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"On Saturday 8th October Cartmel Quakers held a silent prayer vigil in Grange-over-Sands as part of the national Climate Coalition ‘Speak Up’ Week of Action"

Woody Guthrie award

Well, I've held on to this prestigious award for long enough, and it's time to pass on the heavy mantle of responsibility to someone else. I'm not sure I have really lived up to the expectations of my reader for a Woody Guthrie-worthy level of contribution, but it's been tough finding time and energy for intelligent blogging between all our recent holidays hard work. It's been a quiet time for climate science round these parts, in part due to the massive hiatus in funding/management/organisation around the end of one set of projects and the start of the new. We did have an amusing 5 minutes on return from our recent trip, actually, when we found new contracts in our pigeonholes, which stated that we had been transferred onto the new project as of 1 Oct (just prior to our return) and that our annual salaries had been slashed in half. It soon transpired that some administrative goon didn't know the difference between "annual salary" and "salary to be received over the remaining 6 months of the year". Now the first goal of the project (after fixing the contracts), it seems, is to work out what the project is supposed to be about. But I digress - this post is not supposed to be about Japan's democratic, or even financial, deficit.

While there are a lot of thoughtful bloggers around, the choice for whom to pass it on to seemed a pretty straightforward one, actually. Michael Tobis is prolifically thoughtful and interesting in his blog posts, and has been over a number of years and range of fora. Even those who don't agree with everything he writes (I could probably count myself in that number) can hardly deny the thought that goes into his writings. Whenever he has taken on someone like Curry or Pielke (either generation) on anything technical, he's generally had the better of the argument, as far as I can recall. He's been particularly clear on the "costs of uncertainty" argument, that the higher our uncertainty is regarding climate change, the higher justification this is for mitigation - precisely the reverse of the attitude that many on the denialist side seem to espouse. (That post of mine refers to a fairly recent article by Lewandowsky, but here's one example of an older post from Michael).

His own blog seems a bit quiet these days, actually. Most of his writing is on the main planet3.0 site. In the unlikely event that you aren't already a reader, have a look!

Well it looked like a whale...

...sleek and black and with fin-like things...


So it's excusable really that the Japanese whalers should have rammed the Ady Gil, knocking a chunk off its bow.

That picture is a screenshot from the video which can be found here. I won't speculate on the boating laws that might apply in this case, but it is not clear to me that the Ady Gil was actually stationary (as Sea Shepherd have claimed). It was basically idling at the start of the clip, but seems to start generating a significant wake a few seconds before the impact. Hopefully there will be enough hot air generated over this to end the current cold spell.

Having seen a couple more videos, it is pretty clear that the Japanese boat turned sharply towards the Ady Gil and rammed it at high speed. See the boat spinning round at the start of this video



also confirmed by the changing angle in the first few seconds of this:

COP-out

As Churchill might have said: "This is not the end. It is not the beginning of the end. It is not even the beginning of the beginning."

[thanks to JKH]

Hot air (capture)

There's bit of correspondence in Nature Geoscience about air capture, specifically some promotion from RPJr which seems to think that all our problems will be solved by future cost reductions and better technology, and a letter from Andrew Dessler pointing out that the energy cost provides a stiff barrier irrespective of economics.

RP says:

The primary uncertainties surrounding air capture stem more from the lack of large-scale testing rather than scientific or technical concerns.

Dessler replies:

Thus, using today's technology, it takes at least 0.5 J of energy to capture the emissions generated in producing 1 J of fossil fuel energy. If the energy for capturing carbon comes from fossil fuels, then at least a third of society's fossil fuel energy would have to be diverted to air capture to eliminate all emissions. Alternatively, it would require an increase in the total production of fossil fuel energy of at least a third.

While I would not be surprised to see an engineer claiming that the reciprocal of 1-1/3 is 1+1/3, I would hope most physicists would sum a few more terms in the Maclaurin series and get to 1+1/2 :-) However, a mathematician (me) might point out that the correct numbers based on the energy estimates above are actually 1-1/2 and its reciprocal, 2 :-) That is, half of total power output would have to be devoted to air capture, or alternatively total power output would have to double to reduce net emissions to zero; 2J of total power, with 1J devoted to sequestration, would leave 1J usable.

Of course, the general point (that energy matters irrespective of the economics) is one that has been made repeatedly on RP's previous blog when he has promoted air capture in the past (eg the comment thread here, also here and here). It's unfortunate that Dessler's letter drawing attention to this point actually understates it by such a wide margin. Of course future advances can be expected to reduce that energy cost, but there is a hard lower limit. I vaguely recall it's something in the region of 10% of the total output energy for coal, meaning 25% of the usable power for a 40% efficient power station. But I could be wrong. It may be in the comments linked above.

Update
Andrew Dessler explains via email that he was assuming that the "extra" power would use standard on-site carbon capture and storage at low energy cost - but it seems to me that this still makes the relevant figure for fossil fuel use to be at least a 50% increase rather than the quoted 33%, and probably 60% or more if we use a realistic assumption about CCS.

Friday is PARK(ing) Day

I'm all for a little bit of guerrilla gardening and reclaiming some small part of the area currently devoted to the demands of the automobile, so here's a quick plug for PARK(ing) Day UK - September 18th 2009.

Mind you, the suggested one day conversion of parking spaces seems a bit...weak. My own permanent PARK(ing) space can be seen here, in an old picture that dates back to before global warming really took hold (otherwise known as winter a few years back):

The viewpoint doesn't really show it off to best advantage - there are more plants off-screen to the right - but I can hardly do a better job now it's dark out. Anyway, being privately owned, I'm not sure if it counts, but it should. I do pay ¥25000 per month for it, but that is really a fiddle to get round JAMSTEC's silly rules over house rentals rather than a real parking space rental.

As an aside, I don't think there is actually that much need for guerrilla gardening in Japan. The climate being what it is, any unused space is reclaimed very rapidly (eg spot the greenness peeking though here). Also, people here are pretty keen on gardening and like to put pots out wherever there is a few inches of space - in fact that same residential road where the scrap metal dump is, is also lined with flowers, tomatoes, and chilli plants all through the summer. The problem is in really in preventing people from paving, repaving, and expanding over undeveloped areas at an ever-increasing rate.

Spend for the planet!

You know how that old "reduce, reuse, recycle" slogan of the environmental movement is embarrassingly inconvenient for conventional economic growth?

Well, Japan has recently solved this conundrum with a truly brilliant idea. They have miraculously turned grotesque over-consumption into an environmental act by creating the "eco-point"! Each "Eco-point" is worth about 1¥ (which you can use for yet more consumption), and you get awarded more points for buying larger, more power-hungry appliances. The largest flat-screen plasma TVs, with a power consumption of about 5 times greater than a typical old-style CRT model, get the max 36,000¥-worth of points. Buying larger air-conditioners and refrigerators will save the planet too! Why didn't Al Gore think of it sooner? The "eco-point" greenwash site can be found here, but it seems a bit knackered at the moment.

Coming next: eco-coal, which neutralises its CO2 emissions by prepending the "eco" prefix to ordinary coal.

Let's more driving!

As I noted some time ago (but only posted just now...), the JGovt has decided that we don't burn enough oil in this country, and decided to do something about it by reducing the tolls on the long distance expressways. It seems quite sensible really, as the oil literally pours out of the ground here faster than we can collect it in barrels, there is no decent public transport, and an august advisory body recently concluded that man-made global warming is a myth anyway. Also, the roads are also far too quiet, and having spent all that money building them we might as well get as much use as possible out of them! Having comfortably exceeded their Kyoto commitments, the JGovt obviously wants to make sure the baseline is as high as possible for any future emissions reductions.

The first results are now in, and I'm happy to say are very encouraging. Traffic on major routes is up by about 50%! Hopefully the data will be useful for those who are interested in questions of price elasticity.

Rumour has it that there are now plans for tax rebates on patio heaters and SUVs.

Let's Driving!

[I originally wrote this post this post back in January, when the news came out. But somehow it didn't get posted...]


Japan is worried that it has made such strong progress towards its Kyoto protocol goals [:-)] that it has decided to boost car driving so as not to show the rest of the world up. For the next two years, all expressway tolls have been cut to a maximum of ¥1000 on holidays and weekends.

As an indication of the scale of this discount, I worked out on Navitime that our summer holiday trip to the mountains (300km) would have cost about ¥7000 each way in tolls. [There is a toll-free alternative for those who want to crawl through every little village on the way, but it would take twice as long.]. Of course the cost of motoring that distance is significant too, depending how you work it out it might be about the same amount. The train fare is about ¥8000 each way, making that choice a very reasonable one even for two people (as we are).

But at ¥1000 for the tolls there would be a substantial saving for the driver. So slashing the tolls should encourage more people into their cars for long-distance drives along the expressways rather than sitting in the express trains running along the lines parallel to their roads. Let's Driving!

(Not that I'm thinking of buying a car: not having to return to our start point, and being able to crack open a beer and snooze on the return journey is worth a few thousand yen per trip to me anyway.)

The 2000W challenge

the energy use each of us must stick to if we’re to keep the planet hospitable: precisely 2,000 watts.

Well I just looked at our fuel bills. The max monthly electricity bill I can find is 440kWh (December) and the min is 142 in May (neither heating nor air-con). The summer air-con peak is about 300 and the monthly ave is comfortably below this but I will round it up a little to 10kWh per day - this is for two people and covers the vast majority of our domestic fuel use since gas is just for hot water and cooking.

The cited article (which has some silliness like conflating max rated power with actual energy usage) says that domestic energy, food, and travel make up roughly 1/3 of the total each. So by that reckoning we are using about 1/3 of the suggested max for domestic energy. Our Japanese diet is certainly lower in energy demand than a typical Western diet, being rather low in meat (and calories!). We even cycle to work most days and don't own a car. But we probably make up for it with ~2 long-haul air trips per year...

Hooray for Gordon

Just thought I'd take the opportunity for that blog title, since there are unlikely to be many more chances.

"The government says its aim is to insulate every home in Britain by 2020 - and energy companies, councils and voluntary organisations will be making door-to-door visits in deprived areas to promote the scheme."

Whether or not it is "enough" (and I'm sure plenty of people will be lining up to say it's inadequate), it is still a positive move. Although our old house will certainly not have cavity wall insulation by 2020, due to the fact that it has no cavity...

Back when I was living in the UK, Gordon was one of the most (if not the most) successful Chancellors ever. Now it seems that he is destined to be remembered primarily as one of the feeblest PMs. A sad but entirely predictable end to a political career (and yes I did predict it confidently, although maybe not in writing). Of course it is well-known that all political lives end in failure. I wonder why they never manage to quit while they are ahead. Did anyone ever get out at the top, leaving the masses desperate for more?

(Thinks for a minute.....ah, John Smith. That's taking things a little too far, though.)

Biofuel, food prices and poverty

Biofuels have been getting a lot of bad press recently - lots of it justified I'm sure (many schemes seem to have at best a marginal net energy surplus) but there's one aspect I'm a bit puzzled by - the worry over increasing food prices and the effect this will have on poverty.

I had always thought that the standard received opinion was that poorer countries were basically agriculturally-based and food-exporting, and indeed that it was primarily the hegemony of the evil West that kept them this way by suppressing the global market price of their outputs (by subsidising their own agricultural sectors and/or imposing various trade barriers).

But if that is true, then rising food prices should be a good thing, surely? They'll get more for their exports, and our technology will be (relatively) cheaper.

I have this probably naive view of subsistence farming as the bottom rung of economic development - and anyone below that rung in economic terms is already dependent on aid. At the national level, if a poor country is a net food importer, then I have to wonder what it is they are exporting to pay for that food in the first place. Of course there will always be some poor people within the poor countries who will struggle to buy food - but the existence of (much) poorer and richer people within a specific country is surely first and foremost a local issue to do with national governance, not an international one to do with food prices.

I hope an economist (or indeed anyone clued-up on these things) can point out what I'm missing.

Initially ridiculed by many scientists as new age nonsense, today that theory forms the basis of almost all climate science.

A small prize (OK, absolutely nothing except your e-immortality assured in a blog comment) for anyone who can identify the subject of that sentence. Small hint: you won't find it in the IPCC report (not that I've searched the text, actually).

Lentil-munching sandal-wearing Grauniad readers need not apply (even if they haven't read it yet, cos being lentil-munching sandal-wearing Garudina readers they will instinctively know the answer anyway :-) ).

'Toxic waste' fed to schoolchildren

No, not a tale of turkey twizzlers, but dolphin meat in Japan. A couple of local politicians have dared to point out the bleeding obvious, that the dophins "traditionally" slaughtered off the coast on Japan and then stuffed into schoolkids (no-one actually buys the stuff willingly) by politicians in the hope that they will be indoctrinated into this "traditional way of life" are actually not fit for human consumption.

I look forward to the agriculture minister claiming that the Japanese intestines are adapted to mercury-rich food through their unique genetic heritage.

Perhaps not. Mercury poisoning has a long history in Japan - they basically invented the problem, and some people are justifiably touchy about the subject (which was covered up for decades, and lawsuits from the infamous ~1950s pollution scandal continue today).

Actually Prime Minister Abe has just lost his 2nd agriculture minister in as many months, both due to embezzlement scandals (the last may actually have more to do with the ruling LDP's historic defeat in the recent elections).

To be fair, the actual amount of dolphin eaten is probably small enough that the mercury isn't that big a health problem. But it all makes good knockabout politics.

Guilt Trip

Some attendees at the recent EGU meeting spent an evening getting worked up over the environmental cost of the event. Here's a report of the debate. I don't pretend to have any really good answers - large meetings are probably relatively efficient, in the sense that an attendee gets to meet a whole lot of people in a single trip (potential interactions increase as n²), although it does end up being a bit superficial at times. Jules and I also try to combine some sort of holiday with any trip we take to Europe - this time, her Dad also attended the meeting, and last time I went (2 years ago), my parents joined us in Vienna. So at least we rarely fly outside of work, despite being temporarily the far side of the world from all of our relatives.

I won't deny that travel is a bit of a perk of the job (although too much is a pain). If we didn't get to leave our cubicles every so often, probably even fewer people would be prepared to do the job. (Not sure if that would be a good or a bad thing.) As I said previously, if the price of travel was higher, we would probably adjust our methods somewhat, but we have to use our limited budgets efficiently. It's worse than that, actually - Japanese rules mandate that the salary bill of research institutes are capped, so currently any spare funding has to be spent on things like foreign travel and umbrella dryers, rather than paying a real human to do some real work. I'm not joking about umbrella dryers, either.

I'm off to Belgium in a couple of weeks. Oops.

JAMSTEC - the movie!

This film has been fairly popular in Japan, it seems - at least, our local video rental has been pushing it - so we succumbed to their temptations yesterday and rented a copy. It's called "Nippon Chinbotsu" (日本沈没) which means "Japan sinks" and is actually a remake of a 1973 film of the same name. The plot is something silly about plate tectonics dragging Japan under the sea, and I won't spoil it for those who might want to watch other than to say there are lots of volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunami. I'm not sure if and when it might be released internationally, this version was Japanese only but simple enough for us to follow most of what passed for a plot.

JAMSTEC had a substantial starring role, mostly in the form of the research vessels that have to be used to investigate the problem and try to save Japan from its fiery and watery fate. For some reason the Shinkai ("Depths of the ocean") submersibles were renamed Wadatsumi (which may mean "sea" or "Poseidon", although my dictionary only has watatsumi for those), but the massive drilling ship Chikyuu ("Earth") kept its name. I'm tempted to say something cynical about spending science budget on expensive props for trashy films but the filming probably didn't disrupt research much and the publicity probably made it well worth their while. Needless to say, it doesn't exactly represent my typical day...

The solution to conference travel guilt

Cheatneutral.com

It's what climate scientists the world over have been waiting for :-)

(Hat tip: Kevin Vranes)

Hot year hype

Some more drivel in the Indescribablyoverhyped, which starts off with

"A combination of global warming and the El Niño weather system is set to make 2007 the warmest year on record with far-reaching consequences for the planet, one of Britain's leading climate experts has warned."

I call bullshit on sentence 1. To clarify, I don't challenge the very reasonable prediction that 2007 could be the hottest year yet (with probability 60%, according to the Hadley Centre via the BBC, which doesn't quite reach the standard "likely" threshold but perhaps is close enough to not be worth quibbling over) but I do challenge anyone to describe the "far-reaching consequences" which will arise if and only if 2007 is indeed hotter than 1998.

In other words, I'm looking for a statement of "far-reaching consequences" X such that the proponent will be prepared to bet on X occurring if and only if 2007 becomes the warmest year on record. That is, if exactly one of "X is true" and "T(2007)>T(1998)" occurs, then you lose, since either set of outcomes is inconsistent with the proposition that a new high temperature will have those far-reaching consequences. If neither or both happens, you win, since both outcomes are consistent with the proposition. Any offers?

Asahi Blue Planet Prize

Another year, another Blue Planet Prize. The first speaker, Dr. Akira Miyawaki, is an academic ecologist who developed and implemented methods for natural forest restoration. He's 78 and still runs a small research institute - a position he only took up at an age when most people would have retired. He seemed like a pretty amazing guy. He exhorted us to plant forests wherever there was space for 3 trees - and had the results to prove it worked.

The second winner, Dr Emil Salim, had been a minister in the Indonesian government and talked enthusiastically about sustainable development. Michael Tobis would no doubt have been delighted by the way he picked apart traditional "Washington Consensus" economic theory as promoting the interests of the rich at the expense of the poor and the environment. Unfortunately, he didn't really seem to have any clear mechanism for a concrete alternative, with his goal of sustainable development apparently relying on a combination of draconian national and international govt intervention, coupled with citizens attaining personal enlightenment through Yogic flying and scientific study.

OK, I exaggerated slightly on the Yogic flying. But he did make a strong play for a spiritual basis to our sustainable development, and also appealed to "Asian values" (community, family, environment etc) as a basis for a new style of government. There is a proportion of the Japanese public who are not exactly thrilled to be reminded that they are also Asian (cf: telling the English to be "good little Europeans"), and sure enough one questioner basically asked him what exactly he thought the Japanese had in common with Indonesian Muslims. Actually I'd think that Japan would be a good place for his theory of sustainable development to take hold, having essentially a benevolent dictatorship and docile population.

It was interesting to see that the Stern report came up in the following discussion session. I was disappointed - but not overly surprised - that the interpretation (provided by a Kyoto University professor, not just some random member of the public) was that we faced the certain loss of 20% of the world economy under "business as usual" - and there was no hint of any uncertainty about this figure, which readers may recognise as the extreme upper limit Stern produced based on a whole host of unfortunate coincidences which have varying degrees of implausibility. It is possible that some of this nuance had been lost in translation (which I was listening to) but frankly I doubt it.