- Key concepts:
- William Calvin, Edge.org, climate crisis
- Attention Conservation Notice:
- Thinking seriously about the sober prospects described here can inspire Lovecraftian cosmic fear.
Links:
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/289/
Bruce-Sterling-State-of-the-Worl-page01.html
The Viridian Pope-Emperor is nattering away on the
Well, as I commonly do when the year starts. Drop on
by, if you like.
http://www.greenbiz.com/
news/reviews_third.cfm?NewsID=34384
Top ten green industry stories of 2006. In 2006
there was a no-kidding green industry that had
some actual no-kidding business stories.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/
connecticut/ny-bc-ct--thinice0101jan01,0,2792964.story?coll=ny-region-apconnecticut
Elderly New England poet plummets through thinning ice,
freezes from global warming. I wonder if a last poem
went through his mind. "Well, I'm dying with my
skis on." Maybe he was optimistic!
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39625/story.htm
http://www.stellaraxis.com/
Weird Antarctic landscape art, from where the ice isn't
quite so thin yet.
(((A whole bunch of jolliness from the latest rollout of the Doors of Perception newsletter. Viridian List might be almost this good if we were smarter, better-organized, more capable, worked a whole lot harder.... and had a budget, a fixed address and some management skills.)))
"WHY FOOD AND ENERGY AS AN ISSUE?
"Global food systems are not sustainable.
Industrialised food consumes ten times more energy
in production and distribution than enters our bodies
as nutrition. In 'developed' countries, the food
consumption of a single family generates eight tonnes
of CO2 emissions a year. This madness is enabled by
non renewable fossil fuel. But what to do? Doors 9
breaks the food systems issue into bite-sized design
chunks."
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/food/
"WHAT IS DOTT FOR?
"Two hundred and fifty regions in Europe (and many
more worldwide) are in search of a shared vision to
inspire economic and cultural renewal. In Dott 07,
the abstract idea of sustainability becomes a concrete
question: 'how do we want to live?' By the end of 2007,
some Dott 07 projects may evolve into enterprises;
people in the region will have learned, by doing it,
new approaches to social innovation; a further legacy will be platforms for ongoing social innovation –
such as places, hubs, and support schemes.
http://www.dott07.com/go/the-region/a-new-approach-to-design/
a-new-approach-to-design
ECO-DESIGN CHALLENGE
Year eight students in 80 schools across the North
East of England have been invited to map their school's
'carbon footprint'. Having identified which aspects of
their school's systems and activities are wasteful,
they will soon propose the re-design of their school's
key systems to reduce its impact on the environment.
The 50 best schools will further develop their plans
with the help of professional designers. The best
designs will be eligible for awards at the Dott
Festival in October. If you would like to be considered
as one of those designers working with the schools
(as a volunteer) please contact project leader Nick
Devitt:
<nick.devitt@dott07.com>
http://www.dott07.com/go/eco-design-challenge
STUFF-O-METER
How many materials are wasted during the manufacture
of a hairdryer? Or a car? Dott and Design and Art
Direction (D&AD) have issued a challenge to
communication design students: Develop a Stuff-O-Meter'
to help us all understand more about the "hidden
rucksack" of everyday products. Competitors will
design a visual representation of the lifetime use of
material resources, from cradle to grave, of a
household durable product. The best designs will
be presented at the Dott Festival in October.
(((Sounds like some kind of "spime dashboard,"
doesn't it? Hope that project thrivesl!)))
http://www.dott07.com/go/energy/dandad
Source:
http://edge.org/q2007/q07_index.html
"GOT OPTIMISM? THE WORLD'S LEADING THINKERS SEE GOOD
NEWS AHEAD.
While conventional wisdom tells us that
things are bad and getting worse, scientists and the
science-minded among us see good news in the coming
years." (((That's because all 160 of them are looking
really, really hard for anything to be cheerful about.
Quite a few of them discuss the climate. A lot of them
seem to be just waking up to that issue. Not William
Calvin, though.)))
(((Okay, so who's Dr. Calvin, and, given that he's
a neurologist, how come he knows so much about
climate?)))
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/calvin.html
http://faculty.washington.edu/wcalvin/
WILLIAM CALVIN
"The Climate Optimist"
by William Calvin
Professor, The University of Washington School of
Medicine; Author, A Brain For All Seasons
Mention global warming at a seasonal social gathering and see what happens, now that skepticism has turned into concern and sorrow. They will assume that you're a pessimist about our prospects. "Not really," I protest. That earns me a quizzical look.
"Wait a minute," she says. "If you're an optimist, why do you look so worried?"
"So you think it's easy, being an optimist?"
Many scientists look worried these days. We've had a steady diet of bad news coming from climate scientists and biologists. To become even a guarded optimist, you have to think hard.
First, I reflected, the history of science and medicine shows that, once you mechanistically understand what's what, you can approach all sorts of seemingly unsolvable problems. I'm optimistic that we will learn how to stabilize climate.
Unfortunately the window of opportunity is closing. Fifty years have now passed since the first unequivocal scientific warnings of an insulating blanket of CO2 forming around the planet. Politicians apparently decided to wait until something big went wrong. (((Politicians probably figured that politically managing the weather and commanding the tides like Canute was not within a politician's realm of expertise. Of course, now that the climate's actually screwed and the seas are literally rising, somebody's kinda gotta. At least the politicians managed Kyoto, which is more than industrialists, or the military, or the intelligentsia ever managed to date.)))
It has. We have already entered the period of consequences. Climate scientists have long been worried about their children's future. Now they are also worried about their own. (((This is some cause for satisfaction, actually: we held our own feet to the fire, and we won't simply export a doom that we created to some hapless generation who had nothing to do with it.)))
Our Faustian bargain over fossil fuels has come due. Dr. Faustus had 24 years of party-now, pay-later – and indeed, it's exactly 24 years since Ronald Reagan axed the U.S. budget for exploring alternative fuels. This led to doubling our use of cheap coal, the worst of the fossil fuels. They're planning, under business as usual, to re-double coal burning by 2030 – even though we can now see the high cost of low price. (((I like it when these science writers wax all literary and start quoting guys like Goethe.)))
The devil's helpers may not have come to take us away,
but killer heat waves have started, along with some
major complications from global warming. We're already
seeing droughts that just won't quit. Deserts keep
expanding. Oceans keep acidifying. Greenland keeps
melting. Dwindling resources keep triggering genocidal
wars with neighbors (think Darfur). Extreme weather
keeps trashing the place.
All of them will get worse before they get better.
(((But wait! It gets even more optimistic!)))
Worse, tipping points can lead to irreversible demolition derbies. Should another big El Nino occur and last twice as long as in 1983 or 1998, the profound drought could burn down the rain forests in Southeast Asia and the Amazon – and half of all species could go extinct, just within a year or two. (((Do we even have words for a cataclysm like that? Yeah, thanks to Jamais Cascio, we do now!)))
Link:
http://www.openthefuture.com/2006/12/
an_eschatological_taxonomy.html
Jamais Cascio's Eschatological Taxonomy
"Time has become so short that we must turn around the CO2 situation within a decade to avoid saddling our children with the irreversible consequences of a runaway warming. That means not waiting for a better deal on some post-Kyoto treaty. It means immediately scaling up technologies that we know will work, not waiting for something better that could take decades to debug.
This isn't optional. It is something that we simply have to do. The time for talk is past.
"I see why you're worried," she says. "But what's your optimistic scenario for dealing with this fossil fuel fiasco?"
For starters, I think it likely that the leaders of the major religious groups will soon come to see climate change as a serious failure of stewardship. And once they see our present fossil fuel use as a deeply immoral imposition on other people and unborn generations, their arguments will trump the talk- endlessly-to-buy-time business objections – just as such moral arguments did when ending slavery in the 19th century. (((Okay – so we get a giant swarm of fundies to help out? I thought they'd been running the show since Reagan. What do they have to show in the way of positive eco-accomplishments? If religion is supposed to be an answer, why don't they go rebuild Jerusalem first? Everybody agrees it's holy, right? A green, steward-centric, eco-ethical Jerusalem. Yeah, sure. Okay, next optimistic suggestion.)))
Second, the developed nations are fully capable of kick-starting our response to global warming with present technology – enough to achieve, within ten years, a substantial reduction in their own fossil fuel uses. How?
Wind farmers will prosper as pastures grow modern windmills to keep the cows company. (((Okay.)))
Giant parking lots, already denuded of trees, are perfect places for acres of solar paneling. Drivers will love the shaded parking spaces they create. (((I'm buyin' it. Sure.)))
The Carbon Tax will replace most of those deducted from paychecks and create a big wave of retrofitting homes and businesses. (((I don't think this ought to be called a "tax." I think it ought to be called something like "reparations for crimes against humanity.")))
Big brightly lit grocery stores with giant parking lots will compete poorly with warehouses that deliver web and phone orders within the hour, like pizza. (((Hey, that's Wal_Mart you're dissing, Dr. Calvin. They're already a lot greener than wood-oven pizza joints.)))
Smaller neighborhood grocery stores will once again do a big walk-in business and they will compete with the warehouses by offering "green bicycle" delivery. (((Here in Serbia we've got a lot of these. They're called "kiosks." They spring up and squat on sidewalks right after abject economic collapse. They're starting to go away now, mostly because Belgrade has painfully advanced to the point of creating real stores.)))
High-speed toll gates will become the norm on commuter highways. (Yes, I know, but remember that the paycheck was just enriched by eliminating withholding for income tax.) (((All right, as long as green cars are subsidized and don't have to pay.)))
Speed limits will be lowered to 50 mph (80 kmh) for fuel efficiency and, as in 1973, drivers will marvel at how smoothly the traffic flows. Double taxes will apply to vehicles with worse-than-average fossil fuel consumption, reducing the number of oversized vehicles with poor streamlining. Hybrids and all-electric cars will begin to dominate new car sales. (((Smoother traffic flow would probably help more than the 55 mph limit, which everyone will ignore.)))
A firm, fast schedule will be established for retiring or retrofitting existing coal plants. My bet is that adding nuclear power plants – France gets 78% of its electricity that way, New Jersey 52%– will prove safer, cheaper, and faster than fixing coal. (((Yeah, until the seas rise or rivers get spotty, in which case nukes themselves succumb to climate change because they lose their water coolant.)))
On the quarter-century time scale, let us assume that the new rapid transit systems will reduce car commuting by half. (((Or, you could just have 50 percent unemployment, which would cut emissions just as dramatically.))) The transition to electric and hydrogen vehicles will shift transportation's energy demands to greener sources, including biofuels, geothermal, tidal, and wave generation.
The highly efficient binding energy extractors (BEEs, the fourth-generation nuclear power plants) will be running on the spent fuel of the earlier generations. (((Maybe.)))
The low-loss DC transmission lines will allow, via cables under the Bering Strait, solar-generated electricity to flow from the bright side to the dark side of the earth. (((That would kinda rock, wouldn't it? Hope the Bering Strait behaves itself as the ice melts.)))
And in this 25-year time frame, we ought to see some important new technology making a difference, not just improvements in what we already use. For example, we might encourage rapid adaptation of the whale's favorite food, the tiny phytoplankton which provide half of the oxygen we breathe as they separate the C from the CO2. (((Remediation. Yeah, it's what's for breakfast. It's too late just to do less damage. We've got to undo the damage already done.)))
Since the shell-forming plankton sink to the ocean bottom when they die, their carbon is taken out of circulation for millions of years. Forests can burn down, releasing their stored carbon in a week, but limestone is forever. (((Makes a nice t-shirt.)))
If shell-forming plankton could thrive in warmer waters with some selective breeding or a genetic tweak, their numbers might double and start taking our excess CO2 out of circulation. (((How do we stop them?))) But even if we invent‚ – and debug – such things tomorrow, it can take several decades before an invention makes a dent in our urgent problem. And all this assumes no bad surprises, such as the next supersized El Nino killing off the Amazon and, once we lack all those trees, increasing the rate of warming by half.
By mid-century, let us suppose that we have begun extracting more CO2 from the atmosphere than we add.
This will only happen if the technology of the developed world has become good enough to compensate for what's still going on in the overstressed nations that are too disorganized to get their energy act together. (((Optimistically speaking, maybe they're too disorganized to let their oil companies buy their government, like the highly organized Russians and Americans both did.)))
When CO2 levels fall enough to counter the delayed warming from past excesses, we will begin to see a reversal of droughts and violent weather – though the rise in sea level will likely continue, a reminder to future generations of our 20th-century Faustian bargain. (((That would really be interesting, though I find it hard to believe that a mid-21C sky with carbon sucked out of it would fully return to the status quo ante. Likely it would be a world with rather different weather patterns – especially if those seas keep rising anyhow.)))
As Samuel Johnson said in 1777, "when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." (((I wonder if this made Saddam Hussein an optimist. It's also rather small comfort that the vast majority of condemned prisoners hang no matter how hard they think.))) We need to turn on a dime – by which I mean, close to what we saw in the United States after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. ((("Khaki Green." Yeah, several years of unrestrained mass slaughter oughta concentrate minds pretty wonderfully.)))
From a standing start in late 1941, the automakers converted – in a matter of months, not years – more than 1,000 automobile plants across thirty-one states... In one year, General Motors developed, tooled, and completely built from scratch 1,000 Avenger and 1,000 Wildcat aircraft... GM also produced the amphibious 'duck' – a watertight steel hull enclosing a GM six-wheel, 2.5 ton truck that was adaptable to land or water. GM's duck `was designed, tested, built, and off the line in ninety days'... Ford turned out one B-24 [a bomber] every 63 minutes. . . . – Jack Doyle, Taken for a Ride, 2000
Now there's a source of optimism: we did it before. Indeed, GM currently needs a new purpose in life (and I'd suggest repurposing the manned space program as well). All of that talent is badly needed.
With great challenges come great opportunities and I'm an optimist about our ability to respond with innovation. Countries that innovate early will have an economic edge over the laggards.
Our present civilization is like a magnificent cathedral, back before flying buttresses were retrofitted to stabilize the walls. Civilization now needs a retrofit for stabilizing its foundations. It will be a large undertaking, not unlike those that once went into building pyramids and cathedrals.
I'm optimistic that the younger generation can create a better civilization during the major makeover – provided that those currently in the leadership can stop this runaway coal train, real fast. Climate change is a challenge to the scientists but I suspect that the political leadership has the harder task, given how difficult it is to make people aware of what must be done and get them moving in time.
It's going to be like herding stray cats, and the political leaders who can do it will be remembered as the same kind of geniuses who pulled off the American Revolution.
(((I don't know which prospect is weirder: a world of climate calamity where a swift holocaust devours the Amazon and swamps London, or an amazingly with-it and politically-together Global Green Renaissance that saves our collective bacon in ten years flat. I don't think anybody fully believes in either of these prospects, not yet. But they're coming. And they're coming fast.)))
