Simple Physics

Jim White - a paleoclimatologist and the director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INCAAR) - knows something about climate change. And last Thursday, he took the time to explain it to those of us who are a little less steeped in the topic.

Global climate change comes down to simple physics and depends on three factors:

1) How much energy we get from the sun (i.e. sun cycles, our orbit around the sun)
2) How much of that energy is reflected back into space (by polar ice caps, glaciers, various aerosols)
3) The amount of greenhouse gases in earth's atmosphere(water vapor, carbon dioxide, etc.), which absorb the energy that is being reflected.

Pretty basic stuff at its core. And the laws that govern climate change are the same laws that govern other natural phenomena, like gravity - they are universal.

To make his point, he gives us a demonstration he's given frequently, recently to a group of Evangelicals. He asks one person to stand on a chair and then says to the crowd, "What happens if I push this person off the chair?" 

The crowd usually says the person will jump and catch himself.

"What if I tie his legs?"

He'll catch himself with his arms, maybe break a wrist.

"What if I tie his arms?"

He'll fall and get hurt, maybe badly.

But at no point does anyone in the crowd ever say that the guy won't fall. So we do understand that there are physical laws out there that apply to all of us. Those same physical laws are involved in climate change. Whether you believe in climate change doesn't matter - it's happening. To say it's not is like saying you don't believe in gravity or thermodynamics.

It's a good argument. For many - especially for those who are religious - climate change is seen as a different type of faith that scientists are trying to convert them to. But, as White points out, this isn't about faith, which requires you to make a leap, to accept something intangible or unprovable. Climate change and the science behind it are real. They're measurable. 

That doesn't mean religion and science have to be at odds - people have accepted gravity as part of their world and adopted it into their faith-based lives. This shouldn't be any different. Scientists like White aren't concerned with if or how people work climate change into their faith - they just want to make sure everyone understands the facts - the simple physics - of it all. 

Back In The Big Easy

From my hotel room, I'm watching an oil tanker push its way up the Mississippi River. Off in the distance, I see oil refineries, water storage tanks and fluffy white clouds building on the horizon. On the streets below, pedestrians move slowly through the heat and humidity, trying to stay in the shade and out of sight of the piercing hot sun.

I'm back in New Orleans, for the Society of Environmental Journalists' annual conference. It's been more than six years since I've been here but I haven't forgotten what a great city this is. It feels so different from any other American city I've been to; the architecture, the food, the history, even the city's layout - all of it makes it seem so much more foreign, more magical. 

The theme (because we have to have a theme) is "Risk and Resilience" - something that this city knows a lot about, or has certainly learned a lot about in the nine years since Hurricane Katrina. And while New Orleans seems magical, it - like many other cities around the world - faces some very real problems when it comes to climate change.

This morning's workshop focused on what communities are at risk from climate change and what's being done to make those communities and populations more resilient. While there are all kinds of ways to approach this topic, many of the panelists honed in on population growth. 

Obvious statement: population growth has a big effect on the environment.

No surprises there. It's especially a problem in poorer countries, where access to family planning, birth control and education are limited and poverty rates are high. But there have been some interesting finds out of attempts to curb population growth. In countries - Bangladesh was held up as an example - where WOMEN, not men, get more access to education, the population is less affected by climate change.

Why?

No one's entirely sure. But the theory is that when women get an education, they learn about family planning, they make better choices about their health, they understand the potential hazards in their community, they come up with disaster-preparedness plans, they develop skills that help get them out of poverty (or at least make them more economically stable and give them more power) - and all of those contribute to a population that is more resilient to climate change, that can adapt.

It's an interesting idea but it's really more about adaptation and long-term thinking. That's great. Climate change is going to affect everyone and populations will need to adapt to whatever it brings. But those changes are happening fast and we're a long ways from improving education for women across the globe. 

So, as I sit looking out the window at New Orleans, a city for which climate change has some big implications, in a state that faces some very big problems, it leaves me with the question of what are we going to do right now? Can we curb population growth faster? What's being done in poorer countries to make them aware of climate change? And if we can't even get people in this country to believe the science, to change their habits, can we expect others to do the same? It seems to me the longer we wait to make serious changes now, the less resilient we will be in the long run.

Law of the Land

If you're going to study law in the American West, you have to understand all of the parts that make it up - not just water and mineral rights, but also religion and culture. At least, that's what Charles Wilkinson believes. He's a longtime law professor who's worked for the government on a wide range of assignments, negotiating treaties with Native American tribes and establishing national monuments.

He paced in front of my Foundations in American Natural Resources Law class yesterday, six-foot-three and wiry, sporting well-worn cowboy boots, warning his law students that if they're just looking to study cases, this isn't the class for them.

Instead, he said, we'll get history and a chronological recounting of how the resources in the west were divvied up as well as the rise of the early conservation movement. We'll read Wallace Stegner's Beyond The Hundredth Meridian and Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac. In short - not your traditional law class.

And then he broke down the various elements that have to be considered if you're going to have a discussion about natural resource law in the American West, specifically on the Colorado Plateau - an area that encompasses large parts of Utah and Arizona, big chunks of Colorado and New Mexico and the Grand Canyon, among other major national monuments, forests and parks. Some of the elements he mentioned play a much larger role, but they all have to be taken into account.

1) Aridity - west of the 100th meridian, we get less than 20 inches of rainfall a year, which means that farmers rely heavily on irrigation and reservoirs. It's the main reason for the establishment of western water law.

2) Public lands - nationwide, the federal government owns about 25 percent of the land. In the intermountain west, that number goes up to 50 percent. And on the Colorado Plateau - two-thirds of that land belongs to the federal government. That's a lot of land to manage.

3) Range land - grazing land, for which the Colorado Plateau is not well-suited, as it causes a lot of damage, although that hasn't stopped ranchers.

4) Timber land - forest land is not abundant in this area and logging here has come way down in recent years but it's still a disputed resource.

5) Minerals - this includes hard rock minerals, like gold, and energy fuels, like coal and uranium.

6) Big build-up - following World War II, there was a huge rush on the west. The population quintupled and what city leaders wanted most for growth were water and energy. Big infrastructure projects got underway - the Glen Canyon Dam, Hoover Dam - and mining for coal and uranium took off. All this at a time when there was no regulations governing clean water or air.

7) Parks and monuments - those particularly breathtaking spots: the Grand Canyon, Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Bryce Canyon, Arches National Park...

8) Wilderness - protected areas, which preserve a natural resource that's not much discussed: the beauty of the land, as untouched and as wild as possible.

9) Mormons - they were the first whites to settle many parts of the Colorado Plateau, giving them a strong interest in ownership of the land and a tremendous amount of power in deciding what's to be done with it.

10) Indian tribes - they, too, have a strong interest in how the land is used and many have a central belief that the earth is a living conscious being to be treated with respect and care.

In short, there are a lot of interests here and a lot of resources that many people and industries would like to control. It will be interesting to see what's been done historically, as well as try to understand and anticipate what we might see going forward.

Here Comes Peter Cottontail...

They're a good source of protein. They don't take up much room. They're easy to raise, easy to breed, easy to butcher. They're delicious. And they're cute.

I'm talking about rabbits. Darling little fluffy bunnies.

And yes, I've eaten it, in Europe, in some sort of tasty stew. I haven't seen it much in the US - the occasional fancy-pants French restaurant will have it on the menu. But once upon a time, rabbits were a common food source here in the US, as recently as World War II. The meat fell out of favor but it could be making something of a comeback - Whole Foods has started selling whole butchered rabbits at certain stores.

As a meat source, rabbits make a lot of sense. They're better for the environment, as they require much less land and water than cattle; they're better for us health wise, rabbit meat is lean and low in cholesterol.

But there's a problem here for a lot of people, especially Americans. Bunnies are cute: they're soft and furry and they have those adorable little noses. They're one of the most popular pets in the country. And a lot of Americans are not too keen on the idea of eating them. A number of rabbit advocacy groups (37! There are at least 37 rabbit advocacy groups!) recently held a protest outside Whole Foods stores around the country,

I get that the idea of eating a pet makes people uncomfortable. People freaked out about the possibility of horse meat in their IKEA meatballs last year - not because horse meat isn't good (it is) but because we don't like the idea of eating horses (especially ones that have been secretly slipped into our meatballs). Same thing with dogs - almost everyone I know here is opposed to that idea, but they do eat dog meat overseas.

Here in the US? Well, we want pets and food to be completely separate from one another. We don't want to think too much about what we're eating or where it came from. And because we're so familiar with fluffy little bunnies, we don't like to find them on our dinner plates. But those same feelings don't apply to the cows, pigs and chickens that we happily gobble down.

Here's my thought - there's nothing that says you have to eat rabbit. People who want to eat it can eat it and the people who want to have pet bunnies can have pet bunnies. There might even be people out there who end up doing both - much like with backyard chickens. But it shouldn't be taken off the table. For those of us who want to continue eating meat, while also keeping the environment in mind, rabbit is a pretty good option, even if it is a cute one.

Polar Extremes

Last night, I met a guy who's been to the North Pole (multiple times), the South Pole (multiple times) and the top of Everest. I admit - I was a little skeptical when I went to his talk. I've come across a lot of other people who take on these big adventures just for the thrill or as a way to prove themselves, how hardcore they are. Climbing Everest, especially, seems like a big ego boost - and a selfish one at that, given the deaths in this year's avalanche.

But the guy who spoke last night - Eric Larsen - was a very thoughtful and smart fellow, who's spent 15 years exploring cold places. Part of what Larsen wants to do with his expeditions is raise awareness about the effects climate change are having on some of the most remote, most harsh environments on the planet, environments he hopes to document and preserve even though most people will likely never set foot there. As Larsen put it, he's doing these things not (in the words of British climber George Mallory) because they're there, but because they may not be there in the future.

Case in point, his most recent expedition. Earlier this year, he and another guy, Ryan Waters, made another trip to the North Pole - skiing, snowshoeing and - because the route involved traversing open water - swimming (in a dry suit). The whole thing was unsupported (no outside assistance or supplies), so the two of them pulled 350 pounds of their own food and equipment on lightweight sleds.

Larsen dubbed this expedition "Last North" because he expects it will be one of the last times that anyone will be able to make this journey, which starts on land (Northern Ellesmere Island in Canada) and goes to the geographic North Pole. Climate change and a shrinking, unstable Arctic ice pack will make future journeys like this next to impossible. 

I like what Larsen is trying to accomplish and I like what he had to say about what people can do at home to mitigate the effects of climate change. Turn off the lights. Ride your bike. But it's nothing we haven't heard before and I get the feeling, based on the crowd that was at his talk last night, that he's kind of preaching to the choir. Most of the people who watch his movies or follow his expeditions are already doing these things and are already aware of the problems that climate change poses.

He's clearly got the knowledge and the experience and the smarts to be able to talk to more than a crowd of adventurers and grassroots environmentalists. So the next step should be to reach out to people who can effect real change, like, say, the Canadian government. Which, it's recently been reported, has been trying to prevent federal scientists from sharing the extent of Arctic ice loss with the public. 

That seems to me to be a richer target for his campaign to save these polar places. Larsen's latest expedition began and ended in Canada and he's seen first-hand what climate change is doing to the landscapes and wildlife of our northern neighbor. He might get a frosty reception (ha) but he's been to colder places and - if he really wants to preserve them, working with the people who can effect real change will be both important and necessary.