Fragilecologies

Category: Environment and Society

  • Climate Change and Energy Development

    Climate Change and Energy Development

    – We Live in Two Different Worlds

    If the climate scientists’ projections about the dangerous impacts of the increasing emissions of greenhouse gases are valid and if the energy community’s optimistic projections about future fossil fuel production are correct, the climate change and energy development worlds are on a collision course. As a proverb goes, “if you stay on the path you are on, you will get to where you are going.” To avoid this otherwise inevitable collision, we need to get on a new path.

    For the past several years I have been straddling two different worlds, that of the climate community and the world of oil and natural gas. The former world is the one I have worked in as a researcher for about 40 years. Focusing on climate, water and weather variability and extremes and on climate change. With regard to the world of the oil and gas, I have been just an observer listening to energy projections out to 2050, for exploration, production and consumption of oil and gas.

    For climate issues I focused on concerns about how societies might cope with yearly variability and extreme event as well as with foreseeable consequences of a 1 or 2 degrees C warming in the 21st century. I witnessed debates between climate change believers and climate change skeptics (I now believe human activities are the culprit for steadily increasing heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere).

    In the other world — that of the oil and natural gas community— it is not at all apparent that there is a high level of concern about fossil fuel-related greenhouse gas emissions. In a corporate way, this is understandable. Oil and gas corporations are expected to find, extract, refine and bring to the global marketplace oil and gas supplies. They do it well. In fact, time is on their side; constantly emerging new locations and technologies and improved efficiency and conservation techniques for oil and natural gas extraction seem to have put peak oil worries on the proverbial backburner.

    The climate community warns about the dangerous influence of increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. The UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) states this fear in the following way:

    The ultimate objective of the Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) is to achieve “… stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.

    Most likely there are temperature thresholds in the climate system that, if crossed, will wreak havoc on the climate system and on societies as we have come to know them. However, scientists do not yet know precisely where those thresholds of adverse changes are, despite scientific and media speculation. In theory and in practice precaution should rule the day, but in this case it does not. The following link to a NASA website highlights observations of the climate warming trajectory that our planet has been on between 1880 and 2011.

    Please go to this link: http://www.globalissues.org/video/798/global-temperature-anomaly

    The climate community has proposed that policymakers consider planetary “geo-engineering schemes.” Such schemes attempt to tamper with the planet’s climate regime by, for example, mimicking volcanic eruptions, dumping iron particles in the ocean, putting millions of mirrors in space, planting more trees, and design mechanical trees to capture carbon and sequestering carbon beneath the Earth’s surface.

    Meanwhile, members of civil societies worldwide have become involved in projects to reduce the carbon content of the atmosphere: better light bulbs, recycle, hybrid cars and buses. They are increasingly demanding green, if not low carbon, societies and a greater dependence on wind, solar and water energy.

    As for oil and gas, the amount of recoverable oil and gas worldwide even with today’s technology is mind-boggling. And new discoveries and techniques (such as horizontal drilling for fracking operations) seem to be occurring each new year. So, if there is a fossil fuel resource still in the ground I believe it will be extracted when the price and the demand deems it opportune to do so. Perhaps a good representation of the rapid exploitation of fossil fuel resources is a brief video of the expansion of exploration and extraction of fossil fuels from the Bakken formation in north central US (the states of North Dakota and Montana) and the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Some have suggested that the gas reserves there are double those to be found in Saudia Arabia.

    exponential exploitation of fossil fuels extraction as a result of new technologies (e.g., horizontal fracking)

    These are the two worlds: one filled with dire predictions about the consequences if increasing dependence on fossil fuel burning to achieve growth and development goals; the other filled with joy at every new oil or natural gas find somewhere, anywhere, on the globe. Neither of these worlds has direct influence on the other.

    I now believe that these two worlds will collide in this century, and more sooner than later. I believe all of the proposals to provide “sunshade to the planet” in attempts to modify the human enhancement of the naturally occurring greenhouse effect or to sequester carbon or to green the economies (these are not the same as low carbon economies) are like band-aids to deal with a gaping wound. At best these are short-term technological fixes for processes that, if left unaddressed, will likely challenge the existence of humanity itself.

    Written 42 years ago, climate scientists concluded in a 1971 MIT Conference “Report of the Study of Man’s Impact on Climate (SMIC),

    We recognize a real problem that a global temperature increase produced by man’s injection of heat and CO2… may lead to dramatic reduction even elimination of Arctic sea ice.” This exercise [convening of a conference in inadvertent climate modification] would be fruitless if we did not believe that society would be rational when faced with a set of decisions that could govern the future habitability of our planet.

    Neither climate scientists nor today’s (or even tomorrow’s) policymakers will resolve the global warming dilemma. Governments are in the fossil fuel business. They rely on cheap energy at least for foreseeable future in the absence of other bountiful sources of cheap energy. Yet governments also fund the climate research that produces the scary scenarios and warnings about continued global dependence on fossil fuel consumption.

    It is time to unleash engineering ingenuity, whether in a formal lab or in a home-based workshop. In fact, engineers gave us all the technologies we depend on today. Maybe the unbridled engineering thinking will devise ways to “suck” carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases directly out of the atmosphere in great amounts and dispose of it. Within the engineering community lies a key to reducing fossil fuel emissions. The engineering community needs to move quickly to center stage on the climate change issue.

    It is time to create an International Engineering Panel for Climate Change (IEPCC). Maybe it is a blind faith in technology that causes me to believe that engineers will save us from two worlds colliding. As key governments waste precious time talking past each other on what to do to avert dangerous changes to the climate system, all they are doing is giving false hope that catastrophes will either not occur at all or at the least they will not occur during their term in office. Engineering minds got us into this fix. Let’s call on them to get us out of it. I think they can do it, given the challenge and incentives to do so.

  • Whose Flood is it Anyway?

    Whose Flood is it Anyway?

    Floods occur on the earth’s surface in scores of different locations every year. Some cause minor damage, while others can be labeled blockbuster events. For example, consider two major flood episodes from 2011: the tens of millions of dollars in damage from the flooding in Pakistan in summer 2010 and the October floods in Thailand that were the worst in at least 50 years in that country.

    October 2011 floods in Thailand

    When a flood occurs, regardless of the country in which it occurs, a lot of finger-pointing usually takes place, with various elements of society and of government blaming other elements for the extensive loss of life, damage to the built environment and failure in some component of the in-place early warning system. In fact there is often enough blame to go around. A popular Roman adage related to war that has survived over 2000 years captures this reality: “Success has many fathers but failure has none.”

    Rather than comment on a specific flood in a developing country to expound on the title of this editorial—Whose Flood is it Anyway?—I thought it would be interesting to review a flood that occurred in the summer of 2011 in the Upper Midwest region of the highly developed United States of America. The comments that follow were made by victims of this flood and have been taken from a New York Times article (from July 30) written by A.G. Sulzburger, “In the Flood Zone, but Astonished by High Water.” (Note: some comments have been shortened for the sake of brevity, though I’ve been careful to make sure the sentiment of each is right on target). First, some general commentary about one specific area hit hard by the flooding, Dakota Dunes, South Dakota:

    “Developers transformed this mostly barren peninsula at the intersection of two rivers [the mighty Missouri and the Big Sioux] into an exclusive planned community, complete with million dollar homes and a private golf course…”. “They call it ‘The Dunes’ for a reason, the warning went as follows: ‘the rivers put the sand there and the rivers could sweep it away’.”

    “Now, a little more than two decades later, the stately homes … have been evacuated and the 18th hole is six feet under water, as miles of newly built levees strain to this community from surrendering to a historic flood.”

    Now for some brief comments from residents of The Dunes. Several residents made statements about their misconception of the risk and unpredictability inherent to living on a flood plain, even when such an area has been managed by scientific engineering and modern technology:

    “Many residents said they never imagined this chain of events.”
    “I didn’t think this [flooding] was an issue.”
    “Most [people] did not take out flood insurance because they thought the Missouri had been tamed by a system of dams and reservoirs.”
    “A river makes an unpredictable neighbor.”
    “People revisited longstanding questions about whether government flood insurance, dams and levees encourage people to take unnecessary chances.”
    “Most people don’t understand what flood risk is.”
    “They assume there is a level of protection with levees and dams.”

    Others believed that the managed area of the flood plain was safe because of how they choose to interpret government assurances of security and because of how their personal experiences reinforce those interpretations of security. This framing of security also influenced many individuals’ responses to the flood, especially in their feeling entitled to compensation for the government’s perceived failure to keep them safe, even after they were warned otherwise:

    “If I had to do it again, I’d buy a house in the same place. The flood was an aberration.”
    “Many people in these higher risk areas [lower areas like “The Dunes”] mistakenly believed that a flood could not happen more than once in a century.”
    “Government flood risk maps led to a false sense of security if your location was outside the flood zone’s borders.”
    “Initially developers urged homebuyers to get insurance but later dropped the advice given that the upstream dams had apparently tamed the rivers.”
    “Some homeowners refused to have levees placed on their property at the government’s expense. Soon, with the threat of the flood they paid for it themselves.”
    “Homeowners typically dropped the insurance after several dry years.”
    “Even when the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) warned of increased river flow and water releases from the dam, the people thought the warnings were overstated.”

    “The victims of the flood who did not want to buy insurance now wanted the government to pay for the flood damage. They hoped for federal help to rebuild.”

    Still others, which may be a product of human nature, chose to live with the risk because the aesthetics of living in the area of ‘The Dunes’ was seen to outweigh the risks, a decision reinforced by a frame that portrays any possible location as having inherent risks:

    “Residents said they would return to their homes for a variety of reasons, especially the natural charm of the area.”
    “We are staying. There is risk everywhere: there’s risk in Arizona fires, in Florida hurricanes, in California for earthquakes.”
    Given the comments above, one can legitimately ask the questions about this particular flood situation to find out “Whose Flood it was?”

    My thoughts:

    Was it the developers (who developed an area they called The Dunes, known to have been created by sand deposits from the rivers)? Was it the Army Corps of Engineers (that built the structures that led people to believe they were protected by dams, reservoirs and levees)? Was it the government that failed to force those in the flood plain to buy flood insurance)? Was it the fault of the land-use planners (those who drew up the risk maps for the area)? Was it the fault of the local government (allowing development in a vulnerable intersection of two major rivers)? Was it the fault of the science educational system (that did not teach people how to interpret probabilities)? Was it the fault of the homeowners as victims (because they did not learn about the risks of hazards in their community or because they seemed to have had a blind faith in engineering that would protect them)? Was it a problem of human nature (risks be damned; I want to live here because it is so beautiful)?

    blame others.

    The fact is that in every flood situation there is a mix of responsible parties with some bearing large portions of the blame and others less. The tendency, however, has been to focus on one party to take the lion’s share of the blame, to be a proverbial scapegoat for the flood-related loss of life and property. Doing so, however, is unlikely to minimize the risk to the hazard, though it does make some people and some agencies feel better that they found someone else to blame… until the floods return again and the blame game starts anew.

  • “It’s the 100th day since the start of the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico … But, it’s the 13,000th day(!) since the discovery of the Gulf ‘s Dead Zone.” Michael Glantz. 29 July 2010.

    “It’s the 100th day since the start of the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico … But, it’s the 13,000th day(!) since the discovery of the Gulf ‘s Dead Zone.” Michael Glantz. 29 July 2010.

    “It’s the 100th day since the start of the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico …
    But, it’s the 13,000th day(!) since the discovery of the Gulf ‘s Dead Zone”

    Michael Glantz. 29 July 2010.

    Well, the leaking oil well on the Gulf of Mexico seabed has finally been capped. Soon it will be recorded permanently in historical records as the worst environmental disaster in the US history to date, beating out the Exxon Valdez oil spill (where was that spill? Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Most people don’t remember that). Soon, I believe most Americans (except those along the Gulf Coast) will put the BP leak — despite its widespread environmental damage and huge ecological, economic and social costs — in the back of their minds (who remembers the Torrey Canyon spill or the Amoco Cadiz spill?). I call that “discounting the past,” that is, societies think that history is of decreasing value as one looks back in time. It’s the opposite of what economists refer to as “discounting the future” of, say, the dollar.

    Back in 1974, Dr. R. Eugene Turner, Director of Coastal Ecology Institute at Louisiana State University, discovered a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. The dead zone is the result of runoff from cities, farmlands, feedlots and factories into the mighty Mississippi River. This River basin drains about 40% of the continental United States. Herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers among other chemicals are released on a routine basis throughout the basin. In the springtime they accumulate of the Gulf Coast forming an 8000+ square mile region, which adversely affects all living marine resources.

    Each year the dead zone increases in size and has an increasingly negative impact on the fish population and in turn on the commercial fisheries. As I wondered in an earlier podcast titled “Pick Your Poison!”, why has there been no constant, even deafening, uproar about either the causes or the consequences of the ever-increasing dead zone? Although it is not the only dead zone in the world (there are an estimated 300 of them of varying sizes worldwide), it is OUR dead zone.

    While in the midst of having a coffee at a local Starbucks, I began to jot down a few ideas about a comparison between the BP spill and the dead zone. The ideas herein do not represent the results of a systematic review but are only first-order thoughts. Such a comparison would make for an interesting class project or paper. Feel free to send me your thoughts, comments, corrections and additional comparisons related to the chart below.