The War of 2021

            Francis Scott Key began his 1814 poem to America with “Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming, ...”

            How many of us knew of the perilous threat looming over our democracy when dawn arrived on that January day set aside for Congress to certify the electoral count of the 2020 Presidential election? And after that day’s assault on the Capital and night descended, how many believed that on the morning of January 7^th our Stars and Stripes would still fly over a home of the free and the brave?

            There have been few times since Key penned those opening words of what would later become our National Anthem that Washington, D.C. has seen such a firsthand threat as hit on January 6^th. The only other one I can remember arrived on September 11^th in 2001, a fearful day I spent guiding high school students in Raleigh while seeking assurance that my college-aged daughter remained safe in our nation’s capital.

            Now we celebrate an inauguration of the next President while the outgoing President continues to harbor tales of a stolen election. Thousands of armed National Guard soldiers line the streets of the capital and across the country, watching over our ramparts as we wonder how many armed rebels will march in red-hatted glares of protest.

            Our land of laws and freedoms lies at our feet, prey to each nuance and spin bent on supporting someone’s wish for a win. Would that more of us apprehended the democratic principles over which bombs have burst, but the days when we recognized reality flew away with the winds that replaced newspapers and journalists with social media and influencers.

            Long before our ancestors organized reason into a skill we came to call science, “facts” could be twisted in support of any whim or desire. Leaders ruled exploiting fears. We only escaped those mystical days when we stopped burning witches and began understanding the powers of experiment and evidence. But over the past few decades we’ve seen rulers return to casting doubt on reason and science in favor of fear and faith, leading more of us down the road of ideology and away from unwanted facts. To be true a thing only needs to be believed by “many people” or spouted by a revered leader.

            The Truth defined by evidence may yet prevail, but time lost following attractive falsehoods wreaks inevitable destruction, as we witnessed January 6th. And how many have died in the pandemic because ideology kept leaders from advocating and their followers from wearing masks? Welcome or not, heeded or not, Truth exists. It’s up to the many leaders among us to follow the evidence and bring our compatriots along on the road back to reason.

DISRUPTION: A review of the climate change documentary

The video opens with the following quote:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
---Frederick Douglass

This statement and its author tell us much about the documentary that follows. The focus is on action, in keeping with the title itself, Disruption. The target of the action is, clearly in this case, the fossil fuel industry and the political machine that protects and supports it. And quoting Frederick Douglass hints at the central environmental justice theme.

As a scientist, I am nervous when the discussion moves from a consideration of the science to how to achieve political goals. So, yes, I am not thrilled with the documentary’s fuzzy use of the “tipping point” concept, and avoidance of the more accurate term, “positive or reinforcing feedback.” Yes, I am anxious when specific storm events come to characterize climate change rather than global shifts in heat content of the oceans and the atmosphere. Yes, I am concerned with the touch of exaggeration I perceived when methane was described as fifty times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (I believe twenty-five times is more like it). And I don’t understand why they left out sea level rise and long-term climate events like drought.

However, as a parent and a new grandparent I am more nervous with the risks we take doing nothing, or doing as little as we have done for the past decade to avert climate change. The risk is significant, the consequences likely to be severe, and many unknowns exist that could send us spiraling down paths to new unpleasant, perhaps catastrophic “normals” we could find difficult to avoid or change. I don’t want that for my children or their children.

The purpose of this documentary was not so much education as motivation. The clear goal was to spur individuals to take part in the upcoming climate change march in New York City, either directly or in their local community. Given the seriousness of the problem and especially our country’s negligence in taking sufficient steps to address climate change, I can live with a little rabble-rousing. I only wish it were done with more dispassionate logic, but passion is what they hope, and need, to arouse. On that point I have no dispute.

Next to large crowds on the streets, neighbor to neighbor efforts to share knowledge of the causes and consequences and solutions to climate change seem important as well. Consider participating in that type of activity in addition to marching in the streets.

Rates of Change

Noah Diffenbaugh and Christopher Field offer a sobering perspective on the ecological challenges posed by climate change in the coming decades.

In their review, "Changes in Ecologically Critical Terrestrial Climate Conditions", in the August 2, 2013 issue of Science, these two Stanford scientists suggest that the magnitude of near-future climate changes will match the greatest changes seen over the past 65 million years of Earth's history.  However, it is the rate of changes the Earth will see in coming decades that causes even more alarm.  Our planet will likely proceed along the path to these greatest climate changes at a pace 10 to 100 times faster than ever before experienced.  And if that kind of unique once-in-a-planetary-history ecological and evolutionary challenge were not enough to cause concern, today's living things, and that includes you and me and our offspring, will be trying to adapt to those rapid changes in the face of natural system habitat losses and disruption as well as pollution brought about by our own unprecedented population growth and competition for resources.

But Diffenbaugh and Field offer a sliver of hope in their final paragraph:

However, the ultimate velocity of climate change is not yet determined. Although many Earth system feedbacks are uncertain, the greatest sources of uncertainty—and greatest opportunities for modifying the trajectory of change—lie in the human dimension (emphasis added). As a result, the rate and magnitude of climate change ultimately experienced by terrestrial ecosystems will be mostly determined by the human decisions, innovations, and economic developments that will determine the pathway of greenhouse gas emissions.

In other words, what we decide to do in the next few decades will either significantly slow down or speed up the climate change we and our descendents will have to adapt to.  The speed with which we make the inevitable switch to renewable energy sources such as solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, wind, tidal, and geothermal, and leave as much coal, oil, and natural gas as we can in the ground, will mean everything to our children and grandchildren.

I have three daughters, and one of them is now expecting our first granddaughter.  I think they would expect us to make our decisions based on the best available scientific evidence unclouded by the disinformation campaign we've seen so successfully waged over the past decade.  Diffenbaugh and Field represent that best available scientific evidence.  Listen to them.  And hear your children and future children ask what you did to make the right decision today.

The Casualties in Industry's Assault on Science

The following review of Doubt is their product, a book by David Michaels, appears in Briar Patch Books, Linda Brinson's " latter-day version of a newspaper book-review page."  Thanks to Linda for editing it and publishing it in her blog, on which you will find many other interesting book reviews.  Take a look!
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DOUBT IS THEIR PRODUCT: HOW INDUSTRY’S ASSAULT ON SCIENCE THREATENS YOUR HEALTH. By David Michaels. Oxford University Press, 2008.  384 pages.

A review by Denis DuBay

Once upon a time, seemingly in another galaxy far away, scientists received nearly universal respect for their knowledge and skills, at least in their chosen field.  How rapidly things can change.  Witness now a leading climate scientist receiving a subpoena from a state attorney general angry with his findings and being compared to a child molester by a national magazine, and other climate scientists harassed for simply doing their job.

David Michaels, a former chief safety officer for the nation’s nuclear weapon’s facilities under the Clinton administration, helps make some sense of this unbelievable turnabout in his 2008 book, Doubt Is Their Product.  The title of the book came from the blunt statement of a cigarette executive: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public.”

In the case of the tobacco industry, that body of fact considered cigarette smoke to cause lung cancer and heart disease.  The longer industry leaders could create at least the semblance of controversy about the hazards of tobacco, the more money they could make selling tobacco.  Here industry learned that “debating science is much easier and more effective than debating the policy.”

And the science is epidemiology, defined by Encarta World English Dictionary as “… the scientific and medical study of the causes and transmission of disease within a population.” Here is an entire field of science that arose in part because one cannot ethically conduct an experiment to test whether a substance causes cancer on real live human beings.  A gross oversimplification, but you get the idea.

In order to determine whether certain substances or practices do harm humans, scientists must either do the experiments on biologically similar animals, or conduct elaborate correlational studies that need to control for the host of extraneous variables such as age, gender and occupation that can confound any results.  Either of these two alternatives, but especially the latter one, often involves elaborate employment of, oh my, statistics.

In Chapter 6, Tricks of the Trade: How Mercenary Scientists Mislead You, Michaels describes all the ways a so-called “product defense scientist” can use the complexities of epidemiology to deceive.  A favorite technique finds the affected industry kicking into high gear when a new study comes out with unfavorable results.  The industry demands the raw data from the study, then sets its hired guns to work reanalyzing that data.  With a little massaging here and cherry-picking there to “improve” the study, voila, the unfavorable results turn out to be a mirage.  Product goldfinger is safe after all.  Of course it is.

The “product defense industry” takes its orders, and more important, its money, from companies and industries with products to sell.  Its objective, as it appeared in a 1972 letter from a Tobacco Institute staffer, “…creating doubt about the health charge without actually denying it.”  Industry does not have to win the science debate to win the policy debate.  It only has to generate a bit of confusion surrounding the science.

We see Michaels’ passion for this story beginning on page ix when he describes an especially offensive example of the model created by Big Tobacco.

In 1980, 555 cases of Reye’s syndrome were reported, and one in three children diagnosed died.  Today, thanks to a public education campaign and warning labels, nearly everyone is aware that children with a flu-like illness should not take aspirin because it increases their risk of developing Reye’s syndrome.  But in 1980, few knew about the link.

Faced with convincing evidence, aspirin manufacturers nevertheless delayed action alerting parents to the situation for several years, claiming flaws in studies, and asserting that: “We do know that no medication has been proven to cause Reye’s.”  Michaels points out that the italicized emphasis appeared in industry’s original public service announcement!

And those italics are telling.  Contrary to popular public understanding, science rarely is able to say it has “proven” something beyond the shadow of a doubt.  Michaels describes the resulting delays to regulatory action as waiting for the body count before exercising precautions, the “bodies in the morgue” form of risk assessment.

In the case of aspirin and Reye’s syndrome, it was 1986 before a lawsuit forced the Reagan Administration to act.  As a result of the education campaign and warning labels, there are few Reye’s syndrome cases today, but no one knows how many children died in the early 1980s as a result of the doubt manufactured by an industry eager to make more money selling more aspirin.

Michaels tells many tales of doubt manufactured on behalf of dangerous products whose industries followed the lead of Big Tobacco, including benzene, asbestos, lead, mercury, aromatic amines, diacetyl, beryllium, vinyl chloride, and among others, the drugs phenylpropanolamine (PPA), and Vioxx.

The value to industry of creating doubt resides in the common misperception that absolute and direct proof is the gold standard in science.  In fact, science proceeds based on the weight of the available evidence.  When that weight is balanced between two opposing viewpoints, further study is required.  However, when the preponderance of the evidence comes down on one side of the argument, science accepts the conclusion and moves ahead.  Further data will likely strengthen the case, and perhaps modify it slightly, but will not often overturn it.

Reading that someone demands “proof” of a connection between a product and potential danger should set off alarms that here stirs a product defense advocate wishing to sow confusion and inject delay into the regulatory process.

And if that industry reanalysis is criticized for not appearing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, no problem, the product defense industry has “captured” journals ready to provide that peer-review imprimatur!  Michaels suggests viewing with some caution articles found in certain publications, for example, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, Indoor and Built Environment, and the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

What can be done about these illegitimate tactics that threaten public and environmental health?  Michaels suggests keeping an eye on the “funding effect.”  Follow the money, discover who paid for the research, and you can predict the results with amazing accuracy.

Michaels’ solution: eliminate conflicts of interest.  Today’s mantra says manage conflicts of interest, so as not to remove too many qualified experts from contributing to an important process.  Michaels would have none of it.  If it looks like a duck, eliminate it.  Managing conflicts of interest rather than eliminating them simply ensures that the funding effect will continue to work.

So what of the relative lack of respect accorded to scientists today, especially those on the front lines of well-known issues such as climate change?  How might David Michaels’ book explain this?  Consider that for over three decades the public has been treated to special interests trotting out their captured scientists every time a bottom line is threatened.  Of course one’s view of the objectivity of scientists, and even of science as a way of knowing, would tarnish.

The email came last night at 9 pm:
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"SpotTheStation!" Time: Fri Nov 30 6:21 AM, Visible: 4 min, Max Height: 79 degrees, Appears: NW, Disappears: SE"
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Set the alarm clock, walked out to a clearing by 6:15, used the compass app on my iPhone to get oriented, and at 6:21, looking towards the northwest, about 45 degrees above the horizon (horizon would be zero degrees, straight up 90 degrees) the International Space Station appeared, brighter than any star in the sky by far, easily visible despite some light fog and a very scattered layer of very thin cirrus clouds and a bright full moon in the same direction! It moved rather quickly up and across the sky, never blinking. Wished I'd brought my binoculars with me, bet I could have seen the giant solar panels! It took 6 minutes to traverse the sky before it faded out of sight to the southeast about 20 degrees above the horizon. Then it was time to go get Chestnut and take him for a walk!

Let’s focus on our shared values

Flag flying over Liberty Island, 2009

The following op-ed, "Let's focus on our shared values", appeared in Raleigh's News and Observer on November 27, 2012. 

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My daughter, Michaela, recently encouraged our family to keep things positive and be careful not to offend those with whom we share this great country, even if we may not share their political preferences.  I thank her for a timely reminder, and for the hope that it represents, coming from a twentysomething with strong political preferences of her own.

This great United States of America came into existence thanks in no small part to the willingness of our forefathers to compromise.  They found ways to latch on to values they shared as they struggled to reconcile their tremendous differences.  Our very form of government depends on compromise and reconciliation.

In that spirit, I suggest that each one of us takes as much time as it takes, and exerts as much effort as it requires, to find common ground with our fellow Americans.  Yes we have differences, sharp and serious.  But we may share much more than we think.

Maybe reminding ourselves of all the things we together love about the USA will help us and our leaders figure out how to work out compromises to solve our current and future problems.  It worked in 1776 (Declaration of Independence), 1787 (Constitution), and 1791 (Bill of Rights), and they were at least as passionate as we are, and I hope we are as smart as they were.

I offer below a list of items upon which to begin a search for common ground.  Consider them, change them, add to them.  Discuss them with your fellow Americans.  Talk about them with your neighbors next door and across the street, at the gym, at the game, at work, in letters to the editor.  Search long and hard for the things that both of you like and value, and focus your attention, laserlike, on those things.  Let those shared values form the basis for a civil conversation that celebrates the things we all love about our country.

• I want my children and grandchildren (may we be so blessed), to lead happy, healthy, and safe lives enjoying the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
• I value a strong economy where everyone is enabled and encouraged to find or even create a good job that gives them the chance to exercise their talents and abilities, provide for their well-being, and contribute productively to our common good.
• I want our country to continue to be a model and a shining light for freedom and liberty and tolerance and diversity.
• I hope that the USA can continue to be a force for good around the world, both by our example and by sharing our time, talent, and treasure.
• I want America to continue to protect its neediest citizens even as it provides the foundation upon which its most talented citizens build successful lives.
• I value a natural environment surrounding me that reflects the diversity, productivity, and resilience found in healthy ecological systems, and that provides at the least cost possible, breathable clean air, drinkable pure water, and delicious healthy food.
• I hope that all of our communities can continue to provide the structures that support our comfortable and productive lives: fire and police protection; good roads; abundant greenways, parks and playing fields; power utilities; water and waste utilities; engineering and safety standards; objective journalism outlets; and communications networks.
• I value an educational system that provides a common, excellent learning experience for all of us, that teaches about the things that make the USA a beacon around the world, and that shares the best understanding we have of history, language, science, society, and mathematics with all of our students.
• I want our elected and appointed leaders to respect our history, understand this world in which we live, value our diversity, appeal to the best in each of us, and bring us together as they improve our union.
• I hope my children and grandchildren will, as I do, feel a lump in their throat or a tear in their eye whenever they hear or sing The Star Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful, and God Bless America.

Lady Liberty on a visit in June, 2009

Climate Change Science

 

Bottom Left Image Source: TAO Project Office, NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Lab.
Right Image Source: University Corporation for Atmospheric Lab.
Top Left Image Source: NASA

From time to time it is helpful to refer someone to a readily available online source of reliable and objective information about climate change science.  There are many sources from which to choose, but there is one that appears to clearly take the honors when it comes to objectivity and integrity.  That source is the National Research Council (NRC).  The National Research Council was formed by the National Academies of Sciences, and regarding the National Academies, here's a brief statement from the "About Us" portion of their website.

"The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) was signed into being by President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1863. As mandated in its Act of Incorporation, the Academy has, since 1863, served to "investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art" whenever called upon to do so by any department of the government"

 The National Academies formed the National Research Council in 1916 "...to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government."

So without further elaboration, here is the link to a concise summary of the best available understanding of climate change science as of the current  year, 2012.  Enjoy!


CLIMATE CHANGE: Evidence, Impacts, and Choices
Answers to common questions about the science of climate change

A little lesson about the positive feedback effect

Sent the following to the News and Observer of Raleigh, they printed it on 11/9/12 (link to online version complete with reader comments below):

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In his letter of 11/7, William Everett reports that scientists found a case where temperatures increased before atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.  Everett claims this finding invalidates the climate change concept that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations cause temperature increases, since one would expect the carbon dioxide to increase first if it caused a temperature increase.

I believe the report Everett cites refers to climate 20 thousand years ago, and there are times in Earth's history where temperature does increase first, and a carbon dioxide increase follows.  What Everett failed to add is that oftentimes when this happens, the increase in carbon dioxide causes a further and much larger increase in temperature.  And the initial smaller temperature rise was caused by changes in Earth's orbit and orientation (Milankovitch cycles) that simply do not cause today's warming.

A study by Jeremy Shakun, published in the science journal, Nature (volume 484, April 2012), presents convincing evidence that rising carbon dioxide concentrations caused global temperatures to increase from 18 to 11 thousand years ago.  This is but one of many lines of evidence indicating that rising carbon dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere do cause an increase in temperature and consequent climate changes.

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http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/11/09/2472857/denis-dubay-greenhouse-effect.html

Global Warming: A Matter of Balance

Don't cringe, this will not be a political essay. It's about the science.

Global warming is all about energy, since it is energy which determines the temperature, or average heat content, of an object.

Over the next few minutes I will ask you to think about three connected facts about energy which together define the basis for global warming and climate on Earth:

1. Earth receives incoming energy from the Sun in the form of visible sunlight.
   
2. Earth emits or loses outgoing energy to space in the form of invisible infrared radiation.
   
3. The balance between this incoming sunlight energy and the outgoing infrared energy determines Earth's average heat content and therefore, climate.
   

POINT ONE - Earth Receives Energy From Sunlight

So, if the Earth's energy content affects the planet's temperature, understanding global warming requires knowing where and how the Earth gets its energy. Virtually all of the energy that influences the temperature of the Earth's surface comes from the Sun as visible sunlight.

Most of this incoming sunlight energy is absorbed by either the air in the atmosphere, the water in the oceans, or by solid objects on the land - like soil, rocks, and plants. When sunlight energy is absorbed, it warms the objects absorbing it - recall the last time you touched a surface warmed by the sun or felt your skin warmed by sunlight.

However, not all of the sunlight energy headed towards the Earth is absorbed - some of it is reflected away from the planet before it can be absorbed - by light-colored surfaces such as clouds, snow, and ice. Reflected sunlight energy is NOT absorbed, and does not add to Earth's energy content. Thus it's cooler on a cloudy day than it is on a sunny day.

POINT TWO

Less well-known is the fact that the Earth loses energy to space about as rapidly as it gains energy from sunlight. This energy lost to space is called infrared radiation, which is just light energy of a different wavelength than visible sunlight. This infrared energy radiates or moves out from solid objects, water, air, even you and me! If you want to feel infrared radiation, put your hand close to, but not touching, your face. Your hand and face both feel warmer, because both feel or sense the infrared energy radiating from your body.

This outbound infrared radiation moves in all directions, eventually escaping through the atmosphere into space.

However, there are invisible gases in the atmosphere which can block the escape of infrared energy from the Earth into space. The most important gases that can do this are water vapor and carbon dioxide.

When there is more water vapor or carbon dioxide in the air, these gases intercept and absorb more of the infrared radiation otherwise on its way to space.

As a result, these gases themselves get warmer, and in turn radiate infrared energy, some of it back towards Earth's surface, some of it out to space. The infrared energy radiated back to the surface of the planet causes an overall increase in Earth's heat content - something called the greenhouse effect - because it resembles what happens on a sunny day inside a greenhouse (or your car with closed windows). Sunlight passes through the clear glass, but the resulting infrared heat energy cannot escape through that same glass, and the energy content - temperature - of the greenhouse, or your car, increases.

Charles Darwin's greenhouse at his family estate in Down

This greenhouse effect is really an example of the THIRD and final POINT - that the balance of incoming energy minus outgoing energy determines Earth's average heat content, and controls the climate.

If the amount of sunlight energy absorbed by the Earth is exactly balanced by the amount of infrared radiation escaping the Earth, the planet is in energy balance, and the overall average energy content of Earth remains constant. In this case, overall climate averages would not change.

But as described above for incoming sunlight and outgoing infrared energy, from time to time things happen in the atmosphere or on the surface of the Earth that change that balance of incoming and outgoing energy. As a result of those changes, Earth's energy balance gets out of whack and average climates can change.

What has all of this got to do with you and me and our children and grandchildren?

Scientists measuring the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, and where it comes from, have determined that our burning of coal, oil, and natural gas, along with cutting down vast areas of forest around the world, has caused the average amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to increase from 265 parts of carbon dioxide per million parts of other air molecules before the industrial revolution, to almost 400 ppm carbon dioxide today. And the energy imbalance and temperature increase caused by that rise in carbon dioxide has, in turn, caused more liquid water to evaporate into the atmosphere, further increasing the greenhouse effect - adding more to the energy imbalance initially triggered by the increase in carbon dioxide.

Of course, as with any measurement, there are uncertainties about how much or how little. How much carbon dioxide will cause how much of an energy imbalance will cause how much global warming and climate change. And subject to even more uncertainty is what we might do about it all.

But if you remember that global warming and climate change arise from an imbalance in the energy coming to the Earth and the energy leaving the Earth, I think you'll be better prepared to evaluate new information as it's discovered and presented, and make informed and intelligent decisions when you have the opportunity.

THE SCIENTIST WHO CRIED WOLF AND THE SQUEEZE IN

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!

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

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

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

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.