Californians, it’s your turn

There is currently a proposal before Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to rip through desert wilderness in your state to put powerlines. Chris Clarke makes the case against it; you don’t have much time to respond, so phone or email your protests IMMEDIATELY. Let the state government know that there is a dedicated bloc of environmentally aware voters in the state who are not going to sacrifice what makes California a state worth living in for power company profits.

The McCain record on the environment

John McCain made some pleasant noises about supporting science in his Science Debate 2008 responses. They were outright lies, however. If you want to get pissed off at a politician, read the analysis of McCain’s voting record on environmental and alternative energy issues. His voting record is nearly indistinguishable from James Inhofe’s — he has routinely either skipped out on crucial votes or voted against renewable energy and environmental conservation.

And it’s not just the environment! If you want to be really frightened, read what he said about health care:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

He wants to do to health care what the Republican party has done to the economy!

Judge him by what he has done, not what he says he has done, because the straight-talk express seems to be a twisty bunch of lies and detours that never gets to its promised destination.

Proud Ecuador

When we were in Ecuador, much of the local political discussion was around their efforts to write a new constitution for the country. I’d heard that there were some significantly progressive elements to the work, but this is the first I’ve seen some of the articles being considered: as is perhaps unsurprising for a nation well-endowed with natural resources and reliant on maintaining those resources to support the economy, they’ve done something terrific: they’ve not only written rights for nature (personified as “Pachamama”), but they’ve acknowledged the importance of evolution.

Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is
reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and
regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in
evolution.

Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to
demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public
organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will
follow the related principles established in the Constitution.

Art. 2. Nature has the right to an integral
restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation
on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people
and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.

In the cases of severe or permanent environmental impact, including
the ones caused by the exploitation on non renewable natural resources,
the State will establish the most efficient mechanisms for the
restoration, and will adopt the adequate measures to eliminate or
mitigate the harmful environmental consequences.

Art. 3. The State will motivate natural and
juridical persons as well as collectives to protect nature; it will
promote respect towards all the elements that form an ecosystem.

Art. 4. The State will apply precaution and
restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the
extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the
permanent alteration of the natural cycles.

The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material
that can alter in a definitive way the national genetic patrimony is
prohibited.

Art. 5. The persons, people, communities and
nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and
form natural wealth that will allow wellbeing.

The environmental services are cannot be appropriated; its
production, provision, use and exploitation, will be regulated by the
State.

It’s awfully fuzzy on exactly how they’re going to protect the rights of Nature (will she have lawyers working on her behalf?), but the sentiment is excellent.

Dr Chilingar, AKA Dr Chill

Most of you haven’t seen Sizzle, but there is one global warming denier in the movie who is a wonderfully strange character, Dr Chilingar. He is interestingly idiosyncratic, but the movie didn’t really pursue his views very far…but Tim Lambert has. Chilingar is guilty of comparing CO2 over billions of years to human CO2 over centuries and using formulas that assume greenhouse effects don’t change to argue that greenhouse gases will have no effect.

<hack> <hack> Excuse me, I had a little cough.

Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy

That gadfly of the science communication world, Randy Olson, has a new movie out, Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, and many bloggers all over the place are putting up their reviews today. I tried something a little different. The other day, I invited a group of people from Morris, Minnesota to watch the movie with me, and then we discussed what we thought of it afterwards…while my daughter, Skatje, video taped the whole thing.

Here’s the team: Nancy Carpenter (UMM chemistry), Kristin Kearns (astronomy/physics), Pete Wyckoff (biology), Len Keeler (physics), Kathy Benson (psychology), Athena Kildegaard (poet), Kathleen and Lawrence Owen (retirees), Arne Kildegaard (economics), Nic McPhee (computer science), and me.

We all watched the movie together, and then…our reaction. It got us all going, and we talked for over 45 minutes, which I’ve edited down to 10 minutes here.

You don’t want to watch the whole thing? Well, the overall response was that, alas, the movie is mediocre as both a documentary and as a movie — it’s not really about global warming at all, but is more about how people respond to information. This is one of those awkward media misfits — it doesn’t really fit into any of the conventional niches. It also doesn’t accommodate itself to passive viewing; I think sitting alone and watching it would have been exasperating. As a catalyst for a discussion, though, it was much more rewarding.

So don’t see it alone! Bring along a few people so you can have a good entertaining argument afterwards.

Seed has a new blog

We have a new blog here: Next Generation Energy, a temporarily active blog discussing alternative energy. It’s a bit of an odd duck and an experiment, with a team of bloggers focused on this one issue and exploring it for a limited term, but check it out.

One concern I can predict: it’s sponsored by Shell Oil (what next? A blog on the virtues of vegetarianism sponsored by McDonalds?). To allay concerns a bit, we’ve been assured that Shell will not be imposing editorial constraints — although, of course, there is always the indirect pressure caused by the fact that displeasing your patron may mean they will not fund future ventures — and the blogging team they’ve put together has a history of independence on this subject. I also think that the commenters here can play a role in keeping the discussion honest, since Shell isn’t paying you.

Ice, Mud and Blood

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I’m very fond of Chris Turney‘s book, Bones, Rocks, and Stars. It’s a slender, simple description of the many tools scientists use to figure out how old something is, and when arguing with young earth creationists, it’s become the first thing I recommend to them. It’s short and easy to read, and focuses on explaining how dating methods work.

Turney has a new book out: Ice, Mud and Blood: Lessons from Climates Past(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). This is the one you’ll be able to hand to climate change denialists, and it’s a winner.

Its virtues are the same as his previous book, the careful documentation of exactly how we know what we know, and less dictation of the conclusions. This is useful, because as we all know, climate is a phenomenon that shows a lot of variability, exhibits patterns in its history, and also has large degrees of uncertainty, phenomena that denialists can seize upon to magnify that uncertainty into a basis for an unwarranted rejection of well-supported hypotheses. So while we can see distinct variations from simple linear uniformity of climate change like the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period, that doesn’t change the fact that greenhouse gases profoundly influence earth’s temperature, and it’s clear that CO2 has risen to levels the planet hasn’t seen in at least 650,000 years. The past tells us what we can expect in the future, and it’s grounds for serious concern. Yes, Turner comes down firmly on the side of an anthropogenic cause for the current trend of global warming, and he explains exactly why, step by step.

Where Turner departs from the formula of his last book, though, is that this one, while still fairly short, is much denser and more technical. Anyone can read it — I managed, despite knowing next to nothing about climatology — but it’s not the kind of thing you’ll be able to do in an evening or two of light reading. There are a few places where the level of detail slowed me down to a steady slog rather than a fast flit, but face it, any book that tries to untangle ocean currents, monsoons, El Nino, and past current reversals is going to occasionally demand the same level of studious, focused attention you’d need to clean up a snarled fishing reel. This is a book that is describing some extraordinarily complicated stuff.

If you want just one book, not too thick or too technical, that will give you the intellectual tools to at least understand what the climate change experts are talking about, this is the one. I recommend bringing it to the beach and reading it there — you’ll appreciate the rising tide and the ocean beaches a little more, and perhaps regard them with a little more respectful dread.

Reality hurts farmers’ feelings

A few weeks ago, you may have heard about that interesting study that showed that using cropland to produce biofuels was actually more damaging to the atmosphere than using fossil fuels — among the reasons was that tying up productive cropland to produce alcohol meant other land had to be deforested/plowed/burned to produce food. It turns out that a couple of University of Minnesota faculty were involved in that study. Their reward? Agriculture groups that had funded them to the tune of about $1.5 million suspended their grants.

The Minnesota Soybean Growers Association and the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council decided to stop paying additional research money until they meet with Allen Levine, dean of the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, and other officials.

“The university hurt the farmers’ feelings, OK? That’s probably the best way to say it,” said Jim Palmer, executive director of the two groups.

Some people, even prominent, wealthy people, simply don’t understand the fundamental concept of basic research. The goal isn’t to get answers that make you feel good; it isn’t to find ways to rationalize continuing damaging practices; it isn’t even to pat you on the should and salve your delicate feelings. It is to find out the actual answer to a problem, no matter what it may be. Don’t fund research if you’re afraid of the truth.

Those two agriculture groups really ought to be ashamed of themselves. This is like getting together with your friends to play baseball, but threatening to take your ball home if they don’t let you win.