out to be. I recently received a letter informing me that I’ve been selected to receive a nice recognition, to be announced in a couple of months. I thought of the letter after I’d been up for a while this morning, and it made me feel good. But a bit later I found that my printer was malfunctioning; it seems unable to print in simple black, though the cartridge is relatively new and properly HP-certified. OK, it's a short-term problem, I’m sure I can fix it. Little ups and downs such as these are not important in themselves, but they can get in the way of addressing larger concerns.

Such as flooding.  In America's heartland.

So, on to the hard stuff.

As I began looking through the day’s feeds, many having to do with climate change in one way or another, one of the first papers I ran across is a link to a paper by Daniel Rothman of MIT in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Rothman is Co-Director of the Lorenz Center in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. We all know that the oceans are undergoing changes in temperate and acidity at unprecedented rates. If today’s human-induced emissions cross certain thresholds, as Rothman predicts they soon will, many marine ecosystems are likely to go extinct. The consequences may be just as severe as the Earth experienced during previous mass extinctions. We tend to lose track of the fact that 71 percent of the planet’s surface is covered with water. We should care about what goes on in those deeps.


 On the general subject of the oceanic environment, how about the runaway increases in Sargassum seaweed blooms along the coasts in Florida, the Caribbean and Mexico? The stuff stinks to high heaven and accumulates almost faster than it can be carted off. Check out the photo of a formerly pristine white sand beach in Cancun.   A likely driver of this massive new intrusion is an increase in nutrients flowing from the Amazon into the South Atlantic because more and more land in the Amazon is being converted to agriculture, with an attendant overuse of fertilizers. So we lose the carbon-sequestering power of the rainforest and gain a wholly new source of pollution. As they say, what goes around comes around…

My next read was a paper entitled "Sleepwalking Into Certan Catastrophe, or Awakening via Agroecology", by Steve McFadden. He referred to a UN report on the devastating consequences climate change could have for a large fraction of the world’s population. The looming threat of massive food shortages brought on by changing patterns of rainfall and temperatures all over the planet has food scientists thinking about agroecology, a stabilizing set of principles and practices for clean, just, and sustainable farms and food. Transformation of agriculture through agroecological techniques and principles could have profoundly beneficial impacts on land, workers, and food. But how do we get to actually making changes, to progressing beyond talking about what might be possible, to actually making the necessary moves? In the short term, large corporations such as BASF, Bayer, 3M, DowDupont, Archer Daniels Midland, Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods, Exxon, Chevron and many more stand to lose a great deal in making many of the needed changes. Corporations hold great political power in the global economy. It will be difficult to constrain them from using it to maintain their short-term business models. If they had wise, informed models that look ahead, the way forward might come to light. An article not long ago in Bloomberg Business News about Tom Hayes, the new CEO of Tyson Foods gives hope that enlightened leadership can be found in the corporate world, but is there enough of it?

The obstacles to change extend beyond just giant corporations. How many owners of large tracts of farmland who farm using monocropping methods, with high tillage and heavy reliance on fertilizers and pesticides are prepared to change from the practices that have made them rich? The feeds I read from the world of agriculture have a lot to do with the politics of maintaining government bailouts in the wake of massive flooding, wholesale losses of animals from hurricanes and tropical storms. Extreme weather events of the past few years don’t seem to have brought about an acknowledgment that the current models of industrialized farming must change. The solution could lie in employing regenerative agriculture. True, the ag feeds are sprinkled here and there with mentions of cover crops, low-till and no-till, permaculture and so on. Farmers such as Gabe Brown, who has successfully used regenerative agricultural practices for many years have garnered a lot of deserved attention. But climate change is coming fast, and moves to confront the changes afoot have been pitifully small in relation to the continued increases in greenhouse gas emissions.

 In addition to the problems associated with plant agriculture, modern methods of raising animals for food, referred to as Concentrated Farm Animal Operations, CFAOs, are a great bundle of harmful effects on land and water, to say nothing of spoilage of the environment for anyone unfortunate enough to live in the vicinity of a CFAO. Instead of recognizing the negative impacts of these operations and enacting tough laws to curtail their operations, state legislators in many farm states are enacting barriers to law suits from affected neighbors. And by the way, the resistance to effective change comes from both sides of the political divide. House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) has resisted the progressive push for dramatic action on climate change, reflecting the industry's aversion to change and its wariness of the climate movement. "I think a lot of them would like us to quit farming," Peterson told POLITICO in January. 'Peterson the unimaginative farmer' apparently has an edge over 'Peterson the people’s servant'.

Those who live citified lives can easily be unaware of the pollution of rivers and underground water resources resulting from CFAO operations; of a steady erosion of soil quality that comes with frequent tilling, eventually leaving land devoid of native soil organic matter, no longer capable of supporting sustainable food production; of deforestation operations that permanently strip out whole regions of plants that were soaking up CO2 and thus serving to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. They may not think of the huge quantities of CO2 that result from manufacturing fertilizers. Nor are they likely to dwell upon the folly of planting, harvesting and processing vast quantities of corn to produce ethanol as a gasoline additive. Ethanol is blended with petroleum gasoline in America in order to meet a federal government mandate known as the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and its updated version, RFS2. The original rationale was the desire to support U.S. agriculture. The RFS currently requires that about 10 percent of all gas-engine fuel sold in the United States be ethanol. There is virtually nothing left of the original rationale other than making some rich farm landowners even richer.

These examples call attention to the fact that agriculture is a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions and the cause of much ecological damage. And because of the slow pace at which this realization is penetrating into the public consciousness, it seems unlikely that reforms will come on a sufficiently broad and timely scale. I’ve frequently called attention to the great book Drawdown, which spells out a list of 80 or more feasible steps that could be enacted on a sufficiently large scale to go far toward mitigating climate change. Agriculture is at the heart of many of the most important ones. We need to find ways to make change happen. The alternative is described in David Wallace-Wells’s book, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Check out this arresting interview with him.

The rapid-fire announcements of plans to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 are exemplary of an unfortunate expectation that new technologies will be enough to save us from global warming. Any realistic analysis leads to the conclusion that it will take a lot more than achieving net-zero emissions. It will require revolutionary new approaches to using the planet’s landmass to produce food and serve as a sink for CO2 by revitalizing currently depleted and desertified land. We will have to massively reduce global consumption of animals as a food source, learn to budget the ever more limited freshwater resources—and so much more. Small steps are being taken in the developed nations, but it’s a constant battle to educate the public and prevail politically against those who refuse to surrender their short-term interests. On this particular morning, it’s not easy to be optimistic.

Climate Change's slow emergence

I've been active with several projects related to climate and environmental change that affect Florida, where I now live. However, the commentary surrounding climate change I've read in the last few weeks has really bothered me, as I’m sure is true for many readers. I feel I should write about them now.

A New Yorker article entitled “The Other Kind of Climate Denialism”, opens with a photo of a landscape apparently devastated by a great fire--trees sticking up as stark skeletons against a befogged background. The caption under the photo reads: As uncertainty and denial about climate change have diminished, they have been replaced by similarly paralyzing feelings of panic, anxiety and resignation. The article itself, authored by Rachel Riederer, is prompted by David Wallace-Wells's new book, The Uninhabitable Earth.  I haven't yet read it, but I'm given to understand from the New Yorker and other reviews that it paints a pretty grim picture of what awaits us.  It begins, “It is worse, much worse, than you think.”  That’s followed by several scenarios that would make anyone feel terrible.  I wonder, though, whether books bearing down on a disaster theme will inspire readers to take actions that might mitigate the gloomy prospects. Wallace-Wells seems to think that fear can be a motivator to action. In an interesting TED talk, climatologist Katherine Hayhoe advocates a different, more engaging opening gambit for conversation. We can’t be sure, but any discussion that calls attention to a threatening future, that we have something to worry about, is welcome.

It's quite clear that attitudes about climate change are changing dramatically. Apathetic stances are being replaced by grudging admissions that something indeed is happening.  But many still find it possible to hold the view that the future’s by no means clear—we don’t know how quickly change is arriving, or for that matter what can be done about it. That’s wrong, of course. The science on climate change is clear—we’re building ever more reliable forecasts as new data accumulate and the models continue to sharpen their focus. We can be pretty sure about the broad outlines of what’s coming, and roughly when.  

But it's difficult to build a determination to take action when faced with consistent denialist pushbacks by the President and the largely unqualified appointees serving as his lap dogs in top agency positions. What sort of message is being conveyed to the American public when the Trump White House creates a panel to conduct an “adversarial” review of mainstream climate science literature and government reports concluding that climate change poses threats to the United States’ health economy and security? The panel is apparently going to be an informal group; I guess that it, therefore, won’t have to follow federal rules regarding transparency. But transparency about what? One can be sure that the panel will ignore every conclusion and estimate of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  It’s to be led by White House aide William Happer, a professor emeritus of physics at Princeton University who has pitched the notion that carbon emissions have become demonized.  I don’t know much about Happer, but what I’ve read leads me to conclude that he has a warped sense of how science connects with other aspects of society.  For example, In a CNBC interview, Happer said that “the demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler — Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so were the Jews.”  All the scientists I know and admire would not speak in such terms.  I’ve been a working scientist all my adult life, and I feel ashamed to even read such conflating of scientific results and proposals with entirely unrelated human sufferings from the past. Happer seems to have abandoned whatever professional commitments to the ethical and intellectual ideals of science he may have had. 

The nonprofit organization Ecoamerica, in a recent American Climate Perspectives survey, found that 94% of Democrats, 71% of Independents and 64% of Republicans understand that climate change is happening. Those percentages are all up from a prior survey conducted a year or so ago. The survey also inquired as to where people go for guidance. It turns out that 63% of Republicans look most to scientists as reliable sources, 48% look to the president, 47% turn to environmental organizations and 44% to health professionals.  It's laughable, though tragic, that Republicans responding to the survey are as ready to listen to advice about climate change from the White House as from environmental organizations devoted to collecting and disseminating reliable information about climate change.  I wonder if these people realize that environmental NGO’s are heavily staffed by scientists. 

Dav

Unfortunately, our challenges are broader and deeper than the thoughtless ruminations of this (hopefully) one-term presidency. Control of the executive branch has allowed the corporate conservatives and alt-right to wreak havoc with many of the regulatory agencies, in terms of both policy changes and management structures. There have been many appointments of outrageously unqualified people. Consider Trump’s candidate for Secretary of the Interior: David Bernhardt is an oil and gas lobbyist who worked to destroy endangered species protections for decades.  As deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior under Zinke, he helped open our public lands and coastlines to mining and drilling.  There’s been plenty of damage done at the federal level by appointees such as  Bernhardt. But there’s also trouble at state and local levels. While the 2016 election put a good many more progressive legislators into the House of Representatives and state houses, many states still have substantial Republican majorities.  The Washington Post has flagged over a dozen bills this year that represent threats to the integrity of science education.  Many of these initiatives come at the behest of conservative think tanks, such as The Discovery Institute, founded in 1990.  It gained fame by advocating that the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design be taught in science classes as an alternative to Darwinian evolution. Recently, the Discovery Institute has been associated with bills in state legislatures that would require that climate change and global warming be stricken from state science standards, or presented as an unsettled matter of science along with alternative views.  The Heartland Institute, founded in 1984, is a similar not-for-profit organization.  It maintains a website Climate Change Reconsidered.  These conservative voices are using the same strategy they employed earlier in arguing that there are scientifically authentic alternatives to certain prevailing theories, notably evolution and climate change, and that these alternatives should be taught in the classroom.   But as the eminent University of Illinois climate scientist Donald Wuebbles said with respect to climate change, “You can’t talk about two sides when the other side doesn't have a foot in reality.”

Though it’s too slow, change is coming.  A recent online poll taken by the St. Leo University Polling Institute in Florida revealed that about 65 percent of respondents strongly agreed or agreed that climate change should be taught in primary and secondary schools. However, it’s just a telephone poll.  Who’ll actually take the time to learn about climate change and what we can do to head off David Wallace-Wells’s harrowing scenario?