Mongabay Blog

Well, it’s a week after I started this little series and I’m still only part of the way through. Seems that it will take me a little longer than planned to write, but rest safe in the knowledge that that simply means there’s research happening behind the scenes here at Casa de Hill.

The second article published in the delayed September edition of GeoJournal is written by Roy W. Spencer, who serves as a principal research scientist for University of Alabama in Huntsville. He has served as Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and according to his Wikipedia article (he is one of the few in GeoJournal’s AIT forum to have a Wikipedia article) “…is skeptical of the scientific consensus that human activity is primarily responsible for global warming.”

So it is not surprising that straight away, in Spencer’s introduction, he notes that “…the following arguments I present will not support the supposed scientific “consensus” that exists on the subject of global warming.”

Naturally, as seems to be the general consensus – excluding those scientists on their high-horse unwilling to come down – Spencer praises the good job that AIT has done in “explaining the basic theory behind manmade greenhouse warming.” However Spencer immediately notes that AIT was single-minded in its view that anthropogenic global warming was the only possibility.

This is the tact that Spencer takes throughout his article, touching upon this undeniable onslaught “Mr. Gore”

Carbon Dioxide’s Evil Plan

Spencer’s first point of attack harkens back to a point also made by Steig, regarding Gore’s misleading representation of carbon dioxide levels measured in ice-cores from Antarctica, compared to temperatures. Much of what he says mirrors Steig’s arguments, regarding the likelihood that instead of carbon dioxide being directly responsible for temperature increases it may have only acted as an amplifier.

He did make one interesting point though that is worth looking at. It is summed up thus; “The third problem with Mr. Gore’s graph is related to the fact that CO2 is a relatively minor atmospheric greenhouse gas.”

This point of view has often been used to great effect against climate warriors, and for good reason. Consider that out of every 100,000 molecules of air, only 38 are carbon dioxide. Spencer strikes what would appear to be a blow by saying that “if you double or triple a very small fraction, it is still a very small fraction.”

However, this point of view is somewhat misleading. The simple fact of that matter seems to be that, even though there is a relatively small amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, it is not the overall quantity that matters, but the strength of what is there.

I posed this question on a science forum, as well as to various scientists that I am in contact with. This is the best analogy that came out of it; “Just because I change only 1% of the air in your bedroom to toxic nerve gas does not mean that it will have no effect and you will not be killed. It’s not the overall amount that matters; it’s the effect of the amount which is there.”

Additionally, carbon dioxide is by no means the only greenhouse gas that has increased of late. “CO2 is up more than 30%, CH4 (methane) has more than doubled, N2O (nitrous oxide) is up 15%, tropospheric O3 (ozone) has also increased,” said an expert who preferred to go unnamed. “All of these increases contribute to an enhanced greenhouse effect.”

Spencer then points to the fact that over 90% of our current greenhouse effect is actually not due to any of the toxins we pump in to the air, but water vapor and clouds. He points out then a much ignored point, that it isn’t the direct response of climate to toxins but the feedbacks that are the greatest concern, because we know the least about these.

Individual Extremes

Spencer also points out, as did Steig, that individual events are not the mark of climate change, but rather the overall pattern is; and Gore does have a nasty habit of attributing every nasty weather system to global warming.

The real question that Spencer wants answered is are the natural processes causing these events speeding up, and if they are, are humans to blame? He notes that considerable evidence has built up over the past years suggesting that glaciers have been receding since at least the late 1800’s. Examples such as tree stumps left behind which have been carbon dated to be only a few thousand years old suggest that a relatively recent period existed when glaciers were much smaller than they are now.

He spends the time to look at three specific examples; hurricanes, tornadoes and sea level rise. To hurricanes he points out that individual hurricane’s like Katrina aren’t the big deal, but rather the fact that there was so many that made landfall in the US. To tornadoes he notes that “despite the movie’s suggestion that severe storm and tornado events have increased in frequency, there is no convincing evidence of this.

When he touches on sea level rise though, Spencer seems to once again blur the edges of the facts. He notes that Gore alludes to the possibility that sea levels could rise twenty feet, and says that “even the IPCC is projecting something closer to only one or two feet.” This is a convenient truth, without any of the facts.

Gore was, possibly a little towards the alarmist side of things, suggesting that if the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets were to melt, we would see a sea level rise of up to 20 feet. However Gore is misleading in alluding to this happening any time soon: Spencer fails to mention this, while quoting the IPCC’s theories for sea level rise for the next decade or so as opposition to this point.

Humans or Nature?

On the home stretch, Spencer asks what he believes to be the key question; “To what extent is our present global warming due to humans?”

It is a good question, and one that is fairly the base of the majority of scientific debate at the moment. He points to “historical records and numerous temperature proxy measurements from around the Northern Hemisphere that suggest our present warmth is not greater than that during the Medieval Warm Period, which peaked around 1,000 years ago.”

He sums up his arguments though, by addressing the fact that AIT blames almost the entirety of the current global warming on humans, where there could be natural influences at play. “I am not claiming that recent warming is entirely natural,” he states. “I am simply disputing the view that it is 100% anthropogenic.”

I would be inclined to accept his point of view if it wasn’t for his last blurring of facts to prove his points. A big point in the media and in science recently has been the fact that the Northwest Passage opened up during summer for the first time in recorded history. Spencer however claims that the Northwest Passage has in fact opened up previously, in 1906, 1940 as well as in the summer of 07.

Now, I spoke to contacts at the USGS Alaska Science Center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and in addition to my own research, this is what we found. In 1905 (or 1906, records are confusing) Roald Amundsen sailed his vessel the Gjøa through the Northwest Passage, however he was using shallow draft boats. In other words, the Northwest Passage was not traversable by any means, but by a vessel that was smaller, lighter, and less likely to run aground on the ice.

In 1940, the St. Roch captained by Canadian RCMP officer Henry Larsen made the journey, but once again in a vessel this time designed specifically for dealing with ice. Larsen was quoted as once wondering "if we had come this far only to be crushed like a nut on a shoal and then buried by the ice."

No doubt you can get a vessel through the Northwest Passage, however whether it is “open” as it was in the summer of 07 is definitely not up to debate, and it seems nothing but a sly trick on Spencer’s part to undermine.

In conclusion Spencer, as with his colleagues in the GeoJournal issue, notes that AIT deserves high praise for its job in raising public awareness. However Spencer believes that there are “simply too many examples of irresponsible misrepresentation of science to redeem the movie.” Amusing, considering how many “irresponsible misrepresentations” there were in his article.

I now feel qualified to take the next step in our look through GeoJournal’s AIT forum, having just heard back from author Eric Steig about an aspect of his entry “Another look at An Inconvenient Truth” that had me baffled.

Steig, who teaches environmental earth science, isotope geochemistry and paleoclimatology as associate professor at the Earth and Space Sciences department, University of Washington, was first off the blocks in GeoJournal’s look at the science within AIT.

As the Springer press release upon publication of this journal (they were a few months late, as the September edition was published mid-April) points out, Steig believed that Gore and AIT got the fundamental sciences right. The few minor factual errors that were made, Steig believed, did not undermine the main message of the film.

My personal copy of Steig’s paper is highlighted to all hell and back, and as such I’m going to work through it for those not lucky enough to have press credentials to acquire these articles, or the money to purchase them.

Gore’s Fundamentals OK

Steig opened up pointing to the question that he would attempt to answer; does AIT accurately portray the science of climate change.

A writer at RealClimate.org, Steig has already gone on record as being in the affirmative column for this question, and noted in his review that “for the most part … Gore gets the science right.” Stepping in to this journal entry though, and having watched the movie three times, Steig once again qualifies that opinion by saying that “there are certainly aspects of the scientific content of the film that could be improved.”

Steig disclaimers anything he will say though with reiterating that Gore got the fundamentals correct. “The increase of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere … is relentless. The direct impact of increasing greenhouse gases is to warm the planet’s surface. Feedbacks … make it very likely that the amount of warming wil be greater than the direct effect from greenhouse gases alone.”

Explanatory Interlude

My job here at Blog Mongabay is to bring a measure of layman’s understanding to a topic that is, at its very core, oh so very not lay. This is not elitism on my part, as I spend many hours scouring the internet and reading information to condense and accurately portray what the scientists are saying.

I have for a long time believed that, as Quiring hints at, scientific papers do not do a good enough job of enlightening the everyday Joe or Jo. They are intent on putting their information out there without qualification, and are surprised when they are not automatically flocked too with thankful and happy converts.

As such, there are several scientific terms that bear explaining that are frequently used throughout Steig’s article.

The first is “sea ice albedo.” That Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize the word albedo is no surprise. Albedo is the extent to which an object diffusely reflects the sunlight, or, the extent to which an object reflects the light at a number of different angles. So, when attached to the words “sea ice,” this naturally refers to sea ice’s ability to reflect sun rays, which subsequently diminishes the amount of heat affecting our planet.

Factual Errors

There is a point within the movie where Gore shows a number of images of glaciers, including glaciers atop Mount Kilimanjaro and the Columbia Glacier in Alaska. Steig points out that, “while both have retreated dramatically … in neither case is temperature change likely to be the culprit.”

“In the case of Kilimanjaro … changes in precipitation and … changes in cloud cover have altered the ratio of precipitation to sublimation that determines whether Kilimanjaro’s glaciers grow or shrink.” This evidence is credited to Dr. Thomas Mölg and D.R. Hardy, in an article written for the University of Innsbruck’s Geographie Innsbruck publication (PDF).

Within, Mölg and Hardy explain the marked difference in surface ablation on Kilimanjaro’s surface as a result of surface albedo, which depends upon precipitation amount and frequency.

Another example is Gore’s statement that you can visibly see the effect that the United States Clean Air Act has had on ice cores in Antarctica. According to Steig “one can neither see, nor even detect using sensitive chemical methods” any evidence in Antarctica of the Clean Air Act. Steig once again points to outside sources, this time, Michel R. Legrand and Séverine Kirchner, who wrote a paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research back in 1990 looking at the origins of nitrogen oxide at the South Pole. Their conclusion was that “…NOx production in the upper stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere does not contribute significantly to the antarctic NO3 budget.”

Steig notes however that the “general points” that Gore is attempting to make in these examples are not in dispute. “Mountain glaciers are in retreat worldwide … likewise … changes in U.S. atmospheric … are clearly recorded in ice core records from Greenland.”

Misleading

If you have followed the criticism’s laid at feet of AIT and Al Gore at all, you will have no doubt come across the fact that Hurricane Katrina should not be the poster child of Gore’s case. Steig notes that, “as scientists are fond of pointing out, no single weather event can be attributed to global climate change.” In other words, it is only the “likelihood of such events occurring” that can be pinned on the door of climate change.

This is where Steig becomes a little too apologetic for my tastes. He seems to go out of his way to ensure that Gore is not painted in a bad light. He points to the “supplemental material supplied with the DVD of the film” as a way out for Gore, when this seems not to be the point of the paper. With all due respect, it seems to me that the majority of people have seen the movie, not bought the DVD, let along poured over the extra features.

So while Gore does somewhat make up for his misleading interpretation of Hurricane Katrina’s relation to climate change, he does it only in the supplemental material and thus, AIT itself seems to stray away from scientific accuracy in this case.

Another misstep that Gore takes is his treatment of sea level rise. In a statement that has been reiterated by doomsday reporters and environmental alarmists, Gore notes that the planet’s sea level could rise by up to 20 feet if the West Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets melted. While this is entirely accurate, what Gore fails to note is that this is unlikely to happen anytime soon. What he should have made clear is that conventional scientific wisdom puts the timescale of this likelihood taking place over hundreds or thousands of years.

Steig does rightfully reprimand Gore for this, and he adds that Gore could have pointed out that we do have a serious misunderstanding of just what is going on in our polar ice sheets. Recent changes in Greenland’s glaciers may in fact result in a glacial collapse earlier than was first predicted.

Not So Simple…

All of this being said Steig reserved his chief criticism for Gore’s handling of the science for the end. Steig points to the almost famous scene, where Gore lifts himself above the crowds on a scissor lift to follow the rising carbon dioxide levels. What he leaves unsaid is that the temperature will follow suit, rising dramatically as CO₂ levels do.

Now, for the sake of brevity, Steig does not go in to much detail about this. Gore makes an unspoken link between the carbon dioxide levels found in the ice core records, and global temperatures. However, as many scientists will hasten to tell you, this correlative link is not as clean cut as Gore alludes.

As mentioned, Steig is also known for his writing at RealClimate.org. It is here that his first review of AIT is shown, as well as a much longer look in to why the link between ice core records of carbon dioxide levels in Antarctica, and global temperature levels, is not as simple as it looks.

To match Steig’s brevity, I will simply summarize his position by saying that science has depicted a lag between the rise of carbon dioxide levels and temperature levels rising; it isn’t the hand-in-hand relationship that Al Gore leads us to believe it is. However, as Steig writes in his article at Real Climate, “CO₂ acts as an amplifier” of the temperature. In other words, an increase in CO₂ levels will inevitably push the temperature further, though maybe not immediately.

Conclusion: Mine and His

Steig sums it up simple; “An Inconvenient Truth rests on a solid scientific foundation.” However Steig provides an escape clause for Gore and his movie by adding that AIT was not supposed to be a scientific movie, but a movie of bringing people to awareness and action. As such, Steig seems to negate the necessity for actual scientific fact, in place of activism. And while for the most part, this can work in the favor of science, to ignore the science completely is unwise.

That is where people like me step in. I’m well aware that not everyone wants to know just what has caused global warming. Most of you just want it to stop, or at least, to leave you with swimming days in winter. But there are those who want to look further than just what they are being told by celebrities and the media, and that is why myself, websites like Mongabay and Real Climate, and others, all come in to the picture.

Despite what some may attempt to have you believe, not everyone is an expert on global warming or climate change. In fact, you’ll know how to spot an actual expert when you hear someone say “we simply don’t know.”

Reality is a cold splash of water, and when it comes to Earth’s current environmental crisis, no one has a full idea of what is going on.

That may be a surprise to some of you, especially if you have watched An Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore’s Academy award winning documentary on climate change has reshaped the way people look at the environment around them.

AIT provided a very clear, cut and dry perspective of what some believe is happening to our planet at the moment. You walk away from the movie entirely certain that you’ve somehow doomed the planet to an early death, even though you’re not 100% certain how.

So, just under two years since it was first released in New York and Los Angeles, GeoJournal has combined a forum of experts to give their take on the hotly contested movie; five scientists, five different opinions, from five different scientific perspectives.

The journal was opened by Steven M. Quiring, whose introduction was entitled “Science and Hollywood: a discussion of the scientific accuracy of An Inconvenient Truth.” An assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Texas A&M University, Quiring overviewed the following articles.

Less of an opinion piece than the others, Quiring simply focused on what AIT has actually done for the climate sciences. He notes that “although scientists do not view Hollywood as the best way to communicate accurate scientific information, it is hard to ignore the impact that AIT has had on the general public.”

He points to the accolades that AIT has garnered since its inception, and then rightfully sums up what many have suspected; “Whether scientists like it or not, AIT has had a much greater impact on public opinion and public awareness of global climate change than any scientific paper or report.”

Though the five authors whose papers follow Quiring’s introduction do not unanimously agree on every point, they do adhere to his overall view that AIT has had an affirmative impact. All of the authors agree that AIT does an excellent job in raising public awareness, but they also note its flaws, especially in its almost gleeful attempts to prove global warming using specific events, such as Hurricane Katrina.

Other unanimous agreements center on Gore’s focusing on anthropogenic causes of climate change, rather than looking at natural variations which could be attributed to global warming, or contributed too.

As Quiring notes, “the focus of this forum is to address whether AIT accurately presents the scientific argument that global warming is caused by human activities.” Though AIT was not necessarily intended to present the scientific argument, but rather to inspire action, the necessity to look at the basis behind Gore’s desire for action is important.

Over the next week or two, I will be looking at the five articles which were part of GeoJournal’s look at AIT.

“Another look at An Inconvenient Truth” is written by Eric Steig, who teaches environmental earth science, isotope geochemistry and paleoclimatology as associate professor at the Earth and Space Sciences department, University of Washington.

“An Inconvenient Truth: blurring the lines between science and science fiction” is written by Roy W. Spencer, a principal research scientist for University of Alabama in Huntsville. In the past, he served as Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

“An Inconvenient Truth: a focus on its portrayal of the hydrologic cycle” is written by David Legates is the Delaware State Climatologist, and an associate professor at the University of Delaware, who is best known for his contrarian opinion on the causes and effects of global warming.

“An Inconvenient Truth: the scientific argument” is written by Dr. John W. Nielsen-Gammon, who is the Professor of Meteorology at Texas A&m, as well as being Texas State Climatologist and Associate Director at the Center for Atmospheric Chemistry and the Environment.

“An Inconvenient Truth and the scientists” is written by Dr. Gerald North, who also serves at Texas A&M University as the Distinguished Professor and Holder of the Harold J. Haynes Endowed Chair in Geosciences.

The Arctic has received a great deal of attention over the past couple of years, due to a diminishing summer ice-sheet that is expected to be all but gone within a few years. Climate fear-mongers are crying that the end of the world is nigh, sighting the opening of the Northwest Passage for the first time in known history as its proof.

However, take a trip down to the southern hemisphere – which I know, for many, is a weird idea, considering that surely the northern hemisphere is the important one – and you’ll see that life isn’t all that dire.

The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research vessel Polarstern has returned to its port in Punta Arenas, Chile, after its latest expedition down south. As part of the International Polar Year 2007/2008, the Polarstern – meaning polar star – expedition ANT-XXIV/3 was focused on examining the oceanic circulation and the oceanic cycles of materials that depend upon it.

Two of the main projects in the Antarctic for the IPY took place aboard the Polarstern; CASO (Climate of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean) and GEOTRACES.

CASO’s intent was to provide “an integrated and interdisciplinary approach to understanding the role of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean in past, present and future climate.” Under the leadership of Dr Stephen Rintoul and Dr Eberhard Fahrbach, the team of 58 scientists from ten countries were on board the Polarstern to study ocean currents, distribution of temperature, salt content and trace substances in Antarctic sea water.

"We want to investigate the role of the Southern Ocean for past, present and future climate," chief scientist Fahrbach said. The sinking water masses in the Southern Ocean are part of the overturning in this region and thus play a major role in global climate. "While the last Arctic summer was the warmest on record, we had a cold summer with a sea-ice maximum in the Antarctic. The expedition shall form the basis for understanding the opposing developments in the Arctic and in the Antarctic," Fahrbach said.

GEOTRACES on the other hand, is an ‘international study of the biogeochemical cycles of Trace Elements and Isotopes in the Arctic and Southern Oceans.’ Under the helm of Ed Urban, Ph.D., Robert Anderson and Gideon M. Henderson, their mission was – to quote from the official GEOTRACES website – “To identify processes and quantify fluxes that control the distributions of key trace elements and isotopes in the ocean, and to establish the sensitivity of these distributions to changing environmental conditions.”

The GEOTRACES mission onboard Polarstern was only one of several, the majority taking place in the northern hemisphere. However in their results from the Southern Ocean, the team found the smallest iron concentrations ever measured in the ocean.

The Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres press release noted that “As iron is an essential trace element for algal growth, and algae assimilate CO2 from the air, the concentration of iron is an important parameter against the background of the discussion to what extent the oceans may act as a carbon sink.”

Not surprisingly, these results – from both GEOTRACES and CASO – are only preliminary, and nothing solid will be able to be taken from them for a few years. Oceanic changes must be measured over several years, and also differ spatially, thus the data acquired during this latest Polarstern expedition are not enough to discern long-term developments.

This is why part of the Polarstern expedition was to leave behind more automated buoys.

"As a contribution to the Southern Ocean Observation System we deployed, in international cooperation, 18 moored observing stations, and we recovered 20. With a total of 65 floating systems that can also collect data under the sea ice and are active for up to five years we constructed a unique and extensive measuring network," Fahrbach said.

Either way, over the next few years, the Polarstern – in tandem with scientific teams from around the world – is going to be a focal point of research that will hopefully, provide us with answers to help protect our planet.

A guest blog by Danny Bloom



In the fight against global warming, no matter what side of the aisle one is coming from, leftwing or rightwing or right down the center — or even, in some cases, outright denial that man-made global warming exists at all — the words and slogans used by activists and campaigners can have a powerful impact on the debate, not only swaying minds but also changing the ways that people live their lives, carbon footprint at all.



Recently, there was a news item on the Internet with a headline that went like this:



“Five keys to a safe-climate future”



http://www.carbonequity.info/climatecodered/5keys.html



When a blogger in Taiwan read that headline and saw for the first time the phrase “safe-climate future”, his eyes did not glaze over, quite the contrary. He woke up from the normal quiet buzz in the email cafe where he was surfing the Internet that day and realized that the using the two words together, with a hyphen connecting them — “safe-climate” — had a very good ring to it, and was immediately recognizable and understandable due to earlier coinage of “safe-sex” practices among activists fighting other battles.



If “safe-sex”, which had a particular ring to it after being popularized in English around the world, could have an impact, then perhaps “safe-climate” could also play a role in the debate over climate change and global warming, the blogger in Taiwan thought to himself as fellow denizens of the email cafe continued playing a variety of noisy “computer games” on the Internet all over the cavernous room. Yes, he thought, this term, whoever coined it, has come up with a very good concept, and it could be applied to other topics in the global warming debate — for example, one could speak of “safe-climate lifestyles” and “safe-climate education” and “safe-climate ideas,” in addition to talking about a “safe-climate future”.



According to sources, a green activist in the USA first coined the “safe-climate future” wording when he wrote the headline for the article about the Code Red report linked to above. From there, the phrase spread around the Internet, via blogs and comments and news websites, and a new phrase was born. So whether we are talking about a safe-climate future or practicing a safe-climate lifestyle, the new coinage has great possibilities of rallyng people around the vital issues of the day and inspiring them to lead more safe-climate lifestyles themselves.



The phrase seems like a good wake-up call, using language as a tool. When asked about this idea, comments on the blogosphere ranged from “inspired” to “important”. Of course, there were also some naysayers, there are always people who don’t cotton to a new word or phrase when they first encounter it and shy way from wanting to use it when it seems so strange to them at first. Later, they might come around. Or later, they may still not like the new coinage. That’s okay. If the words or phrases are useful, they will be used. If they are not useful or inspiring, they will fall by the wayside.



But talking about a safe-climate future and leading safe-climate lifestyles seems to make sense in this day and age. Here are what some people said in comments:



“I think it’s a good PR phrase. The article says that now ‘radical’ responses from activists are required. I don’t know what to do ‘radically’, but anything that helps, such as promoting a ’safe-climate’ consciousness, lifestyle, future, surely has to help. It’s a good phrase.”



“Go, go, go! ”Safe-climate future or safe-climate lifestyles” sounds like a great idea. Good framing.”



“I Like the term a lot! — Catchy.”



“It’s simple, succinct and catchy. It’s an idea that most people can easily grasp. So it seems good.”



“Tha is an awesome term, safe-climate, and yes, we should get it used! In the media and in the blogosphere. Who coined it?”



“I too have been looking for a phrase to embody this idea. I’ve seen a couple — such as “climate preservation” — but nothing that sounds as good to me as “safe-climate lifestyle”.

“That sounds good. We need catchy phrases like that to get people thinking. And it doesn’t sound ego-threatening or scare-mongering.”



“The ways of language are mysterious, and impossible to predict. But there’s no doubt that the new reality of the 21st century calls for such a phrase as “safe-climate lifestyle or safe-climate future, and that phrase is definitely a good contender — perhaps in time it will come to be known as the phrase that saved the climate!”



So a new phrase has been born, thanks to one activist’s creativity and inspiration. If the word term catches on with media people at newspapers and on TV and radio, in addition to people blogging day and night about climate issues, it might have a long shelf life and be an important addition not only to our vocabulary, which is always evolving, but also the fight against global warming itself, as a means to help raise public awareness and concious.

I’m not a regular blogger, even on my own blogs, as I use them mostly as files to store articles and file ideas away for future reference, so I thank this website for giving me a chance to be one of the guest bloggers here.

I want to say a few things about a year-long campaing I’ve been conducting on the Internet to help raise awareness of global warming issues using some visual images of so-called “polar cities” (where survivors of future global warming events are imagined to find refuge in). The entire project is basically a public relations campaign aimed at making those people who are still not aware of global warming a bit more aware of it, if only for a day or two, until the polar cities images fade and they go on with their daily lives, once again oblivious to the dangers that might lie ahead for all of humankind. The dangers? You know what I am talking about. I would think that most people are aware of global warming and the danger it poses for the future of civilization on planet Earth. But apparently, there are quite a few people, here and there, who still don’t get it, or aren’t paying attention, or are in deep denial. Whatever.

So, to make a long story short: I created the polar cities project as a PR campaign to help do my small part in helping to raise public awareness worldwide. Not a huge effort, not a big stamp; just a one-man blogging band using the Internet to spread the message that global warming is for real and we need to try to tackle it. I don’t have an agenda, political or scientific, but like many other people, I think we need to face the issue climate change head on. I read green blogs every day to check on the issues (and also am a regular reader of Dot Earth over at the New York Times).

I want to emphasize that in my project, I am not saying we will ever need polar cities for survivors of global warming in the far distant future. I hope we never need them, and it’s hard to conceive of a world where they would be needed. Right? Right.

But I asked an artist who lives in my neighborhood in Taiwan to make some computer-generated images of what a polar city might look like, and the operative word here is “might”. Deng Cheng-hong, who runs a small sign shop near by home, came up with a series of amazing images. They are from his own imagination. I asked him to make the images for me, I paid him for his work, and I suggested a rough sketch of what a polar city might look like. But the artwork is all his own, from an artist’s point of view.

The images are a visual wake-up call, I like to think. In what way? If we don’t sit down and tackle global warming, then the future might be very very problematical. That’s all my PR campaign is trying to say — using a scary visual image to help wake people up. Not those reading this blog today: you already know the score. But for those people in the world who still think the Earth is flat (and by that I mean “that global warming is hoax”), my PR campaign is for them.

Read my new press here and see more of the images here. Comments and feedback are very welcome, because I learn so much each time readers give me feedback, pro or con. This is an ongoing project, unfunded, my time, my dime.

Take a look.

= = = = = = = = =

Green blogger uses “polar cities” as educational tool to raise public awareness about global warming issues

NEW YORK — A lone blogger in Taiwan is using the Internet in a novel way to help raise awareness about global warming.

Green media activist Danny Bloom doesn’t believe humans will ever have to live in so-called “polar cities” (a term he coined in 2006), but he is using a series of computer-generated blueprints of a polar city as an educational tool to help raise help public awareness about the climate crisis.

Created by Taiwanese artist Cheng-hong Deng, the polar city images have appeared on hundreds of websites and blogs around the world — in English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French and Chinese, Bloom, a 1971 gradute of Tufts University in Boston, says.

The 58-year-old green activist says he is using the Internet in a novel way to get his message across.

The message? “If we don’t actively tackle the very serious problems that confront the world now, in terms of global warming, then there is a possibility that future generations might have to take refuge in such polar cities. I never want to see these polar cities become reality. So the images Deng has created for my project are meant to be a warning about global warming.”

Bloom says he has shown the images to internationally-acclaimed climate scientist James Lovelock in Britain, who is known for his pessimism and doomsaying about global warming. Lovelock told Bloom by email: “It may very well happen and soon.”

“I hope polar cities are never needed for survivors of global warming in the far distant future,” Bloom says. “These images are meant to be a wake-up call for those who are still sleepwalking through the climate crisis.”

Bloom emphasizes that he has no agenda, political or scientific, in terms of solutions to global warming, and says that he just wants to participate in the global discussion about climate change in his own personal way. “I am just using Deng’s images to sound the alarm, a visual alarm.”

He says that his Internet campaign, which began a year ago with a letter to the editor of several newspapers in North America and Europe, has had the result he is looking for.

A young blogger in Tahiti saw the images, blogged about them in French, and said that while he found the polar city blueprints to be fascinating, they made him just want to work harder in his daily life “to help fight the climate crisis so that the worst case scenarios never happen.”

POLAR CITIES BLUEPRINTS CAN BE SEEN HERE, at the newly opned “James E Lovelock Virtual Museum of Polar Cities”: http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

EMAIL: danbloom (GMAIL)

With reefs facing increasing threats from warmer and more acidic oceans, researchers are looking at ways to help corals by introducing heat resistant forms of zooxanthellae — the symbiotic algae that provides corals with sustenance — according to an article by Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post.  High temperatures cause corals to expel the algae, resulting in higher incidence of disease and death among corals.

 Andrew Baker, a University of Miami marine biologist, is about to embark on an experiment aimed at learning whether scientists can help corals adapt by providing them with symbiotic partners better prepared to cope with waters that are growing warmer largely because of the buildup of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.
Some corals have evolved to do this on their own, over a long period of time: Now, researchers want to see if they can speed up the process.
 
“It’s controversial; it’s high risk,” Baker said last week. “But it’s really important we make the effort to try to show not only are we monitoring the situation, but we’re trying to do everything we can, literally, to make sure there are as many corals as possible left to save.”

Two weeks ago the Pew Institute for Ocean Science awarded Baker a three-year, $150,000 grant to “help identify the specific genetic and physiological factors that allow some corals to cope with warming better than others.”

Initially, Baker and his team of about 10 researchers will do their work in the lab, artificially bleaching corals and then adding cultured algae to the water to see if other zooxanthellae varieties can help the corals adapt to the temperature shift. Corals do not expire immediately after expelling their zooxanthellae, but if they do not find another algae partner quickly enough, they will die.

BBC News highlighted an interesting relationship between a day gecko and a plant hopper insect in Madagascar.  Apparently the lizard signals for food which is provided by the insect.

The lizard repeatedly nods its head at the insect, called a plant hopper, until it flicks over small balls of honeydew for the gecko to dine upon.

BBC says that in return, the lizard may offer some form of protection for the plant hopper.

Mark Bittman, of the popular How to Cook Everything books, has written an excellent article on the environmental costs of eating meat, especially in the amounts that the average American consumes.  Oh, and he’s not a vegetarian. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

Some excerpts:

“Americans eat about the same amount of meat as we have for some time, about eight ounces a day, roughly twice the global average. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we “process” (that is, grow and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the world’s total.

“Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.

“To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.”

It seems everyday there are more studies and reports coming out on the impacts of climate change–now and in the future (at mongabay we see A LOT of them).  Yet, rarely do these studies make it to mainstream new sources.  Either, the media is still run by science-skeptics or the newspapers, news shows, and online media sources actually believe that Brittany Spears’ latest cry for help, Clinton’s (take your pick: Hilary’s or Bill’s) latest remark on race, or the newest electronic gadget is somehow more important than massive shifting of earth’s temperature, causing desertification, species extinction, ocean warming, new migration patterns, flooding, increased intensity of storms, increased unpredictability of weather, changes in agriculture, and the beginning of struggles over dwindling resources, namely water. 

The newest proof of American media’s unwillingness to accept the seriousness of climate change is the presidential primaries, which have received such a glut of coverage that I actually know how much the candidates have spent on haircuts (unwillingly).  Yesterday, both Moveon.org and the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) reported that in the primary debates  only three questions out of  2,500 have been related to climate change.  A letter from NRDC states: “they have spent more time talking about baseball, UFOs, and Chuck Norris than they have about global warming”. 

While this is patently ridiculous and gross negligence on the part of the news organizations and their top-brass anchors, it’s not all that surprising.  Global warming is a serious issue, arguably the most serious issue in our world today, and arguably one of the most serious issues human beings–as a species and a civilization–have ever faced, but sometimes America has difficulty with serious issues: we’re after all the culture of video games, reality TV, and our stupidest videos.  In general, we prefer distraction and entertainment to serious debate and thought.  For presidental debates baseball, UFOs, and Chuck Norris are much lighter (distracting and entertaining) fare than a global ecosystem undergoing massive change (although I wonder how the candidate’s policies differ regarding baseball, UFOs, and Chuck Norris).

I do not mean this to imply hopelessness.  I have hope that the next president will be serious about global warming.  I have hope our consumeristic, distracted culture can change in time.  I have hope the next generation may possess the skills to take real time on serious issues (and not just climate change).  I have a lot of hope.  I just wish–sometimes–the America of today could buoy that hope just a little, rather than tying stone after stone to it.