An Authority in the Field

Being an authority in sustainability is not as important as being able to lead others to walk a sustainable path.  For example, there are 831 scientist appointed to the 5th climate assessment panel for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  While that sounds rather impressive, and it is, it does not make the knowledge sharer impressive- this is more to the point.

There is a certain benevolence among the community truly committed to growing the number of people actively participating in climate initiatives and efforts.  It seems sometimes that the real expertise manifests in behavior; it is not necessarily the expert that convinces people, but the persuader that is most successful.  Think about advertising, the woman in the skimpy shirt and panties, the man with the low cut jeans; they are no expert in manufacturing jeans or even health and fitness, but you listen to their message- buy these jeans dammit and you will look good like me.  And what happens, millions of people go out and make their purchase on a most unreliable source.

So with 831 experts in their field, why is it so difficult to move a society closer to climate consciousness?  We are creatures of habit and comfort.  This may be one of the human conditions that plagues us the worst, certainly among the top ten.  In fact when is the last time you watch or responded to the stock market rising or falling.  Heck we have so much belief in the stock market, not a day goes by where we are persuaded to believe that our day is not complete without us determine based on some"one", else's opinion, that the world economy is going to collapse because the some country's market dropped 1%.

Now imagine if we gave that much weight to the environment.  What would happen if we responded to a 1% change in the ecosystem, the way we do when the financial markets shift.  We might think very differently about the Amazon Rain Forest.  Such a shift in our behavior might result in a cataclysmic shift in our decision making.

In a recent article in Time Magazine, Ecuador want to be paid not to destroy the rain forest in their geographic area.  It is a very interesting article, but more importantly it is forces us to take a real hard look at externalities (assessing a value to attributes we over look). I would say that the world could probably come up with $3.6 billion dollars to protect the rain forest for 13 years- seems like a pretty good value.  As a matter of fact, I think I going to reach into my pocket right now and that spare $3 billion I have just sitting around.  All joking aside, why is it we have hordes of people telling us the significance of climate issues and our response is less than admirable?  Comfort is a likely answer.

We have got to work harder to do more to persuade others to act more responsibly.  Maybe it is more time out of our day, more money, better yet, more individual innovation that will help move people's stale thinking about climate extremes.  And whatever you do, don't try to scare people into being more responsible, they will just shut down and that won't do anyone or anything any good.  Let's go back to the sexy women and men of advertising; it is not often that you feel threatened by their ads, they can be down right persuasive.  Employ similar techniques, at least in principle.  No need to start stripping down, though some women in the Ukraine, have been known to take advocacy to such a level somewhat successfully.  Hmmm, perhaps the tides are changing.

Good fortune to all!

Shifting from Climate Change to Climate Extremes

 by Scotland Willis

The discussion over climate change, has been a hotly debated issue since it's inception.  Advocates fiercely reacting to opponents of climate related issues with great fervor to emphasize the seriousness of potential threats.  Now is not the time to add to that flame, but rather clarify- and continue to do so.  Choosing a discourse that is based on observations, reasonable extrapolations, and comparative data year over year, is imperative.  Action is a must.

Yes, it is impossible to predict exactly what is going to happen with the weather patterns around the world, many experts believe the extremes will continue to increase aggressively- a likely scenario.  But if speculation, projections and modeling aren't sufficient (a task carried out by experts in the field of science), then why do we depend so heavily on them with regards to economic market conditions?  Such models are known as market predictability models; hundreds of billions of dollars each day depend on such projections and their outcomes.  Why? Simple, they are a good indicator of human behavior with reference to increasing or decreasing the price of various commodities.

 Why then, are such sophisticated systems dismissed in climate modeling?  Asserting that using probabilities and potentialities is not a reliable source, is a poor argument for non-action by policy makers and the general population for that matter.

It is important to be able to translate this into climate extremes and human behavior; market behavior is of course very different- or is it.

If we think of the environment in an inverse sort of way, we can look at it a bit differently.  While we can't change the weather based on how many people are going to buy a share of sunshine or speculate on rain; we do do this in a sense.  People bid on crops and other agribusiness all the time.  The performance of the weather significantly determines whether the price of wheat will go up or down.  Take the fires that destroyed the wheat crops in Russia.  People who speculated that the price of wheat would go down when those crops matured lost their bet in terms of stock futures.  Why? because the unexpected wildfires that destroyed the crops thus increasing the price of wheat.


And there is evidence that governments have been tampering with, artificially experimenting and manipulating the weather patterns over the years.  But the other and more important point is that we (the human species), can intentionally shift the way we impact the environment.  It is true that if agribusiness could make enough millions they would play war games with other countries crops but that is not the topic of discussion here.

The former discussion is solely to raise awareness of potentialities.  What our human impact is doing is having an accelerated impact on weather conditions.  Climate change will always occur, but climate extremes will significantly impact how we live and what quality of life we can expect.  The other point of the discussion above was to look at the comparison of using predictions and forecasting to influence our decisions about legislative policy related to climate change.  A book written about crowdsourcing (link here), provides some insights to predictive modeling as a powerful source to understanding economic market behavior


In 2011, the United States experienced twelve (12) extreme weather events; the record in 2008 was nine such events.  These are generally events that translate into $1 billion in damage or more.  Two good resources to defer to are both the NOAA (link here) and a Public Broadcasting Service program NewsHour (link hour).  From Snowfall records in January of 2011 that paralyzed the midsection of the United States to the hundreds of people who died from record tornadoes that hit the country; more extreme weather patterns are striking with great force and increasing frequency.  The NOAA estimates $52b in total damage for weather related events in 2011.  These unusual weather events are not solely in the U.S.

This past Fall season, my travels took me to Thailand during flooding that struck the far north and continued southward decimating communities.  And early in 2012, Latin America is experiencing recording flooding, wildfires and droughts (Huffington Post).  Along with the extreme hurricane type winds that battered the U.K., these patters emit a warning signs that should have legislators acting on firm policies to protect the native populations.  Planning is the key.  But when project like Rancho Cielo Solar Farm get canceled one must ask why, and not just point to the DOE-- but ask who is pulling the strings?  How do such project like this get usurped politically?  Start by asking what is at stake for the existing industries that have dominion over energy sources.


Real Solutions
Locating energy sources closer to the populations that use them is an important decision to make.  A tremendous amount of energy is lost when electricity from power generating plants are located long distances from the end user.  But no one wants a coal burning plant in their back yard (unless you live in Washington D.C. [ Capital Power Plant], 60,000 tons of carbon dioxide).  Solution, find a different power source.  Granted that in some areas, certain environments are not hospitable to certain power sources.  The efficiency  is simply a poor trade off.  But in many places geothermal, solar and wind are seriously under utilized.

What to Expect
Expect more extreme storms.  The capacity of the atmosphere to retain more energy and moisture means that the release of such energy will be more extreme.  Can we harness more of that extreme energy and find creative ways to stave off or offset the negative impact? Can't answer that one.  But we can trust what is before us and act accordingly.

Extremeness:

• Snow: January record snowfall in Chicago blizzards that pounded 22 states in the midsection of the US;
• Spring: Tornadoes 3 largest twister outbreaks in 6 wks $25b dmage;
• 300 killed in 3 days
•  Tuscaloosa, Alabama leveled due to tornadoes;
• Joplin Missouri: Late May leveled killed over 150 people200 mph winds
• Hurricane Irene; ravaging the East coastline
• Droughts  TX $10b loss crops, livestock, timber, (hottest Summer in TX
• over 6000 1m acres over labor day weekend.
• Kansas 100 days over 100 temp