In the new issue of Scientific American, vodcast host and prodigious author Steve Mirsky takes on James Inhofe and Ray Comfort. No news here if you're the sort of person who follows climate politics and creationism shenanigans, but his short essay is pretty funny.

Labels: climate change, evolution, global warming, humor, podcasts and vodcasts, politics

Food for thought: check out this excellent article in the Columbia Review of Journalism ("Hot Air," Jan/Feb issue). Subtitle: "Why don't TV weathermen believe in climate change?"

Hat tip: Anthony Leiserowitz at the Yale Project on Climate Change, who is quoted in the story.

Labels: climate change, global warming, politics, tv

Last Friday, I went to a briefing in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill about adaptation to climate change. I present here a transcription of my notes as a quick, unpolished rundown of what was discussed there. It may be of interest to you.

The speakers, their titles, and their topics were:

• Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs, the Climate Institute: Projected impacts of Climate Change on the United States


• Kristie L. Ebi, Executive Director, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 2 Technical Support Unit - Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability: Adaptation


• Katharine L. Jacobs, Professor, University of Arizona Soil, Water and Environmental Science Department: Adaptation to water resource changes


• Susanne Moser, Director and Principal Researcher, Susanne Moser Research & Consulting: California as a case-study in adaptation planning

MacCracken was first up, and gave [what I was surely biased to percieve as] the most compelling talk. I felt this way not because he was the only dude, but because he was talking science, while everyone else was talking adaptation -- how humans should/can/might respond to climate change -- a topic I find fundamentally less interesting than the science. However, I'm teaching environmental geology again this semester, and having some clue as to policy options is a part of my job. That's why I went. Citing the IPCC and a UNEP report (reproduced above because I think its cover design is pretty clever), MacCracken informed us that the overall projections for North America is that it will get wetter in the north and drier in the south. He noted that there is less confidence in precipitation projections than there is in temperature projections. Water is going to be one of the most important aspects of climate change, MacCracken asserted. Tangentially, he also suggested that the large amount of snow we're seeing in the U.S. this winter has to do with less ice cover on the Great Lakes (encouraging evaporation and precipitaiton as snow). He showed a cool graph of corn yields over time, showing the crop's susceptibility to extreme climate events (superimposed on an overall upward trend). I found this to be interesting, and coveted the graph. [Eventually, all the speakers' PowerPoints will be available at the AMS Climate Briefing site - but they are not there yet.] He showed some good graphs showing projections of sea level rise under high, medium, and low emissions scenarios. He also cited Isabella Velicogna (2009), displaying graphs which show estimates of ice mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica. (I need to get a copy of these images: very compelling! The Way Things Break discussed them in October, when they were first published.) Finally, he brought up ecosystem changes, showing us maps of the spruce bark beetle infestation on the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska (a forest catastrophe I have seen firsthand).

Ebi spoke quietly about adaptation in general. Adaptation is in contrast to mitigation, which is what most people spend their climate time talking about: Mitigation attempts to prevent future climate change (by limiting emissions of CO2 or by capturing CO2 and sequestering it), while adaptation says, "given a certain level of climate change, what do we do in order to maximize human welfare?") She noted that the impacts we face are entirely contingent upon which adaptation strategies we adopt: a given quantum of climate change will have different effects upon identical communities which adopt different levels of adaptation. Ergo, adaptation is important, and we really need to start talking about it. She made the claim that the federal Stimulus package was a major missed opportunity, as major infrastructural investment was made without consideration as to whether long-term infrastructure should be modified or moved. For instance, before rebuilding a bridge, perhaps we should be asking ourselves if it should be taller, or before repaving a coastal road, we should perhaps consider moving it to a higher elevation where it is likely to last longer. She gave a compelling example of Barbados (I think), where coastal mapping showed that with year 2100 projections for sea-level rise plus a category-3 hurricane, the portion of Barbados' coast to be flooded will include both the power plant and the coastal road! While Barbados has been proactive in addressing these issues, Ebi says the U.S. has not. Adaptation, she argued, is nothing more than iterative risk management. She gave a list of criteria necessary for action, and you can see that the U.S. is falling short of the minimum threshold for action on many of them:

• an awareness of the problem
• an understanding of the causes
• a sense that the problem matters
• a capability to influence outcomes
• political will to deal with the problem

The third expert to speak was Kathy Jacobs. She pointed out that many of the projected impacts of climate change will be delivered, one way or another, via the water cycle. One example she gave that caught my attention was the declining amount of snowpack in the western U.S. Historically, this snowpack has been a fundamental reservoir of water during the summer months, and as it melts away, we are going to need to build artificial reservoirs to compensate. She noted that this sort of adaptation is uniquely human: ecosystems do not have the foresight or ability to build reservoirs and the like -- so if we want those ecosystems to continue to function, we will have to do their planning, too. She discussed the Colorado River, which is estimated to decline somewhere between 11% and 40% at the same time demand for its water is increasing. She said, "We may not know the magnitude or the rate of change [in Colorado River discharge], but we know the direction of change" (i.e., downward). The comment she made that impressed me the most was that the current uncertainty (in U.S. society) about whether climate change is real is blocking action. She was citing the frequently-made argument that because we don't understand everything about climate change, we shouldn't take any action. "Yet we make decisions with imperfect information all the time," she said. "Climate change shouldn't be any different. We need to get past that." She made two final points: (1) that there is no silver bullet solution to our burgeoning water resources crisis ["We will need a broad portfolio approach" including things like desalination], and (2) Many of the current water technologies are energy intensive, and these technologies will be less attractive in the future because of their carbon cost.

Susanne Moser was the last one at bat. She detailed California's response to the question of adaptation. It was an interesting case study, because under the leadership of Governor Schwarzenegger, an office was formed to examine what adaptation might mean for the Golden State. This office provides bi-annual updates to the government of California on the state of the science. They are the only state to do this, so far (though ~a dozen other states have taken less decisive measures). Unfortunately, "California is also adapting to bankruptcy," and so really this golden example of adaptation is hamstrung by economic constraints: It is really only a baby step.

I enjoyed the briefing. It was the sixth or seventh AMS-sponsored briefing I've attended on Capitol Hill, and it was informative as always. Typing up these notes reminds me how useful it was. I'd like to thank AMS for making these sessions open to the general public, and for providing lunch to all the participants.

Labels: alaska, antarctica, art, barbados, california, climate change, CO2, dc, global warming, graphics, greenland, politics, science and society, water resources

Local yokels! Head on over to the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Metro Center for their new climate change photo exhibit.

Hat tip to Surprising Science.

Labels: climate change, dc, global warming, museums

Remember how I was lamenting the carbon footprint of my globetrotting?

Here's a nice summary of that issue in an image:

Smoke from the engines of the M.V. Evangelistas drifts across the terminus of the largest valley glacier in South America.

Labels: chile, climate change, CO2, environmental, glaciation, global warming, patagonia, south america, travel

This is coming up on Friday. I'm going. See you there?

Labels: action, climate change, dc, environmental, global warming, politics

So I'm in Patagonia right now, doing the thing I love to do most: travel across my home planet, checking out its less explored corners. Chile and Argentina are my 20th and 21st countries to visit. It is my second trip to South America. I've also travelled twice to Africa, four times to Asia (including my stint in Peace Corps Mongolia), and extensive travels in North America. I've only hit North Atlantic island nations as far as Europe is concerned. I've been to Australia once. I have not been to Antarctica.

So why am I listing all of this?

Because I'm a freaking hypocrite. I'm very concerned about how humanity is altering atmospheric chemistry, and what that's going to do to our (shared) planet's natural systems. Because I am convinced that we are releasing carbon into the atmosphere at a faster rate than natural systems can remove it, we are endangering ourselves (or at least some of ourselves) and also endangering the ecosystems that we depend on. I recognize the role the individual can/might/should play in reducing their personal carbon emissions through efficiency and lifestyle choices. I drive a Prius, use energy efficient light bulbs, recycle my cans and bottles and paper, serve on the College's "Green Committee," and teach (and blog) about the science underlying environmental issues, like climate change. I'm spreading the word, see?

But I really love to travel, and travel is a high-carbon endeavor. The best thing I could do for the world would probably be to stay home, but home gets stale. The world is big and diverse and full of landscapes and people and food and culture and birds and all kinds of interesting things. And there is nothing like getting out there and experiencing it firsthand. My time on this planet is finite, maybe close to half used up (assuming an average lifespan). What am I going to do during my time here? I figure I should live morally, attempt to improve things a bit, and enjoy myself. And I enjoy travelling more than anything else. I don't have kids (or an interest in having them), I'm not a religious person, I'm not tied down to a garden or a dog or a network of people that can't live without me. There's little to keep me in town when the opportunity for travel arises. And I have a career which gives me three and a half weeks off each winter and three months off each summer, plus a week of spring break. I have chosen my career in no small part because of the tremendous amount of free time it grants me each year. (Having a third of the year "off" makes up for the fifteen hour days I work during the fall and spring semesters, I reckon.)

My philosophy of life is essentially to facilitate and accrue a suite of fond memories and cool experiences. My goal is to enjoy my limited time here. Secondary goals: be a good person, help others out, learn as much as possible about the world I will spend my life in, share this perspective by spreading an understanding of the natural world, be creative, be responsible (but not so responsible, CO2-wise, that it cripples Goal #1). I am aware that this is a fundamentally self-centered approach, and I accept it.

So I know that there is a tangible global negative to my jetsetting habits, but the personal positive is what sways me. I'm going to keep travelling, because although environmental concerns mean a lot to me, experiencing the world means even more.

So that's my philosophical postcard from the austral hemisphere. ...Wish you were here!

--Mr. Hypocrite

Labels: argentina, chile, climate change, CO2, energy, environmental, global warming, patagonia, science and society, south america, travel

The news from Copenhagen is dissipiriting, but this is worse. Via Pharyngula.

Labels: blogs, climate change, global warming, pseudoscience

I thought this video does a nice job of investigating the hacked e-mails from CRU:

Rational, in context, and well-presented. I especially like the video author's advice at the end: if you don't believe his presentation, go check for yourself, with specific advice about what to check if you want to verify or refute his interpretation.

Labels: climate change, global warming, politics, science and society

The Way Things Break has a nice "review" post up pointing to the "emerging scientific consensus on the SwiftHack e-mails."

I hope my e-mails never get published online because I can sometimes be brusque or snarky or dimwitted and ignorant, and this incident has reminded me never to type something online that I don't mind the whole world seeing. A good thing to be reminded of, particularly (listen up, young people) in terms of the sorts of stuff that gets press time on Facebook.

That being said, I think it was wise of (CRU head) Phil Jones to step aside for an inquiry. My sense of things so far is that there isn't anything wrong, but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise if the inquiry suggests there was any kind of fraud. The e-mails I've seen are not particularly damning scientifically, given that they are taken out of context. All data gets processed, and I suspect that's all that was going on at CRU, though the words used to describe it are unfortunate. A lot of scientists I know write e-mails the way I do, and I'm sure it would be easy to take any particular e-mail completely out of context and interpret it incorrectly and embarrassingly.

I wonder what life would be like for other scientists if they were working on politically-charged topics like climate change. What would the structural geologists say if a tectonics working group got hacked and a media firestorm erupted with individuals quoting a line or two of an e-mail out of context to suggest that plate tectonics was a vast conspiracy of left-winger outdoorsy types just looking for research dollars so they could go hang out in the mountains? Or a group of sedimentologists get hacked, and the hackers scream that their e-mails show geologic time is a fraud? Maybe some physicists could get hacked, and the resulting headlines on Fox News would be that "Theory of Gravity called Into Question. Inquiry Launched." Chemists: it could happen to you too. You won't be able to keep your "everything is made out of atoms" charade up much longer...

One more, for reals: I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there were some creationists out there looking at this chaos and thinking, "We should hack some biologists' e-mails, and then publish the lines that would call evolution into question." Stay tuned for that. You heard it here first.

I want to be excited for Copenhagen, but this CRU "Climategate" business definitely casts a shadow over things. Unfortunate timing...

Labels: climate change, evolution, geologic time, global warming, humor, politics, science and society

Labels: alaska, climate change, global warming, humor, oil

Last night, Lily and I went down the street to the Carnegie Institution to catch a guest lecture by climatologist Wally Broecker of Columbia University. Broecker won the Balzan Prize last year, and this was 'the Balzan Lecture.'

Broecker was introduced by the Swiss and Italian ambassadors to the United States, as well as another man whose title was not made explicit, but who had the most pronounced eyebrows I have ever seen on a non-cartoon character.

Broecker's PowerPoint was written in all capital letters, and all Helvetica. It was a bold font for a man who has a reputation for boldness. He was blunt in his assessment of the climate crisis: "The problem is huge, and I wish I could live for fifty more years to see how it all plays out," he said. He pointed out that we are currently at "390" parts per million carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, up over a third from pre-industrial levels of ~280 ppm. "We're going up by two per year," he said, and that means that we will be at 450 ppm within 30 years. "If we want to stop at 450 ppm, we're going to have to go on a World War II footing."

He estimated that about 80% of humanity's energy comes from carbon, and stated "We must cut back to zero net emissions." However, he acknowledged that it is unlikely that we will be able to do this in the time we have (~30 years, see above), so he has come to the conclusion that the only way we're going to be able to avoid a doubling of CO2 is to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it somewhere.

He showed both Keeling curves: Dave Keeling's CO2 data from Mauna Loa, and Dave's son Ralph Keeling's CO2 data and O2 data from La Jolla. (I've reported before on how compelling this oxygen data is: it's definitive information that shows the rise in atmospheric CO2 must be coming from the combustion of fossil fuels, a process which consumes oxygen by bonding it in an exothermic reaction to fossil fuel carbon.) Broecker then predicted that we are going to at least double CO2, triggering a rise in temperature of about 3.5 degrees C. He said, "This will not be a total catastrophe, but it's going to be a huge mess." He discussed ecological changes which will likely result - species shifting poleward or towards higher elevations, but able to migrate at different rates, which will be rough in terms of keeping ecosystems coherent and functional.

He said that water vapor is actually the biggest contributor to the greenhouse effect, and that it amplifies the warming caused by CO2. The partial pressure of water vapor over the oceans goes up by about 7% with each degree of warming: this means that a degree of warmth caused by CO2 would trigger a triple warming because of its effect on water vapor. He discussed uncertainties in our understanding of the climate system: the role of aerosols, the role of clouds. "We're perturbing climate," he said, "on a planet where we don't understand the whole thing."

He discussed his Columbia colleague Klaus Lackner, who has developed a plastic compound that can capture carbon from the air. Lackner has proposed a facility using filters of this compound, and estimates each facility, about the size of a shipping container, could remove 1 ton of CO2 per day, about the equivalent of 20 U.S. automobiles' emissions. Each facillity costs about as much as a car, so Broecker proposed paying for them by tacking a 5% surcharge onto automobile sales. They also cost money to maintain, and the calculation suggested that if we added a tax of 25 cents per gallon, we could generate enough income to maintain these carbon-capturing facilities.

The grants that Lackner got to develop this technology totaled about $6 million. Broecker pointed out that we pay (Yankee) baseball pitchers about $6 million per year, and that it's a shock and a shame that so very, very little is being invested in solving the problem of accumulating carbon emissions. He said, "That is peanuts compared to the amount of money that is being spent on any other serious problem on this planet."

Norway's 13-year record of success in storing captured carbon in deep sea sandstone reservoirs was his next topic, and he went on to suggest that we should try trial experiments where we inject CO2 directly into the deep sea's water, given that it has a ~1000-year circulation time. Below 3500 m depth, liquid CO2 is more dense than seawater, and would either sink or form clathrate slush. Broecker suggested it's quite possible it could be stable down there, and we need to figure out if in fact it is before it's time to actually start injecting it. Greenpeace opposes this idea, and Broecker said, "environmentalists are their own worse enemies." In Iceland, an experiment is being done where the small amount of CO2 that comes up in geothermal water is being re-injected into basalt. He pointed out that Iceland is investing MUCH more per capita in carbon capture and sequestration experiments, and lamented that the rest of the world was being so lackadaisical with its funding.

Finally, he discussed the 'geoengineering' solution of pumping SO2 into the stratosphere to filter out some incoming solar radiation (as happened naturally in the aftermath of Mount Pinatubo's 1984 eruption). Broecker and colleagues did a paper back then to calculate how much SO2 we would need in the stratosphere to counteract the warming effect of CO2 + H2O vapor, and found it to be about 30 million tons of SO2 per year. He calculated that you could deliver it with 747 aircraft, but you would need 250 of them, flying around the clock, year-round, to do it. The cost would be about $15 billion. Whether he advocated this approach was unclear to me, but that's where we ended up. The end.

Applause, more "hosting" from Mr. Eyebrow (who tried to inject a positive note into the grim discussion: "It will be okay. We're so smart; we will figure it out!"), and some audience questions. A walk home for Callan and Lily, followed by a gin and tonic.

Labels: awards, climate change, CO2, dc, global warming, meetings, new york

Wallace Broecker

Columbia University Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences

What Can We Do About Fossil Fuel CO2?

Reversing the rise of atmospheric CO2 will be a monumental task. Despite our best efforts to conserve energy, to substitute non-fossil fuel sources, and to capture CO2 produced in power plants, the level of CO2 will almost certainly reach double its pre-industrial value. Halting the CO2 buildup will require direct capture of CO2 from the atmosphere. Once the CO2 level has stabilized, there will almost certainly be a drive to reduce it. Fortunately, it appears that CO2 capture can be achieved at an acceptable cost. If we fail to act aggressively, however, we will be faced with risky remedial measures.

Co-hosted with the Embassies of Italy and Switzerland
Thursday, November 12, 2009 6:45 PM
This program is free and open to the public and is held at the Carnegie Institution, located at 1530 P Street, NW (corner of 16th and P Streets)

For more information, visit http://www.ciw.edu/events/lectures, call 202-328-6988 or e-mail CapitalScienceInfo@ciw.edu

Labels: climate change, dc, global warming, meetings

A trio of recommendations for a Tuesday morning:

• Thomas Friedman on the three bombs (nuclear, climate, debt). Wise words. (Hat tip to Cathy Manduca, via the Earth and Mind blog)
• Betsy Kolbert on how the Internet enables non-rational thinking, from last week's New Yorker.
• And another one from Ms. Kolbert, on the 'geoengineering solution' for climate change, from this week's New Yorker. (It's a review of both Superfreakonomics and Al Gore's new Our Choice, and guess how she feels about those two books? Hint: she uses the word "horseshit" several times, and she's not referring to Mr. Gore.)

Labels: blogs, climate change, economics, global warming, politics

I really enjoyed Freakonomics, and so it was disappointing to hear that the recently-released sequel, Superfreakonomics, had a section devoted to the suggestion that global warming was going to be imposssible to solve via cutting carbon emissions (with renewable energy sources) and so we should focus our efforts on geoengineering schemes instead. RealClimate has a well-written post up today showing just how sloppy the Superfreakonomics authors' thinking on this issue is.

Labels: books, climate change, global warming, politics, tech

Heh heh heh.

Labels: action, climate change, global warming, humor

If you haven't seen this yet, please watch it. Nice work, Mr. Balog!

Labels: art, climate change, glaciation, global warming, ice, meetings

George Mason Univerity invites you to attend the first lecture of this season's Vision Series on Monday, September 21, 7:00 PM, in the Center for the Arts. Jagadish Shukla, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Oceanic and Earth Sciences, will present "Global Warming: Science, Adaptation and Mitigation". A reception with light refreshments will follow the lecture. The Vision Series lectures are free and open to the public. Tickets are available online, or at the CFA ticket office, or the evening of the presentation. For more information and to reserve tickets, click here.

Labels: climate change, global warming, virginia

Very clever! (a comparison of tobacco-doesn't-hurt-you and climate-change-denier arguments) Hat tip to Tamino.

Great resource. (For those who love to wallow in data and want the freshest graphs for their students.) Hat tip to ClimateSight.

Labels: climate change, global warming, politics

Bill McKibben on political conservatives and climate change. (Orion) - This addresses what I see as a fundamental contradiction in modern political discourse: the fact that a lot of "conservatives" aren't into conserving natural systems. It bugs me & McKibben both.

Weather vs. climate (Surprising Science, a Smithsonian blog)

The new Wooster Geologists blog, featuring some awesome imagery of the Canadian Rockies.

Some advice about finding the right geology grad program for you (from Christie at the Cape)

Labels: climate change, global warming, politics, websites

It shows current atmospheric measurements of carbon dioxide in parts per million, as sampled at Mauna Loa, Hawai'i.

Want one? Here's where to pick up the HTML code.

Labels: climate change, CO2, global warming, hawaii

My colleague Ken Rasmussen (the other full-time geology professor at NOVA-Annandale) takes issue with George Will's most recent climate-change-denying column for the Washington Post.

Labels: climate change, dc, environmental, global warming, nova

When I started writing this post, I had just finished reading Tyler Volk's book CO2 Rising. Now it's been more than a month, and it's time to get this post up online. The author has kindly granted me permission to reproduce some of the images from the book.

CO2 Rising has got some stuff that sets it apart from other global warming books.

To start with, it's more focused on helping readers understand the carbon cycle rather than outright climate science. To do this, Volk employs a heurisitic device of naming certain carbon atoms. He names one 'Dave' (in tribute to Dave Keeling, who established the atmospheric CO2 observatory on Mauna Loa). Dave gets washed out of limestone and into the sea, he diffuses into the air, he gets sucked into a plant stoma and locked up in plant sugar. He gets fermented in a batch of beer, and drunk by the author, then oxidized and diffuses across the lung membrane and is exhaled back into the atmosphere, and so on. There are three other carbon atoms who also get names, and the reader gets to follow them on their adventures through the biosphere over tens of thousands of years. Some have been locked up in fossil fuel deposits for millions of years.

While I've heard some dismiss this narrative technique as a gimmick, I liked it. It drives home the point that carbon atoms "live" forever, and are simply jumping from carbon reservoir to reservoir through chemical reactions and physical flow. Bonds form and are broken. Energy is absorbed, energy is released. Now Dave is in a coccolithophore, now he's in a tree, now he's being oxidized in a cooking fire. You really get a sense of the complexity and the limits of the carbon cycle.

After these physical pathways are established, the latter half of the book explores the manifestations of accumulating carbon dioxide in the world. The reader, with their new sense of the robust & complicated nature of the carbon cycle, can start looking at the problem of anthropogenic climate change.

I was particularly impressed with Volk's pedagogical style by "zooming out" from a series of graphs of carbon dioxide, granting a tremendous perspective on how out-of-whack our modern CO2 concentrations really are. He does this by starting with the present day and backing out further and further into the past. The saga begins with the familiar Mauna Loa curve:


Then he puts that in perspective by showing CO2 data from Law Dome ice, which overlaps with Mauna Loa:


...But Law Dome's record goes back further than that:


...And where Law Dome's record ends, the ice of Taylor Dome takes over:


...And it takes us back further still:


Finally, we get to Vostok's record, which takes us back (in this graph) 400, 000 years:


I think that's a pretty impressive way of presenting this data -- building it out bit by bit, starting with the familiar and then going waaaaaaaaaayyyy back into the past.

All in all, I really enjoyed the book. I recommend that you read it. Say hi to 'Dave' for me!

Labels: books, climate change, CO2, global warming

Here's the results of a neat little experiment my Environmental Geology students did a couple weeks ago. This is the first time I've run this activity, and I was pleased with the results:

Labels: climate change, CO2, global warming, nova, teaching

Heh! This "clean coal" debunking campaign is directed by the Coen Brothers.

And another:

Behind the scenes:

Labels: climate change, CO2, coal, global warming, humor, politics

Last week, I mentioned the impending launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory... Well, last night at the launch, things didn't work out so well...

NASA Satellite Fails to Reach Orbit (New York Times)
NASA satellite crashes (Los Angeles Times)
Seven years' work on satellite crashes and burns in 12 minutes (Scotsman)
NASA satellite launch fails (Newsday)
and from NASA themselves, the grim Launch Mishap Ends OCO Mission

What a bummer. All that potential knowledge, snuffed out before we even got a chance to see it.

Labels: climate change, CO2, global warming, news, satellite imagery

Very cool -- I think I want to design an Environmental Geology lab that uses Google Earth to access and evaluate this data. Kudos to the Vulcan Project for putting it together.

You can open these layers in Google Earth by clicking here.

Labels: climate change, CO2, coal, global warming

The February meeting of the Potomac Geophysical Society will be held February 19th at the Fort Myer Officers' Club in Arlington, VA in the Campaign Room. This month's talk will be: Listening to a Melting Arctic Ocean - Singing the Blues?, by Peter N. Mikhalevsky, SAIC, VA.

Abstract:
The waters of the Arctic Ocean have been warming since the mid 1990's. Average maximum temperatures have risen by more than 1°C. In the last 20 years submarine measurements of sea ice draft have shown a 40% reduction in average sea ice thickness while satellite remote sensing has shown a 14% reduction in sea-ice extent over the same period decreasing at a rate of 3-5%/decade (thicker multi-year ice at 7-10%/decade). Forecasts indicate that if these trends continue the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free, "A Blue Arctic Ocean" before the end of this century. Significant effort is needed to expand our observational capabilities in the Arctic Ocean to support better modeling, forecasting and improve our understanding of this critical ocean and the linkages to global climate. One technique - acoustic thermometry - has been shown to be a very effective for monitoring average heat content and average temperature in the Arctic Ocean and in particular in the Arctic Intermediate Water (AIW) layer. Two experiments conducted in 1994 and 1999 measured the warming and demonstrated the feasibility of long term observations. Plans are in process to incorporate acoustic thermometry and tomography in in-situ Arctic Ocean observatories.

Dinner Menu
Chicken Marsala (House salad & vegetables, rolls and butter)
Tira Mi Su
Coffee / tea
A vegetarian meal can be substituted by request.

Reception at 6:30. Dinner at 7:30. Talk at 8:30 PM. Allow 15 minutes for security entering Ft. Myer as all civilian vehicles are searched. To ensure access to and from Fort Myer use the Hatfield Gate, open 24 hours a day (https://webmail-1.nvcc.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.fmmcmwr.com/directionsmyer.htm). If you wish to attend dinner ($25), please make reservations with Joydeep Bhattacharyya at 703-676-4373 or via E-mail at Joydeep.bhattacharyya@saic.com. If you wish, please feel free to attend the talk without dinner. Non-members and guests are welcome. Visit the PGS web site at https://webmail-1.nvcc.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.potomacgeophysical.com%2520/ for new meeting announcements, etc.

Labels: climate change, global warming, meetings, oceans, pgs

For those of you who missed it, here's video of Mike Tidwell's talk at NOVA last Thursday.

Labels: action, climate change, global warming, maryland, nova, podcasts and vodcasts, politics, virginia

Cool idea. Check it out.

Labels: art, blogs, climate change, global warming, ice, oceans

Because he's coming to campus tomorrow (Thursday), last weekend I watched Mike Tidwell's movie We are all Smith Islanders. It's a 35-minute long documentary about how climate change is effecting the states of Maryland and Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Though it is a political document (and not a scientific documentary), I think it's a worthwhile enterprise because it connects the global to the local. We hear a lot about climate change, but when someone actually walks through Ocean City, Maryland, pointing out what three feet of sea level rise would look like, it fosters a connection based on shared landmarks.

Thanks to archive.org, you can actually watch the movie in low resolution on the Internet. Google video also keeps a copy available.

Or, if you'd prefer it in higher resolution (on DVD), you can find it at the NOVA library.

Labels: action, climate change, dc, global warming, maryland, movies, nova, politics, virginia

I'm on the mailing list for ANDRILL, an organization that I got interested in because they pair educators up with Antarctic researchers for scientific expeditions. They forwarded this video to me yesterday from the recent Polar-palooza campaign. It's a bunch of high school kids singing/rapping about climate change. Some of the turns of phrase are pretty clever, and the overall production values are high. I dig it, and figured you might want to check it out too:

Labels: antarctica, climate change, global warming, music

While completing an Amazon impluse buy triggered by the "Climate Sale" post at The Way Things Break, I noticed a clever book cover:

Whoever designed that deserves a bonus. Pretty clever.

Labels: art, blogs, books, climate change, global warming, websites

From Greenfyres, via Tamino: "Sherlock Holmes and case of the climate bandwagon." Well worth a read, if you like satire and the writings of Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle.

Labels: blogs, books, climate change, global warming, humor

Following the success of last year's Climate Change Symposium, this year NOVA will host Mike Tidwell, the dynamic director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, for a talk on global warming and what college campuses can do about it. Mr. Tidwell has a reputation as a terrific speaker, so I'm really looking forward to his talk.

He will be speaking at 11am on Thursday, February 5, in the Ernst Community Cultural Center Theater (CE building) on the Annandale campus of Northern Virginia Community College. The event is free and open to the public. I encourage you to attend if you're in town. A booksigning will follow in the Theater lobby.

Labels: climate change, global warming, maryland, meetings, nova

Tamino of Open Mind has an excellent post up describing how 2008 temperature data compare to the long-term trend. Check it out! It's an excellent example of clear writing accompanied by illustrative graphs.

Labels: climate change, global warming, graphics, news

This is pretty good... from the Coyote Crossing blog:

Labels: art, climate change, coal, environmental, global warming, politics

The author Michael Crichton died yesterday. He gave us Jurassic Park; He also wrote a novel based on the idea that global warming was a hoax (State of Fear). A mixed bag, but he'll be remembered for Jurassic Park. I've read everything he's written except for the global warming book. My favorite was non-fiction: Travels. Check it out.

NY Times obituary.

Labels: books, dinosaurs, global warming

Labels: climate change, environmental, global warming, humor, oil, politics

Two of my favorite things to talk about, global warming and the Talking Heads, are combined in this trailer for a new program on PBS:

Hat tip to Babak R. for passing this on to me. I'm a day behind the curve in posting it (the show aired last night), but I'm a day behind in just about everything these days, so I'll post it anyhow.

Labels: climate change, global warming, music, tv

This is pretty good, folks. Frank Capra (director of It's A Wonderful Life and other films) put out a documentary called "Unchained Goddess" for Bell Labs' television program "The Bell Telephone Hour." In this segment, host Frank Baxter (a professor of English, not science, but we'll let that pass, since he's so charming and avuncular) discusses the state of knowledge in the 1950s about global warming:

Hat tip to Andy Revkin of the Times for posting this on his Dot Earth blog today.

Labels: climate change, global warming, movies

Heh heh heh!

Labels: climate change, global warming, humor

What're you doing on Friday? There are two excellent-sounding earth science seminars inside the Beltway: The University of Maryland Geology Department's weekly seminar, and the American Meteorological Society's monthly seminar for policy makers. Both events are free and open to the public. AMS is at 10am, UMD at 11am. You can't do both -- you must choose...

AMS: Friday, September 26, 2008New Time - 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room G50 Washington, DC

Accelerating Atmospheric CO2 Growth from Economic Activity, Carbon Intensity, and Efficiency of Natural Carbon Sinks

What is the relationship between economic activity and CO2 growth? What is carbon intensity and how does it relate to economic activity? What are the trends in CO2 growth, carbon intensity, and changes in the efficiency of natural reservoirs to store carbon? How does the growth in CO2 compare to the various estimates of CO2 growth contained in the most recent IPCC assessment of climate change? What is permafrost and what is the extent of permafrost thaw in the Arctic? Is permafrost thaw a response to global warming and if so, what is the future likely to hold? Will permafrost thaw result in the release of additional CO2 into the atmosphere from Arctic soils? If so, what is the impact likely to be on global warming? How much carbon is stored in Arctic soils? Assuming that the Arctic continues to warm well above the global average, what is the likely fate of that soil carbon and how might it influence climate in the future?

Public Invited; Buffet Reception Following

Moderator: Dr. Anthony Socci, Senior Science Fellow, American Meteorological Society

Speakers:

• Dr. Josep (Pep) Canadell, Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) Marine and Atmospheric Research, Canberra, Australia
• Dr. Vladimir Romanovsky, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, A
• Dr. Howard E. Epstein, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Program Summary

How Fast is Atmospheric CO2 Growing and Why, and Does it Suggest Ways to Mitigate Climate Change?

The increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is the single largest human perturbation of the climate system. Its rate of change reflects the balance between human-driven carbon emissions and the dynamics of a number of terrestrial and ocean processes that remove or emit CO2. It is the long term evolution of this balance that will determine to a large extent the speed and magnitude of climate change and the mitigation requirements to stabilize atmospheric CO2 concentrations at any given level. Dr. Canadell will present the most recent trends in global carbon sources and sinks, updated for the first time to the year 2007, with particularly focus on major shifts occurring since 2000. Dr. Canadell’s research indicates that the underlying drivers of changes in atmospheric CO2 growth include: i) increased human-induced carbon emissions, ii) stagnation of the carbon intensity of the global economy, and iii) decreased efficiency of natural carbon sinks.

New Estimates of Carbon Storage in Arctic Soils and Implications in a Changing Environment

The Arctic represents approximately 13% of the total land area of the Earth, and arctic tundra occupies roughly 5 million square kilometers. Arctic tundra soils represent a major storage pool for dead organic carbon, largely due to cold temperatures and saturated soils in many locations that prevent its decomposition. Prior estimates of carbon stored in tundra soils range from 20-29 kg of soil organic carbon (SOC) per square meter. These estimates however, were based on data collected from only the top 20-40 cm of soil, and were sometimes extrapolated to 100 cm. It is our understanding that large quantities of SOC are stored at greater depths, through the annual freezing and thawing motion of the soils (cryoturbation), and potentially frozen in the permafrost.

Recent detailed analysis of Arctic soils by Dr. Epstein and his colleagues found that soil organic carbon values averaged 34.8 kg per square meter, representing an increase of approximately 40% over the prior estimates. Additionally, 38% of the total soil organic carbon was found in the permafrost.

A total of 98.2 gigatonnes (1015 grams) of carbon is estimated to be stored in the soils of the North American Arctic tundra. An area-based estimate for the entire Arctic suggests the presence of approximately 160 gigatonnes of carbon. The annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is roughly 2% of this amount, so small changes in Arctic carbon storage could have substantive impacts on atmospheric CO2. The future of this stored carbon is, however, largely uncertain in the face of a changing Arctic environment. Climate change and resulting increasing temperatures in much of the Arctic could increase the decomposition rates of soil organic carbon (producing atmospheric CO2), and increase permafrost thaw, which would expose more soil organic carbon for decomposition. On the other hand, increasing temperatures could also lead to greater sequestration of atmospheric CO2 by tundra vegetation. Actual changes will be the result of complex interactions between processes that sequester carbon and those that release it.

Past, Present and Future Changes in Permafrost and Implications for a Changing Carbon Budget

Presence of permafrost is one of the major factors that turn northern ecosystems into an efficient natural carbon sink. Moreover, a significant amount of carbon is sequestered in the upper several meters to several tens of meters of permafrost. Because of that, the appearance and disappearance of permafrost within the northern landscapes have a direct impact on the efficiency of northern ecosystems to sequester carbon in soil, both near the ground surface and in deeper soil layers. Recent changes in permafrost may potentially transform the northern ecosystems from an effective carbon sink to a significant source of carbon for the Earth’s atmosphere. Additional emissions of carbon from thawing permafrost may be in the form of CO2 or methane depending upon specific local conditions.

Dr. Romanovsky will present information on changes in terrestrial and subsea permafrost in the past during the last glacial-interglacial cycle and on the most recent trends in permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere. He will further discuss the potential impact of these changes in permafrost (including a short discussion on potential changes in methane gas clathrates) on the global carbon cycle. Dr. Romanovsky’s research suggests that permafrost in North America and Northern Eurasia shows a substantial warming during the last 20 to 30 years. The magnitude of warming varied with location, but was typically from 0.5 to 2°C at 15 meters depth. Thawing of the Little Ice Age permafrost is on-going at many locations. There are some indications that the late-Holocene permafrost started to thaw at some specific undisturbed locations in the European Northeast, in the Northwest and East Siberia, and in Alaska. Future projections of possible changes in permafrost during the current century, based on the application of calibrated permafrost models, will be also presented.

The next seminar is tentatively scheduled for October 10, 2008.
Topic: Ecosystem Health in a Rapidly Changing Climate

Please see the AMS web site for seminar summaries, presentations and future
events: http://www.ametsoc.org/seminar

For more information please contact:
Anthony D. Socci, Ph.D. Tel. (202) 737-9006, ext. 412 socci@ametsoc.org

UMD: 11:00am - 12:00pm at 1121 Computer Science Instructional Center

Internal flow and extrusion of the Greater Himalayan Slab, Mount Everest Massif: a tour of the world's highest rocks
Dr. Rick Law from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

If you are interested in meeting with Dr. Law please sign up online. You also may delete an appointment from this page. Please join the faculty and students for refreshments in the Geology Building foyer at 10:30 am.

Seminar series web page for UMD-College Park Geology.

Labels: climate change, CO2, geology, global warming, maryland, meetings

Labels: appalachians, climate change, global warming, new york, rain, sediment, snow

Another event that may be of interest to DC area readers:
Learn why plug-in hybrid cars (PHEV) hold such great promise as a means to reduce the costs of driving, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce our national reliance on petroleum. What are current PHEV drivers experiencing (the good and the not-so-good) and what are the barriers to bringing PHEV’s to market. Plug-in hybrid passenger vehicles are not yet in production, but what we might expect to see from automotive companies in the next few years. The term "plug-in hybrid" has come to mean a hybrid vehicle that can be charged from a standard electrical wall socket.

I won't be able to make it because of Historical Geology class Tuesday nights, but I encourage the rest of you to go, and enjoy!

Labels: climate change, global warming, oil, prius, tech

Andy Revkin's Dot Earth blog alerted me to a significant milestone in Arctic melting: There is a continuous circle of water around the Arctic now: the Northwest Passage (north of North America) and the "Northeast Passage" (a.k.a. the Northern Sea Route, north of Eurasia) are both open at the same time, for the first time in recorded human history. The last time the Northern Sea Route was open was 2005, but the Northwest Passage wasn't open then. The Northwest Passage opened up last summer (2007), but the Northern Sea Route wasn't open then. This year is the first time in human history that you could sail a boat completely around the North Pole through open water... but you'd have to have a pretty fast boat (because it's going to start freezing up again within a couple of weeks).

The last month's worth of retreating sea ice data is shown in this animation loop.

Article in the Independent (U.K.)

Press release by the National Ice Center (Sept. 5):

"As of September 4, 2008, the Northern Sea Route (Northeast Passage) appears 'open'. According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), open water is defined as areas with less than 1/10th ice concentration (WMO Sea-Ice Nomenclature, 1970). National Ice Center (NIC) analysis of Synthetic Aperture Radar imagery suggests a 10-15km wide area of open water that winds along the Taymyr Peninsula and through the Laptev Sea. Even with small openings, currents from the north could clog openings again quickly, in the same fashion that has opened the sea ice lead in a matter of days. A sea ice lead is any fracture or passage-way through sea ice which is navigable by surface vessels. There are also substantial amounts of dangerous multi-year ice present in the area. Shallow or uncharted bathymetries may present additional hazards in those areas where ice concentration is reduced. Current charting of bathymetry from the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO) suggests depths between 10-20 meters along the Taymyr Peninsula and 20-30 meters through the lead in the Laptev. This is the first recorded occurrence of the Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route both being open at the same time. The NIC will continue to monitor this area and will report on any changes in the status of polar navigation routes."

UPDATE: You may also be interested in the fate of some specific ice shelves: "Rapid Retreat: Ice Shelf Loss on Canada's Ellesmere Coast," a well-illustrated update from NASA's Earth Observatory.

Labels: alaska, canada, climate change, global warming, russia

Labels: art, climate change, environmental, global warming, humor

Fellow DC metro area residents -- there are a bunch of geology events coming up in the next couple of months that you may be interested in. Everything* listed here is free and open to the public.

Next Sunday, August 24, I'll be leading an event called "Geology Along the C&O Canal," at the Lock 8 River Center from 10am until 11am. My plan is to give an overview of the Appalachian mountain belt, then focus on the Piedmont "chapter" of that story, using local outcrops to illustrate the rock types produced. I'm not sure if you need to reserve a spot or not; Call Bridget Chapin at the Potomac Conservancy (number at link above) to inquire about details.

Friday, September 5: "Geology Along the Billy Goat Trail," I'll lead this hike along the famous Billy Goat Trail, examining its exquisite display of metamorphic geology and geomorphology. 12:30pm-4:30pm. Reserve a spot through the good folks at the Great Falls Tavern Visitor Center.

Wednesday, September 10: first Geological Society of Washington meeting of the fall. Beer served at 7:30pm, and the formal program begins at 8pm. At the Cosmos Club in Dupont Circle.

Saturday, September 20: I'll be leading my "History Before History: the Geologic Saga of Washington, DC" walking tour as part of Walkingtown, DC. The tour runs from 1pm until about 4pm, and involves about 2.5 miles of walking from Adams-Morgan to Georgetown. Limit of 30 people; interested walkers should reserve a spot with Cultural Tourism, DC, the nonprofit group that sponsors Walkingtown, DC each spring and fall.

Sunday, September 21: For those who can't make it Saturday, I'll again be leading my "History Before History: the Geologic Saga of Washington, DC" walking tour as part of Walkingtown, DC. The tour runs from 1pm until about 4pm, and involves about 2.5 miles of walking from Adams-Morgan to Georgetown. Limit of 30 people; interested walkers should reserve a spot with Cultural Tourism, DC, the nonprofit group that sponsors Walkingtown, DC each spring and fall.

Wednesday, September 24: Another Geological Society of Washington meeting, but I'll be delivering a talk at this one. My talk's title is "Rise of the geoblogosphere."

Sunday, October 5: I'll be delivering a talk called "A Geologist's Perspective on Climate Change" at the Chinn Park Regional Library in Woodbridge, Virginia. 2pm-3pm.

Friday & Saturday, October 10-11: The Virginia Geological Field Conference, in Marion, VA. "Geology of the Saltville and Pulaski Fault Blocks" is this year's topic. *This is the one item on the list that is not in the immediate DC metro area, and also the one item on the list that costs money -- registration is $45 for professionals, $20 for students. Transportation, lunch, and guidebook will be provided. See more details on the website. If you're interested in comparing and contrasting two Valley and Ridge fault blocks shoved westward during Alleghenian mountain-building, this might be of interest to you.

Thursday, October 23: the Earth's birthday, according to James Ussher. 4004 BC to 2008 AD; does that make it 6012 years old? Or is it 6011 years old, since there was no year "0"? Tricky... Regardless, I'll be serving lithosphere/asthenosphere cake/pudding to NOVA students in celebration of the day. (I posted on visiting Archbishop Ussher's church here.)

Wednesday, October 22: Another GSW meeting. Same time, same place, but this time I'll be back where I belong: in the audience.

Friday, October 24: "Geology Along the Billy Goat Trail," I'll lead this hike along the infamous Billy Goat Trail, examining its exquisite display of metamorphic geology and geomorphology. 12:30pm-4:30pm. Reserve a spot through the good folks at the Great Falls Tavern Visitor Center.

If you're into geology and you'll be around, I hope you'll join us on one or more of these events.

Labels: blogs, climate change, CO2, dc, geology, global warming, gsw, nova, piedmont

A bunch of articles in today's issue of Nature use precise measurements of the composition of glacial air bubbles to extend the record of atmospheric gases (and airborne dust) back to 800,000 years before present. (Previously, the record "only" went back to 650,000 years before present.) Fully eight glacial cycles are seen in the new, expanded dataset. These new findings are all part of the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA), and they offer some new insights, as well as additional confirmation of the close link between climate and past fluctuations in CO2 and CH4. Check it out.

Labels: climate change, CO2, global warming, ice

In an article in Newsweek, the hosts of NPR's "Car Talk" talk about the car of the future.

Turns out that the Tappet Brothers, one of whom doesn't even own a car (!), are lobbying Congress for increased automobile fuel efficiency. They're also starring in a new episode of the PBS series Nova. And they have some advice for you, the consumer: "Get a Prius."

FYI, since we're talking about it -- a quick update on my "Pious" seems in order. Its current fuel efficiency (running average since I bought the car in December) is:

Labels: action, climate change, global warming, oil, petroleum, prius, tech, tv

Thought I'd pass these along:

(1) This weekend's New York Times Magazine is the "Green Issue" with a wealth of articles on environmental issues and their solutions. The range of authors they got to contribute is pretty impressive.

(2) A video on YouTube which simplifies thinking about our choices regarding climate policy, and provides a compelling argument that action is the right choice, even if climate science turns out to be wrong:

Labels: climate change, environmental, global warming

Take the next five minutes of your life, and watch this video about a cool new imaging experiment done by Kevin Gurney's research group at Purdue. They've taken pre-existing data about CO2 emissions and plotted it in a dynamic map. The most striking feature is the pulsating nature of the United States' CO2 emissions: we put out a lot during the day, and not so much at night. The maps really show this -- demonstrating yet again the power of images (over description) to convey information.

It's long been my contention that one of the biggest problems with the global warming issue is that CO2 is invisible. I'll bet that if people actually saw giant clouds the color of liquid Barney wafting off the coast every day, then they would be more inclined to think of carbon dioxide as something tangible.

Labels: art, climate change, CO2, global warming, maps

About a year ago, I watched "The Blob" (the original 1958 version) via Netflix. As you're probably aware, it deals with an alien lifeform coming to Earth, a little blob of goo that assimilates human beings into its body and grows, eventually getting large enough to engulf a diner where Steve McQueen is hiding. My favorite moment came at the end of The Blob, when they discover that the blob doesn't like cold. So they spray it with CO2 fire extinguishers & freeze it. Then the Air Force comes in and air-lifts it up to "the Arctic." The police chief character says to Steve McQueen: "At least we've got it stopped." And McQueen replies, I kid you not: "As long as the Arctic stays cold." Oh, Steve, if only you knew! Looks like we've got one more hazard that climate change is going to unleash...

Labels: climate change, global warming, movies

Over the first half of the semester, I've been reading Vaclav Smil's comprehensive book The Earth's Biosphere. It's an incredible work of scholarship, and I recommend it to anyone with a solid foundational understanding of both biology and geology who's ready for "the big picture": an overall review which will give contextual perspective on each of the details of how the living portion of our planet works. It's a remarkable book, really. It covers so much, in such a precise, well-written manner, that it makes my head spin. It has forty pages of references (in small type)! As an example of the multidisciplinary nature of the book, I offer the following graphic from page 134:

In one image, Smil integrates information about seven variables: clay varieties, latitude, biome type, depth of weathering in the crust, precipitation, temperature, and evaporation! That's an incredible accompishment graphically, but he does the same thing in just about every sentence.

I read the book originally because a potential student recommended it as providing a "balanced" look at climate change. Curious to see what that meant, I checked it out of the library here on campus, and read it. It has an excellent and comprehensive scientific discussion of climate change, with a particular focus on how the Earth's biosphere will effect it, and be effected by it.

I feel obliged to give an example of something I learned, so here's amazing fact #3546 from the book: photosynthesis is really inefficient! Plants vary in how photosynthetically efficient they are, but the values range from plants that capture 0.1% of incoming solar radiation to the really efficient ones, which max out at capturing about 2% of incoming solar radiation. That's so not efficient! I had no idea.

Of course, no book is perfect, and I'll offer two complaints about The Earth's Biosphere: (1) A general theme is woven throughout the book of examining the work of neglected Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky, who made critical advances to our understanding of the biosphere, but hasn't gotten enough credit. Smil goes overboard in giving Vernadsky his due: it's Vernadsky this, Vernadsky that, every couple of pages through the whole book. I got sick of reading about him, and wished Smil could stick to the (excellent, fascinating) science, divorced from the persons who wrought it. (2) Every now and again, he threw in a superflous graphic, like this one:

Is the fish really supposed to be ~16 m tall? What's the point of this graphic anyhow? To show that fish live below the ice? Seems to me you could just say so. (Plus, the graphic needs the scientific name italicized, as in the caption.) I don't mean to snipe -- most of the book is super, but stuff like this irritates me. A fly in the ointment, I guess. The book's worth reading regardless.

Labels: books, climate change, global warming

Juliet Eilperin reports in today's issue of the The Washington Post about the Ken Caldeira study I mentioned a few days ago. She also mentions another recent modeling study by Andreas Schmittner, who wrote (with others) a February 14 article in Global Biogeochemical Cycles that suggests that if global emissions continue on a "business as usual" path for the rest of the century, the Earth will warm by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. Schmittner's study continues: If we don't get to zero emissions until 2300, the temperature rise at that point would be more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit. (FYI: I haven't yet read the Schmittner, et al., study myself.)

Anyhow, the Post article reminds me of something I've been mulling over, and meaning to post since then.

I view climate change from two main perspectives: (1) as an earth scientist, and (2) as a citizen. As a scientist, I find it fascinating to watch how all this plays out. As a scientist, it presents an opportunity for learning, for greater understanding of how the Earth works. You see, geologists are limited scientifically: we often don't have the option of running controlled experiments on our topics of study: continents are too big, the spans of time are too vast. But with global warming, we have a colossal experiment that's being run, even though no one intended it as such. I offered this quote back in January, and I think I'll put it up again to give some context to my "scientist views climate change" perspective:

• "Human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future. Within a few centuries, we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated organic carbon stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years."

-- Roger Revelle and Hans Seuss, 1957

In other words: The timescale of carbon storage is ~7 orders of magnitude larger than the timescale of carbon release. That's a large difference. Humans are thus changing the atmosphere's composition; but what effect will it have on the climate? Those who practice science can make some logical predictions based on our understanding of the natural world:

(A) It has been demonstrated for over a century that certain gases, like CO2, absorb energy in certain wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. The gases that absorb in the infrared portion of the spectrum are the ones we call "greenhouse gases," since the majority of the energy re-radiated upwards from the Earth's surface is infrared, and absorption of this energy keeps the planet warmer than it would otherwise be.

(B) It has been demonstrated that in the presence of oxygen, biogenic carbon can be oxidized to release energy. Whether it's a campfire or gasoline (derived from petroleum derived from Paleozoic planktonic photosynthesis), organic carbon burns. When it does, carbon and oxygen combine, and CO2 is a product of the (exothermic) reaction.

(C) At numerous locations around the world, we have measured precisely the rising concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere. We have even measured precisely a corresponding decline in free atmospheric oxygen, as oxygen is consumed through the combustion of fossil carbon.

(D) These facts predict that the Earth's temperature will rise on average as a result of the greater concentration of greenhouse gases. That too can be measured, with multiple thermometers in multiple locations over a long period of time. What we find is that on average the temperature is going up (it's risen 0.7 of a degree Celsius, or ~1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century), as is logically predicted by (A), (B), and (C).

So, as a scientist, I think it's really interesting: Here you've got some knowns, and some unknowns, and a logical structure linking them. Hypotheses yield predictions, and those predictions are being tested. Wow, scientist-me thinks, it's fascinating to see how the Earth system works when you alter a variable like atmospheric CO2 concentration.

On the other hand, I'm not just a dispassionate observer watching this all play out on an experimental planet: I'm also a person who lives on that planet and will be subject to the consequences of the experiment. It's from that perspective, the "citizen" point-of-view, that global warming scares the hell out of me. The Earth's fate is not in question here: our planet has endured far greater fluctuations in the past (both warmer and colder). The issue is for those of us who live on the surface of the planet Earth (humans and other species): as conditions change, will we be able to adapt? I'm concerned that some of the consequences are potentially too large for ecosystems to maintain their coherency. I'm worried about the huge proportion of my fellow human citizens (of the Earth) who dwell on the low-elevation coastlines of the world. The Earth will endure quite a lot of temperature variation; but I'm not sure about the organisms on its surface (of which I am one).

Last week, one story in the news was about the opening of the "Doomsday" seed vault on Svalbard. I was struck by the scientific parallels between the seed vault story and global warming, yet how very differently people were treating it. Science suggests that biodiversity is declining, and is subject to numerous threats, and we humans depend on viable seeds for our survival as a species. So, we're taking action by making this vault to keep our seed stock safe. It's totally uncontroversial. You don't see any Seed Vault Skeptics publishing editorials or holding conferences. Yet with climate change, there is a substantial voice in public life suggesting that the science is flawed, and thus that no action is required. Obviously, there's a HUGE difference between the relatively simple matter of creating a seed bunker in the Arctic and retooling the world economy's energy source, but those are both matters of political action. The science underlying each issue is strong and compelling. Whether we choose to act on the conclusions of that science is another thing: do we take action only when it's easy? Or do we take action when the science suggests that, for our own benefit as a species, we must?

Perhaps this is the third perspective with which I view climate change: as a "social scientist" intrigued would how people sort out complex issues like this. Will we be able to pull if off, as a society? Maybe it's already too late.

Some quotes from the Post article:

• "People aren't reducing emissions at all, let alone debating whether 88 percent or 99 percent is sufficient. It's like you're starting off on a road trip from New York to California, and before you even start, you're arguing about where you're going to park at the end."

--Gavin Schmidt, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

• "[Global warming] is a classic inter-generational debate, where the short-term benefits of emitting carbon accrue mainly to us and where the dangers of them are largely put off until future generations."

-- Steve Gardiner, University of Washington

• "Each unit of CO2 emissions must be viewed as leading to quantifiable and essentially permanent climate change on centennial timescales."

-- Damon Matthews, Concordia University

Labels: climate change, CO2, global warming, politics

The meeting this week of global-warming-skeptics in New York, sponsored by the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, is discussing the various reasons they feel climate change science is unconvincing. One reason being bandied about is the cold winter the U.S. has been experiencing. Andrew Revkin covered it for the New York Times. Juliet Eilpern covered it for the Washington Post. "I will admit that we do not have all the pieces," he NYT article quotes Dr. Ignatius Rigor as having said (He works at the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Rigor continues, "but as the I.P.C.C. reports, the preponderance of evidence suggests that global warming is real....Climate skeptics typically take a few small pieces of the puzzle to debunk global warming, and ignore the whole picture that the larger science community sees by looking at all the pieces."

I agree with this rigorous (pun fully intended) approach, and am bummed out when I hear people look at a relatively small weather event as evidence for climactic trends over the long term. Plenty of people made that mistake with Hurricane Katrina, and it looks like more people are making it now with regards to the 2007-08 winter chill. I'm pleased to see that at least one of the skeptics on the Heartland Institute meeting program, Patrick Michaels, a climatologist at the Cato Institute libertarian think-tank in DC, makes that same point. Gavin Schmidt (NASA Goddard & RealClimate.org) agrees: "When I get called by CNN to comment on a big summer storm or a drought or something, I give the same answer I give a guy who asks about a blizzard," Dr. Schmidt said. "It's all in the long-term trends. Weather isn't going to go away because of climate change. There is this desire to explain everything that we see in terms of something you think you understand, whether that's the next ice age coming or global warming."

So how big are the fluctuations (weather) relative to the trend (climate)? This graphic from the Times shows this winter's temperature relative to the overall trend. Click on it for the full-size version.

Also, you may be interested in Real Climate's discussion of the conference.

Labels: climate change, global warming

Today was the artist's reception at the National Academies of Science for Camille Seaman's exhibit of photographs entitled "The Last Iceberg." I took a break from writing a paper for my MSSE class and went down to check it out.

One of my geology honors students, Spencer, showed up too, and we checked out Seaman's glowing icebergs set against dark backgrounds. There were some really stunning images, but the exhibit was rather small -- only fifteen or so separate pictures.

If you're not in the DC area, you can check out a slideshow of images from the exhibit at Seaman's website. Enjoy!

Also, while I was there, I went upstairs to see the excellent "Monkey Portraits" exhibit by Jill Greenberg. As with "The Last Iceberg," only a selection of images was shown -- a total of ten or so. But man, what an amazing ten images! I'll put just one up here, entitled "Undecided":

Labels: art, climate change, dc, global warming, primates

New Scientist gives the full run-down on their findings.

Reference: Matthews, H. D., and K. Caldeira (2008), Stabilizing climate requires near-zero emissions, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L04705, doi:10.1029/2007GL032388.

Labels: climate change, CO2, global warming

In this past week's New Yorker, Michael Specter examines the convoluted business of trying to measure a person's (or a product's) carbon footprint. Turns out to be rather complicated. An interesting, thought-provoking article: this is viewed in some sectors as an essential piece of information, but it's amost mind-numbing to try and cover every relevant consideration. I recommend the article.

Labels: climate change, CO2, global warming

The geoblogosphere spawns semi-monthly collections of blog posts on a particular theme, and this time around, Dr. Lemming is hosting with the theme of "things that make you go Hmmmm." The idea here is to write a blog post about something you don't understand in geology -- a mystery. Here's my contribution:

When I was in graduate school at the University of Maryland, I started hearing about a crazy notion that the entire planet had frozen over in the past. Apparently, multiple streams of evidence (chemical, isotopic, geologic, and magnetic) suggested that during the Neoproterozoic era of geologic time, the planet experienced a mega-Ice Age. There were even glacial deposits within a few degrees from the equator. If you've got glaciers operating within a few degrees of the equator, some scientists argued, then that means the Earth would have been entirely sheathed in ice. Its reflectivity ("albedo") would have been so high that most (~85%?) of incoming solar radiation would have been reflected back out into space, and that would have made the planet even colder, promoting more snow and ice. This positive feedback cycle would have reached a tipping point if the planet were covered in ice from the poles to approximately 30 degrees latitude: once it got that white, the "runaway albedo" feedback would have reached a tipping point, and wham, you've got a planet that looks like a great big snowball.

This led Joe Kirschvink (of Cal Tech) to dub this episode of glaciation the "Snowball Earth," which is about as catchy a name as a scientific hypothesis is every likely to get. The idea was then heavily promoted by Paul Hoffman (of Harvard), who was seeing strange stratigraphic patterns during field work in Namibia. Among the evidence Hoffman eventually accumulated for the Snowball were the following: "dropstones" (boulders, presumably dropped by icebergs into fine-grained offshore marine deposits, squishing the layers beneath them); conformable stratigraphy of "tropical" carbonate topped by glacial tillites, topped by more "tropical" carbonate; carbon isotope anomalies in overlying "cap" carbonates indicating a massive inorganic dumping of precipitated CaCO3; delicate crystal fans (some meters tall) precipitated rapidly in the post-Snowball ocean; and the temporary reappearance of banded iron formations (BIFs), which had not been seen since the Paleoproterozoic (and indicated an anoxic ocean, such as one sealed beneath a layer of ice).

When Kirshvink pitched the initial hypothesis, he also proposed how the Snowball could have ended (in a deliciously short, non-peer-reviewed paper): he noted that just because the surface of the planet was frozen, that would have meant diddly to plate tectonics. Radiogenic heat from the Earth's interior would have continued to drive plate tectonic processes, and that meant subduction would have continued, beneath the icy rime. If subduction continued, that meant that volcanoes would have continued to erupt, and as Iceland and Antarctica show us today, volcanoes can erupt underneath glaciers. This is important because volcanic outgassing has a substantial percentage (~15%) of carbon dioxide (CO2), and CO2 absorbs reflected infrared radiation: it's a greenhouse gas.

But with the entire surface of the planet frozen, what would have happened to this degassed CO2? If the planet's surface is frozen solid, that means the hydrologic cycle would be shut down, and the usual means of removing CO2 from the atmosphere (e.g. photosynthesis & also deposition of carbonate sediments like limestones) would be non-functional. Any CO2 emitted by volcanoes would therefore likely linger in the atmosphere, building up in concentration over time. Eventually, Kirshvink suggested, it built up to levels that caused global warming which compensated for the ice albedo effect, and the absorption of all that radiation by the CO2 melted the Snowball.

As evidence for this audacious idea, Kirshvink pointed to the cap carbonates: all that limestone ("cap carbonate") deposited on top of the glacial units needed a lot of CO2 to be dissolved in seawater (and a lot of Ca+ too). The cap carbonates, it was suggested, represented the stratigraphic removal of all that built-up CO2 from the atmosphere. Once the levels of CO2 were drawn down to a non-hothouse level, the cycle could repeat itself. Modeling calculations suggest that it would take about 5 million years of CO2 buildup to melt the Snowball.

And this is what I don't get: if you've got an atmosphere full of CO2, I can see how that would melt the Snowball. But wouldn't it then acidify the ocean (with carbonic acid, like we're seeing today), making calcite dissolve, rather than be precipitated? If the ocean is undersaturated with respect to CaCO3, then that ocean should not host accumulations of limestone. How could the voluminous worldwide cap carbonates be deposited in an acidic ocean?

On the Snowball Earth website, a list of suggested reasons why Snowball Earth could not have happened are listed, along with Hoffman, et al.'s scientific rebuttals. But when they come to the question of acid oceans and the deposition of cap carbonates, you can almost see them shrug: "These are serious criticisms," they note. Hmmmmm.

Post-script: The idea is intriguing not merely scientifically, but also in terms of the way science gets done: by people, sometimes people with outsized personalities. Paul Hoffman promoted the idea with an "evangelical zeal" (according to Gabrielle Walker, who wrote a book about the whole idea and the scientists involved). Hoffman's relentless pushing of the idea ruffled a good many feathers. Some scientists fought back, motivated in part by these chafing interpersonal dynamics. There's nothing like a little scientific controversy, and this is what Walker's book focuses on, more than the details of Snowball science.

When I found that Jay Kaufman (of UMD-College Park) was interpreting a local diamictite(near Aldie, VA) as a Snowball Earth tillite (and the overlying marble layer as a cap carbonate), I thought "this could make a great class." Last spring, I applied for and received a grant from the Virginia Community College System to develop a 2-credit class for NOVA utilizing these local rocks as a gateway to understanding the Snowball Earth hypothesis. I offered the class for the first time last summer, and I'll be offering it again this summer in August. We were fortunate to get rock samples from Virginia's two putative Snowball deposits as well as a suite of samples on loan from Gene Domack of Hamilton College. These "Snowball Suite" samples include tillites and dropstones from Namibia, Greenland, Mauritania, and Canada, as well as international BIFs and cap carbonate samples. I have to tip my hat to Dr. Domack and his colleagues: making these samples available is a terrific service in support of geoscience education.

Labels: climate change, CO2, geology, global warming, nova, snow, snowball earth, teaching

Labels: art, dc, ethanol, global warming, humor, politics

A new paper in Water Resources Research suggests that Lake Mead, Nevada, may be dry by the year 2021. Authors Tim Barnett and David Pierce (both of Scripps) base this austere prediction on two things: (1) increasing projected rates of water use in the American southwest, as well as (2) climate change projections which suggest the region will receive less precipitation. They also posit a 50% chance that the lake level will drop too low to allow hydroelectric power generation by 2017. That's only 9 years from now!

It would seem that it's time for some conservation measures. When I lived out in California, I was struck by a major design flaw in the aqueducts which transport water from reservoirs in the Sierras and the Colorado River system to the centers of population: they're uncovered! These big long uncovered troughs full of water encourage the active evaporation of much of the liquid they carry. I'd imagine that just putting some tarps over the top of them would make a huge difference in conserving water that would otherwise be lost to the atmosphere. Maybe this has already happened: I left California in 1998, and I recall some post-September-11 (2001) talk about how the aqueducts were susceptible to being poisoned, so maybe they've already been covered up in the name of homeland security.

Check out the picture of the lake in October of last year (by Ken Dewey of the University of Nebraska). A glaring white "bathtub ring" shows how much the lake level has dropped due to the recent string of drought years the west has experienced. In early July, at the end of our Grand Canyon rafting trip, my Dad and brothers and I will float into the upper reaches of Lake Mead, and we'll likely see something like this in person. I'll be sure to post a blog reaction to that when I see it.

Reference:

Barnett, T. P., and D. W. Pierce (2008), "When Will Lake Mead go Dry?," Water Resour. Res., doi:10.1029/2007WR006704, in press.

For more details on the new study, see the press release on Eurekalert.

Labels: global warming, grand canyon, water resources

Saw this video yesterday on the "How Stuff Works" website. It shows a crazy number of mammoth fossils being unearthed in Siberia (due to thawing of the permafrost there). I was kind of astonished how casually the fossils were being treated: at one point, a Russian scientist takes two mammoth teeth and grinds them together with vegetation in between, to demonstrate how they chewed. This strikes me as kind of rough treatment for specimens like this.

Labels: fossils, global warming, tv

Here's a few photos from last Friday's Climate Change Symposium here at Northern Virginia Community College's Annandale campus:


Panelist Scott Sklar answers an audience question.
(Also pictured, left to right, are Jill Caporale, me, Ken Rasmussen, Daria Amato,
Steve Fetter, Craig Jensen, Ralph Eckerlin, and Paul Burman.)


NOVA biologist Jill Caporale delivers a climate change 'call to action.'


Here's one of me, discussing changes to Arctic sea ice cover.


NOVA geologist Ken Rasmussen discusses the geologic record of ancient climate change.

Fellow geoblogger Tuff Cookie (not her given name) gave us a thumbs-up in her recent report on attending the symposium. I'm glad she was able to attend, and glad it was thought-provoking!

Labels: action, climate change, global warming, nova

An interesting piece on NPR discusses how joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) will react to climate change. It revealed a fact I had not previously recognized: that during the Pleistocene, joshua trees habitat expanded thanks to the digestive efforts of the Shasta ground sloth (Nothrotheriops shastensis). Sloth dung deposits are full of j-tree nuts, and since the sloths expired 13,000 years ago, the trees haven't been able to move as far or as fast. Half of their current habitat in California and Nevada may be too hot and too dry within the next 50 to 100 years. The graphic above is from NPR, which produced the story as part of their "Climate Connections" series.

Labels: california, fossils, global warming, national parks

The Lounge of the Lab Lemming has a great post showing that the Patriots in fact won the Super Bowl, if you believe a series of arguments put forward by global warming skeptics. It's terrific satire. There's even an allusion to the Princess Bride in there.

Labels: blogs, global warming, humor

In 1998-1999, I served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Mongolia. A "News Focus" article in the February 1 issue of Science explores how climate change is affecting Mongolia. The author, John Bohannon, notes that "Winter temperatures in Mongolia have increased a staggering 3.6 degrees C on average during the past 60 years." That's a lot more warming locally than the global average. Areas of permafrost are melting, turning solid ground to mush. This yields forests of trees tipped over at drunken angles. Might sound okay -- after all, Mongolia's really cold, and not so good for agriculture. But at the same time, "Four of the worst drought years on record in Mongolia occurred in the past decade," and they've had several extremely harsh winter storms (called zud) which have killed off huge numbers of livestock and precipitated near-famine conditions in some regions. As Bohannon notes, "the livestock losses spurred a wave of suicides
among herders." Because I have a personal history in Mongolia, news like this affects me in a way other than as a pure scientist. In fact, I'd have to say I look at climate change through two totally different lenses: (1) as a scientist, I think it's fascinating to see it all the changes that the Earth system is experiencing in this interesting time, but (2) as a citizen of human society, I'm rather worried about it all. And when it hits folks like the good people of Mongolia like it is, it really drives home that humans need their environment. As Will Durant glibly put it, "civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice."

Reference:

Bohannon, John (1 February 2008). "The Big Thaw Reaches Mongolia's Pristine North." Science 319 (5863), 567. DOI: 10.1126/science.319.5863.567

Labels: global warming, mongolia

A new study in Geophysical Research Letters uses C-14 to date the shrinkage of the ice cap on Baffin Island, in Canadian Nunavut. Baffin Island is the fifth largest island in the world, located just west of Greenland.

As the (non-flowing) ice cap withers, it exposes vegetation which has been buried beneath the ice since ancient times. This organic matter can be dated using the relative proportion of isotopes of radioactive carbon-14 and its daughter product, stable nitrogen-14. The oldest date found so far is apparently 350 AD.

The researchers, mostly from the University of Colorado at Boulder, also used measurements of cosmogenic ("made by space") nuclides in the rocks on which the ice cap sat to figure out how long they had been uncovered by the ice. I'm not an expert on cosmogenic nuclide exposure dating, but it works something like a sun tan: how long have the rocks been exposed to the barrage of radiation from the sun? If they've been exposed for a long time, they build up a substantial amount of these "cosmogenic nuclides" that wouldn't be found in an unexposed sample of the same rock. In my local area of mid-Atlantic North America, a study by Paul Bierman, et al. (2004) used cosmogenic berylium-10 to date bedrock terrace levels along Mather Gorge, thereby revealing the incision history of the Potomac River.

However, this is the first time I've heard of carbon-14 used as a cosmogenic nuclide. The authors offer this justification: "In situ cosmogenic radionuclide inventories in rock surfaces provide an integrated record of periods of ice-cover and exposure at a specific site since the end of the last ice age. We utilize in situ cosmogenic 14C due to its short half-life. In situ 14C production is reduced by 85% under 6 m of ice and is completely attenuated under 35 m of ice. Any 14C that had accumulated in rocks prior to the last glaciation would have decayed below our background after 25 ka beneath the Laurentide Ice Sheet." Is this coming from nitrogen in the rocks, the same way carbon-14 is generated in the atmosphere? Or is some other element/isotope serving as the source material which then gets changed upon exposure to the sun? Enlighten me if you know! It builds up specifically in quartz, if that helps at all.

Anyhow, they've found that half the ice cap has melted in the past 50 years. Half. Yep.

References:

Anderson, R. K., G. H. Miller, J. P. Briner, N. A. Lifton, and S. B. DeVogel (2008), A millennial perspective on Arctic warming from 14C in quartz and plants emerging from beneath ice caps, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L01502, doi:10.1029/2007GL032057.

Bierman, P., E. Zen, M. Pavich, and L. Reusser (2004). The Incision History of a Passive Margin River, the Potomac near Great Falls. USGS Circular 1264: Geology of the National Capital Region—Field Trip Guidebook, Trip #6.

University of Colorado at Boulder press release on the study.

Labels: canada, global warming, ice

While prepping for the Climate Change Symposium on Friday, I came across these excellent old quotes about CO2: One is over a hundred years old. The other is over fifty years old. They both remain totally relevant today:

"If the quantity of carbonic acid (CO2) increases (in the atmosphere) in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression."

Labels: CO2, global warming

A sizable group of researchers (21; all members of the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London) has put forward an idea in this month's issue of GSA Today: they suggest that humans have altered the planet enough that it will show up in the geologic record of the future. They suggest, therefore, that we may have already entered a new geologic epoch defined by human alteration. As a result, they've adopted the name originally suggested by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen: "the Anthropocene." (Crutzen won in 1995, with two other chemists, for his work on the depletion of the ozone layer in the atmosphere.)

The evidence they offer for this assertion is compelling, but it raises a few questions about how we define these stratigraphic breaks in the geologic record.

Here's the only figure from the paper, a temporal comparison between several lines of data (top to bottom): sea level, average global temperature, atmospheric CO2, terrestrial erosion rates, and human population of the planet.

This is a powerful image. The authors note that climate essentially stabilized in the Holocene, the "long summer" of Brian Fagan's phrasing. In a classic display of scientific understatement, they note that this prolonged period of stable climate "has been a significant factor in the development of human civilization."

How will the rise of humanity be remembered by the geologic record? They note that we've accomplished some major changes to the rate of erosion and sedimentation : "directly, through agriculture and construction, and indirectly, by damming most major rivers, that now exceeds natural sediment production by an order of magnitude." I may be missing something here, but it would seem to me that anthropogenic erosion would produce more sediment due to our land use practices, but that less of that sediment would make it to the sea due to the "sediment trap" effect of dammed reservoirs. I mean, the Colorado River doesn't even make it to the ocean anymore.

Then there's temperature. A quote from the paper: "Temperature is predicted to rise by 1.1 °C to 6.4 °C by the end of this century, leading to global temperatures not encountered since the Tertiary." The high end of that estimate is indeed the sort of temperature change that one would think would leave a profound mark in the geologic record. (I find it interesting to note that a cast of 21 stratigraphers persists in using the outmoded and archaic term "Tertiary," by the way. I guess that's as sure a sign as any the Wernerian Chronology still has some kick left in it.)

I think one of the most compelling arguments made in favor of the Anthropocene is the rapid change in the Earth's biosphere. As the authors of the GSA Today paper point out, we've wiped out the majority of the big terrestrial animals, and concomitant wave of extinctions has rippled through the marine realm. Since changes in fossil biota have been the benchmarks of change in the geologic timescale, it seems certain that our tenure will be marked clearly for future paleontologists to see. Not only are species going extinct, those that survive are migrating to new territories as a result of shifting climate.

I'm pleased that the authors also explored changes to ocean chemistry, which will likely be a major source of information to future geologists. They cite Ken Caldiera and Michael Wickett's 2003 study on ocean acidification (which I blogged about last month) which shows that pH in the world's oceans has already dropped by 0.1 unit, and is predicted to continue acidifying so long as there's excess carbon dioxide to absorb from the atmosphere. Of course, add sea level rise to that (as is predicted via accelerated melting of continental ice sheets), and you've got a distinctive stratigraphic signature.

And I guess that brings me to a point that's been on my mind since I started listing these items. Will these changes persist for a long time, or will they be a small but distinct signature, a la the iridium layer at the K/Pg (formerly known as the "K/T") boundary? Another way of putting this: are we seeing the beginning of the Anthropocene's modus operandi, or are we seeing the environmental catastrophe which paves the way for a new, different, and (at this time) unpredictable Anthropocene status quo? At this point, we don't know what the Anthropocene will really look like in bulk. While it makes a lot of sense to point out the accelerated rates of change unfolding in so many geological realms, what it all portends for an as-yet-unattained future equilibrium remains to be seen.

I think papers like this are important. It's both broad in scope and displays some excellent thinking outside the box. I'm curious to see what reaction it provokes in the scientific community. Certainly it's getting some press.

* A side note: Does anybody else find GSA Today to be a weird journal? It always has one main article and then a bunch of stuff about meetings, awards, and the like, of interest to members of the GSA. But the articles featured each month are all over the map. Some, like this month's, are potentially ground-breaking works of scholarship. Others, just seem a bit... fringe. Like the one in December about how a team has shared Denver's geologic story with the public. Or the one about a historical critique of Lord Kelvin. Don't get me wrong: both topics are well and good, but if you're putting out only a single article each month that gets mailed to the entire GSA membership, why those? Sometimes I'm just left perplexed and scratching my head.

References:

Caldeira K., Wickett M.E. 2003. Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH. Nature. v. 425. p 365. doi: 10.1038/425365a
Fagan, Brian. (2004) The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization. Basic Books. ISBN 0465022812
Zalasiewicz J, Williams M, Smith A, Barry TL, Coe AL, et al. (2008) "Are we now living in the Anthropocene?" GSA Today: Vol. 18, No. 2 pp. 4–8. doi: 10.1130/GSAT01802A.1

Labels: CO2, environmental, global warming, stratigraphy

In today's issue of the Washington Post, an article by David Fahrenthold reviews the mixed bag of results that the House of Representatives has achieved in making their half of Capitol Hill carbon neutral. In November, they spent about $89,000 to offset their unavoidable carbon emissions by paying for agricultural acts that sequestered an equal amount of carbon elsewhere. All well and good, at least in theory, but carbon offsetting is a new and weird commodity. It doesn't always work that well. Some of the money went to farmers in North Dakota, to pay them to practice a certain soil conservation technique they were already doing. Some other funds went to a power plant in Iowa that was supposed to produce cleaner energy -- during a trial run that ended a year before the money got there.

Driving around town, I see a decent minority of cars sporting a bumper sticker that says "This car's CO2 offset by TerraPass" or something similar. Despite my strong concern over climate change and the clear connection between CO2 emissions and global warming, I have yet to invest in one of these balancing schemes. I think it's just that it's an unproven system. Mainly through my own ignorance of their practices, I'm not convinced that companies like TerraPass aren't just taking people for a ride. I think that if the U.S. government had some sort of verification procedure whereby carbon offsetting companies could be certified, then I would be more inclined to trust them and get on board. But, as the Post article elucidates, we don't really regulate this business yet in America. They regulate the heck out of it in Europe, but also with mixed results.

It should be noted that despite these examples of offsetting "flubs," the House achieved some real progress with some simple acts that conserve energy: they switched to compact fluorescent light bulbs and ordered the Capitol Power Plant to burn natural gas instead of coal.

Labels: action, global warming, politics

It appears that researchers have located a volcano under a thick mantle of Antarctic ice. They found the volcano's approximate position by mapping a layer of ash and glass shards within the glacial ice. The volcano erupted in or around 325 B.C., say Hugh Corr and David Vaughan, based on their study. (Both men work for the British Antarctic Survey.)

They initially detected the layer of volcanic debris through airborne radar-reflectance measurements. (At first they thought the reflective layer was the bedrock at the bottom of the ice, since it provided such a strong reflection.) Then they looked at the thickness of snow overlying this layer and correlated the ash deposit with eruption-linked acid-rich snow strata in ice cores that were taken in adjacent areas. The image here shows the radar-wave reflectance profile.

(According to my rough calculations, the vertical exaggeration of the cross-section is about 6x. )

This has been billed as the first time we've seen clear evidence of a volcano pushing its way up through the ice sheet in Antarctica, though similar eruptions have been observed in historical times in Iceland (like Grimsvotn in 2004). However, just this past weekend I watched an episode of the PBS series NOVA, which showed scientists working on a big ice coring project near what they interpreted to be a sub-ice volcano. There was a big depression, and ice was flowing into the depression (downhill) from all directions. Ergo that ice had to be going somewhere. NOVA's scientists posited it was being melted, and that meltwater was greasing the skids of the bottom of multiple ice streams which were cruising out of that area of the ice sheet. (These ice streams are just faster-flowing areas of the ice sheet, like currents zooming through ocean water, sometimes 50x as fast as the "background" rate of flow.)

The show got me thinking about another study, coincidentally also published in Nature Geoscience, although this one was in the inaugural January issue. It's a study of the Kennicott Glacier, in Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park:

The study was conducted by three researchers, all associated with the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research: Timothy Bartholomaus, Robert Anderson & Suzanne Anderson. They measured a bunch of variables on the Kennicott Glacier, seeing which of them correlated with a rise in the glacier's speed. They found that an annual flood event from Hidden Creek Lake (HCL in part d of the diagram, orange line) occurred at the same time as the glacier's maximum speeds during the measured interval, the maximum discharge of the (downstream) Kennicott River, and a maximum electrical conductivity of the water in the Kennicott River (the bedrock beneath the glacier is halite-bearing). As this whopper of a graphic shows, Not only does the glacier speed up its horizontal motion during the flood (part b), but the whole thing actually rises up vertically too! (part c) Also, Donoho Falls Lake (DHL in part d of the diagram, blue line) downstream experiences a huge surge in water as the flood passes over it. Conductivity spikes during this same interval. Bartholomaus and the two Andersons propose that when the ice dam of the lake gives way and all that water surges into the glacier's channel, it overwhelms the capacity of the sub-glacial network of channels & raises the pore pressure of water within the ice. This extra pressure "inflates" the space between glacial ice & underlying bedrock, and the whole thing slides like an air hockey puck. At least, as long as the super-high pressure lasts. Once the flood ebbs, pore pressure in the glacier drops back down to levels that are easily counteracted by friction. The glacier slows once more to a "normal" pace.

This is very reminiscent to me of studies done on how an increase in pore pressure along a fault plane can trigger movement along that fault. When I took structural geology in college, the professor described an example from Colorado (I think) where the Army (I think) was injecting nerve gas down into the ground to get rid of it. The nasty nerve gas was dissolved in water, and the periodic injections of this solution correlated with a series of earthquakes (movement) along a previously-unknown subterranean fault. The injections increased fluid pressure in the pore space of the rock, and that "inflated" the space between the fault blocks, and the relatively minor shear acting on them was then enough to get the two to slide. I won't get into the whole Mohr Circle here, but I do recommend you check out the famous Beer Can Experiment to get an idea of how an increase in fluid pressure can cause an otherwise "stuck" fault to slide. Anyhow, I guess the base of a glacier is essentially a big fault, with one kind of rock below and another (ice) above. Same phenomenon, in other words, but different geologic context.

The Bartholomaus + 2 Andersons study also has some big global warming implications. The recent surge noted in Greenland's glaciers (e.g. Zwally, et al., 2002) may be explained by higher rates of surface melting (due to elevated Arctic air temperatures) which then produces lots of meltwater, which flows down through the glaciers to the bottom via meltwater channels which plunge through the ice. Via the mechanism explained above, the great ice sheet atop Greenland is reduced more rapidly than without the surface melting. One of these meltwater channels was featured prominently on the cover of the June 2007 issue of National Geographic.

So, with that, I think I'll end this blog post -- my thoughts went from volcanoes to ice streams & subglacial meltwater to fault slippage to global warming. I reckon that's just about enough... just about... but I also noticed something else...

A tangent about publication: The Corr & Vaughan findings will be published in the second issue of the new spinoff journal Nature Geoscience, but they were posted online over the weekend in advance of the actual print publication of that issue. An article in the New York Times alerted me to the study. I'm not surprised that Nature, like the Proceedings of the Royal Society, has taken to hatching specialty sub-journals to convey more articles each month. (An "about the journal" page appears on their website, if you're curious.) The image shown here with this post is from the Times, not the actual Nature Geoscience article.

References:
Hugh F. J. Corr & David G. Vaughan. (2008) "A recent volcanic eruption beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet." Nature Geoscience. Published online: 20 Jan. 2008. doi:10.1038/ngeo106

Timothy C. Bartholomaus, Robert S. Anderson & Suzanne P. Anderson. (2008) "Response of glacier basal motion to transient water storage." Nature Geoscience 1, 33-37. Published online: 20 December 2007 doi:10.1038/ngeo.2007.52

H. Jay Zwally, Waleed Abdalati, Tom Herring, Kristine Larson, Jack Saba, & Konrad Steffen. (2002) "Surface melt-induced acceleration of Greenland Ice-Sheet flow." Science 297, 218-222. doi: 10.1126/science.1072708

Also see:
Kenneth Chang. "Scientists find active volcano in Antarctica." The New York Times. Published online: 21 Jan. 2008.

Labels: antarctica, global warming, tv, volcano

Plans are coming together for the big NOVA Climate Change Teach-In, scheduled for the week after next. Each of the six different campuses of Northern Virginia Community College are participating in one form or another. Starting on Wednesday night (Jan. 30), there are opportunities to learn about climate change and its implications for our society. Webcasts, lectures, and in-class teach-ins on Thursday the 31st will lead up to the biggest event, held at my own Annandale campus. This will take the form of a series of short lectures and a panel discussion from 12pm to 3pm on Friday, February 1. Plus we're going to serve cookies! Under the leadership of the College-wide Green Committee, on which I serve, NOVA's events are part of a larger nation-wide teach-in involving over 1400 schools.

More information about the multiple events can be found at the Green Committee's website.

If you're in the DC Metro area, you are invited to attend any of these events. They are free and open to the public. Also, for the Manassas lectures and the big Annandale event, surface parking regulations will be waived. There's no excuse not to attend. Of course, if you're one of my students, then I expect to see you there!

Labels: action, global warming, nova

Last year's temperature data is in, and it's no surprise that it was the second-warmest year ever, since human beings began measuring temperature. To be precise, 2007 is tied with 1998 for second place in the rankings for warmest. (2005 was the warmest year on record.) NASA, which released the data today, posted some nice analysis, animations and graphics on their website. Check it out here.

Labels: global warming

On Monday at noon, I went to the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill to attend a seminar organized by the American Meteorological Society.

The speakers were: David Archer of the University of Chicago and Ralph Keeling of Scripps (son of Charles David Keeling, also of Scripps). In two months, the Keeling curve (started by the father, maintained by the son) turns 50 years old. Probably more than any other graph, the Keeling curve is responsible for convincing people of the reality of CO2 buildup in our atmosphere.

Click on the picture at left to get a full-sized PDF of CO2 data from multiple measuring stations (not just Mauna Loa), all showing the same thing. The concentration varies with the seasons (more CO2 is pulled out during the northern- hemisphere summer; less in the northern winter), but overall the amount of this gas is increasing.


The seminar was titled "Natural CO2 Sinks and their Policy Implications: A Closer Look at Where Current CO2 Levels are Headed, in Historical Context." The two scientists gave an outstanding pair of back-to-back presentations, detailing the enormity of climate change we are now committed to.

The image that stuck most in my mind is this one: measurements of atmospheric oxygen (O2) from Cape Grim, Tasmania (Australia).

If volcanoes were the source of all that CO2 building up in our atmosphere, you would expect oxygen measurements to stay static (or at least not to vary beyond normal seasonal variations: the zig zags). But that's not what researchers have found. Instead, the pattern seen in the graph above is clear: oxygen levels are declining in lock-step with CO2's rise. The reason is simple: when we burn fossil fuels, we oxidize hydrocarbons. We can't burn a fossil fuel without oxygen. Oxygen is consumed by the process, and that oxygen is then paired up with carbon to generate CO2. The process is so simple, but the implications are profound. This graph makes clear that human burning of fossil fuels is the source for atmospheric CO2 rise. This is mankind's fingerprint on global warming.

I might also add that it was cool to run into Michelle Arsenault and Linda Rowan at the seminar.

AMS seminar series.

Labels: CO2, global warming, oxygen

I was struck by the visual similarity of these two round graphics from the Science section of today's Washington Post. The first shows the circuitous path taken by the Mercury Messenger spacecraft, which is scheduled to fly by the innermost planet in about 2 hours from the time I'm writing this:


The second image shows the changing ice situation in Antarctica on a cool combination of ice-flow velocity map and ice loss/gain bar graph, wrapped around the edge:

Labels: art, global warming, planetary geology

Switchgrass, a native prairie grass, is a potential source of ethanol for powering automobiles. Ethanol, of course, is hooch. If you've ever had a "flambe" dessert or a flaming shot at the bar, you know that alcohol can combust. And if it combusts, it can drive an internal-combustion engine. Beacuse of this, ethanol has been touted as a solution to (a) the U.S. dependence on foreign oil, and (b) the U.S. dependence on oil, period. Oil's energy is ancient photosynthetic energy, but liberating it comes with a cost: CO2 is released. This is where the vast majority of anthropogenic greenhouse gases come from. So ethanol sounds like a good deal... but there's a catch.

As any homebrewer knows, to make alcohol, you have to ferment something -- usually a sugar from fruit or grain. Brazil has used sugarcane sugar to produce tons of ethanol, and they have developed an automobile fleet that can run on it. Inspired by this success, our own president announced an initiative to develop ethanol in America. We can't grow sugarcane in most of the United States, though, due to climate. But we can grow sugar beets, and we can grow corn. Boy, can we ever grow corn! So that's been the emphasis so far: grow corn, harvest the kernels, get some of that good old high-fructose corn syrup, and then ferment it into corn liquor... I mean, ethanol. There are some dark clouds hovering over this utopian fuel, however. First off, corn is food. We eat corn. We feed corn to our livestock. We put high-fructose corn syrup in EVERYTHING. So corn ethanol competes with food corn. Second, it takes a huge amount of energy to plant, fertilize, de-pestify, grow, and harvest corn. Ultimately, we do barely better than breaking even, in terms of energy invested in producing corn ethanol versus the energy we glean from it.

This is where switchgrass comes in. Because it's not food, it doesn't compete with corn for edible market share. Because it's a native plant, it's much more adapted to pests & whatnot -- it's not as "needy" a crop to grow. It doesn't need fertilizer. And because the entire plant is fermented (as opposed to just the kernels) more photosynthetic energy gets retained as fuel energy. Amazingly, all this adds up to the fact that switchgrass has the potential to yield ethanol with 540% more energy than it takes to produce it.

Both forms of ethanol have additional caveats: Regardless of source plant, it takes even more energy to ship that corn/switchgrass to the fermenting facility, and then ferment it, purify it, and ship it to fueling stations around the country. All (or most) of that energy releases more CO2 into the atmosphere. Second, these are still crops, and they need water and arable land to grow. With 6.6 billion people on Earth, we could probably stand to use that land for feeding our many hungry mouths. Third, ethanol still emits carbon when it's burned. It's modern carbon rather than ancient (fossil) carbon, but that doesn't mean a whit as far as global warming is concerned. Fourth, ethanol is only a solution for transportation -- it doesn't power my computer or my washing machine. To me, it makes more sense to invest in solar energy, and then have electric cars that run on batteries recharged on that energy. Solar can also power our homes and other energy needs. Lastly, solar doesn't need prime farmland. In fact, the collector panels are probably best positioned out in the desert, in "wasteland" we're not using for other purposes.

More information: National Geographic has a piece on switchgrass, and WIRED had it as their cover story a couple of months ago. And: Discovery news had a little blurb on the new research.

Labels: ethanol, global warming, solar

WIRED magazine's cover story this month is about the race to build a car that gets 100 miles per gallon of gasoline. Also, they offer an online feature about a guy who modified his 1992 Honda Civic to get 95 m.p.g. (under certain conditions).

On a related noted, my friend Greg has a great nickname for the Prius (he's also a Prius driver): the Pious! (as in "holier-than-thou")

Labels: global warming, prius

This is what the eastern U.S. looked like as of yesterday. No snow in the DC area, but it sure is cold out there. Reminds me of my favorite Robert Mankoff cartoon (below).The satellite image is courtesy of NASA's Earth Observatory.

Labels: cold, global warming, humor, satellite imagery

An update on my Prius: I've driven about 250 miles since I got it last week, and over that period I'm getting an average of 46.7 miles per gallon. I am pleased. Merry Christmas!

Labels: action, global warming, prius

National Geographic has a nice overview of the basic ideas behind global warming here.

Labels: climate change, global warming

Global warming bummer for the Italians: chikungunya, a tropical disease native to the Indian Ocean region (a relative of dengue fever), has moved in. It's carried by tiger mosquitoes, which are able to thrive in Italy now that the temperature's gone up. The New York Times has more on this story.

Labels: climate change, global warming

From The Onion: Bush Acknowledges Existence of Carbon Dioxide

Labels: global warming, humor

So... I've been talking to my students for years about the science of climate change. I've stated as plainly as I can that I'm convinced that emissions of greenhouse gases, in particular CO2, are warming up our planet. To my long-term, whole-planet style of thinking, this is a MUCH bigger issue than something like the war in Iraq. Iraq is "merely" a conflict between two (or a half-dozen) countries. On the other hand, climate change is BIG -- it affects all of the planet's surface (albeit to differing degrees) and it's going to last an unimaginably long time (if all continues along the present trend). The rates at which geologic processes extract CO2 from the atmosphere are way too slow to compensate for the breakneck pace we're generating atmospheric CO2 through the burning of fossil fuels (and forest biomass).

But besides educating students, what am I doing about it? Two days ago, I took a big step towards putting my money where my mouth is. I bought a Toyota Prius, one of the current generation of hybrid vehicles that are much more fuel efficient and produce less greenhouse gases. The Prius is ranked by the EPA as getting 45 miles per gallon in the city and 48 m.p.g. on the highway. It's classified as a partial-zero emissions vehicle.

Here's a comparison for several cars from the EPA's data. Hopefully you can see why I opted for the Prius. Maybe in another five years, there will be a mass-market electric vehicle. That's what I really want for Christmas!

Make and model	Engine	Fuel	Drive	Air pollution score	Fuel-economy (MPG) City/Highway	Greenhouse gas emissions score
Toyota Prius	1.5L 4 cyl	Gasoline	2WD		48 / 45
Honda Civic Hybrid	1.3L 4 cyl	Gasoline	2WD		40 / 45
Honda Insight	1.3L 4 cyl	Gasoline	2WD		45 / 49
Mazda Tribute Hybrid	2.3L 4 cyl	Gasoline	2WD		29 / 27
Lexus LS 600 HL	5L 8 cyl	Gasoline	4WD		20 / 22
Jeep Grand Cherokee	3L 6 cyl	Diesel	4WD		17 / 22
Jeep Grand Cherokee ("flex-fuel")	4.7L 8 cyl	Ethanol Gasoline	4WD		9 / 12 ethanol 14 / 19 gasoline
Hummer H3	3.7L 5 cyl	Gasoline	4WD		14 / 18
Bentley Continental GTC	6L 12 cyl	Gasoline	4WD		10 / 17

Labels: action, global warming, prius, teaching

New research indicates that one possible source for the decline in Atlantic sea-surface temperature in 2006 may have been dust from the Sahara Desert. The image at left shows a dust plume being blown westward off the coast of Mauritania.

William Lau and Kyu-Myong Kim of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have concluded that airborne Saharan dust over the Atlantic was likely responsible for low temperatures because it effectively blocked sunlight from reaching the ocean's surface. Their research was published in EOS and the International Journal of Climatology.

In 2005, when the Atlantic was warmer, there were 15 hurricanes (including Katrina and Rita). In 2006, many people were expecting similar numbers and strengths of storms. However, there were only five that year due to lower sea-surface temperatures. Lau and Kim estimate that the dust was responsible for 30%-40% of the cooling effect.

Read more about it here and here.

Meanwhile, another team of researchers has found that these well-traveled dust particles may be a potential vector of disease. In the current issue of Environmental Microbiology, Anna Gorbushina and William Broughton (of the University of Geneva) report that germs can "hitchhike" on dust particles, allowing them to spread from continent to continent. The researchers used geochemical analyses to determine that samples of dust originally collected by Charles Darwin in Barbados actually originated in Africa. Furthermore, bacteria and tiny fungi were found stuck to the dust grains. The species found were not pathogenic (disease-causing), and the researchers note that most pathogens are not hardy enough to survive a long voyage on the Dust Express.

Read more about it here.

Labels: disease, dust, global warming, hurricanes, satellite imagery, silt

A well-illustrated article by NASA's Earth Observatory discusses the issue of coal mining in Appalachia. Estimates are that we have 100 years or more coal reserves in the world -- far more than oil. The problem is, coal is dirty. Appalachian coal in particular is high in pyrite (FeS2), so that when it is burned, sulfuric acid is generated.

And then, of course, there is the issue of greenhouse emissions. When we heat or get electrical power from the burning of coal, we are reversing an ancient photosynthetic reaction. In the Carboniferous, great swampy deltas (much like the modern Mississippi Delta) stretched across what is today West Virginia. Great rivers draining the young Appalachians flowed west into a shallow epeiric sea. In these muddy deltas, plants grew in profusion. Those plants did what modern plants do: they sat in the sunlight and used its energy to fuse CO2 and H2O into sugars -- plant food. Before they got a chance to use that constructed food, and before any animals had a chance to eat the plants, they were smothered beneath additional layers of sediment, and the efforts of their photosynthesis were locked away underground. This went on for millions and millions of years. Now, humanity has discovered that coal burns well, releasing energy originally generated by the Sun 300 million years ago. Using coal for energy reverses the ancient photosynthetic reaction. When we burn coal, we are combining the coal's "carbohydrates" with oxygen, and re-producing the initial ingredients (CO2 and H2O) in the process. Of course, when water vapor in the air reaches a high concentration, it condenses and precipitates. Carbon dioxide is also removed from the atmosphere by geologic processes, but at a much slower rate. Hence the rise in atmospheric CO2 levels since the Industrial Revolution (when coal-burning picked up pace).

The Earth Observatory article deals with another issue, though: the question of how best to get at coal, given that it's underground in strata with other rock layers atop them. Every month, it seems like there is an item in the news about how there's been an accident in some underground coal mine somewhere in the world, always with a dozen or more miners killed or trapped. In West Virginia, strip mining is a favored tactic. It's safer to coal miners because it occurs at the surface, but there's the rub: The surface is also where everything else happens, too. When miners strip away the overlying rock layers, they also strip away the forest and everything that lives there. Often, unwanted rock is dumped into neighboring valleys, which causes a lot of stress on the freshwater ecosystems present in streams draining that valley.

Check out the article here. It is illustrated with great maps and satellite photos.

Labels: CO2, coal, global warming, mining, satellite imagery