Wisdom of a poet?

Man has survived hitherto
because he was too ignorant to know
how to realize his wishes.
Now that he can realize them,
he must either change them
or perish.

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

La traduction française de ce texte se trouve ici.

From tobacco to climate, the reuse of a winning method

Looking back at the 20th century, we may pride ourselves of living in an enlightened period: after decades of struggle, science has finally managed to defeat the powerful tobacco lobby. The task has been far from easy. In fact, it almost seems like people in developed countries had to reach the murky bottoms of addiction and denial to start coming back to their sense again.

A widespread addiction...
During the first half of the 20th century, cigarette sales literally skyrocket, from 80 cigarettes per inhabitant per year in the US in 1910 to 10 cigarettes per day and per inhabitant in 1950 - which equals to more than 4,000 cigarettes per year for each smoker. In 1951, it is estimated that between 3% and 5% of the budget of an American consumer is spent on tobacco. No surprise then that at the time, each rise of tobacco price generates a strong opposition!

... that raises suspicion among scientists
Yet, even at this early stage, the spectacular infatuation with tobacco does not seem to please everybody. Some suspicious scientists and doctors think that the product might be addictive, while others blame tobacco for the rise in lung cancer rate. One must admit that this rise has been so sudden that it does indeed need to be explained. In 1919, the disease is an oddity with a prevalence of 0.6 cases for 100,000 deaths, the kind of thing the average doctor is likely to see only once in his career. In the 50s, it has become the most common type of cancer after stomach cancer, with a prevalence of 31 cases for 100,000 deaths. As the disease death rate grows, so does the number of scientific studies linking the phenomenon with tobacco use, to the point that in 1954, the American Health Minister declares that one should now consider that the link between tobacco and lung cancer is established.

The recipe of the tobacco lobby: how to gain time with advertisement campaigns...
For the tobacco industry, the only thing that is established at this stage is that without swift action, this kind of sentence is likely to degenerate into some restrictive legislation. This would no doubt be a disaster for the industry's profits, which now reach the huge level of 8 billions dollars for the USA only. To prevent this, several advertising campaigns are started in 1954, with the aim of denying the link between tobacco and lung cancer. Scientist are hired to write pamphlets that will be distributed to medical offices and published in the columns of the national press. The rise of lung cancer being difficult to deny, the industry tries to demonstrate that this might be due to other factors than tobacco, such as the rise in air pollution. The lobby also promotes the use of cigarettes with filter, declared to be less harmful... while increasing in parallel the nicotine doses in these.

All this smoke cloud gives good results: it is not before 1962 that the American government decides to create a group of scientific experts in charge of assessing the real impact of cigarette consumption on health. In 1964, the first assessment of this committee is made public and the link between tobacco and cancer is reasserted. Things then go all wrong for the tobacco industry: in spite of claims that tobacco is helping many American citizens to make a living, the Federal Cigarette and Advertising Act is finally voted. From 1966, it obliges the industry to write on cigarette package that the product might be harmful.

... big money and endless "scepticism"
This blow is followed in 1971 by the ban of cigarette advertising on TV and radio. But the tobacco lobby does not let this get it down. At first, it offers 10 million dollars to the American Medical Association (AMA), effectively silencing it for 10 years. It then gets involved in a large propaganda, mostly based on a scientist-written book with an evocative name: "Smoking is not dangerous". The lobby strategy, which is described thoroughly in internal notes, consists in casting doubt on the real danger of tobacco by claiming that there is not enough data to be sure of it and then endlessly moving the goalposts. Among numerous claims, the lobby will successively put forward that scientific studies are biased because smokers are more likely to be submitted to screening for cancer and thus diagnosed (1974) and that the anti-smoking movement is primarily a conspiracy against personal freedom (1978).

Passive smokers: the last blow
With what might retrospectively be seen as clearsightedness, the tobacco industry points out as early as the 70s that the passive smoker issue is now the biggest threat it has to deal with. If the link between passive smokers and cancer is established, a new set of restrictive laws is sure to be put into place. During several years, the industry will try to silence anti-smoking movements by ensuring that ads that are too clearly against tobacco are not published within national newspapers. This is not too difficult because tobacco advertisement is a major source of profit for newspapers at the time... Yet, in spite of all efforts, the passive smoker issue finally surfaces in the 1986 annual report of the group of experts that was put into place in 1962. This marks the beginning of decaying prospects in developed countries.

During the 90s, numerous newspapers start refusing tobacco ads. At the same time, trials and bans against smoking in public places flourish. After five decades of ruthless battle, cigarette sales in developed countries start to plummet: in 2006, only 24% of American men and 18% of women are alleged smokers, which should be compared to more than 50% of men and 35% of women in 1965.

The show must go on
Yet one should not deduce from this that prospects have become really bleak for tobacco lobbyists. First, the market of developing nations is still open and growing. Furthermore, even in developed countries, there is something to be done with the learning of 50 years of propaganda against a scientific consensus. We should maybe not wonder too much why the past tobacco strategy so strangely resembles current climate change denial. One should be silly not to reuse a winning method!

If we really want to pride ourselves of living in an enlightened time, we may be well advised to look thoroughly at the financing sources of self-declared "non-conformist" scientists and consider with scepticism any of the conspiracy theory flourishing on internet and newspapers. This is the price to pay to make sure that large industry profits are not taken more into account than citizens' own best interests.

Source: most of the information related here comes from the well-documented website Tobacco.org

Picture: More doctors smoke camels than any other cigarettes

Version française : Du tabac au climat, ou les dessous d'une histoire sale

Workaholics in your company? Keep your cubicles!

In Europe as in America, open workspace has become increasingly trendy lately. This cannot be attributed to a real eagerness of the workforce, who often finds the concept difficult to handle and complains about its noisiness and its lack of privacy. The main argument, especially in cities with expensive real estate, is usually the cost: in Paris for instance, an open workspace can lead to alleged savings of 10% to 40% on renting expenditure. Not something to be easily disregarded in those tough times!

Yet, before moving from cubicles to open workspace, managers may be well inspired to take a closer look at their energy expenses, especially if the company hosts one or several workaholics.

This is what was discovered by the consultants of the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) when they realized the first energy assessment of a brandnew building in Paris, built with the specific aim of minimizing its energy intake. At first, the consultants could barely believe what they saw: instead of the expected model "green" building, they were actually leafing through enormous energy bills! In order to understand what was happening in this place, the building was examined from roof to floor, but no previously undetected energy leak was found. On the other hand, when consulants started to scrutinize the company habits and workforce, they discovered that one of the manager had very peculiar working hours. He was indeed working at night. And unfortunately, the open workspace meant that the presence of one single person was enough to keep the heating and cooling system working outside normal working hours... and hence ruining the energy savings made the rest of the time!

This story is based on a small part of the speech given during a conference (Smart Grid et Smart Homes : évolution ou révolution) held by the Profesionnal Group Centrale-Energies on May 20, 2010.

Meteorology and climatology: two different worlds

This might come as no surprise to the numerous tourists strolling around the surroundings of the French Riviera: Marseille (the third most populous metropolitan area of France) enjoys a Mediterranean climate. In addition to a significant number of British citizens moving to the area in the wake of Peter Mayle, this means that the summers in the city are usually hot, while autumns and winters are mild. Most rainfall is recorded during the autumn and winter season.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and despite close latitude, Montreal is characterized by a continental climate. This means that winters are cold (some might even say very cold), while summers are hot. Precipitations are recorded the year round.

Now prepare yourself for a shock: on January 9, 2009, it snowed in Marseille; it might also have been the case in Montreal, but for some odd reason, it dit not end up making the cover of newspapers (I had a look to make sure). This snow event is of course very interesting, but I think you may easily conclude with me that this does not modify the first piece of information of this post: Marseille is and remains to this day a Mediterranean city. Even if we assume, just for the sake of argument, that on January 9, 2009, it snowed in both Montreal and Marseille, it will not lead us to deduce that Marseille is going through some strange climate change event that would make its climate closer to the Canadian one. For this to be the case, it would have to snow for numerous consecutive winters, the average temperatures recorded at Marseille's airport would have to plummet in both winter and summer and holly oaks would have to be replaced by maples. Of course, none of these changes would take place within a fortnight or even a ten-year period. Thus we would not be certain of a climate change before very long years had passed.

One swallow does not a summer make
It follows from the example above that no single weather event can by itself define a given climate. This is of course all the more true for a changing climate. It is not because it snowed in Marseille in January 2009 that the climate of the city is cooling. Similarly, it is not because the hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc in New Orleans that it proves the world climate is changing.

On the other hand, it is because scientists have been recording for years a rise of average temperatures in the weather stations of the planet that we have the certainty that something is happening with climate. When this kind of things happen, events such as Katrina become more likely, while snow in Marseille becomes less frequent. But this does not mean it cannot happen. January 9, 2009 made this point clear.

Image: Marseille, seen by Sophie

Version française : Climat, météo, késako ?

Greenland or the false legacy of a name

I don't know if you have noticed this, but Greenland's popularity tends to climb almost as quickly as greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. One might imagine this is linked to its scientific and potential business opportunities. But this would be shortsighted. Actually, the ones that I most often hear talking about Greenland lately are climate skeptics. If this sounds like a paradox to you, it might be because you have not fully realized the potential of a name like Greenland.

The general line of thinking goes as follows: the island known as Greenland was named in the 10th century, a time which has become known as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) in the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists believe that temperatures during that time were close to the ones recorded today in this part of the world. Yet, for any sane being born today, the name "green land" clearly seems more suited to the grassy shores of Ireland than to the ice-cold fjords of Greenland. One can thus easily conclude that if Greenland looked like Ireland one thousand years ago during the MWP, then the climate at the time was obviously warmer than today, which would imply that we are still within the normal range of temperature variation. This whole thought may seem simple and clear-cut... but does sadly not take into account the fact that Erik the red, the "discoverer" of Greenland, was not a great friend of simplicity.

A violent yet creative character...
Even for the standards of his time, Erik the red was definitely not the kind of man you would like your daughter to marry. Born in Norway around 950, he was banned from the country around his 25th birthday, after having killed a man. He moved to Iceland, then a Norwegian colony. Unfortunately, his stay there did not attract him many friends. Neighbours seemed to have serious difficulties understanding his point of view on various matters and this led to several bloody arguments. Around 982, Erik drove his sword yet one time too much and was forced into exile once again.

This second conviction was no doubt a very serious matter. Forbidden to enter either Norway or Iceland (the latter for a presumed period of three years), Erik found himself into a deadlock. As a man of will (or maybe because he was driven by despair), he remembered old tales describing how Gunnbjörn, a sailor that lived a century ago, had found a land further west. Having nothing to lose, Erik decided to risk it; chartering a ship, he sailed west, hoping to find this land. His quest was successful: having reached Greenland, Erik explored the island and finally decided he would found a colony there.

... for one of the most talented advertiser of History
At this point of the story, one cannot help but suspect that the three years spent in Greenland made it clear for Erik that the place was probably not the most well-suited for his grand plans. A colony based on trade would indeed have the greatest difficulties in a place so far away from Norway, locked into the ice for most of the year. The main other resource of Nordic colonies, livestock rearing, would certainly not be easy to develop either, as the long winters meant that grasslands could only be used three months in a year. Even worse, wood and iron were rare. But for Erik, nothing was impossible and he pursued his goal with great tenacity. However, being (or so it seems) rather realistic, Erik sensed that describing his newfound land as "Snowland" would probably not be the best way to achieve success. This is why, according to some Nordic chronicles, he named the island "Greenland", hoping that a beautiful name would help attract people. His bet was right and marked the beginning of an adventure that would last 400 years... and a myth that would last even more.

French version can be found at Erik, ce grand farceur

Sources:
Collapse, from Jared Diamond
Heimskringla, text of the Scandinavian saga, notably Islendingabök

Fermeture des commentaires anonymes/No access to anonymous comments anymore

Suite à la prolifération de publicités envoyées par commentaires sur Le grand dégel, je me vois contrainte de fermer l'accès aux commentaires pour les utilisateurs anonymes. Ceci ne change rien pour tout ceux disposés à laisser un nom ou un pseudo en même temps que leurs commentaires. Merci de votre compréhension.

Due to the increased frequency of adds received through comments on Le grand dégel, I find myself obliged to close the access to comments for people unwilling to leave a name as well as a remark. Thank you for your understanding.

Heading north: the great crop migration

My job is full of numbers. Yields, areas, quotes, temperatures... all take a big chunk of my working day. Most of these figures are predictable. Yet every once in a while, something really unexpected comes into focus.

Scandinavian oddity
This is exactly what happened a few months ago, when I entered for the second year in a row a corn production in Sweden. That piece of information puzzled me. In fact, had it not come from an official source, I would have believed it to be a mistake. Even if corn is grown on a very large scale in countries such as the US, it remains a tropical plant, not well adapted to the coolness of Swedish summers.

Though strange, the few thousand tons of corn produced in Sweden were not revolutionary enough to keep me awake at night. I would probably have forgotten the issue if I had not stumbled across an odd article barely a week later; it described the truly impressive growth of corn acreage in Denmark. As was highlighted in the paper, corn area totalled a mere 20,000 ha at the beginning of the nineties. In 2008, it had risen by almost ten folds. At the same time, the optimal sowing date for the crop had moved backward, from May 1 to April 20. Ten days in twenty years may seem anecdotal, but for an agronomist, this equals to a flashing red light: something is going on there!

Heading north
Quite excited, I decided to have a serious look at the corn data I have for Europe. Here is what I found:

Source: various national statistics offices. The data include both corn for silage and for grain.

In the northern fringe of Europe (namely Denmark and Poland, but also Sweden or the Baltic states), corn acreage has increased very sharply between 1995 and 2009. This also holds true in Germany, where the area allocated to the crop has gained 500,000 ha since 1995. However, as the German area was already quite high in 1995, this implies a smaller change in proportion than in other countries. On the other hand, corn area has stabilized or even decreased in countries of southern Europe (Italy, France, Slovakia, but also Spain or Hungary).

Without too much head scratching, I could thus easily see two things: first, that there seemed to be consistent changes in corn acreage happening both in the north and in the south of Europe. Secondly that situations in the south and in the north seemed to be opposite. As both the north and the south of the European Union are submitted to the same agricultural policy (the CAP), I was left with a growing suspicion that these contrasted changes may well be linked to climate. At this point, I decided to call one of the most prominent specialist of cereal physiology in France and get his point of view on the matter.

My story did not seem to surprise him much; in fact, it corresponded to what he had been monitoring for years. Agricultural species are moving north, as farmers take advantage of a wider growing window - the gap between sowing and harvesting dates. For a plant such as corn, the growing window is long (at least five months). In countries like Sweden, where summers are cool and winters come early, the long growth cycle of corn had until recently prevented any major development of the crop because the plant would not be able to perform its entire growth cycle before the frosts. Yet, as this drawback becomes less important, farmers in northern countries have started introducing the crop onto their farms...

Southern worries

Image: Tuscany

This explanation left me with one serious question: what would happen in southern Europe? If the growing window tended to increase in the north, one would expect that crop development in the south might be more frequently hampered by less auspicious weather events, such as droughts or hot spells. According to my own observations, this already seemed to be the case in several European countries located along the Mediterranean rim, where the area left fallow showed a tendancy towards increasing.

After I had expressed my concerns, there was a deep silence at the other end of the phone line. "This is a real issue, I was finally told. It is very likely at this point that future weather conditions in the south will exceed the adaptive capabilities of a species like wheat. Farmers will probably have to turn to more drought-resistant species. Who knows? In 2030 or 2040, farmers in Italy may well choose to grow sorghum or millet instead of durum wheat..."

If this turns out to be the case, then it is really worth wondering what farmers of more southerly countries, such as Mali or Niger, will be left to cultivate. Millet and sorghum both constitute staple food in Africa today. If these crops move north, answering this particular question might indeed become one of the most important issue of the coming years. If not of the century.

Version française : la grande migration agricole

To save the planet, eat a whale!

Surprisingly mild temperatures, very little snow, Helsinki’s harbor free of ice… Every time I called my contacts in Denmark, Sweden or Finland during the last few months, they shared new observations confirming that for the second year in a row, Scandinavia was getting through dark months so mild that they could hardly qualify as winter. Warm temperatures made people increasingly uneasy as the winter was drawing near to its end, as it seemed to picture the future of a very different Scandinavia.

Norway, a climate change pioneer

In such a situation, no wonder that Norway, the most Nordic country of Europe, is particularly involved in the battle against climate change. The country made the headlines with the opening of the Svalbard Seed Vault, which offers the opportunity to store seeds from everywhere in the world in a frozen environment. But Norway also received media coverage on a more confidential scale with a recent study published by the High North Alliance, a Scandinavian organization based in the Lofoten, which promotes whale hunting.

An –almost- carbon neutral whale?


Granted, the link between whale hunting and climate change may not seem obvious at first sight. But for really worried citizens, nothing is impossible. That’s why the High North Alliance has just demonstrated that for the same weight, one emits 8 times more CO2 equivalents by eating a beefsteak than by eating minke whale meat (the study doesn’t give figures for blue whale meat). For comparison sake, one might be interested in learning that the consumption of chicken (4.6 kg of CO2 equivalents per kg of meat) generates more than 2 times more greenhouse gases emissions than the consumption of minke whale meat (1.9 kg of CO2 equivalents per kg of meat).

This result might seem surprising, but it’s actually quite simple to explain: 1) on the contrary to beef and chicken, a whale does fortunately not need to be fed with agricultural products such as cereals or soybean. This spares a great deal of greenhouse gases, which would have otherwise been emitted by tractors, fertilizers or the heating of building and 2) on the contrary to beef, a whale doesn’t emit methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas. Should we then conclude from this demonstration that the future lies in whale stew?

The whale’s limitations

This might be a bit premature. Despite the pedagogical advantage of this study, which shows how the food we consume is linked to greenhouse gases emissions, it seems to me that it has curiously neglected to take into account two points that should yet have driven the attention of its authors. The first one is that minke whale stocks –or any other whale stocks for that matter – can hardly be considered sufficient to keep pace with growing meat demand from the world. Besides, it comes as a surprise to find out that the study does not even mention the fact that the consumption of 1 kg of cereals produced in the UK generates in average almost 14 times less emissions of CO2 equivalent than the consumption of 1 kg of whale meat…

Picture: a minke whale

A new spring for the grand dégel!

After a very long dormancy, the grand dégel is back!

As I no longer live in America, it will take a more international turn, though still focused on climate change.

I'm looking forward to reading your comments.

Joking British Airways

When my friend Sid announced that she was planning a trip to England, everyone asked her whether she was going to offset her carbon emissions.

A very fashionable concept

The question might sound weird at first sight, but it has become increasingly frequent in environmentally conscious circles in America. The general idea behind the nebulous "offsetting" term is to help the persons who feel guilty about their carbon emissions to "offsett" them by contributing financially to projects that might either compensate or spare an equivalent amount of carbon that would otherwise be vented into the atmosphere.

Though the concept might seem quite simple, it is in fact pretty tricky. First, the person who dearly wishes to diminish one's ecological footprint will discover that the estimation of one's carbon emissions can vary wildly according to the company chosen. Then, one will discover that even if the amount of emissions is similarly estimated, the price of a tonne of carbon might also be subjected to wide variations.

British Airways: a "green" company?

But let's go back to Sid, who might be considered lucky; as it proudly advertises, British Airways (more commonly known as BA) is actually the first airline that introduced the possibility of carbon compensation to its customers. One might then easily imagine that this means more experience in the offsetting business and therefore better projects. Indeed, for the curious customer willing to spend a few minutes investigating how his money will be used, the "climate projects" funded by BA may well look quite interesting.

Did the inhabitants of the Atlantis have the right light bulbs?

One of them is focused on the Marshall Islands, an archipelago that is (according to BA) "under severe threat from rising sea levels due to global warming". To say this straight, this doesn't sound like much fun for its inhabitants, who may well feel a bit concerned by the fact that each rountrip Boston/Manchester emits as much carbon than two Chineses during a year. But why should they worry? BA has the solution! The company is installing highly efficient compact fluorescent lamps in a third of the Majoro island's homes. No doubt that this is going to make all the difference when sea levels will indeed start to rise seriously... It's a pity that the environmentally conscious website of BA does not include a notice saying that a better option to fight global warming and insure a future to the Marshall Islands would be not to take the plane.

Believe it or not, but Sid has decided not to compensate her carbon emissions.

Picture: http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/gri/lowres/grin548l.jpg

Navajos: the curse of coal

"Why pick on the little Navajo nation when it is trying to help itself?" asked the Navajo tribal head Joe Shirley to the New York Times in a recent interview.

A new hope for the Navajo nation?

The reason for this bitter question lies in the heating controversy surrounding the planned construction of a 1500 megawatts coal-fired plant on the Navajo ground in New Mexico. The plant, whose planned name is Desert Rock, would provide hundreds of jobs, might help send electricity to 20,000 remote homes on the reservation and would hopefully bring $50 millions of yearly incomes to the Navajo tribe. Joe is right: these prospects sound appealing for a people whose major source of income remains the American government's grants.

Uranium and coal: a blessing or a curse?

But past experiences make the Desert Rock prospect look grimmer than advertised by Joe Shirley; the Navajo people have already suffered a lot from the hidden riches of their underground. The exploitation of their uranium mines is probably responsible for cancer-rates among teenagers that are 17 times higher than the national level. The San Juan River, which crosses the reservation, is heavily contaminated with mercury. Ozone levels in some parts of the Navajo lands are higher than permitted levels. And finally, the reservation is already plagued by two coal-fired facilities that makes the air-quality on the reservation the worst in the whole state of New Mexico.

The threat of global warming

Some people, especially non-members of the tribe, also worry about the CO2 emissions that Desert Rock would generate. Coal is already responsible of half of the 59 millions tons of CO2 emitted by New Mexico each year (20% more than the average contribution nationwide), and the new plant would add 12 millions tons of CO2 to this balance sheet. The state of New Mexico has already declared that it would not grant the plant tax breaks. But ironically, the ones who have the most to lose from the global warming are the Navajo themselves.

Since the beginning of the drought that plagues the Southwest since 1999, the traditional farming of the Navajo has become increasingly difficult, and has driven more and more people (especially the youngsters) out of the countryside. Once in the cities, the Navajos lose their mother tongue and their culture. If the Southwest climate changes for good toward a drier one as is predicted, it might become increasingly difficult for the tribe to maintain its traditions.

Like so many Native-American stories, the Navajo story is a sad one. It is the story of a proud people who has lost most of its land and is now struggling to survive with the most valuable currency it possesses, energy. It is the story of a people that might lose its soul because of this currency. As one Navajo interviewed by NPR was saying, "dry days might be here to stay. And we don't even remember how to do a rain-dance".

Photo Navajo Plant: http://www.cpluhna.nau.edu/images/navajopwrplant.jpg
Photo Mother and Child: http://mle.matsuk12.us/american-natives/sw/navajo-mother.jpg

From coal to Coke: the improbable path

"If we don't solve the coal problem, we cannot solve the climate problem" said Princeton physicist Robert Williams to Science in a recent interview.

Climate's biggest challenge

As China keeps putting two new coal-fired power plants online each week and the 600 coal facilities of America are responsible alone of roughly 30% of the 7 billions metric tons of CO2 emitted each year (more than the emissions of all the cars and other industries of the country combined), coal looks indeed more and more like one of the biggest challenge of the climate issue.

The trouble with coal is that no one really wants to get rid of an energy source which is four to five times more abundant than oil, cheap and for once ideally distributed among developed countries (1) instead of being found in improbable locations plagued with chronic political instability.

But as the idea of a near-term cap on carbon dioxide emissions gains support in America, the industry of the by-far-dirtiest-of-all-fossil-fuel (2) is submitted to more and more intense scrutiny. This sudden awareness has prompted a rising interest in the currently only known solution to the coal-fired plants emissions problem: the carbon capture.

Carbon capture: a simple concept plagued with technical challenges

In theory, carbon dioxide capture is pretty simple: one grabs the CO2 emitted by the coal combustion before it gets vented into the atmosphere. But the concept is actually tricky. Current off-the-shelf technologies need at best to be submitted to a thorough improvement if the plant is still supposed to be profitable.

The technique that would be the easiest to implement on most existing plants consists in using a molecule called monoethanolamine (MEA) to bind the CO2 right after the coal combustion and thus to separate it from the other gases emitted by the plant. But in order to capture 96% of the plant's CO2 emissions, 40% of the energy previously sold to the public would have to be used... which would raise the electricity bills by 36% or more! With improved efficiency, the technique should still not permit the capture of 90% of the CO2 emissions without cutting the net output of the plant by 30%.

From coal to Coke

And even if the technical problems got solved, a daunting question still remains: what are we going to do with all this CO2? The coal-fired plant of Warrior Run in Maryland found an interesting answer to this question: the 5% of its CO2 emissions that actually get captured are sold to beverages gas distributors and then incorporated in your Coke. Too bad that no one seems to have realized that unless the Coke bottle is never open, the CO2 that has been so painfully trapped is going anyway to take a short cut to the atmosphere...

(1) Coal known reserves are found in the United States (25.4%), the ex-URSS (23.4%), Europe (12.4%), China (11.6%) and India (8.6%).

(2) For the same amount of energy produced, coal emits 25% more CO2 than oil and 40 to 50% more CO2 than natural gas.

Sources:
Making Dirty Coal Plants Cleaner, Science, 13 July 2007, pp. 184-186
Le Plein s'il vous plait! by Jean Marc Jancovici and Alain Grandjean

Photo: itsgettinghotinhere.org/tag/uncategorized/

An insight into a warmer future?

MILK and DAIRY PRICES

You may have heard that milk prices worldwide are rising at the
fastest rates ever. Unfortunately, prices for other dairy
products will be higher for the foreseeable future due to :

• An increased worldwide demand for milk
• Higher transportation costs
• Increased corn prices (the primary dairy cattle feed) because of the growth of the ethanol industry

Here is the notice that can now be found next to the jugs of milk in some grocery stores in the Boston area. If the price of milk by-products is still relatively stable, consumers now have to pay almost 4$ to buy a gallon of milk, which represents a 92 cents increase in comparison with last year.

It is undoubtedly a bad news for milk, cheese and other pizza addicts, but this notice is probably a very accurate insight of the life we will have in a warmer world. According to the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment Synthesis Team, milk production in the Northeast (but also in the rest of the United States) is likely to be strongly impacted by warmer summers, as ruminants are highly sensitive to temperatures above 24°C (75°F). As summers get warmer, it will become more and more necessary to invest large amounts of money into new cooling capacities to ensure a stable production. Of course, such investments are more than likely to have an impact on milk prices...

But milk production will also be negatively impacted in other parts of the world. The current increase of prices is partly due to the catastrophic drought currently experienced by the traditional suppliers of Asia's growing thirst for dairy products, Australia and New Zealand. Such production shortenings are likely to become common sight in the future.

Finally, milk prices are impacted by the fact that the percentage of the American corn crop used for the ever-increasing ethanol production has been rising sharply from 12% in 2004 to 20% in 2006, according to the American Coalition for Ethanol. No wonder then that milk prices are soaring! We probably better have to get used to black coffee... in our new warmer world.

Special thanks to Lucas Guillet and Claire Notin for the well-documented report on climate change and agriculture in the United States.

Photo : www.mothercow.org/oxen/got-milk.html

The new climate awareness of America

They are unanimous : during the last 18 months, the United States have been experiencing a rising interest in the global warming issue. From coast to coast, all the people I have so far been talking to have perceived the unprecedented "climate revolution".

A new awareness that finally buries the scientific debate

Recent polls confirm this rise of awareness. According to the Pew Research Center, 38% of the Americans now rank the global warming issue as a top priority, a number 14% higher than in 2002. Although the problem is still not seen as an emergency by the majority of the American population, it seems at least that the long-lived scientific debate is finally over : in January 2007, 77% of the Americans thought that climate change was indeed real, an increase of 7% since June 2006.

The impact of a hurricane...

But what did trigger this change of public opinion? It seems that causes are numerous. According to Annie Strickler, communication director of ICLEI USA, an association that helps local governments implement measures to reduce their emissions, the recent climate awareness started with the hurricane Katrina. However, local climatic events (drought, lack of snow) and the recent Democrat majority in Congress also made a deep impression on people.

... and a movie

For many Americans, Al Gore's famous documentary An Inconvenient Truth also plaid an important role in the public opinion reversal. "With his movie, Al Gore managed to turn the public's attention to a very complex issue", says Dr. Stephen Nodvin. Thus, the climate change problem became a matter of interest for other people than the traditional intellectual elite who had been familiar with the subject for years. And as a proof of its success, Al Gore recently demonstrated again the power of the entertaining formula by organizing the Live Earth concerts series.

Nevertheless, according to Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale project on climate change, who was recently interviewed by the National Public Radio during its Climate Connections series, Gore's impact on public opinion is probably overestimated. In his opinion, people who actually watched and liked the movie were often Democrats, traditionally more aware of environmental issues. Katrina's impact was probably more determining.

A new scandal story full of economic opportunities

Finally, according to the science journalist Chris Mooney, who had a thorough look into the question, public attention was also caught by the impressive rise of media interest displayed since Katrina's disaster. Mooney indicates that not only did the coverage of the issue increase dramatically, but the subject has also been entirely reframed.

While global warming was for a long time only discussed on the so-called scientific debate point of view, it suddenly became scandalous subject. As journalists were telling the stories of the various scandals related to the Iraq war, they unfortunately discovered the intimidation methods and the scientific information distortion that were used by the Bush administration. All this clumsiness made the uncertainty thesis more difficult to sell and journalists started writing about personal stories and big economic opportunities.

A long-lasting impact?

In a world where information ought to follow an ever faster pace, can such an interest last? For Anthony Leiserowitz, this is not certain. It is then even more necessary to use this opportunity window to implement courageous national policies.

Version française : Le grand réveil de la conscience américaine

Caricature 1: http://www.brutallyhonest.org/brutally_honest/images/2007/03/15/051206winterblunderx.gif
Caricature 2: Dan Perjovschi, What Happened to US?, MOMA exhibition

California: only words?

Surprising departures from the California Air Resources Board

As I was having a quick look at the Los Angeles Times yesterday, I stumbled across two highly intriguing articles, reporting the almost simultaneous departures of two top officials of the California Air Ressources Board.

I would probably not have found the story appealing if it hadn't been for the fact that it seemed to involve a deep rooted conflict between the top officials of an agency in charge of monitoring and regulating greenhouse gases emissions in California and the now famous Governor who succeeded in making the issue one of the Golden State's top priorities.

The impressive leadership of California

As anyone in America, I have of course heard quite a lot about California during the last months. I followed the legal battle opposing the Environmental Protection Agency and the States in favor of a regulation of cars greenhouse gases emissions, where California, as the first State to implement such a regulation in 2002, was quite naturally under the spotlights. I also read about the Global Warming Solutions Act, effective since January 2007, that aims to reduce Californian emissions to the 1990 level by 2020. I finally heard of local initiatives, like the ban on plastic bags adopted by the city of San Francisco at the beginning of the year. As a whole, I concluded that California was probably the leader of climate change actions in America.

Could it have been only a public relations campaign?

But I now start wondering whether these climate actions should not be seen for an important part of them as a big public relations coup. Until now, most of Governor Schwarzenegger's actions have indeed been focused on driving the spotlights on the (revolutionary) steps taken by the State to deal with climate change. However, most of them still remain quite academic. And his recent conflict with the top officials of the Air Resources Board seems to indicate that the concrete step is not necessarily going to be an easy one.

Robert Sawyer, former head of the Board, said that he had been fired by Schwarzenegger after having pushed for more aggressive actions to curb greenhouse gases emissions. The Governor's administration officials replied that he had actually been fired for not being tough enough. This version could have been believed if it wasn't for the departure of the Board executive director, Catherine Witherspoon, less than a week later, saying that she resigned because the very same administration was pressuring her and her staff to soften the regulation measures planned for the construction industry.

Knowing that the construction industry offered millions of dollars to the Governor during his electoral campaign, one will easily understand that Schwarzenegger might be keen to ensure that regulations don't get too tough for these precious allies. Let's see during the next months whether the actions announced by the Californian Governor are indeed real.

Le scepticisme climatique en Amérique / Climate scepticism in America

En surfant sur internet, je suis tombée il y a quelques temps sur le blog du Dr. Stephen Nodvin. Le Dr. Nodvin est Directeur de l'Ecole d'Arts et de Sciences du Mount Ida College, localisé dans le Massachusetts, et professeur associé en sciences naturelles dans le même établissement. Voici sa vision de l'évolution du discours des "sceptiques climatiques" américains.

Traduction : Il n'y a pas de réchauffement climatique.

La personne prise pour cible sur ces images est un chercheur en sciences environnmentales de l'Université de Virginie et un contributeur aux rapports du GIEC. Le Dr. Patrick Michaels est membre de l'Institut Cato, un groupe d'experts proche du parti républicain. Il est connu pour son scepticisme climatique (qui n'est peut-être pas complètement étranger à ses sources de financement...)
Traduction : La terre se réchauffe, mais c'est un phénomère naturel. Il n'y a pas de preuve que les humains en sont responsables.
Traduction : Nous savons depuis des années que la Terre se réchauffe à cause des activités humaines, mais on ne peut rien y faire!
Traduction : Blup. Allo?


English version:

As I was surfing on internet some days ago, I discovered Dr. Stephen Nodvin's blog. Dr. Nodvin is the Director of the School of Arts and Sciences of Mount Ida College in Massachusetts, as well as an associate professor in natural sciences there. He kindly allowed me to use some images found on his blog, that describes the evolution of the climate deniers' speech in America.

Dr. Patrick Michaels, the target of these caricatures is an environmental science researcher at the University of Virginia. Dr. Michaels is a contributing author to the IPCC reports and a member of the Cato Institute, a think-tank close to the Republican party. Dr. Michaels' "climate scepticism" is well-known in the US, though it might be partly due to his financing sources.

The real cost of plastic bags

The overwhelming plastic bags

I have been back in North America for several months now, but I still feel uncomfortable with the battle that I have to fight almost every day against plastic bags. Do I forget that issue during a short second while paying at the pharmacy? I’ll go out with three plastic bags wrapped around my shampoo. Do I start discussing the weather with the cashier at the grocery store? I’ll find myself with two plastic bags for each of the products I bought. If I say from the start that I don’t want them, I can still be sure that I’ll find my eggs and my milk carefully packed inside two plastic bags each.

In the US, as was the case until very recently in France, the plastic bag is the common currency of any commercial transaction. If you have a look at the Reusablebags website, you’ll learn that, according to the Wall Street Journal, Americans consume around 100 billions plastic bags a year. If one takes into account any kind of plastic bags and wraps, as the EPA does, then this number skyrockets to 380 billions a year. No wonder then that people have difficulties understanding why I don’t want to fill my closets with them!

San Francisco's groundbreaking decision

But it seems that there actually are people in America who do care about the plastic bags problem. I have just discovered while looking at an old issue of the Christian Science Monitor that San Francisco has decided last March to ban all kind of non-reusable bags from its retail stores and pharmacies, thereby eliminating around 90% of them. Such a decision is really a first in the United States, and San Francisco had indeed very good reasons to take it, as it is facing an increasing scarcity of landfills and experiences little recycling success: in spite of a decade of efforts, only 1% of the plastic bags in the Bay Area do have a second life, a ratio comparable to any other place in the United States (incidentally, this might sound like a failure, but for the tax-payers, this is actually a reason to be relieved, as the recycling of a ton of plastic bags has a net cost of almost 4000$).

A potential climate asset...

Aside from its economical advantages, San Francisco’s decision could also turn out to be a real asset in the fight against global warming. Here are the facts: the city consumes 181 millions plastic bags a year. The decision to eliminate them will spare the use of 430 000 gallons of oil per year, an amount that could permit the circulation of 140 000 more cars each day. Isn’t that quite impressive? Just imagine what would happen if every town in the United States followed that decision. That would diminish the US greenhouse gases emissions to an amount equivalent to taking 77 millions cars off the road each day!

... which could also turn out to be catastrophic

However, the plastic bags’ ban could also have catastrophic consequences on San Francisco’s emissions, depending on whether the retailers choose paper bags or starch bags to replace them. Paper bags, though clearly less expensive than starch bags (whose price has been rising steadily because of the pressure put by the ethanol demand on corn market), are also very energy consuming: according to the Society of Plastics Industry, it takes four times more energy to produce a paper bag than to produce a plastic bag. And as paper bags are made of wood pulp, an increase in their production would also imply more forest cutting. Evidently, such an eventuality is not very welcome in a time when we badly need the carbon wells graciously provided by temperate forests…

Is San Francisco’s decision a good or a bad news then? It is still difficult to say. But I wouldn’t be surprised if now was the perfect time to launch a business that would sell some of the wheeled reusable-bags that have become an increasingly common sight in Paris during the last year…

The crusade of the man who used to be the future President of the United States

The great discovery of An Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore

For Stephen Nodvin, director of the School of Arts and Sciences of Mount Ida College, Al Gore’s “inconvenient truth” is not a novelty. Holding a Ph.D. in ecology, this is actually something he has been explaining for years to various publics, including his own students.

“But what really got me impressed when I first saw the movie was the ability that Al Gore showed to explain in one hour and a half something that usually takes me more than three weeks to teach. Besides, his graphs were better than mine!”, Stephen tells me.

Stephen is not the only one who felt impressed by Al Gore’s clarity. With An Inconvenient Truth, America discovered a charismatic politician, far away from the “boring” Presidential candidate people used to remember. And no wonder why: since 2000, Mr. Gore has been working very seriously on the way to get a complex message to be heard by an easily distracted public. “The idea of making a movie is in itself part of this new approach, Stephen explains. Al Gore knows that one of the best ways to get the attention of the American public is to make a movie!”

A message that needs to be passed on further

But despite the unarguable success of the documentary, which grossed over $20 millions, earned two Academy Award nominations and received a broad Media coverage, Al Gore realizes that his movie did not reach everyone in America. There still are large areas, especially in the Midwest, that have not received the message. Since the beginning of the year, Al Gore is therefore recruiting an army of volunteers, who will pass it on in person.

Like a thousand others, Stephen is part of the Climate Project « cavalry ». He has been recruited to give the movie’s presentation in his region, New Hampshire. The volunteers, ranging from housewives to scientists, have all taken part in a two-days and a half training session, during which Al Gore has been explaining step by step the scientific background of his movie and why he chose to present it in this way. The “climate messengers” have all agreed to give the presentation at least ten times this year. For many of them, this objective should be easily reached, as they know that the time is now running short: the ex vice-President’s call must be heard before the presidential elections of 2009. As Stephen notices, “we have today all the technology we require to reduce substantially our greenhouse gases emissions. All that we need is the will to do it.”

Version Française: La croisade de l'ex-futur Président des Etats-Unis

A new recipe to curb U.S. emissions?

Europe should try to move to a more U.S.-style economic model

Workers from all around the world, here is a piece of news that might interest you! It looks like some researchers in Washington D.C. have found a new solution to curb the U.S. carbon emissions.

I have just read a report published by the Center for Economics and Policy Research. The report studies the impact of long working weeks on the global warming issue. As the authors, David Rosnick and Mark Weisbrot, rightly observe, there is a general transatlantic consensus that Europe needs to move to a more U.S.-style economic model, and especially needs to allow more labor market flexibility (i.e. allow less regulation of business, more latitude to fire employees...)

Americans work more than Europeans, but they also tend to consume more energy per unit of GDP

Yet, according to this study, such an evolution could have highly negative effects on the energy use in Europe. Here are the facts: in 2003, Americans worked in average 1817 hours a year, while their European counterparts work in average 1650 hours a year. At the same time, the energy consumption of the United States was around 0.27 kg of oil equivalent per dollar of GDP* in 2005, while the average European energy consumption was close to 0.21 kg of oil equivalent per dollar of GDP.

Longer working hours tend to increase the energy bill

In the authors' view, the higher energy use in the US per unit of GDP is due to the longer time spent at work. Their explanation is actually quite simple: when you work more, you've got less time. Therefore, you'll be more prone to avoid time-consuming activities (that also tend to consume less energy), like drying your laundry on a clothesline, cooking or walking to work.

With shorter working hours, Americans could reach the Kyoto targets

Assuming a constant energy efficiency (energy used per unit of GDP) and a constant productivity (GDP per hour of work), the authors calculated that if the workers in the U.S. had worked as much as people in the EU-15 in 2002, the country would have decreased its energy bill by 20%, and would have emitted 3% less carbon dioxide than in 1990, thus reaching easily the Kyoto targets...

Should we start reconsidering the classic economic theory in the light of the new global challenge we face?

* GDP : Gross Domestic Product ou Produit Intérieur Brut

Photo: Nicolas.

Melting Point or how to make global warming fun

Source : http://www.cognitoy.com/meltingpoint

The global warming game

"And then, every kid in the classroom could be given a country, knowing that he would be awarded marks according to his individual economic performance. Of course, everyone would try at first to play on his own, thinking only about his own interest, and everyone would crash! Then, kids would maybe start to understand the importance of teamwork on this issue”, Kent Quirk tells me enthusiastically.

I am sitting with him, his wife Kim and Nicolas on the sunny terrace of a Starbucks Coffee in the “People Republic of Cambridge”, as they teasingly introduced the city. And despite the appearances, Kent is not a teacher discussing new pedagogical methods. He is a software architect and he is introducing the enormous educational potential of Melting Point, a computer game about global warming.

In the shoes of a policy-maker

Melting Point is a serious game dealing with a very complex issue. Kent’s general idea is to give you and me the opportunity to understand better the incredible complexity hidden behind the issue of global warming. Thanks to his game, you’ll be able to put yourself in the shoes of a policy-maker for a moment, by trading-off economic and politic issues to solve the scientific problem of global warming. The game is currently intended as a flash game that takes only a few minutes to do. However, its longer version could also become a very useful tool for policy-makers, as well as a platform to argue about science, allowing to test both the effects of various policies on global warming and the climate response to human activity through more or less optimistic scenarios.

An impressive project

Kent started the creation of Melting Point a year ago, as he became frustrated with the US inertia on the global warming issue. “I thought the Medias were only interested in the controversy and when they acknowledged the existence of the issue, they only focused on a tiny bit of the solution. This was irritating, especially as the size of the problem means that we need to find a real solution to fix it in the next decade or so.” He decided therefore to work on Melting Point on his own for some months.

The result is impressive. It has already driven the interest of Scholastic, a publisher specialized in educational books. Kent will be presenting the flash game version of Melting Point to the public at the Games for Change festival that is to be held in New York City on June 11 and 12. He hopes to attract other potentially interested companies there. Why not yours?