climate change starting to bite in Alaska

Bloomberg has an article about the effects of climate change in Alaska, and failure to deal with them. Surprisingly, it sounds like the state was making some limited strides under Sarah Palin but has completely dropped the ball since.

Across Alaska, in towns built on permafrost, rising temperatures are causing the ground to sink, damaging buildings and roads. In towns built on the coast, less sea ice means greater exposure to storms and floods. Drier conditions have led to more forest fires. Extreme weather killed or injured as many Alaskans in 2015 as in the previous 10 years combined. “Environmental change is not a theoretical in Alaska,” says Rick Thoman, the state’s climate sciences and services manager for the National Weather Service. “It’s happening, and it’s accelerating.”

Alaska was once at the vanguard of states trying to deal with global warming. In 2007, then-Governor Sarah Palin established a climate change subcabinet to study the effects of warmer weather and find policies to cope with them. Over three years, the legislature provided about $26 million in funding. But Palin’s successor, Republican Sean Parnell, disbanded the group in 2011. That year, Alaska withdrew from a federal program that provides funds for coastal management because of concern the program might restrict offshore oil extraction. Since then, lower oil prices, combined with dwindling production, have left the state with a budget crisis that’s among the worst in the U.S. Just when climate change is having real impact, Alaska has less and less capacity to deal with it…

Alaska is an extreme example of a national failure to prepare for climate change. Across the U.S., state funding for environmental projects, such as beach erosion control or upgraded sewage systems, peaked in 2007, even as capital expenditures have since risen 25 percent. States along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts have resisted adopting the latest model building codes designed to protect residents against storms and other extreme weather.

Along with its failure to deal with climate change, it sounds like Alaska has squandered its oil wealth. It could have converted its natural capital in financial capital that future generations could use to deal with the consequences of extracting those natural resources – pretty much a textbook definition of sustainability. It’s not the only failure at the state level – my home state of Pennsylvania could have used royalties from the shale boom to reduce its enormous state and municipal pension mess, but it didn’t and it’s mostly too late now.

 

small modular reactors

Even though there haven’t been a lot of commercial nuclear reactors built in the U.S., nuclear energy research and development has progressed since the plants we are most familiar with from the 1970s. Here is Forbes talking about a new type of small modular reactor.

This nuclear reactor is something that we’ve never seen before – a small modular reactor that is economic, factory built and shippable, flexible enough to desalinate seawater, refine oil, load-follow wind, produce hydrogen, modular to make the power plant any size, and that provides something we’ve all been waiting for – a reactor that cannot meltdown.

This last point is the really big deal with SMRs. The small size of each module changes the surface-area-to-volume ratio such that heat can be siphoned off easily so that the reactor can’t melt down…

Refueling of SMRs do not require the nuclear plant to shut down. The small size and large surface area-to-volume ratio of NuScale’s reactor core, that sits below ground in a super seismic-resistant heat sink, allows natural processes to cool it indefinitely in the case of complete power blackout, with no humans needed to intervene, no AC or DC power, no pumps, and no additional water for cooling.

I support nuclear energy provided the risks of past designs can be mitigated, and it sounds like there is progress in that direction. Uranium still has to be mined, enriched, transported, and disposed of safely, of course, and safer reactors do not address that issue. There is also the proliferation issue, coupled with the fairness issue of who gets to decide which countries are allowed to have nuclear technology and which are not. But there are no zero-risk options. With the health and climate risks of continuing to burn fossil fuels on a massive scale becoming more obvious every day, we should be giving nuclear a cautious look.

palm oil and peat

Mongabay explains why draining peatlands to grow oil palms is not a great idea.

Peat is a type of soil composed of partially decayed organic material such as vegetation that accumulates over time in a water-saturated environment lacking in oxygen. Peatlands are characterized by a thick layer of peat, often several meters deep that can take thousands of years to form.

Peat swamp forests act as massive carbon sinks, and when they are drained, carbon that has been slowly captured over the centuries it takes the peat to form is suddenly released into the atmosphere. A group of scientists recently uncovered the world’s largest tropical peatland in the Congo basin, thought to store the equivalent of three years’ worth of the world’s total fossil fuel emissions. The draining of peatlands can also lead to widespread subsidence, or sinking, as the organic matter rapidly decompresses and decomposes, ultimately rendering land unsuitable for agricultural or community development, according to NGO Wetlands International.

Across Southeast Asia, peat swamp forests have been cleared, drained, and burned away, often replaced by monocrop plantations or construction projects. Malaysia and Indonesia’s vast peatlands have been significantly reduced by large-scale draining and drying, leading to huge forest and peat fires across the region – such as the 2015 haze crisis that scientists say may have led to the premature deaths of 100,000 people. The event subsequently led Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo to ban the clearance and conversion of peat swamps.

 

The Death of Expertise

This sounded familiar to me:

a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.

It’s from the Amazon description of a new book called The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters.

fluoride and neurotoxicity

A coalition of groups including the American Academy of Environmental Medicine and the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology is petitioning the EPA to ban the practice of water fluoridation.

EPA should exercise its authority under TSCA to prohibit fluoridation additives because application of the Agency’s own Guidelines for Neurotoxicity Risk Assessment to the existing database on fluoride shows that (1) neurotoxicity is a hazard of fluoride exposure, and (2) the reference dose that would reasonably protect against this hazard is incompatible with the doses now ingested by millions of Americans in fluoridated areas. In fact, the amount of fluoride now regularly consumed by many people in fluoridated areas exceeds the doses repeatedly linked to IQ loss and other neurotoxic effects; with certain subpopulations standing at elevated risk of harm, including infants, young children, elderly populations, and those with dietary deficiencies, renal impairment, and/or genetic predispositions.

The risk to the brain posed by fluoridation additives is an unreasonable risk because, inter alia, it is now understood that fluoride’s predominant effect on tooth decay comes from topical contact with teeth, not ingestion. Since there is little benefit in swallowing fluoride, there is little justification in exposing the public to any risk of fluoride neurotoxicity, particularly via a source as essential to human sustenance as the public drinking water and the many processed foods and beverages made therefrom. The addition of fluoridation chemicals to water thus represents the very type of unreasonable risk that EPA is duly authorized to prohibit pursuant to its powers and responsibilities under Section 6 of TSCA, and Petitioners urge the Agency to exercise its authority to do so.

I admit I hadn’t heard of these particular groups, but at first glance they appear to be reputable. I might have previously lumped the anti-fluoride movement in with the anti-vaccine movement or the anti-global warming movement, as pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo at best and a serious danger to the public at worse. But unlike vaccines, the health benefits of fluoridation might not be all that great. If something is not useful and we are not sure if it is toxic or not, there is a strong argument for erring on the side of caution. Maybe one day we’ll look back at water fluoridation similarly to how we look at leaded gasoline or mercury thermometers today – “what were we thinking?”

sea level rise and high tide flooding

From PLOS One:

Sea level rise drives increased tidal flooding frequency at tide gauges along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts: Projections for 2030 and 2045

Tidal flooding is among the most tangible present-day effects of global sea level rise. Here, we utilize a set of NOAA tide gauges along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts to evaluate the potential impact of future sea level rise on the frequency and severity of tidal flooding. Using the 2001–2015 time period as a baseline, we first determine how often tidal flooding currently occurs. Using localized sea level rise projections based on the Intermediate-Low, Intermediate-High, and Highest projections from the U.S. National Climate Assessment, we then determine the frequency and extent of such flooding at these locations for two near-term time horizons: 2030 and 2045. We show that increases in tidal flooding will be substantial and nearly universal at the 52 locations included in our analysis. Long before areas are permanently inundated, the steady creep of sea level rise will force many communities to grapple with chronic high tide flooding in the next 15 to 30 years.

The Convergence

from Amazon:

Convergence is a history of modern science with an original and significant twist. Various scientific disciplines, despite their very different beginnings, and disparate areas of interest have been coming together over the past 150 years, converging and coalescing, to identify one extraordinary master narrative, one overwhelming interlocking coherent story: the history of the universe. Intimate connections between physics and chemistry have been revealed as have the links between quantum chemistry and molecular biology. Astronomy has been augmented by particle physics, psychology has been increasingly aligned with physics, with chemistry and even with economics. Genetics has been harmonised with linguistics, botany with archaeology, climatology with myth. This is a simple insight but one with profound consequences. Convergence is, as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg has put it, ‘The deepest thing about the universe.’ This book does not, however, tell the story by beginning at the beginning and ending at the end. It is much more revealing, more convincing, and altogether more thrilling to tell the story as it emerged, as it began to fall into place, piece by piece, converging tentatively at first, but then with increasing speed, vigour and confidence. The overlaps and interdependence of the sciences, the emerging order that they are gradually uncovering, is without question the most enthralling aspect of twenty-first-century science.

Toronto shoppers arriving by bike

Toronto has done a study of preferences and spending by shoppers in one of its neighborhoods, and the results show that merchants have an inaccurate picture of the demand for driving and parking.

A summary of the findings:

  • 72% of the visitors to the Study Area usually arrive by active transportation (by bicycle or walking). Only 4% report that driving is their usual mode of transportation.
  • Merchants overestimated the number of their customers who arrived by car. 42% of merchants estimated that more than 25% of their customers usually arrived by car.
  • Visitors who reported using active transportation to visit the Study Area visited more often and spent more money per month than those who usually drove or relied on public transit.
  • Visitors to the Study Area were much more likely to prefer a bike lane or widened sidewalks over no change, even if this resulted in the loss of on-street parking.
  • Merchants prefer the current layout of Queen Street more than a configuration where on-street parking is reduced to accommodate expanded sidewalks or a bike lane.
  • A majority of visitors (53%) and merchants (64%) stated that there was not enough bicycle parking within the Study Area.
  • Merchants were more likely than visitors to perceive the amount of car parking as inadequate: 52% of merchants stated there was not enough car parking in comparison with 19% of visitors.

This area must already be pretty safe and accessible by foot and bicycle. In most U.S. cities, I doubt we would find results like these. But if not, the lack of shopping by bicyclists could easily be a self-fulfilling prophecy if there are no bike lanes to begin with. The other critical factor, I am pretty sure, is whether people actually live in or near the shopping district. There are examples of U.S. cities that tried downtown pedestrian concourses that ultimately failed, but in the case of Philadelphia at least I am pretty sure they failed because nobody lived nearby.

High and Dry

Nature has a review of a new book on worldwide groundwater depletion. Remember, we are losing glaciers and snowpack in important food-growing regions at the same time it appears we are seeing more extreme and long-lasting droughts. Groundwater overpumping seems to be a wound we are inflicting on ourselves at the same time we are dealing with these external threats.

Some 95% of unfrozen fresh water resides unsung and underground, dimly visible at the bottom of a well or gushing from a pump. Big cities such as Buenos Aires and entire countries, including Germany, depend hugely on groundwater. About 70% of it goes into irrigation, accounting for more than half of irrigated agriculture — which in turn provides nearly half of the global food basket. In large parts of India, groundwater is egregiously overdrawn. And everywhere, aquifers are poorly measured and managed. As a result, no scientific consensus exists on the details of this vast and vital source of fresh water — although there is consensus on the fact that we face a worldwide problem.

In High and Dry, hydrologist William Alley and science writer Rosemary Alley encapsulate the crisis in a description of the US High Plains Aquifer, which spans eight states from South Dakota to Texas. “This virtual ocean of groundwater, which accumulated over thousands of years, is being used up in decades,” they write. In three ways, the book provides a deep and broad understanding of groundwater use and abuse, mostly in the United States but with some international scope…

The well could empty for millions more. The United Nations Development Programme notes that, in 2011, more than 40 countries experienced water stress; of those, 10 have nearly depleted their renewable freshwater supply. By 2050, one in four people globally may be hit by periodic shortages. The near future could see refugee numbers swell, to include more people without water.

self-driving cars, sustainability, and urban form

The debate about the likely impacts of self-driving cars rages on. This article suggests they will “kill the desire for better public transport, and wipe out the jobs of current drivers, plus many other jobs in the transportation system.” I think these charges may be true, but I think the overall impact will depend on the community. I have oriented my life around the idea of taking most of my daily trips for work, shopping, education, and social events on foot. I’ve been doing this for about 15 years, but the advent of ride sharing and mainstreaming of delivery services has made me a lot more comfortable doing it, and has made me comfortable doing it with a young family. There are other people like me out there. On the other hand, I am sure there are also people who live car-dependent lifestyles now who will be even more car-dependent in the future, and if that lifestyle choice becomes even more dominant, it could lead to even less demand for walkable cities in the future. Remember though that most cars are parked most of the time, so even if vehicle miles traveled stay the same or increase, any decrease in demand for private car ownership could have some positive effect on land use for more productive and sustainable uses other than parking (in other words, almost any uses at all).

So I just don’t think we know. I think cities should double down on livability and walkability, but not fight this technology which is probably inevitable. In fact, I think they should treat the technology as inevitable and think about how they can use it to develop more flexible, adaptable public transportation going forward.