This View of Earth

THE SCIENTIST WHO CRIED WOLF AND THE SQUEEZE IN

2011-12-03T10:39:00.000-05:00

So what do Paul Ehrlich and a delicious restaurant in Truckee, California called the Squeeze In have in common? They are both featured in this story of course!

The scientist who cried wolf, Paul Ehrlich, surely made a mistake predicting mass starvation and environmental disaster from overpopulation in the 1960s. However, his caution was well-founded, and we would be making a mistake at least as serious to ignore the impact of humanity on the environment today.

The world's population has more than doubled from 3 billion in 1960 to nearly 7 billion today. Add to that increase in raw numbers of people an increase in the average standard of living for each person and you have a prescription for significant planet-wide environmental degradation.

Questions about the global carrying capacity for humans justifiably bear more weight today than they should have in 1960, but yet many dismiss the concerns as more of the same environmental doomsaying. Unfortunately, the world is vastly different today than in 1960 - 7 billion better-living people take up more space and use more resources than 3 billion mostly poor did 50 years ago.

Can the world handle 7 billion people over the long run? How about 9 billion people, a number we could reach before the middle of this century?

Questions of carrying capacity and sustainability are difficult to answer, and for many different reasons. First is the obvious issue of scale, the planet is big and measurements of agricultural productivity, water availability, suitable climates for growing food dwarf our worldwide data collection capabilities. But even if we manage to grow our data collection abilities with aerial and satellite observations, there is another basic problem.

Carrying capacity depends on the quality of life we are willing to accept. If we all require a single-family home on a quarter-acre of land, well, we better find a couple more planets, because we've already exceeded the carrying capacity of this Earth with 7 billion people. If we are all willing to live in small high-rise apartments and eat mostly a vegetarian diet, 9 billion or so might squeeze in.

The Squeeze In featured little elbow room in its 1970s edition as I recall (but delicious omelettes!), and we will all have very little metaphorical elbow room soon. That is, little food, little spare space, little oil or gas, and fewer species of beautiful plants and animals with which to share our good fortune of having a planet we call home. Are you ready to squeeze in?

Eat Less Meat!

2011-11-20T07:22:00.001-05:00

From the News and Observer (Raleigh, NC) on November 19:

In his Nov. 16 letter to the News and Observer, "We need the meat," a veterinarian claims that "the world now has about 7 billion people and they sure aren't going to be fed adequately with spinach and snow peas." He suggests that more people would be better fed if farms provided more meat, not less. He could not be further from the truth.

Assume it takes 10 acres to grow enough plants to feed one cow. And assume that one cow could feed 10 people. If instead of eating beef the people ate the plants grown on the 10 acres, there would be enough nutritious vegetables to feed about 100 people. Farmers can thus provide food for about 10 times as many people if those people eat vegetables than if they eat meat.

This is not to suggest that everyone become a vegetarian. However, significantly reducing our average consumption of meat would help the world's farmers provide enough food for everyone. Of course, there are also undeniable health advantages to eating less meat and more vegetables. Instead of "Where's the beef?" we might better ask "Where's the spinach, squash, tomato and tofu?"

-Denis DuBay, Ph.D.

A Review of TERC's* Earth Exploration Toolbook

2011-11-02T10:58:00.000-04:00

The Earth Exploration Toolbook (EET) is much more than a set of digital online classroom activities related to earth and environmental science. It is that - a very good set of activities accompanied by excellent supporting documentation - but it is also a guide to learning how to access any available online science datasets and analyze them with the appropriate software tools. As such, this is not only a resource for educators, but as TERC points out, citizens and policy makers might also make good use of the Toolbook.

The Earth Exploration Toolbook at last count contained 43 active chapters and two retired chapters. Retired chapters used datasets and/or analysis tools that are no longer readily accessible. A useful index categorizes chapters by both earth/environmental science topic (eg., atmosphere, biosphere, climate, etc.) as well as by technology tool used to obtain and analyze the data (eg., spreadsheets and image analysis, etc.).

Anyone may use the Toolbook to learn new skills with which they may then find and analyze online earth/environmental science data for themselves. This is the feature that surprised me most about the site. I was expecting a set of classroom activities, and as I said, each chapter can be used in that fashion - a stand-alone classroom activity complete with background information, objectives, and detailed instructions for students. But the Toolbook can serve another purpose, enhancing the professional development of teachers or anyone else with an interest in better understanding current topics by improving their ability to find and explore online earth and environmental science datasets. Do not overlook this opportunity.

As for the individual chapters, 17 of the 43 are directly related to the atmosphere and/or climate. Other topics include biosphere, earth's cycles, geography, human dimensions, hydrology, oceans, solar system and astronomy, solid earth, surface processes, and time/earth history. Most chapters make use of spreadsheets, but many also involve image analysis tools and GIS mapping tools. Additional technology tools include online graphing, data portals, and modelling.

The supporting documentation is simply outstanding. Beware, these are not, for the most part, activities you can complete in a single hour. For example, "Climate History from Deep Sea Sediments" estimates at least three hours will be needed.

Every chapter comes with a brief opening description, then detailed teaching notes. Teaching notes include an example output of the activity, target grade level, goals, rationale, brief science background, pre-requisites, specific instructional and assessment strategies (including questions), content standards met, and time required. Every chapter focuses on a case study, and provides detailed information and background preparatory to tackling the assignments. Only then come the detailed step-by-step instructions for accessing online data, acquiring the analysis tools, and performing the data analysis and interpretation.

The step-by-step instructions are detailed, well-documented and illustrated, and include many screen-captures to guide the novice. The "Climate History from Deep Sea Sediments" chapter mentioned above includes 34 screenshots (!), most of them provided as pull-down images available with a click of the mouse, but not cluttering up your screen unless and until you require them.

The step-by-step instructions contain the meat of each chapter, and include many interpretive questions for you to consider as you access, view, and analyze the datasets. Each chapter concludes with an array of additional questions and resources for follow-up and extension activities. Expect to save online data and new software tools to your computer as you work through a chapter.

This is a resource worth exploring and utilizing. It will take some time, but it will be time well-spent. Expect to learn skills you will employ again. If you are a teacher, expect to help your students acquire skills they will use in their future as well as in your class.

On an introductory "About the Earth Exploration Toolbook" page is a paragraph addressing the question, "Why teach with data?" If you needed another reminder that science is a process of discovering new knowledge and not a matter of memorizing facts, this is it. Don't miss it.
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* TERC was founded in 1965 as the Technical Education Resource Centers, and is located in Cambridge, MA. The Earth Exploration Toolbook is a National Science Foundation-funded collaboration between TERC and the Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College in Northfield, MN.

KIDS, MOTHER NATURE, AND GOD

2011-09-29T12:34:00.004-04:00

Richard Louv begins the final section of his book, Last Child in the Woods, with a question posed by his then four-year-old son, Matthew, "Are God and Mother Nature married, or just good friends?" Later, Louv and his son share this question with Fred Rogers whose reply includes this request to Matthew, "Will you let me know, as time goes by, what answer you find to your question?"

The relationship between God and nature guides only a portion of this interesting and carefully-researched book, but it is the final portion. It wraps up the story Louv weaves with perhaps the most effective argument favoring reconnecting children with nature, and that is to strengthen their spirituality. The argument leans towards no particular denomination or church, rather towards a spirituality rooted in the amazement that overcomes one in the face of an incredibly large, steep, and jagged mountain, the reflection of tree-covered hillsides, blue skies, and white clouds in the smooth surface of a mountain lake, the arching flight of a hawk overhead, or the cautious steps of a suddenly alert deer on the trail ahead.

Louv's telling of this exchange between his young son and Mister Rogers ends in the same manner the book proceeds, with respect for the question and the child asking it, with compelling interest in how the answer comes out. I know it will take some time, but please let me know the answer you find.

Although Louv clearly makes the case for the importance of nature in the growth and education of children, he does it gently, with openness to ultimate alternatives. Yes, he cites many examples, many research studies to support his contention that connections to the natural world help children learn science and math and language, cope with danger as well as with difficulties, appreciate the unknown, and even come to know God. But he entertains as much uncertainty in exactly how exposure to nature does these things, and how we might improve the connection down the road, as he acknowledges in dealing with his son's question about God and Mother Nature.

Although Louv has two sons, it is his younger son Matthew who opens both the book and its last section. This time the question has to do with Louv's oft-repeated recollections of playing outdoors during his own childhood, something Matthew felt he had missed out on growing up in the last decades of the 20th century, so Matthew asked how come it was more fun when his father was growing up. With this opening, Louv describes in disturbing detail the many obstacles preventing our children from experiencing nature with the same ease and wonder enjoyed by earlier generations.

Whether it's homeowner association rules prohibiting treehouses, forts, or any free, unsupervised play in open areas, the replacement of unstructured woods and vacant lots with ball fields used only for structured games, or the fearful restrictions placed by worried parents on how far afield their young offspring may go, there is little doubt of the differences kids experience growing up today compared to 40 or 50 or more years ago.

How many 5th-graders today ride their bikes several miles along major roads on their way to school? I asked my mother recently if she worried about me on those days in suburban Baltimore when she let me take a big spin towards independence. She recalled a strong fear for my safety, but she still let me ride. Of course the world was different then, recall there were no bike helmets or even seat belts!

And in the list of obstacles to kids enjoying the outdoors, did I mention the seductive draw of electronic gadgets yet? Richard Louv certainly mentions them! Couch potato may have been invented to refer to middle-aged men watching football on Sunday afternoons, but the term has been usurped by today's boys (and girls?) playing computer games and texting back and forth. I put girls in parentheses as our three daughters never owned a Playstation or similar electronic gaming device during their entire childhood - a part of "family life" we missed?

Louv highlights research documenting these things that remove kids from nature, but he also goes on to highlight as well the costs of that separation. He acknowledges nature-deficit disorder is not a formally recognized illness, but nonetheless reports many problems that may arise when children grow up with little to no exposure to the natural world of trees, dirt, creeks, bugs, mud, frogs, hills, and ponds.

But Richard also explores how we may return, not to the good old days, but to an exciting new future where parents and children have the opportunity to share an

easy, hand-dirtying, imagination-filled examination of a hillside of bare soil, a flowing creek, a climb-able tree, a trail of ants, or the capture of a frog by a snake! Louv does not spell out exactly how this will or must happen. Instead he shares an array of examples where that future has already begun to happen, and examines and discusses a variety of projects, programs, even movements, that could lead us further in this direction.

To paraphrase an apt question asked by one of my daughters at age four, but did we wanted to go there? Having spent a portion of my time reading this book gazing at high mountain ridges and walking alongside cool alpine lakes with mule deer and ravens, and once or twice passing by a class of adventurous ninth-grade students camping out and hiking in the woods, I know the answer I would give. But the more difficult question is how do we get there, to this new future.

Although Richard Louv does not have all the answers, he's posed important questions, and supported well his contention that most of our kids need and would benefit from more time spent in nature. He has also described a many-branched set of pathways to that hoped-for nature-filled future. And he's reminded us that to be human is to be constantly and repeatedly and deeply amazed, at a mountain, a tree, a waterfalls, a hummingbird, a sandy beach, a child.

A FAIR COMPARISON OF GREEN ENERGY VERSUS FOSSIL FUELS

2011-09-16T08:23:00.001-04:00

Some question the push to subsidize and adopt green forms of energy, such as solar photovoltaic and wind turbines. The challengers suggest that green power cannot produce enough energy to replace fossil fuels, would cost too much to use, and has too many problems associated with its production and distribution. But virtually all of those problems boil down to costs - green energy costs more than dirty fossil fuels. Rick Martinez summarized much of this in the Raleigh News and Observer on September 14, 2011 in an article entitled "Green energy more hype than help."

The flaw in Mr. Martinez' reasoning is a failure to take into account the external costs of burning coal and gasoline. External costs for coal and gasoline are things that burning coal and gasoline cause that cost real money to fix but that are not included in the up-front cost (internal costs) of purchasing that fuel.

For example, extracting coal by removing a mountaintop in West Virginia causes deforestation and massive water pollution. However, the mountaintop and the forests are not replaced and the water pollution is not cleaned up. Moreover, your electricity bill includes no funds to compensate those living near or downstream from that missing mountaintop for their resulting expenses.

For example, burning gasoline releases nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons that cause ozone air pollution. That ozone air pollution has demonstrable health impacts that raise healthcare costs and damage people's health and fitness. Those healthcare costs are not paid for by the oil companies and are not part of the price of a gallon of gasoline.

Let' s be clear. External costs must be paid for, are paid for, one way or the other. It's just that external costs are not included in the price of the fuel whose extraction and use caused them to occur. They should be part of the cost of those fuels, but historically they have not been, and that continues today.

Solar photovoltaic and wind turbines both represent renewable alternatives to nonrenewable and polluting fossil fuels. Although solar and wind power generation have their own environmental costs, they clearly produce little to no air pollution, greenhouse gases, water pollution, or environmental health dangers. Solar photovoltaic and wind turbines have few external costs that result from their use.

So any comparison of the costs of producing electricity with coal to producing it with solar or wind is way off base if it does not include the difference in external costs of the two energy sources. Any comparison of the relative costs of running a car on gasoline versus electricity falls short if it does not include the external costs of burning gasoline that simply don't exist for producing electricity with solar or wind power.

Just how expensive are those external costs? The National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences recently estimated the hidden costs of energy production and use at $120 billion per year. Dr. Paul Epstein of the Harvard Medical School recently estimated the external costs for coal alone at from $175 to $500 billion per year.

For comparison, from 2007 to 2010, government subsidies supporting renewable energy sources jumped 186%, from $5 billion to $15 billion, this largely due to the government's recent economic stimulus bills. That 2010 figure of $15 billion represents just 12% of the low-end estimate of $120 billion per year in external costs of continuing to use fossil fuels.

We could subsidize renewable energy sources at a rate five times higher than the 2010 figure and they would still be much cheaper than fossil fuels!

This is why renewable energy sources must be subsidized - to make up for the unfair advantage fossil fuels have by not having to pay for their external costs. Renewable energy sources have few if any external costs. Until fossil fuels are forced to pay for their external costs, any comparison between the costs of fossil fuels and renewable energy is simply propaganda for the fossil fuel industry.

How could those external costs be paid up front by fossil fuels? The direct and simplest way is a carbon tax. Charge enough to pay for the damages the fuel causes. Take those funds and use them to reduce income taxes by a like amount, and you could have an overall revenue-neutral or tax-neutral tool that would even the playing field between fossil fuels and renewable energy.

With a tax on carbon, consumers would pay the true costs of using coal-generated electricity and driving gas-guzzling cars. Those who wished to save money on their fuel bills would lead the charge to renewable energy, such as solar photovoltaic and wind power. Power companies and car companies would get the message that consumers want efficient clean-energy alternatives, since renewable energy is, in fact, cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

OZONE: BAD NEARBY

2011-09-08T16:39:00.000-04:00

Although my niece Megan, good friend's daughter Kate, and son-in-law Andrew may not realize it, they most likely share a sensitivity to ozone air pollution. You see, they each suffer from asthma. They are just three people I know who have asthma, there are others, since asthma is a condition that affects an estimated 20 million Americans, 1 out of every 15 of us. And experiments find that people with asthma suffer greater lung damage when exposed to ozone air pollution than the rest of us. We all suffer lung damage when we breathe ozone, but some of us experience more injury than others.

President Obama recently decided to delay issuing a rule that would have lowered something called the primary standard for ozone air pollution. That primary standard now sits at 0.075 parts of ozone per million parts of air (ppm) averaged over an 8-hour time period. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed lowering that primary standard to between 0.070 and 0.060 ppm of ozone. That would mean cities would have to adopt strategies to keep ozone pollution from exceeding 0.060 or 0.070 ppm averaged over 8 hours.

Just what is ozone? It is a molecule that consists of three oxygen atoms (O3). The oxygen molecule you want to breathe, that you enjoy breathing in deep gulps, has just two oxygen atoms (O2). How do normal, two-atom oxygen molecules acquire that third, troublesome atom? That involves energy, as do all chemical changes, and in this case the energy comes from sunlight. But sunlight alone is not enough. To get O3 from O2, the air must also have other gases present, nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons.

Nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons come mostly from burning fossil fuels. Nitrogen oxides are produced when we burn coal in power plants to produce electricity, or burn gasoline in cars and trucks. This is also how hydrocarbons are produced, though hydrocarbons can also come from the evaporation of gasoline and other petroleum products or solvents like dry cleaning fluids.

Sparing you from more chemistry than you need to know, just be aware that those nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbon gases in the air help sunlight split apart some O2 molecules, freeing up two solitary oxygen atoms, which can then each combine with still-intact O2 molecules to produce O3 molecules, ozone. And ozone is a highly reactive molecule, which means that it will react with and change (equals damage) any of your body's cells it comes in contact with.

Your skin cells are made tough to resist chemical attack, and are not affected by ozone. However, the inside of your lungs are not covered in skin cells, they can't be or they would be no good at absorbing the oxygen you need to live. So the cells lining your lungs are readily injured by contact with ozone, which is unavoidable if it's present in the air - unless you hold your breath!

Megan, Kate, and Andrew, and the rest of us too, will suffer damage to the cells in our lungs when we breathe in ozone. Notice I said when, not if. All of us living in the developed parts of the world have breathed in ozone air pollution at one time or another. It's our most common and most important air pollutant - a molecule that is produced in the very air around us.

Experiments show that lungs can begin to respond to ozone concentrations as low as 0.060 ppm, levels often exceeded across the country during the summer months. In fact, the national 8-hour maximum average ozone levels during the summer of 2009 was 0.070 ppm.

We all suffer some level of injury from ozone air pollution. That injury can trigger inflammation and reduced lung function, increased susceptibility to respiratory infection, coughing, sore throat, shortness of breath, and aggravation of chronic lung diseases such as asthma, emphysema, and bronchitis. The costs to health include increased medication use, more frequent doctor visits and school and work absences, increased emergency room and hospital admissions, and even premature death in people with heart and lung diseases.

Ozone is a seasonal air pollutant problem, because it requires intense sunlight and high temperatures. The sunlight, as you know, provides the energy necessary to produce ozone, and the high temperatures speed up that chemical reaction, meaning higher concentrations of ozone in the air.

When you hear news reports of a "Code Orange" air pollution alert, that means authorities expect the sunlight and heat forecasted for the coming day are enough, given the presence of nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbon air pollutants, to produce dangerous levels of ozone air pollution, especially during the hottest part of the day. People sensitive to ozone, people with asthma or heart conditions or COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) should refrain from physical exertion outdoors to avoid suffering injury. Of course, all of us might do the same to protect our lungs, and if you ever hear a "Code Red" or "Code Purple" ozone alert, stay inside and hold your breath!

The recipe for reducing ozone air pollution involves reducing those "precursor" gases, nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons. We can't stop the sun from shining, but we can burn less coal and gasoline, and clean up the smokestack and tailpipe emissions when we must burn those fuels.

The estimated costs for reducing those emissions to levels that would keep ozone under the proposed lower primary standard of 0.060 ppm - from $19 to $90 billion by 2020. The estimated health benefits approximately equal those costs, ranging from $13 to $100 billion. So a simple cost-benefit analysis suggests we should do it!

And those health benefits include saved lives and improved quality of life, especially for the 1 in 15 of us who suffer from asthma. Are Megan, Kate, and Andrew worth making that effort? Is your health worth it?

Can You Make Sense of Sustainability?

2011-07-20T11:12:00.002-04:00

A stream in Julian Price Park along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina

Sustainability makes little sense in the developed world to the ordinary citizen. How can I know that my lifestyle is sustainable or not?

Guess we need to define sustainability first. A sustainable way of life can be continued indefinitely. That means you can live that way without threatening the ability of your region (the planet?) to continue providing the renewable and nonrenewable resources necessary for maintaining your desired quality of life.

I can probably make some crude decisions about what is more or less "sustainable", but whether driving to work every day in a Hummer is sustainable or not is either very difficult or very easy to answer. If the gas is there and I can afford it week after week, month after month, year after year, then the easy answer is, YES, it is sustainable. It may be sustainable for me, but is that enough?

If I am supposed to determine whether or not my lifestyle is sustainable for the long term, that is, can my children and their children continue to live in the same manner, for example, driving a Hummer every day, that is a much more difficult question. In fact, for the ordinary citizen, that question is simply unanswerable. Of course driving a Prius is likely "more" sustainable than driving a Hummer, but when will that gas run out or when will the cost become a complete budget-buster?

You get the idea that sustainability is much easier to consider as a budgetary matter. If I can afford it, it is sustainable. Income either meets or exceeds expenses, or it does not. If it does not at least meet the expenses, I am living unsustainably.

Of course, ecological sustainability involves not money, but the ecological services provided by intact and well-functioning ecosystems. Will my ecosystem (instead of my budget) be able to continue to supply oxygen, clean water, edible food, the materials to provide shelter, and a relatively comfortable climate?

Well, now things get really difficult. What are the boundaries for "my ecosystem?" It must be bigger than my neighborhood, since not many of us can walk or bike to the farms producing even some of the food we eat every day. It might be bigger than my town if we don't have any coal mines or oil or natural gas wells nearby. And do you get your drinking water from the nearest stream, and the wood or bricks in your house from the nearest forest or clay deposit? How about the metal in your car?

These are not trivial difficulties. A host of Ph.D.s would find considerable challenge calculating ecological sustainability for anyone in a developed country. In fact, they almost surely would have to resort in many instances to recommending practices that are "more or less" sustainable, without being able to determine whether or not a particular practice is actually sustainable for an individual in a particular region.

Oh, and we've left out actually defining the goal of our sustainability. Do we want to live sustainably as our ancestors might have lived a century, or two centuries ago? Or do we want to live sustainably as our parents did, or continue as we are living today? We're talking about the quality of life we would like to enjoy sustainably.

Finally, how many kids and grandkids do you want to have? Sustainability depends on population size. If we agree to limit our family size to two or three children each, sustainability will be easier to reach than if we average four or five offspring!

Environmental Enlightenment

2011-05-21T07:35:00.001-04:00

Thomas Jefferson's first of four basic principles laying out the importance of education states that "... democracy cannot long exist without enlightenment." Today we face a threat to that enlightenment from those who point to the honorable Mr. Jefferson as an icon of their cause. From Washington, D.C. to Raleigh, North Carolina, politicians eager to establish their conservative credentials strive to eliminate educational and research programs designed to conserve Earth's life-supporting ecological and environmental systems.

From the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), budget cuts proposed by the U.S. House of Representatives would restrict or eliminate research efforts to improve our understanding of climate and our impacts on it. One way to overcome findings of fact which conflict with your ideology is to simply stop the research. Ignorance may not be bliss in this case, but it could silence dissent.

Here in North Carolina, the political wing that ironically claims the conservative label is hard at work finding ways to keep fellow citizens and patriots ignorant about the ways in which the conservation of this state's natural resources benefit our economic well-being, our quality of life, and our health. This state's House of Representatives seeks to divide and conquer the conservation efforts of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). Among the myriad proposals is one to move the Division of Soil and Water Conservation into the Department of Agriculture, where presumably, agricultural interests could stem the state's efforts to enlighten us all about an industry often cited as a major source of nutrient pollution in North Carolina's waterways.

But perhaps Mr. Jefferson would find most alarming one of the smallest cuts proposed by the North Carolina State House, one of just $221,000 to gut the state's Office of Environmental Education. Here is a program that coordinates and creates environmental education efforts that cut across departmental and philosophical divides and works on that most subversive activity, education.

The state's Office of Environmental Education brings in at least $221,000 in outside grants and in-kind support to more than match it's tiny state appropriation. But it may not be the dollar figure that draws the ire of "conservatives," but rather the program's goal.

That goal is understanding how ecosystems function - how humans and the environment are interconnected - how conservation may help us live healthier and richer lives. Environmental education strives for a populace that can address complex environmental problems with knowledge and the scientific method rather than with emotional and misleading appeals to ideology.

The Office of Environmental Education created an award-winning and nationally touted environmental education certification program to ensure that those teaching about the Earth's environment not only know of which they speak, but truly educate rather than engage in issue advocacy.

Equally as valuable, the Office leverages private funding and job creation at outdoor educational and recreational facilities across the state - each promoting environmental stewardship. But as a former member of the Office, and most recently, a high school science teacher, my favorite programs are those for teachers.

The Office of Environmental Education spearheaded efforts to enrich K-12 classrooms with the educational and scientific power of technology, specifically geographic information systems (GIS) and the Internet, in partnership with N.C. State University and the EPA. Efforts such as this highlight environmental education's role preparing future citizens for 21st Century jobs in high-tech careers.

Enlightenment may not be expensive, but the lack of enlightenment could bankrupt any economy or country. Mr. Jefferson understood this.

Our natural ecosystems provide us with clean water, breathable air, fertile soil, a climate in which we can grow food and live comfortably, and an attractive environment - all at little or no cost. Threats to those natural ecosystems, and threats to our efforts to better understand them, imperil our economic well-being and our quality of life. Those threats, abounding today from Raleigh to Washington, could damage our democracy in ways at least one of our founding fathers appreciated.

The North Carolina Senate is now considering such proposals sent over from the State House. In the spirit of Mr. Jefferson, you might wish to enlighten your state senator about the values of environmental education in a democracy.

Wolverine and Walrus

2011-02-09T19:51:00.006-05:00

Recent studies find that two more species of mammals, the wolverine and the walrus, are threatened by climate change, yet neither will be immediately placed on the official Endangered Species list by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Seems there are too many species becoming endangered too fast for the bureaucracy to keep up. What does that tell you about the state of our planet, and the effects of climate change?

Scientia Pro Publica, 34th Edition - July 5th, 2010

2010-07-05T20:45:00.001-04:00

Welcome to an interesting and eclectic collection of wonderful science writing. Enjoy these observations of science, nature, and humanity brought to you by Scientia Pro Publica, the blog carnival promoting science writing for the public. And please remember to leave a comment to let the authors know you visited and what you thought of their contribution.

We begin with Bob O'Hara, from Deep Thoughts and Silliness, bringing us a thoughtful review of the book, Elegance in Science: The Beauty of Simplicity, by Ian Glynn. You all know as well as Bob that the conventional wisdom puts great scientific stock in simplicity, not without good reason. Might even have something to do with the popularity of Occam's Razor, but does Ian Glynn explain why simplicity makes for elegant science? Bob's Book Review: Elegance in Science gives us an answer, and of course, a question.

Next comes a little-known biographic detail about Sir Isaac Newton, who apparently dabbled in a greater variety of intellectual pursuits than most of us thought. Romeo Vitelli sheds light on Newton's ventures into alchemy and theology at Providentia with his contribution entitled Newton's Revelation.

Several contributions involve nature and the environment. First, Ninjameys continues to fulfill his pledge to raise the profile of the lesser-known but still important species threatened with extinction by completing Parts 4 and 5 of his twelve-part Endangered Species 2010 Series: Dicotyledons (Part 1) and Dicotyledons (Part 2). We also get a bonus this time around with Plants and Fungi Map showing the geographic location of each of the species described in Parts 1 through 5! Parts 1, 2, and 3 included fungi and bryophytes; club mosses, quillworts, ferns, and red algae; as well as conifers, cycads, and monocots. Although I am partial to plants, Ninjameys' mission includes critically endangered species from twelve different taxonomic categories populating IUCN's Red List 2010, so the animal-lovers among us have much to look forward to.

Bridget Nicholson submitted 10 Biggest Health Dangers Behind the Oil Spill, where you will find the health dangers categorized as either "Right Now" or "In the Future", a useful dichotomy given that the effects are being felt at the moment, but will also be with us for a long time to come. Has this oil disaster prompted anyone else to wonder what might be the nuclear power industry's equivalent to the oil industry's "blind shear ram" that failed so appallingly beneath the Deepwater Horizon platform?

Birds, especially ravens, are noted for their intelligence. Now, as suggested in a research study reviewed by Grrlscientist in Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted), ravens may exhibit empathy. The study, by Orlaith Fraser and Thomas Bugnyar at the University of Vienna, involved 13 ravens observed interacting with each other over a nearly two-year time period. The key interactions were conflicts (chase flights, hitting, or forced retreats), and an affiliative, or consoling, behavior characterized by "contact sitting, preening or beak-to-beak or beak-to-body touching. Examine the evidence as described by Grrrlscientist and judge for yourself whether or not Distressed Ravens Show That Empathy Is For The Birds, Too

Human health and behavior is a focus of three contributions. In Unmaking the Disease (Part 1),
Romeo Vitelli begins a brief history of the study of homosexuality. Part 1 concludes with the first of the dissenters from the conventional wisdom of their day, Alfred Kinsey and Evelyn Hooker. We await Parts 2 and 3 where Romeo promises to describe the scientific community's removal of the disease label from homosexuality.

Mind over matter oversimplifies the findings of a study Faith Martin reviews on Highlight HEALTH. Relating how a patient thinks about their illness to their emotional and physical well-being makes for interesting advice for healthcare providers and anyone who knows someone with a chronic affliction. How Your Head Can Influence Your Heart offers valuable insight with relevance far beyond those concerned with cardiac care.

Our favorite 360 Degree Skeptic challenges readers to find the flaws in a study he reviews entitled "Greater religiosity during adolescence may protect against developing problem alcohol use." In Spot the Flaws: Unpacking the Religion Variable skeptic Andrew Bernardin suggests we examine the validity of the conclusions of the study, and includes a link to the original report as well, if you need it to help identify any scientific and/or logical error(s).

Finally, we venture to the outer limits with John at Kind of Curious, who is reading "The Varieties of Scientific Experience" by Carl Sagan. John introduces us to a fine opportunity to participate in one of Carl Sagan's passions, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). In Searching for Aliens, John describes how the SETI@home project encourages ordinary citizens to donate spare processing power from their Internet-connected home computers to assist with the search for ET. Best of all, John reports that "If your computer is the one that finds ET, you get named as a co-discoverer." Be careful what you wish for!

OIL IN DEEP WATER

2010-07-01T08:20:00.001-04:00

The behavior of oil in deep water is a subject few of us thought about until very recently. However, the oil industry has thought about it before this year. In June of 2000, the Minerals Management Service (part of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA) contracted with SINTEF and ChevronTexaco to explore just what would happen if there were an oil well blowout in deep water (see Project "Deep Spill"). In this planned experiment off the coast of Norway, "mixtures of crude oil and natural gas, diesel oil and natural gas, ... were released at approximately 800 meters water depth." On page 150 of their final report of that project, in a section entitled "Further Research", a paragraph begins with the following interesting observation.

"Prior to the sea trial, there were some doubts about whether the oil would reach the sea surface. It apparently did so during these experiments, but if the size of the oil droplets formed at the exit had been sufficiently small, the oil might not have surfaced."

Recent observations in the Gulf of Mexico of an unplanned experiment releasing a large quantity of oil at a depth of 1,500 meters suggest that a significant quantity of the oil has not reached the surface. Given that a large volume of oil dispersants have been intentionally added at the site of the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and that oil dispersants are designed and applied specifically to make the oil break up into smaller droplet sizes, one might anticipate that a significant portion of the oil released in the BP blowout would not reach the surface.

So it is more than a little surprising that BP's chief executive would, weeks after the blowout took place, be so ill-informed about the behavior of oil in deep water as to belittle claims that plumes of oil might exist beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

A key purpose of adding the dispersants is to make the oil break up into smaller droplets so that bacteria and physical action can break it down before it can harm wildlife or coastal habitats. It appears that these smaller droplets also keep a portion of the oil from surfacing, perhaps a good thing for plants along the coast, though maybe not so good for plankton and fish living out in the Gulf.

In any event, it should come as no surprise that scientists observing the spill find plumes of oil under the surface (see USF, and UGA). Oil experts discovered that could happen in an experiment almost 10 years ago, see Deep Spill Technical Report.

A friend wanders across the U.S.A.

2010-05-04T21:39:00.002-04:00

A good friend, Paul O'Connor, is about to head off on his second cross-country adventure in as many years. For a peak at some highlights of what he found last summer, and to keep up with his travels this time around, visit his blog at http://www.ocolumn.com.

Oceans of Climate Change

2010-04-25T20:50:00.005-04:00

Climate change is all about energy --- energy in --- energy out, the balance of energy coming to the Earth and leaving the Earth. The incoming energy is light from the Sun, the outgoing energy is earthshine, infrared radiation from the Earth. To the extent that greenhouse gases exist in our atmosphere, the incoming sunlight arrives unimpeded, but the outgoing infrared light is absorbed by those same gases, which in turn gain energy and increase in temperature, and themselves emit infrared light. In this way, the planet gains energy, and all things being equal and stable, eventually reaches a new, higher equilibrium temperature where the outgoing infrared energy matches the incoming sunlight. But the trouble is, all things are not equal. The concentrations of those greenhouse gases keeps going up, and more and more infrared light is being intercepted on its way out, and the planet's overall energy content continues rising.

How do we know all this is happening? Well, the measurement of the concentration of greenhouse gases is rather straightforward. And we can see from satellite measurements that less infrared light escapes the atmosphere as time passes. We can even estimate Earth's average temperature --- and this is where the oceans come in.

Air temperatures get lots of attention in measuring global warming, but the atmosphere is the least dense, and least massive, of the parts of the Earth that gain energy due to an increased greenhouse effect. Of much greater density, and much greater capacity to absorb energy, are the world's oceans. It will take much more energy to warm the oceans than to warm the atmosphere.

The oceans cover 70% of the planet and average 3,790 meters in depth. Up until recently, we have only measured sea surface temperatures. Limited past measurements of ocean temperatures below the surface exist, but are few in number and geographic extent. It is only since the beginning of this century that a network of bouys have been deployed that measure the heat content of the oceans down a significant 2000 meters in depth. That network is called Argo, and as of today it includes 3,254 bouys spread around the world's oceans.

So what do those bouys tell us about the ocean's heat content? If you can manage to read the smallish reproduction of a graph from a recent paper published using the Argo database (by J. von Schuckmann et al. in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 114, 2009), note that the line shows a heat content increasing from 2003 through 2008. There are ups and downs, but the trend is in one direction, increasing heat content. The average over the period is plus 0.77 Watts per square meter of ocean surface.

Doesn't sound like much, less than one Watt per square meter of the ocean. Imagine your typical neighborhood swimming pool, 25 meters long with six lanes each 5 meters wide. There would be 602 billion such pools needed to equal all the world's oceans, and for the six years between 2003 and 2008 each of those pools, assuming they were each 2000 meters deep (!) would experience an increased heat content equivalent to the heat from six 100 watt light bulbs. That adds up to 3.6 trillion 100 watt light bulbs in all the world's oceans, a lot of extra heat to evaporate more water, power more storms, and change climate in all sorts of energetic and surprising ways.

Rainbow Bridge and Twin Arches

2010-04-18T16:56:00.007-04:00

Rainbow Bridge, Utah
Even if you have not seen it, you have probably heard of Rainbow Bridge in Utah. This is as close as we got back in 2004 when we hiked the short trail in from Lake Powell. Judging the size is difficult, but if someone were standing on top, you would see little more than a tiny speck.

One of the Twin Arches
Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, Tennessee

Take a moment to examine this second picture. Although this natural rock arch is also large, it can be tricky to pick out in the middle of a forest amidst all the leaves and tree trunks. But it is there, and it is big. Not as big as Rainbow Bridge in Utah, but still an impressive piece of rock.

The Twin Arches in north-central Tennessee are part of the Cumberland Plateau formation, made up of layers of sedimentary rock deposited at the bottom of a large inland sea that covered part of eastern North America a few hundred million years ago. These rock layers are mostly sandstone, relatively soft and easily eroded away.

In some places, the sandstone is covered by a layer of conglomerate, a sedimentary rock made up of a conglomeration of pebbles that first accumulated along the bottom of rivers and streams that developed when the inland sea dried up. The conglomerate is much more resistant to erosion than the underlying sandstone.

Thus the formation of large rock overhangs, abundant in the area, as well as quite a few arches. The conglomerate on top resists erosion, while the sandstone around it readily washes away. If the flowing water washes underneath the conglomerate, it can erode the underlying sandstone and create a natural rock arch as seen in the picture.

Not only is it difficult to see these arches in the middle of a forest, and difficult to take good photographs of them, their location also made for a humorous moment on our recent hike through the area.

At one point one of our group was walking near the arch pictured above and through the trees saw what appeared at first glance to be a large splash of blue paint on the side of the rock face. Connie was incredulous that someone would deface such a unique natural landmark by painting a large piece of rock blue. Maybe she was thinking about the Carolina Tar Heels and their off year in college basketball this past season. In any case, she immediately turned around and made her way back to the rest of us and insisted that we go see what she could barely believe had happened.

We followed her path, and for a brief moment saw the splash of blue she mentioned, but a few steps farther along the path noticed a large patch of blue sky visible through the arch. Her splash of blue paint was a beautiful blue patch of sky.

You Can't Throw It Away

2010-02-27T23:07:00.004-05:00

Redworms, Eisenia andrei to be exact, used in vermicomposting

Two years ago, the City of Raleigh, North Carolina proposed a ban of in-sink garbage disposals. It was a teachable moment, though city officials ultimately failed to take advantage of the moment. The ban was rescinded after a brief but loud public outcry.

The lesson that might have been taught would have reminded us that we all live in an ecosystem and a river basin, where everything is connected eventually to nearly everything else.

Throwing something in the trash or down the sink is not really throwing it "away". In an ecosystem, there is no "away"! We may embrace the concept, and practice something we call "throw it away", but ecologists know we are fooling ourselves. Each of us must learn a little about being good ecologists.

We burn gasoline in trucks hauling the contents of our trash cans to a landfill, where they take up space that could be forest or farm. The garbage very slowly decomposes, generating methane gas, and leaching toxins into the ground.

We must capture the methane lest it contribute to global warming more powerfully per molecule than carbon dioxide. We must collect the toxins so they won't poison groundwater beneath the landfill. And a lot of that stuff in the landfill, despite our recycling efforts, is valuable raw material today, or will be years from now. So much for throwing it all away.

Liquid and some solid wastes go down a pipe in toilets, dishwashers, clotheswashers, and sinks. These wastes go to a sewage treatment plant, a wonderful invention which breaks down the pathogenic, or disease-causing bacteria and viruses that can accompany the by-products of our lives.

When you also dump food or grease down your sink with the help of that garbage disposal and lots of water to hurry it along and keep the pipes from getting clogged, the food and grease goes to the sewage treatment plant. Problem #1 today, that is a waste of water. And as wonderful as sewage treatment plants are at killing bacteria and viruses, they are not so great at breaking down the nutrients in wastes and food. That is Problem #2.

In fact, the nutrients that a sewage treatment plant is not so good at breaking down, constitute the most important sources of water pollution today. Here's why.

First, these "nutrients" are essential chemicals that plants need to grow. Like fertilizer, they stimulate rapid growth of tiny plants called algae in a river or lake.

What's wrong with algae growing in a lake? Like all plants, algae produce more oxygen than they use, and that is good. But though a little is okay, too much means trouble, and we're not talking about the oxygen. The tiny algae do not live very long. As suddenly as they blossomed in response to the excess nutrients, they die and sink to the bottom of the lake.

Dead algae make good food for bacteria, so following the die-off of the algae comes a massive growth of bacteria. Although the bacteria themselves are not pathogenic, they require a lot of oxygen to grow.

The population explosion of bacteria decomposing the dead algae uses up all the oxygen in the water. Without oxygen in the water, the fish, indeed every living thing in the river or lake, dies.

So food scraps and grease that go down your drain add to the most important water pollution problem facing America today. But put them in the trash and they go to a landfill, which has an array of problems all its own. What can you do?

This is the part an ecologist loves.

Start a compost bin in your backyard! Composting allows us to "close the loop" on a lot of things we would otherwise "throw away". All those food scraps, egg shells, indeed, everything but meat scraps (which can attract unwanted animals), along with paper napkins, paper towels, even grass clippings and those leaves you love to rake up in the fall, all can contribute to the recycling of valuable nutrients in a compost bin.

And here's the exciting finale, what to do with the compost you create? Spread it in your garden, under plants in your yard or in a "natural area", you could even sprinkle a little as a natural fertilizer in your lawn. All those nutrients left over from delicious meals and lawn care can be recycled and reused. Spread and mixed into the ground, compost enriches soil, promoting better plant growth.

As ecologists we know we can't really throw anything away. But ecologists also know how to save water, reuse nutrients, protect water quality, limit landfills, enrich soil, and promote the growth of the beautiful trees, shrubs, flowers, and vegetables that can grace yards large and small.

Find out more about composting at http://www.p2pays.org/compost/.

Spring Vegetables On The Way!

2010-02-24T20:27:00.005-05:00

In less than two months, this little seedling will be feeding me delicious spinach greens in a salad! And most of the solid material for the growth that will make that possible will come from the thin air surrounding the leaves. Carbon dioxide, a gas that makes up a growing proportion of our atmosphere, is the sole source for all of the carbon that will form the backbone of the proteins, carbohydrates, and fats contained in this plant. Water, of course, along with essential elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, will come up from the soil through the belowground roots.

All of that carbon dioxide will enter my spinach plant through many thousands of tiny pores spread all over the surface of the leaves, called stomates. Thus does most of the solid mass of any plant first pass through a microscopic hole in a leaf as a gas molecule - a gas molecule that currently makes up just under one-half of one percent of the air!

The energy to get this lettuce seedling to burst out of its seed capsule, still attached, and grow up through the soil, came from molecules stored in the first, specialized leaves, called cotyledons. The two cotyledons are at the top of the short stalk, already turning green with chlorophyll and switching from using the energy that they came with inside the seed to the energy from the light bathing them almost 12 hours every day. With the energy from that light, the chlorophyll molecules will work with the other cellular machinery in these leaves to split carbon from oxygen in the carbon dioxide coming into the leaf. That energy will also be used to split hydrogen from oxygen in water coming up from the roots, and then to attach the carbon atoms to each other and to other atoms to make more cells and grow this lettuce plant from a tiny seedling to a delicious meal.

Why Sterilize Soil Before Sowing Seeds?

2010-02-14T19:43:00.007-05:00

What better way to anticipate the coming spring amidst all this cold weather than to plan your vegetable garden. With that in mind, as you collect your supplies and get ready to plant your seeds, consider this. If you ever wondered why agricultural extension folks suggest sterilizing your soil before starting seeds for your vegetable garden, this picture might be worth all those words you didn't read. Each of the four small compartments received 10 clover seeds on February 3rd. As you can see, the two compartments on the left held soil that had been sterilized, in this case meaning the soil was heated to 200 degrees F for 20 minutes in a microwave oven in my kitchen. Two days later seeds were germinating in all compartments.

It is worth noting that I set up this little test to see if the sterilization process released any toxins into the soil that might inhibit seed germination, as that is one danger of heating soil to 200 degrees. So when the seeds in the sterilized soil germinated as readily as those in the untreated soil, I felt confident that I could use the sterilized soil to start the seeds for this coming spring's vegetable garden.

As the seeds came up, I continued to keep track of how many successfully germinated in both sterilized and unsterilized soil. Here are some of the results:
3 DAYS: STERILIZED - 17; UNSTERILIZED - 15
4 DAYS: STERILIZED - 18; UNSTERILIZED - 19
6 DAYS: STERILIZED - 18; UNSTERILIZED - 19

Yesterday, day 10, I first noticed that a couple of the seedlings in the unsterilized soil collapsed. Today, day 11, I took the picture above. Fungus is more than likely responsible, fungus that heating to 200 degrees F killed. In this case the fungus did not inhibit seed germination, but did kill several of the very young seedlings.

Climate Change and Snowstorms - It's All About the Energy

2010-02-13T22:15:00.004-05:00

Snow on rosemary, 2/13/2010, Cary, NC

The story of climate change is the story of energy, in particular, the Earth's balance between incoming and outgoing energy. Our planet's energy equation begins with sunlight. More and more sunlight energy arrives at Earth with each passing day. That sunlight energy warms the ground, bodies of water, plants and animals. Each of those objects in turn radiates its own energy according to its temperature. Since those objects are much cooler than the sun, they radiate energy of a different wavelength than the sun. The sun radiates in the visible wavelengths, but the Earth and everything on it radiates in the infrared wavelengths, which are invisible to our eyes.

Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in our atmosphere are transparent to sunlight just like the nitrogen and oxygen that make up most of our air. However, what makes CO2 and methane effective greenhouse gases is their ability to absorb infrared radiation, something nitrogen and oxygen cannot do. So the greenhouse gases let in sunlight, which warms the Earth, but they do not let infrared radiation escape. Instead, they absorb that infrared radiation and themselves get warmer. As CO2 and methane get warmer, they radiate more infrared radiation themselves, much of it heading back towards the Earth, adding to the warming effects of sunlight.

So the more greenhouse gases reach the atmosphere, the more infrared radiation is absorbed, and the warmer the entire planet becomes. But why would a warmer planet mean more snow or more severe storms?

It's all about the energy. More sunlight coming in and less infrared radiation going out means more energy here. And more energy means higher temperatures, on average. But how can higher temperatures mean more snow?

Because it takes energy to evaporate water. As temperatures rise everywhere, water evaporates faster and faster. More water evaporates from the oceans, from lakes and rivers, even from moist soil. More water even evaporates through the tiny pores covering the leaves of plants growing around the world.

More water evaporation means more total water vapor in the atmosphere, and that inevitably leads to more precipitation. With temperatures above freezing, that precipitation comes down as rain. Drop the temperature below 32°F, and the precipitation comes down as snow or sleet or freezing rain.

Ask a native of Buffalo, New York about the role that water evaporation plays in snowfall. "Lake effect" snow results when water evaporates from a nearby lake - in the case of Buffalo, Lake Erie to the west or Lake Ontario to the north. More water evaporating into the air means more precipitation, and in the winter, even with the greenhouse effect, temperatures can drop below freezing and that precipitation will be frozen. And remember that one inch of rainfall can, if frozen, produce somewhere between 6 and 10 inches of snow.

What is it about a warmer planet that can lead to more severe storms? Storms, with strong winds, heavy precipitation, perhaps even lightning, release a great deal of energy. Where does that energy come from?

Much of the energy in a storm comes from the water vapor in the air within the storm. Remember that it took energy to evaporate that water in the first place. Water vapor carries all the energy it took to evaporate it up into the atmosphere. And as that air rises it cools, and the water vapor cools with it. Eventually the cooling water vapor does not have enough energy to stay a gas, and condenses back into tiny droplets of liquid water, forming clouds. Condensation releases the energy it took to evaporate the water, and that released energy passes to the surrounding air, adding to the strength of the storm.

Global warming driven by a stronger greenhouse effect upsets the energy balance of the planet. More energy evaporates more water. More water vapor makes more precipitation and stronger storms. And in the winter, more precipitation and stronger storms can mean snow and blizzard conditions. Greg Craven, a high school physics teacher, suggested global "weirding" might be a better title than global warming. And that was before the 2010 snowpocalypse hit the mid-Atlantic states.

More on James Hansen's UNC Presentation

2010-02-02T19:34:00.002-05:00

Dr. Hansen described the three categories of evidence used to understand climate change. The historical record of temperature and carbon dioxide concentration is first in line, whether that record comes from instruments deployed around the world for which 130-years of data are available, or air trapped in glacial ice, for which data goes back 800,000 years. I would add that the historical record for CO2 and temperature now goes back 20 million years with the publication by Aradhna Tripati of her work with the foraminifera.

The next line of evidence includes current atmospheric and climate conditions, such as temperature data from around the world, glacier conditions in mountains and at the poles, and ocean chemistry.

Third-ranked by Hansen are computer-based climate simulations.

Dr. Hansen went to some length to explain the causes of historical climate variability. In addition to the climate forcings related to the Milankovitch cycles, he mentioned plate tectonic activity. When India was an island continent south of Asia, it was moving north through the Indian Ocean. During this time period, Hansen suggested that large amounts of carbon dioxide were released by volcanic activity triggered by this plate movement. This corresponds to a very warm period on the planet, much warmer than today, when sea levels were considerably higher as there were no large glaciers.

Some mention was also made of the oceans as a sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide, but I missed the reference (2009) and have not been able to find it. The new finding was of carbon measurements down to a depth of 2 km below the ocean's surface, and Hansen was quite excited about it. If any readers out there know of this study, please advise!

James Hansen at UNC Chapel Hill

2010-02-01T22:23:00.003-05:00

James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, spoke at UNC Chapel Hill earlier this evening. As he put it himself, he is not a communicator, but a scientist who feels compelled to speak out because the gap between what is known by climate scientists and what is understood by a seeming majority of the public is very large and growing.

That he feels so compelled may be the most significant story, but it is not one that I want to tell.

I want to relate the important science story that he told.

He spoke of the inertia in a climate system that encompasses the entire planet. Estimates suggest that we have experienced about half of the warming expected based on the increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide since it was 280 ppm. That means if we immediately reduced our carbon emissions to the point where the atmospheric concentration rose no higher than it is today, we would continue to experience climate change and global warming for some time to come, and about double what has occurred thus far.

Dr. Hansen also spoke about tipping points, moments in time where the climate system may begin to change in ways and at rates over which we will have no control. These tipping points have most to do with positive feedbacks that may begin to operate. There are two big ones according to Hansen. First - melting ice sheets resulting in decreased surface albedo or reflectivity causing more absorption of sunlight and more heating, melting more ice sheets in a spiraling of warming.

Second, the danger of warming oceans allowing methane hydrates on the floor of the shallow areas of the oceans to "thaw" and bubble up to the surface and enter the atmosphere. Methane's greenhouse gas efficiency is more than 20 times that of carbon dioxide. More methane means more heating, meaning warmer oceans, causing the release of more ocean floor methane in a runaway greenhouse scenario. A 2009 story I summarized a while back goes into a little more detail on this feedback loop's scary possibilities.

There were a few other key concepts that will have to wait for a later posting. For now, the take home lesson is that Opa Hansen wants to remind us that global climate change's big losers have either only recently arrived on planet Earth, or have not yet even been born. The decisions we make in the next couple of decades will shape the face of this planet, and strongly influence the quality of life for our grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great great grandchildren.

Sun on Snow

2010-01-31T20:04:00.002-05:00

You know how the sunlight shining on fresh snow at a sharp angle can make the snow appear to sparkle? That's what you're looking at in the picture above, believe it or not. If you click on the image to look at a larger version, you should be able to make out different colors, probably a result of diffraction of the sunlight as it passes through tiny ice crystals. Our "snow" actually was sleet, three or four inches of it.

The Tiniest Air Raid Sirens

2010-01-30T12:48:00.010-05:00

These little guys are members of the Globigerinoides, planktonic foraminifera that have lived in the surface waters of the ocean for a very long time. The picture of their shell on the left (about the size of a grain of sand) and the living organism on the right, was found at Oceanus, the online magazine of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The composition of their shells when they lived millions of years ago contains a warning for us today.

But first, what is a foraminifera? Well, living things can be divided into the prokaryotes and the eukaryotes. The prokaryotes include the bacteria and other single-celled organisms without internal membranes, while the more complex eukaryotes have internal membranes around their nucleus and other organelles. The eukaryotes include multicellular plants and animals, the fungi, and a fourth group of single-celled organisms called the protists which are neither animals nor plants. Foraminifera are protists with shells. Their name derives from the tiny holes (foramina) that perforate their shells.

The shells of the foraminifera consist of calcium carbonate, and the changing ratio of boron to calcium in these shells indicates the concentration of carbon dioxide when they formed. The proportion of a particular isotope of oxygen (δ18O) indicates the temperature when they formed. Aradhna Tripati and her colleagues at UCLA, in work published in Science magazine on December 4th, 2009, measured the boron:calcium ratio and δ18O ratio in Globigerinoides shells over a 20 million year span of time, extending all the way back to the Miocene Epoch.

Up until now, the 800,000 year Vostok ice core record in Antarctica held the oldest measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature, using air trapped in bubbles in the ice. This ice core record shows carbon dioxide and temperature closely tracking each other over 800,000 years, powerful evidence that CO2 influences climate. But now, Tripati, using the tiny shells of foraminifera dug up in layers of sediment at the bottom of the ocean, extends that correlation between CO2 and temperature 25 times further back in history, to 20 million years before the present.

The significance of this longer and older record of temperature tracking CO2 levels lies with the ice sheets of the Miocene and Late Pliocene. Starting 20 million years ago and continuing for five million years, the globe was warmer, no massive ice sheets covered Greenland and Antarctica, and sea levels may have been 25 to 40 meters higher than today. Atmospheric carbon dioxide during this time increased from around 375 ppm to 425 ppm as climate continued to warm.

Then, 14 million years ago, CO2 levels began a steady decrease over a five million year span of time from over 400 ppm down to 250 ppm. The climate cooled, closely tracking the carbon dioxide decrease, as ice sheets grew and sea levels likely dropped as much as 40 meters.

The take home lesson - massive ice sheets may not survive on planet Earth when atmospheric CO2 levels exceed 350 ppm for an extended period of time. Carbon dioxide reached 350 ppm back in the mid-1980s, peaked at 390 ppm in 2009, continues to increase more than 1.5 ppm every year, and that rate of increase is growing.

Without massive ice sheets, global sea levels can rise as much as 40 meters. That will not likely happen in this century, but the last time CO2 levels rose from 350 ppm to over 400 ppm, it took a million years to do so, and it happened in the Miocene Epoch at least 12 million years ago. We will see CO2 concentrations reach 400 ppm by 2015, just 30 years after CO2 passed 350 ppm.

A sea level rise of just a couple of meters in the next 100 years would constitute a major worldwide catastrophe.

The chemical make-up of ancient foraminifera shells suggests we may be headed to or may have already reached a level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere that cannot maintain the large ice sheets now covering Greenland and Antarctica, making the Globigerinoides the tiniest air raid sirens in history. Listen to them.

Tree bark

2010-01-17T11:17:00.006-05:00

This time of year in a deciduous forest in the northern hemisphere you get to see a great deal of tree bark - gray, brown, flaky, smooth, furrowed and fissured, sometimes with lichen or moss growing on it.

This is the bark on a dogwood tree growing near the Apex Reservoir in Cary, North Carolina. If you click on the image to see it full-sized, you can easily count layers along the descending sides of the fissures in the outer bark or cork. I have not found any confirmation that these layers represent annual growth increments of the outer bark, but if they do, I can count as many as 22 layers in this image.

This outer bark of a tree is a protective layer of dead cells meant to be partially shed as they shield the tree from physical impacts of the weather as well as the grazing of animals from deer, beavers, and birds to insects, and the biological attacks of bacteria, fungi, and viruses. In some trees, this outer bark layer contains materials that resist fire, allowing the tree to survive all but the most intense, canopy fires. A tree can also excrete waste products into the cells of the outer bark.

At or just below the base of the fissures seen in this photograph lies the cork cambium, a layer of actively dividing cells that produce the largely dead outer bark layers. Just beneath the cork cambium lies a layer of living cells called the phelloderm that can serve a variety of roles including photosynthesis, active disease defense, and storage.

Below the phelloderm lies the phloem, the inner bark layer filled with the vascular sieve tubes that carry the sugars produced during photosynthesis in the leaves down to the rest of the tree and its underground roots.

Dig just beneath the phloem and you hit the cambium, the layer of actively dividing cells that produces the thickening or radial growth of the tree trunk. This is the inner end of the bark of the tree, and also the outer beginning of the inside structure of the trunk.

The actively dividing cells of the cambium layer produce not only the bark of the tree, but also the entire inner trunk of the tree. This inner wood, called the xylem, includes a variety of tubes that carry water and dissolved minerals up from the roots to the stems and leaves. The xylem also contains stiff vertical tubes called fibers that support the heavy aboveground weight of the tree.

For an overview of bark found on trees around the world, take a look at ArtSylva's post on the biology of barks. This beautiful site created by photographer Cédric Pollet talks succinctly about the variety of barks, their function for the tree, and their uses for people. And the collection of pictures of bark of all colors and bark found on many different kinds of trees is amazing. If you have not seen a baobab tree, visit this site and find one in Cédric's "Photo Reports" link!

Sounds from a frozen lake!

2010-01-11T19:39:00.004-05:00

Once in a while, a great while, down here in the south, it gets cold enough to freeze a lake. I think it's happened once or twice since the big freeze we had in January 2000. A few days ago the lake reservoir behind our house had developed a good bit of ice on its surface. Time to throw a rock across the ice and listen to the lake sing! It's a magical sound. A little web surfing found some recordings of ice "singing" on a frozen lake, and a few attempts to explain this interesting phenomenon. The sound seems to come from the ice itself vibrating like the skin stretched across a drum head. The best recording is Marc Namblard's "Chants of Frozen Lakes"! You can buy his CD, but scroll down a little to listen to some free audio extracts of his recording. Not quite the same as that stone skipping along the ice, but amazing nonetheless. Enjoy!

The "Saturation Myth"

2009-12-27T12:04:00.007-05:00

William Lynch wrote in the News and Observer on Dec.17 that more than 300 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere would absorb all of the infrared re-radiation coming up from the Earth's surface. According to that logic, further increases in CO2 would not cause any more global warming. Unfortunately, Dr. Lynch repeated a very old mistake, first made around 1900. But Dr. Lynch has good company, as Knut Ångström was the first scientist to make this mistake.

Increasing carbon dioxide will continue to increase global warming. Satellite measurements show that as atmospheric CO2 increased between 1970 and 1997, from 320 to 365 ppm, there was greater absorption of the infrared wavelengths absorbed by the CO2 (see http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html). Two other articles extended those findings through 2006 when CO2 was up to 380 ppm. And the satellite observations indicate there is still plenty of infrared yet to be absorbed, so further increases in CO2 will cause further warming.

Ray Pierrehumbert and Spencer Weart give a more complete explanation and history at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument-part-ii/. There are somewhat complicated reasons why the saturation hypothesis is a myth. The most important one may be that CO2 absorbs infrared at several wavelengths, and the energy at many of those wavelengths is not yet completely absorbed by CO2, and will not be even at double, triple, or four times the pre-industrial concentration of 280 ppm!

Is there some aspect of global warming that these climate scientists have not thought of already? Climate science, it's their passion AND their business!

We ignore history at our peril.

Carbon Dioxide Lessons

2009-12-22T15:34:00.006-05:00

With the Copenhagen meeting in the news, I wanted to give my talented students an up-to-date picture of climate change science. The best available evidence makes deciding what to do more rationale and less emotional.

Examining climate change means understanding the greenhouse effect, and the atmosphere's key greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2). A greenhouse gas has two essential characteristics. First, it lets short-wavelength sunlight pass through the atmosphere.

This sunlight heats up the Earth's surface, which then sends out its own light energy, in the form of longer wavelength infrared light.

Greenhouse gas characteristic #2 - it absorbs the infrared light from the Earth, preventing this heat energy from passing through the atmosphere, away from the planet. When carbon dioxide absorbs this infrared light, it heats up and emits its own infrared light, most of which heads back towards the Earth. Infrared heat bounces back and forth between the surface and the atmosphere, warming the planet.

Infrared light eventually leaks through the atmosphere back to space. But the more greenhouse gases there are, the longer this takes and the warmer we get.

We depend on the greenhouse effect to keep Earth's temperatures livable. Take away all greenhouse gases and the average temperature would be 60°F colder. But it is the increased greenhouse effect caused by higher than usual carbon dioxide levels and other greenhouse gases that drives our climate change concerns.

Why is CO2 increasing, and by how much? When we burn coal, oil, gasoline, natural gas and even wood, carbon dioxide is a by-product.

Before people started burning fossil fuels there were about 280 parts of CO2 per million parts of other gases in the atmosphere (280 ppm). Today the CO2 concentration is around 387 ppm, higher than it has been for at least 650,000 years, and it continues to rise at an ever-increasing rate, now nearly 2 ppm per year.
The Keeling Curve, showing the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements from the observatory atop the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii

Do we know that this atmospheric CO2 comes from burning fossil fuels? Yes. As John Rennie recently pointed out in Scientific American (11/30/2009), human activities now release over 8 billion tons of CO2 each year, while the nearest "natural" source, volcanoes, average less than one-third of a billion tons per year. Moreover, the amounts of different isotopes of carbon atoms found in the atmosphere confirm that the vast majority of this CO2 comes from burning fossil fuels.

Carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas. Water vapor is also transparent to sunlight and absorbs infrared light. As some climate skeptics point out, there is more water vapor in the atmosphere than CO2, so why worry about CO2?

Carbon dioxide absorbs a portion of Earth's infrared light that water vapor cannot absorb, and water vapor cycles in and out of the atmosphere in days, while CO2 molecules can stick around for 100 years. Also, as temperature rises due to carbon dioxide's greenhouse impact, more water evaporates into the air, further increasing the greenhouse effect. In this way water evaporation makes carbon dioxide's global warming impact even greater.

There are still other greenhouse gases - including methane and ozone air pollution. To compare the relative warming caused by the human-generated portion of these gases, imagine Earth covered with football fields, each with an overhead array of light bulb sockets filled with 100 Watt lightbulbs. Carbon dioxide's warming effect would be like turning on 74 such lightbulbs over each football field. Methane adds 21, nitrous oxides and hydrocarbons add 22, and ozone air pollution adds 16.

Accumulated over the planet, the energy increases produced by adding all these 100 Watt lightbulbs warms the Earth significantly more than the background greenhouse effect we depend on for a comfortable life.

How much warmer?

Long-frozen mountain glaciers and the giant ice sheets atop Greenland and Antarctica are melting at increasingly faster rates. Since 1974, 95% of 829 documented physical changes on the planet have been in directions consistent with warming (see Nature, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7193/abs/nature06937.html).

The same study found that in 90% of over 29,500 cases of plants or animals altering the timing of their seasonal cycles or shifting their home ranges, the changes were consistent with warming.

This article appeared in the Raleigh News and Observer on Thursday, December 17, 2009.

Backyard Hawk

2009-12-21T15:30:00.010-05:00

Never one to make a definitive statement when there is any doubt, this is likely an immature red-shouldered hawk. He has shown up two mornings in a row now. Yesterday he dared Connie to drive past as he perched proudly on the top of our mailbox post at the head of the driveway. This morning he found the top of the bluebird nestbox at the far end of our backyard. I got the binoculars so Connie could confirm it was the same fellow she saw yesterday. He decided to get a closer look, and flew towards the house, landing on a branch in a large red maple, about 25 feet from our bedroom window. I decided it was time to get the camera and telephoto lens. He (or she?) waited patiently. This is the first of about a dozen shots I got off before it was time to fly. Mr. Hawk seemed to notice me in the window, and may have decided it was not wise to stay in one place too long with a human watching.

Skeptics Spin Doubt, Scientists Study Data

2009-12-13T20:39:00.006-05:00

My foot doctor suggested I participate in an experiment that might help relieve my heel pain. He thought my scientific background would lead me to appreciate the opportunity. What it caused me to do was get a second opinion, and politely decline. You see, experiments often do not turn out as hoped. From the scientific standpoint, unexpected, even undesired results increase our knowledge, always a good thing. But it was my foot and my mobility, and I was not interested in taking chances on losing many years of hiking through wonderful woods with my lovely wife.

We are conducting a giant experiment on this planet today. And undoubtedly we will learn much whichever way that experiment turns out. But Earth is, after all, our only home. No other planet helps us grow food, find clean water, or breathe oxygen. We may not be close to losing Earth's life-supporting environment, but the great climate change experiment might not turn out as anyone expects. That's the tricky thing about experiments.

While skeptics spin their tales of doubt, scientists continue to decipher the atmosphere's riddles. The scientists' goal is understanding. The skeptics' goal is uncertainty. Whom would you trust to advise you on the health of your planet?

Recent spins point to temperature data that, if you turn sideways and peer through one eye from an obtuse angle, could look like a global temperature decrease over the past several years. A temperature decrease does not fit with global warming does it? Trouble is, if you turn the other way, peer through the other eye, the decrease goes away (see S. Borenstein, News and Observer, 10/27).

While those profiting from our current energy dependence on fossil fuels would be happy to keep us confused just enough to maintain the status quo a while longer, there exists a host of data that clears away the confusion. This data focuses on the responses of plants and animals involved in this giant experiment.

Ecologists call these plants and animals bioindicators, species whose presence or absence indicates the quality of the environment. The valuable thing about bioindicators is that they give a much better reading of environmental quality than a hundred or a thousand or a million thermometers. Those thermometers can only tell us the temperature at specific locations and specific times. The plants and animals live across an entire range of the environment 24-7. If you want to know what's happening to climate, ask the plants and wildlife.

Scientists have been doing that for years. Skeptics have not thought of that yet. They are too busy talking to you and me and bunches of important folks in Congress.

Birds arrive at their usual time in the spring, but their food source has already come and gone. Trees drop leaves earlier than usual, or their flowers open up weeks earlier than before. Rosenzweig et al. (see Nature magazine, May 15, 2008, Vol.453, pages 353-358) reviewed changes in the observed timing of various life cycle stages over the past 34 years in species ranging from weeds to trees and from molluscs to mammals. They found that 90% of 28,800 measured shifts in timing matched what would be expected if the climate was warming. It appears that plants and animals have not been swayed by the skeptics, and have reached a broad consensus on climate change.

It is time to listen to these plants and animals and the scientists studying climate change instead of to self-appointed critics quick to highlight any detail that might support their case. Time to decide if using Earth in a big experiment is good for our long-term health.

It cannot happen soon enough. The world is meeting in Copenhagen to take the next critical steps tackling climate change. Without firm commitments from both the President and Congress of the United States to lead in solving a problem we did more than our fair share to create, the developing countries of the world can hardly be expected to do their crucial part.

If ever you wanted to help protect this one planet you call home, now is the time, and the U.S. Senate is the place. Sit back and watch the experiment unfold, or step up and do something for the future health of Earth, and everyone who lives on it or will. Contact your Senator, indeed every Senator not sure of the science and let them know that the plants and animals on the planet do not doubt the evidence of global warming. Giant unplanned experiments on the only planet we know of that supports life might not be a good idea.

Anthocyanins in Quercus rubra

2009-11-14T18:07:00.008-05:00

Northern Red Oak leaves on 11/14/09 in Cary, North Carolina

As deciduous trees prepare for the winter season, they get ready to drop their leaves. Frost and wind would damage the leaves, and a large number of damaged leaves would rob the tree of water and open it up to infection by bacteria, fungi, and viruses. So as trees prepare to drop their leaves, they produce changes at the base of the petiole where the leaf attaches to the stem. These changes occur in an abscission layer of cells which are easily altered to allow the petiole to detach from the stem and separate the leaf from the tree. The tree also thickens cells along this abscission layer to prevent water loss and pathogen entry through the soon-to-open wound. Once these changes cut off the flow of water to the leaf, the leaf can no longer conduct photosynthesis, and the green pigment chlorophyll, integral to photosynthesis and the green color of leaves, breaks down. As the green chlorophyll dissolves away, the remaining pigments in the leaf may be seen, and in northern red oak, that means anthocyanins. Guess what colors anthocyanins are!

Securing Ecosystem Services

2009-10-24T19:55:00.002-04:00

Stream in Julian Price Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina

One more gem from Ken Burns' National Parks documentary that applies to our backyards as well as to a nature park:

"Consecration to the task of adjusting ourselves to the natural environment so that we secure the best values from nature without destroying it is not useless idealism, it is good hygiene for civilization."

---George Melendez Wright, National Park Service Biologist

Steve Forbes and Al Gore Agree!

2009-10-18T11:03:00.005-04:00

Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant, New Hill, NC, September 2006
In his recent editorial in Forbes Magazine, Steve Forbes berates the need to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ("This obsession with carbon dioxide is misplaced."), yet many of the actions he recommends do precisely that. Building nuclear power plants, developing carbon capture and sequestration, using white roofs and roadways, easing access to wind power, and improving the efficiency of energy transmission all are good things BECAUSE they reduce carbon dioxide emissions by reducing our use of fossil fuels! So if we judge by what he says we should do, the emphasis on reducing carbon IS a good thing. Mr. Forbes goes on to conclude his comments with this statement, "The idea that there must be a trade-off between growth and green is pernicious and false." Have not Al Gore, President Obama, and many others been saying for some time now that going green will not have to harm the economy, that there is money to be made in switching to more renewable forms of energy? So Steve Forbes agrees with Al Gore and President Obama that green forms of energy can actually improve the economy! This is great news indeed.

Why Preserve a National Park

2009-10-17T22:23:00.005-04:00

Sunrise at Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, July 24, 2007
From Ken Burns' National Parks documentary, Episode 5:

"Science embraces mystery...It says '...we need to hold onto these places [National Parks], and I can't give you a precise reason why, but the reason will come along later, and if we don't have them we'll never be able to explore the answers to the questions we'll be asking.' So they hold the answers to questions we have not even yet learned to ask."

---Kim Heacox, writer

Skeptics Spin, Scientists Study

2009-10-11T17:49:00.007-04:00

While the skeptics spin, scientists survey and scrutinize how the natural world is already responding to climate change. From polar bears to plankton and fish, from birds to arctic shrubs, many animals and plants show the effects of recent and current climate change in their abundance, health, and phenology. Such ecological indicator species integrate the impacts of climate change across scales of time and space our measurement instruments cannot match.

Now citizen scientists everywhere can join professional scientists in helping us all better monitor and understand what our co-inhabitants on spaceship Earth are telling us about the pace and magnitude of climate change. The USA National Phenology Network recently began registering individuals interested in helping monitor the timing of recurring life cycle changes in plants in North America. Future plans call for similar efforts to include animals and physical phenomena such as when ice melts on ponds.

My environmental science students will be adding their observations from Raleigh this fall and spring. Consider joining up and adding information from your backyard or neighborhood.

This flowering dogwood, in a picture taken in Raleigh, NC on October 11, 2009, shows signs of the early fall season in reddening leaves and mature fruits.

See Scientia Pro Publica #13!

2009-10-07T19:58:00.003-04:00

The letter to George Will below appears in Scientia Pro Publica #13! Visit this blog carnival for lots of other interesting science writing!

A letter to George Will

2009-10-03T10:39:00.005-04:00

I just emailed this letter to George Will (georgewill@washpost.com) in response to his inane October 1 article about global warming.
- - - - -
Mr. Will,

Just a brief note to let you know that, in my humble opinion, you are a danger to the human race. You have let your political philosophy so infuse your intellect that you cannot look at anything objectively.

I received a Ph.D. in biology, for research on air pollution, in 1981, and have followed air pollution and climate change issues closely ever since. Your misrepresentation of science, and of atmospheric and climate science, is astounding. You must have no capacity for shame. Of course, it is easy to let one's firm, absolute beliefs shield one from petty things like shame and honor and honesty. After all, if you are right, you cannot be wrong.

My concern with climate change is first and foremost for my three daughters. I wish that you and other climate skeptics turn out to be correct, as I would not wish the unpleasant consequences we seem headed for on anyone. But the evidence has reached the point where
significant action to avert serious problems is past due. We are foolish to delay.

As a supposedly intelligent observer and writer, you have every right, and even obligation, to critically evaluate and comment upon alternative courses of action we might take to address the
climate-change challenge facing us. You even have the right in a free country to misrepresent the scientific evidence. However, when you misrepresent the scientific evidence, you do yourself, your children, and the rest of us, serious harm.

Risk assessment is the job of trained scientists. The folks doing the risk assessment have spoken, not with one voice, but with many. You ought to try to listen to them, rather than listen so intently to a few critics and ignore the consensus. Yes, consensus is valuable and important. That does not mean the consensus is always correct, just most likely to be so, especially the longer it exists and grows in strength.

Risk management is the job of politicians, that is, all of us. You confuse risk management and risk assessment at our peril. What if you are wrong this time? And even if you end up being correct, you have greatly damaged the understanding of the difference between science and politics. Science is about finding out why things work the way they do, not about supporting your political views. Cloud that difference and you put us back in the dark ages where those who knew they were right ruled knowing they were right and others were simply wrong.

---Denis DuBay.
Science teacher
Raleigh, North Carolina

Farm Animal Waste Contaminating Water Supplies

2009-09-19T21:06:00.003-04:00

As the report, Moove that Manure, in Scientific American describes, manure from large farm animal operations can overwhelm the systems meant to contain or dilute it. The result is often contaminated surface waters and groundwater. This is but one symptom of the unsustainable system of agriculture we are growing in America and many other countries around the world.

In the farms of yesteryear, manure was not simply a waste product, but essential fertilizer. It enriched the soil for the next growing season, and helped prevent erosion and the depletion of soil fertility. The smaller and more diverse farms of that day could optimize their use of everything because they did not depend on the mass production of any one product.

But we don't have to return farming to what it was 50 or 100 years ago to make it once again sustainable. We may have to change our conception of a reasonable size for a farming operation, establish incentives that promote diverse agricultural businesses, and remove barriers that make it difficult for small farms to thrive. But we can do those things while still taking advantage of new technologies such as genetic engineering.

Positive Feedback and the Runaway Greenhouse

2009-09-03T21:12:00.006-04:00

Two recent reports about climate change research send up red hot flares warning of positive feedbacks promoting global warming.

The first is a report by Richard Kerr in Science magazine (see Kerr 2009) of research conducted by Amy Clement and colleagues at the University of Miami in Florida. The bottom line in this study finds that warming ocean temperatures may cause low clouds to thin, allowing more sunlight to reach the ocean and cause further warming of the ocean surface. In turn, this increased warming could cause further cloud thinning allowing even more sunlight to reach and warm the ocean. This positive, or reinforcing feedback provides one of the more frightening scenarios of climate change. The runaway greenhouse effect that a positive feedback loop could trigger threatens to make the worst predictions of the IPCC look tame.

The second report, by Charles Hanley of the Associated Press (see Hanley 2009), examines the findings of a host of permafrost scientists from Canada, Russia, the United States, Germany, Britain, Norway, and Sweden. The common thread here involves permafrost melting across the far northern hemisphere in response to rising temperatures. The danger lies with the large amounts of methane locked in the, until now, permanently frozen lands of the Arctic. If those lands thaw and release this methane, it would add significantly to the already dangerous greenhouse effect from the excess carbon dioxide we have added to the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Methane's greenhouse gas potential, molecule for molecule, is 21 times that of carbon dioxide. The release of even a fraction of the many billions of tons of methane locked up in the Arctic would cause a degree of increased warming sure to melt even more permafrost, and yes, you guessed it, release yet more methane. That should sound familiar, as it represents one more way that a positive feedback cycle threatens to produce a runaway greenhouse effect and catastrophic global warming.

And while climate scientists have been aware of both of these positive feedback possibilities for years, these new findings suggest that the possibilities may become reality. Both reports underline the need for continuing research, but both also point to a growing risk of extremely nasty climate surprises.

Climate skeptics are quick to point out that climate predictions may exaggerate the dangers of global warming. These two reports underline the fact that climate predictions may also greatly underestimate future global warming.

-------

Hanley, C.J. 2009. Climate trouble may be bubbling up in far north. News and Observer, Raleigh, NC. September 3, 2009 (Associated Press).

Kerr, R.A. 2009. Clouds appear to be big, bad player in global warming. Science 325:376.

Picturing Air

2009-09-02T21:24:00.002-04:00

In the alternative energy video, "Kilowatt Ours", a resident of West Virginia laments the loss of a favorite mountain to mountain-top-removal coal mining. He recalls someone asking him if he had a picture of the mountain, and he replied that he did not, and for two reasons. First, it can be difficult to take a picture of a mountain since it is big and if you are close to or on it, how do you take a picture of it. Second, he lived on and around the mountain all his life, he never thought it would go anywhere, so why would he need to take a picture of it?

Similar difficulties face one wishing to take a photograph of the air. How do you take a picture of something that is all around you? Why would you take a picture of something that is ever-present?

Describing a hypothetical picture of air, one could mention it's oxygen content, temperature, water vapor content, water droplet density, carbon dioxide level, ozone concentration, particulate matter load, visibility or clarity, color, and the speed and direction of its movement. Some of these characteristics would show up in your image, some not, depending on their particular levels at the time.

How would you frame all of that?

13 National Academies of Science joint statement!

2009-08-28T17:30:00.003-04:00

The National Academies of Science of Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America have agreed that

"...climate change is happening even faster than previously estimated; global CO2 emissions since 2000 have been higher than even the highest predictions, Arctic sea ice has been melting at rates much faster than predicted, and the rise in the sea level has become more rapid. Feedbacks in the climate system might lead to much more rapid climate changes."

They go on to claim that "The need for urgent action to address climate change is now indisputable."

This is not the press release of a group of people who jump to conclusions.

The full 2-page report, issued in May 2009, may be found here:

http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/G8+5energy-climate09.pdf

The Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century!!!

2009-08-26T20:31:00.002-04:00

This is from the L.A. Times for August 25, 2009:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.

Chamber officials say it would be "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" -- complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect.

"It would be evolution versus creationism," said William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs. "

Does anyone else see just how appropriate the analogy is to the Scopes monkey trial, where creation was pitted against evolution, religion against science? So the U.S. Chamber of Commerce likes comparing its push to challenge the science of global warming to a religious crusade? I understand their bias, but that they would admit it up front is surprising.

Full L.A. Times story here.

2009 Year-to-date Land and Sea Temperatures

2009-08-23T22:19:00.005-04:00

I've heard the climate change skeptics are excited that there has been a cooling trend that might appear to call into doubt forecasts of global warming. Not sure where they are getting their data, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently released it's July 2009 State of the Climate Global Analysis. There does not appear to be much of a cooling trend. If you look at their graph reproduced above, it shows the dramatic warming recorded in the combined global sea surface and land surface temperatures over the last 130 years.

They have also produced a graph separating the sea surface and land surface temperature record over the same 1880 to 2009 time period. You can see in the image below that both ocean and land surfaces show this warming trend. I wish there were a cooling trend overall, but it just isn't there.

The entire July 2009 report (including the two graphs above) may be found at the following link:

State of the Climate - Global Analysis - July 2009

No words, just enjoy!

2009-08-19T20:41:00.002-04:00

This view along the Boone Fork Trail in Price Lake Park on the Blue Ridge Parkway might make a nice screensaver image.

Sun and Clouds

2009-08-17T20:35:00.006-04:00

Turns out that the impacts of water vapor and water droplets in the air pose some of the biggest unknowns when it comes to understanding global climate change. This picture of sunset over Bogue Sound, North Carolina, taken this past Saturday evening, makes clear that water droplets, that is, cloud, blocks sunlight, reflecting it back into space and preventing it from warming the earth. However, water vapor, which does not form cloud, acts as a powerful greenhouse gas, transparent to sunlight just like the glass window on a greenhouse, but absorbing the heat produced by that sunlight when it hits the earth's surface. As the earth warms, more water of course evaporates. The big unknown concerns what will happen to all that extra water vapor in the air. Will it form more clouds, blocking sunlight and providing for a net cooling effect on the earth? Or will that extra water vapor stay in the vapor phase, that is, not form more clouds, allow sunlight to reach the earth's surface, and hold in the resulting heat making the earth even warmer? This latter possibility goes by the term, positive feedback loop. Warmer temperatures cause more water evaporation - in turn the greater amount of water vapor, though transparent to sunlight, holds in the heat generated by that sunlight, and causes the earth to get warmer still - in turn causing more water evaporation, over and over and over.

Climate scientists have long considered this issue, as you can read at RealClimate.org. At least one recent report suggests that the positive feedback loop may predominate, see Strong evidence that cloud changes may exacerbate global warming

Scanning the horizon at the beach

2009-08-16T14:39:00.006-04:00

Just returned from a week at the beach, Emerald Isle specifically, in North Carolina between Swansboro and Morehead City. Last night the air was quite clear, giving us great distance visibility. We picked out the Cape Lookout lighthouse beacon on the horizon, which raised the question how far is the horizon?

We found an online tool to help answer this question, namely,
Distance to Horizon Calculator. You plug in how many feet you are above sea level, and it calculates the distance in miles to an object that appears on the horizon. If the object is also some distance above sea level, you could just add its height to yours.

For example, if you are standing on the beach, about six feet above the water, an object just on the horizon would be about three miles away. As we sat on the porch of the place we were staying in, about 50 feet above sea level, we could see about 9 miles to the horizon. The Cape Lookout lighthouse, with its rotating beacon 150 feet above sea level, appeared to be on the horizon from our porch location 50 above sea level, suggesting it was about 17 miles away. This estimate matches that made using a map of the area.

It was interesting to watch the ocean change during the week as the weather changed from very windy and bright to calm and cloudy, with lots of other combinations in between, including lightning, thunder, and lots of rain. But you know what they say about a rainy day at the beach.

Constructing Earth

2009-08-07T11:19:00.005-04:00

Sculpture at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City
June, 2009

Since no one has managed to dig beneath Earth's crust to view the insides of our planet, one could assume this to be a hypothesis of what you might find. Good questions about such a hypothesis would be how to test it, and what the implications of such an interior would be for those of us living on the surface. What does this image conjure up for you?

How to tell a biased source of online information?

2009-08-06T14:42:00.002-04:00

Left out an important piece of information in the News and Observer article. The key to figuring out whether you are informed or misinformed on something complex like climate change is knowing how to evaluate your sources of information. The U.C. Berkeley Library has a nice guide to Evaluating Web Pages for reliability and trustworthiness. When it comes down to who are you going to believe, you need to have a rational way to answer that question, and this is it. If you want to know whether you can rely on what you are reading or not, it's essential. Take a look.

Irresponsible Climate Skepticism

2009-08-03T09:19:00.005-04:00

George Will is at it again, spinning more irresponsible climate skepticism It's lonely, caring about carbon. The following response appeared in the News and Observer on August 3, 2009.

The skeptics are all wet

BY DENIS DUBAY

RALEIGH - Writers such as columnist George Will would like to credit the state of climate science and the ineptitude of the current administration in Washington for India and China's reluctance to commit to significant carbon emissions reductions. To the contrary, Will and others deserve some credit for the behavior of the world's two population superpowers.

The global warming skepticism of Will and other climate critics has helped keep the United States on the sidelines for the past decade. The U.S. and other wealthy nations must lead before the poorer nations of the world will follow, and leadership does not happen overnight with one election.

One recent Friday evening in a local pizzeria, a friend told me that either climate science is still quite unsettled about the existence and causes of global warming, or that climate scientists are not doing a good job communicating what they knew.

But again, the climate critics should take the credit. It is easy to make the case that a complex problem such as climate change is still an unsolved, controversial issue worthy of continued public debate. Just look at what some of South Africa's leaders did to the spread of HIV-AIDS when they gave support to mavericks who were skeptical that the HIV virus causes AIDS.

There is no scientific doubt that the HIV virus causes AIDS. However, a few scientists initially doubted that a single virus could cause the array of symptoms and diseases attributed to AIDS. Leaders such as South Africa's Thabo Mbeki took these AIDS denialists seriously, and with government support their irresponsible skepticism led to widespread avoidance of effective drug treatments and safe sex practices. Thousands lost their lives -- years after the scientific community had demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the HIV virus causes AIDS.

In a democratic society with a free press, scientific findings with political and public policy consequences depend upon the good judgment of citizens for resolution. If advocates choose to misrepresent scientific uncertainties -- and there are always uncertainties in any science -- then they will likely succeed at confusing citizens. For a public with neither the time nor the expertise to do the in-depth research, media reports of any debate or controversy are simply accepted as evidence that the science is indeed unsettled and not yet ready to inform significant action.

So George Will and other climate skeptics continue to spin the evidence irresponsibly and convince themselves and the public that we need more definitive research before taking action on global warming. They may well continue to succeed, but they will still be wrong.

Climate researchers (please see Climate Change at the National Academies and RealClimate) have many questions and continue to explore for urgently needed answers. But they no longer question the dominant role that human-generated carbon dioxide plays in global warming. The evidence, like that for HIV and AIDS, is overwhelming and clear. They no longer doubt the catastrophic effects unchecked climate change will wreak on the planet, because they can already detect the earliest signals of those effects.

Everyone -- scientist and nonscientist, environmentalist and skeptic -- needs to help answer a basic climate change question: What do we plan to do about it? We must quit questioning the scientific facts and start talking about what we will do about them.

Are we willing to let the poorest peoples of the world take the major hits from climate change without any help from us? Are we willing to allow climate change to alter our coastlines, our weather patterns and biological communities in ways we cannot easily predict and at speeds that will likely overwhelm everyone's capacity to adapt?

Energy legislation recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives is a weak attempt to begin to answer these legitimate policy questions. We can hope that the Senate will not only view the House bill as a start in the right direction but will strengthen that first step with a bill more worthy of a compassionate and capable nation. We can help make our future, and the future for our children, safer, more secure and richer in many ways by embracing sources of energy that do not release carbon dioxide and other air pollutants, and by conserving our use of energy in every way imaginable.

Why Dogwood Flowers Catch the Eye

2009-03-29T20:46:00.006-04:00

The dogwoods are out! Three decades ago we learned what that meant as only living in Atlanta can reveal. Now they are at it once again here in our home in North Carolina.

Of course the answer to the question includes dogwood's early appearance in spring before many other flowers are out and when few leaves have yet emerged. Spring sunlight filtered only by naked branches highlights both white and pink varieties of Cornus florida. Dogwoods filling the gap under a canopy of larger trees show the typical layered growth of a sub-canopy species, spreading branches horizontally so leaves capture the greatest amount of the limited supply of the sun's photons that penetrate deep into the forest. Before the leaves emerge, the showy flowers often mimic the green layering to follow, creating waves of white and pink.

But the dogwood's "flowers" consist of more plant parts than the typical flower. Those showy "petals" started out as four green bracts that enclosed an inflorescence, a bunch of the dogwood's tiny green flowers. As the bracts unfold they reveal 10 to 20 or more of C. florida's real flowers, the tiny green knobs collected at the center of the bracts. Each of these flowers will open, and small insects will spread pollen from the four anthers of each flower to the pistil of other flowers. The resulting fertilization of ovules will lead to the bright red berries each containing a single dogwood seed this fall. Each dogwood inflorescence can produce one to several berries.

The U.S. Forest Service maintains a page with all the botanical information you could ever want to know about dogwoods here:

http://www.na.fs.fed.us/pubs/silvics_manual/Volume_2/cornus/florida.htm

Visit this interesting site for a complete photographic sequence of dogwood flowering and fruiting:

http://www.all-creatures.org/pica/ftshl-dogwood.html

Purplish Delights

2009-03-26T20:03:00.001-04:00

This is a redbud, known to scientists as Cercis canadensis. It is a small tree, one of the first to flower in early spring, they are out now in Raleigh. Its other common name is Judas tree. Redbud is a member of the legume or bean family, the Fabaceae, and like all members of this family, actually enriches the soil it grows in. Legumes have tiny nodules on their roots designed to provide ideal habitat for nitrogen-fixing bacteria. These bacteria have the unique ability to capture nitrogen gas from the atmosphere and convert it to a form of nitrogen that the redbud, and any other plant, can take in through its roots as fertilizer. They generally make more of this fertilizer nitrogen than their host plant needs, and the extra enriches the soil for later plant growth. And since plants cannot take in nitrogen from the air, this is a very good thing. So besides providing an absolutely stunning splash of purple, redbuds are also good for the soil.

Among the first flowers!

2009-03-24T20:01:00.007-04:00

Longer days and warmer temperatures open up opportunities to observe nature coming alive. Share your reactions to this view of bluets, found in Cary, North Carolina. Do you suppose bluets are insect-pollinated or wind-pollinated?

Reckless George

2009-03-07T19:36:00.003-05:00

The News and Observer in Raleigh published this letter, which I will reproduce here.

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George Will demonstrated reckless disregard for the whole truth in his two recent diatribes against the science of global warming (Feb. 16 and Feb. 28). His tactics border on dishonesty, choosing which facts to report and which facts to omit to best make his case.

The Arctic Climate Research Center makes clear in the statement Will cites that although global sea ice area has recently increased, Northern Hemisphere sea ice area has continued to decrease. Will may hope that few of us will actually go and read this statement, for once you do you realize that climate scientists predicted that sea ice area in the Southern Hemisphere is expected to increase before it decreases due to global warming, offsetting the expected (and observed!) sea ice area decreases in the Northern Hemisphere.

This is exactly what is happening, providing further confirmation that the climate scientists' predictions about global warming are not only scary, but accurate.

Denis DuBay

2009-02-23T20:21:00.005-05:00

An old time climate skeptic is at it again. George Will adds to a sad record of sticking his head in the sand with another weak objection to the science behind climate change. Already two letters to the editor (Frank Tursi, and Loren Hintz) have pointed out fallacies in Will's reasoning.

It seems George is taking liberties with other people's data. Especially egregious is his misrepresentation of data from the Arctic Research Center at the University of Illinois. The Center posted a statement objecting to Will's interpretation of its data, which unambiguously show a decrease in sea ice since 1979 rather than the increase or no change that Will reports.

But a picture is worth a thousand disclaimers. Follow the link below for a graph of Arctic sea ice extent shown as the anomaly from the 1979-2000 mean ice extent. This means that the zero line on the y-axis represents the mean sea ice extent during the years 1979-2000. The jagged up and down line shows the deviation from that 1979-2000 mean. Sea ice is clearly decreasing since 1979.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg

The tragedy here is the willingness of otherwise intelligent people like George Will to either outright lie to make a point, or to be so self-deceived that they cannot see reality when it stares them in the face. There is no excuse for the intellectual dishonesty and/or careless scholarship represented by Will's latest disgrace of a column. We all deserve an apology, and his and our children and grandchildren deserve a retraction of his ridiculous rant that only makes it more likely that they will suffer from our inaction regarding climate change.

Climate Change Mistakes

2009-02-21T14:44:00.001-05:00

On July 10, 2007, Max Borders, an analyst with the Civitas Institute in Raleigh, wrote an op-ed piece in the News and Observer - see Energy bill generates hidden taxes and little else. Although the bill considered by the North Carolina legislature, Senate Bill 3, had a lot of problems, so does Mr. Borders' article. Read about them here, Energy Errors.

George Will and Charles Krauthammer for President and Vice President of the Church of the Marketplace

2008-06-14T19:47:00.001-04:00

CLIMATE CHANGE: SCIENCE VERSUS ADVOCACY

Charles Krauthammer (News and Observer, 6/01/08) and George Will (News and Observer 5/23/08) should team up and run for President and Vice-President of the Church of the Marketplace! Along the way they may want to brush up on their bible lessons, especially that admonition about not pointing out the splinter in your neighbor's eye before removing the log in your own.

In this case, one of the logs in their eyes is their lack of understanding of science and scientists. Well, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming it is their lack of understanding rather than outright deception that leads them to accuse scientists of being careless, compliant (presumably to the wishes of "the left"), and unscrupulous.

The first principle of science is objectivity, something every scientist learns making their way through a graduate education. This objectivity and a critical skepticism that goes along with it becomes an ingrained part of every good scientist. The scientist wants to understand the natural world, how it works. You don't find out how something works by deciding in advance the way you want things to turn out and then looking for ways to twist the available data to seemingly support your desire.

Yet Will, Krauthammer and other "climate change skeptics" seem eager to do just that. Sitting back in a comfortable office far removed from the messy natural world real climate scientists have to deal with, it is easy to make the science sound not just incomplete or inexact, but downright flimsy. Krauthammer ends a long harangue criticising atmospheric climate models as "entirely speculative." It is, however, the ability of such models to accurately reflect the natural world that has brought us modern jet aircraft, the space shuttle and space station, and a legacy of successful space exploration. When a test pilot guns the throttle of a brand new jet plane for its very first flight, computer models give him the assurance he is not likely to die at the end of the runway.

The real climate scientists undoubtedly laugh and cry at the purported mistakes or omissions in their studies and conclusions repeatedly and erroneously pointed out by climate change critics (see www.realclimate.org). Where do these hopeful skeptics get the idea that they are the only ones trying to think of alternative explanations like a warming sun or natural sources of greenhouse gases? The real climate scientists make a living out of trying to find these alternatives, they have thought of these and many others and tested each one against the reality of their data.

Are Krauthammer and Will, and the marketplace experts and fossil fuel advocates eager to preserve the status quo of the automotive and oil and coal industries also expert climate scientists? Do they bring the unbiased eye of the trained scientist and find chinks in the body of climate change evidence the professionals have somehow missed? Who would you trust if you really wanted to know what is going on?

Finally, dredging up the doubt-filled claims of a few hyper-critical scientists cannot invalidate the reviewed findings of professional scientific organizations and the mass of peer-reviewed publications used to back up their consensus statements. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the U.S. National Academy of Science, the American Meteorological Society, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change all agree burning fossil fuels is increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere, that this rising CO2 is causing global warming, and that this global warming is very likely to cause a cascading chain of climate changes, many of which are likely to cause increased human suffering, especially among the poorer peoples of the world.

Krauthammer and Will may legitimately debate what we collectively decide to do to limit future climate changes, how we will obtain and use energy. I agree with Krauthammer, for example, that the nuclear option bears careful consideration as a stopgap on our way to developing more renewable energy sources. And deciding on a carbon tax or a cap and trade system is a decision to be made by all of us and our elected representatives. Science cannot make these decision, only inform them.

But Krauthammer and Will and other skeptics cross the line into dangerous territory when they question scientists who have spent careers learning about the atmosphere. Challenging the science simply because it indicates that your cherished energy sources, large cars, and wasteful habits will likely cause all of us future havoc is a recipe for a return to the dark ages. We cannot afford to let self-interests and beliefs overrule science.

We all need to wake up!

2007-11-25T17:27:00.000-05:00

This was published by the News and Observer on October 15, 2007, although the title was different in the paper.
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AN INCONVENIENT NOBEL TRUTH

Two of my neighbors share Rick Martinez's skeptical view of global warming, as they were happy to point out to me even before Martinez' recent column (Warming isn't our No.1 woe, 10/10/07). I wonder if the Nobel Prize awarded to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has caused them or Mr. Martinez to reconsider.

Skeptics will always be around, and that is good. Every scientist casts a critical eye on the findings uncovered by another. But in a matter involving important decisions, we must figure out what most scientists think about it, which in this case means especially the ones doing climate research.

A strong and growing consensus comes from professional climate research organizations and thousands of climate scientists, many of whom participate on the IPCC.

As any of these groups and scientists would admit, the consensus is neither complete nor perfect. Finding chinks in our knowledge of something as complex as climate change is expected. What is surprising in such a difficult field is that large groups of scientists would be able to agree on something. Yet the consensus exists, and it is growing. That is scary.

I have three very good reasons for hoping the consensus is wrong and that the minority of skeptics are right. Those three good reasons are named Kateri, Michaela, and Lizabeth, and although the youngest of them went off to college this year, I still worry about their futures. While I may hope the skeptics are correct, at some point common sense tells me we need to do something in case the majority opinion unfortunately wins out.

Consider the magnitude of the problem -- this is the entire planet! We are all part of an unplanned experiment that we and our descendents will live with for a very long time. And if we wait much longer to convince ourselves something needs to be done, it may be too late to change the outcome.

When it comes to making decisions on matters with any degree of uncertainty, a rational course is to use something called risk analysis. You estimate the likelihood of something bad happening, and the seriousness of the consequences if it does happen.

If the problem is very unlikely to occur, and the consequences even if it does occur are not too bad, you may safely decide to do nothing about it. If on the other hand the consequences are likely to be serious and damaging, you might consider taking action even if the likelihood of the problem happening is slim.

Finally, if the likelihood is not so slim and the consequences are dire, then indeed, immediate action would be wise.

The growing consensus among scientists makes me think global warming has at least a decent chance of happening, and the effects being talked about surely sound serious. You be the judge.

But factor into your judgment some of the actions we might take if we decide to limit carbon dioxide emissions into our atmosphere.

Reducing carbon emissions requires us to either burn less fossil fuel by increasing our energy efficiency (eg., driving smaller cars with higher gas mileage), or by using alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, hydropower, even nuclear power instead of fossil fuels. In either case, burning less fossil fuels has two additional positive outcomes:

It reduces air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, mercury, hydrocarbons, and the products of these pollutants, ozone and acid rain.
It reduces our dependence on oil at a time when oil supplies may soon begin to dwindle, and foreign suppliers may become increasingly expensive and dangerous trading partners.

Sound like a bargain? The bargain gets better when you factor in the "external" costs of finding and using fossil fuels - mountaintop removal and strip mining, water pollution, crop and forest damage, and health effects such as asthma, emphysema, lung cancer, and heart disease - all linked to the air pollution from burning fossil fuels.

Skeptics will always be with us. But I am afraid, truly afraid, they are wrong and even misleading us about this one. The scientists doing the research do not doubt that this is serious and that we can do something about it.

It is time to weigh the evidence and decide. The outcome of this debate has real winners and losers. Our daughters' and sons' and grandchildren's future quality of life will depend upon what we do in the next decade.