Climate Changing Faster, Stronger

According to an article currently up at CNN, the global climate is changing faster, stronger, sooner. This news is not surprising. The Snow and Ice Data Center, which tracks the Arctic situation among other responsibilities, reported in the end of summer 2008 survey of the extent of Arctic Ice after the summer melt period that the ice had declined to the second greatest extent in their records, topped only by 2007. Moreover, the ice, while covering a bit larger area, was at the same time thinner, meaning the total mass of ice was the lowest in their record keeping.

The urgency of responding to climate change is not diminishing, but the political will to respond may take a hit from the global financial crisis. If so, it will be unfortunate because beneath the financial crisis we find the critical factors of climate change and fossil fuel use and these will continue. In fact, the financial crisis is likely to make the situation worse in terms of climate, because lower demand for fossil fuels will temporarily decrease prices and thus decrease a sense of urgency in developing the next energy era. All of this could add up to greater problems in the medium to long term.

Agreeing with that point of view is an excellent article by Johann Hari, columnist for The Independent in the UK. His piece, "Don't kill the planet in the name of saving the economy" is blunt and to the point. Given current trends, a global temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit will be "locked in."

That condemns Bangladesh and the islands of the South Pacific to drowning.

But, if we turn our attention away from global warming to other issues deemed more important, then trends will likely get worse, leading to greater termperature leaps. Another degree Celsius and Siberian peat bogs melt and release methane, causing temperatures to move toward 4 or 5 degrees Celsius higher (7-9 degrees Fahrenheit).

The good news is that measures to tackle global warming and next energy needs are also the ones that will help revive the economy. No time to back off now.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet TV show host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

Future of Permafrost – bigger issue than ice

From Science Daily we learn of a new study published in the Journal of BioScience, Sep. 2008, on potential impacts of thawing arctic permafrost. Over millennia, according to the study authors, northern latitude permafrost has sequestered a trillion tons of organic compounds. Warming in the Arctic, which melts the polar ice cap, also has the effect of melting the permafrost and releasing carbon dioxide. The new study doubles the estimated amount of carbon stored, and likewise increases the amount estimated to be released into the atmosphere as the permafrost warms. In fact the estimate now is that leakage from northern permafrost may be the equivalent of half of all other carbon released by land use in this century on Earth.

It is this phenomenon that leads some scientists to be concerned about a run-away climate change scenario, in which temperatures could spiral more rapidly that can be dealt with. One possible counter balance will be the encroachment of carbon absorbing trees into the tundra, but this process is quite slow in relative terms.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet TV show host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

Future of Arctic Ice – New Data

Among the interesting policy positions of the new Vice President nominee designate of the Republican Party, Sarah Palin, is that global warming, if it exists, is not related to human activity, and that polar bears are in no danger in the Arctic and thus do not need endangered species designation. As a futurist speaker, I hear these same positions echoed after each of my talks in which I mention global warming, if I include that topic. One or more people will come up to me after the speech and ask if I am aware that the whole idea of global warming is a plot on the part of some who want more government control, or that other planets are warming just as much, or that melting arctic ice is just a natural cycle, or more recently that whatever warming had been happening came to an end a decade ago according to data from NOAA (though one can search the NOAA site for hours and not find reference to such data).

Two stories caught my attention yesterday that add to this discussion. First, apparently as the 2008 summer Artic melt seasons nears its end, for the first time in 125,000 years the ice has retreated sufficiently on all boundaries that an ice-free passage is open an all sides.

Compare these photos:

Second, the ice has retreated so far from the coast line in some areas, more than 400 miles, that polar bears have been observed, as their immediate ice flow disintegrates, beginning a swim of 400 miles toward the retreating sea ice rather than 60 miles south toward Alaska. They do this according to instinct, as the ice is their summer home and hunting platform. Bears generally have not been known to survive swims of more than 100 miles, so these particular bears are probably swimming to their deaths.

The end of August report on the extent of Arctic sea ice will be available soon, and so far the year 2008 is shaping up to be a least the 2nd worst year in record keeping history, after 2007.

The prospect of a national office holder who ignores scientific data is of concern, though this would not be new.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet TV show host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

Ice continues to diminish

Afer a long and icy winter in many parts of the world, especially in the U.S., and now that we are in mid-summer, what is happening with ice caps? Both the north and south poles are considered important as indicators of the future direction of the planet as related to global warming, since heat accumulates at a faster rate at the poles. Here is some recent news.

Current satellite images show the Wilkens ice sheet in the Antarctic nearing a full detachment from an island to which it has been connected. The images are similar to recent partial collapses of the Larsen A and Larsen B ice shelves. Most interesting, the current collapse is happening in the Anarctic winter, which makes it unsual.

Commenting on the phenomenon at the European Space Agency web site, Prof. David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said: "Wilkins Ice Shelf is the most recent in a long, and growing, list of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula that are responding to the rapid warming that has occurred in this area over the last fifty years."

He went on to say,

Current events are showing that we were being too conservative, when we made the prediction in the early 1990s that Wilkins Ice Shelf would be lost within thirty years - the truth is it is going more quickly than we guessed."

At the other end of the planet, the North Pole, the summer melt is underway, and the most recent data from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center is that the melt level at this time is similar to that of 2007, when the greatest melt recorded took place. This has caused estimates of when the Artic might be ice free to be moved from 2040 to as early as 2012.

These developments are not really so surprising, given trends of recent years.

Here is Seattle this week a confernce will convene of climate change skeptics, who will argue that either the observed ice pack melting is not really happening, or, if it is, it is of no consquence. My thinking is that it is smarter to behave as though it matters, and do what we can to slow accumulation of green house gases, just as we buy insurance against personal accidents. It would be smart, as any insurance agent will tell you, to purchase this insurance sooner rather than later.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet TV show host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

This is not a drill

Everyone has seen on film or TV, and a few have personally experienced the following: an emergency begins – a fire, an air raid, a ship collision. For a while there is confusion, and people mill around, not sure what is happening. Then, a voice comes over a PA system: “THIS IS NOT A DRILL, REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”

That was the simple point I attempted to make this week in a keynote speech to the Mississippi Valley Conference of state highway and transportation officials meeting in Kansas City.

You can view a copy of the PowerPoint slides that I used, here.

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The topic assigned was what lessons might we learn from the future about transportation, circa 2025? In order to understand transportation in that time frame, it is important to grasp what is happening today.

For a least a couple of decades, experts have been warning that a time would come when oil production would peak, prices would increase, climate change would challenge us, and putting all of that together we would come to end of the first automobile era. In fact, I predicted just that in a keynote speech in 1987, in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Now, it appears that we have arrived at the confluence of these forces. Many people in this audience, and any audience for that matter, hold out hope that the current situation is temporary, a mere blip in normal business and oil price cycles, and that before long we’ll be back, perhaps all the way to 1999 when the price of oil was $10 a barrel.

But, this is not a drill. China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the world are using more and more oil products, and buying more cars. Here in the U.S. we are our own worst enemies when it comes to consumption. Seemingly without much thought we’ve grown typical houses from an average of 980 square feet for 3.4 people, to 5000-8000 square feet for 2.6 people. Our vehicles have ballooned in size until bus-sized SUV’s and Hummers lumber down the road.

Now, not just oil prices but a variety of factors will push us to re-think transportation and energy policies:
• The millennial generation will not stand for an approach which merely attempts to repeat the past.
• Climate change impacts are hitting us sooner than previously expected, including a rapid increase in the number of major floods, and fires, world wide.
• The economy in the near term is staggering under the weight of the financial crisis. (Note: the week of July 7-11, 2008 really brought this fact home, as the stock market went from the worst month of June since the great depression, to its lowest level in years, while oil reached another all-time high price.)

Then, there is the situation with oil. Prices are high now primarily because there is no slack in the system. The world produces, and uses, about 85-86 million barrels a day, while a cushion of 8-10% would be required to reduce supply & demand pressures. Oil exports are flat as producing nations use more of their own product.

So, we must search for answers. Is the answer drill, drill drill, as we hear from certain commentators, presidential candidates, and presidents? Consider the possibilities, keeping in mind that the U.S. uses about 20-21 million barrels of oil a day:
• The Bakken shale area of the Dakotas and Montana: 23 days of oil for U.S.
• Arctic Wildlife Refuge – 1.5 years of U.S. demand
• Alberta tar sands – anticipated maximum production yields 3 hours a day of U.S. needs, a few minutes of global demand.
• Opening the off-shore Continental shelf – 2.5 years of U.S. demand, but not beginning until 7-10 years from now.

In other words, drill drill drill is not a solution, it is an election strategy. We need breakthrough thinking – and it is happening! Nanotech batteries and solar cells. Electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. We need only 17% more electricity a year in the national grid to re-charge the national fleet. Currently Amtrak has only 632 usable passenger cars in the entire country, but high speed trains may get a boost when California votes on Prop.1 this November. Mercedes plans to phase out fossil fuel vehicles by 2015.

Other nations are showing the way: Israel is going all electric, with service stations at which you will drive in, swap out batteries, and drive out. Brazil and China are investing in ethanol and methanol, respectively. Iran is converting private vehicles to natural gas. Masdar City in Abu Dubai will be a center for alternative energy and transportation research (too bad it is not in the New Mexico desert).

Here at home, T. Boone Pickens is outlining a plan to shift natural gas from electricity generation to a vehicle fuel, and using wind and solar to generate the electricity, in 10 years.

The bottom line is this:
• The next 15 years will see a transition from one energy & transportation system to another, a transformation which is necessary and inevitable.
• It is going to take a whole systems view of community form, energy, communications, and transportation to make this transition.
• It will require technology, and a deep reconsideration of values to get there.

We can to this, if we choose the right problems and apply the right solutions – the best definition of optimism that you can have.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet TV show host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

Climate Change: Two Book Reviews

I’ve read a lot of books about climate change in the past few years. Two of the most stunning are essentially picture books. I think I know why they had a bigger impact on me than traditional books. When I talk with people about climate change, the ones who live close to the land all, universally, get the stakes. They seem to have a serious sadness, and a fierce determination about them. They know what’s at stake personally – this tree, that animal, this lake, that beach. There’s some variation on how much is our fault and what we should do about it, but there’s no doubt about it happening. When you know nature, and you’ve been watching the last decade or so, rapid climate change is fact. If I’m talking to people who live in cities, many of them are either serious skeptics, or appear to be imitating Chicken Little. These two picture books show us what’s at stake, with the usual power of great photography to speak volumes of words.

The first book is Storm Chaser, A Photographer's Journey, by Jim Reed. Storm Chaser relates well to my own predictions about climate change for 2008, which include more weird weather. The book is a series of beautifully presented professional photographs of storms, and might be worth buying just for the photos. But its real strength is in the straightforward narrative about global warming and climate change. Storm Chaser is organized by season, and each season includes a discussion of storm chasing and of the beauty and mystery of that season. This discussion - and the accompanying photos - show how climate change is now a central thread for people fascinated by powerful weather. It is the elephant in the sky that can't be ignored. The website for Storm Chaser is beautiful, by the way, although only worth visiting with a fast connection.

The second is Vanishing World, the Endangered Arctic, by Mirelle de la Lez and Frederik Granath. The photos are stunning. Unlike Storm Chaser, where the narrative is as important as the photos, Vanishing World is clearly about the pictures. Each shot is spectacular, designed, I believe, to make the reader fall in love with the arctic. To make us see the stakes. Not that the text isn’t moving…it says things like “Old ice…is a tremendous source of information for scientists. It is an archive of the earth’s climate. Dating back thousands of years. When we lose our glaciers, we lose our history.”

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet TV show host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.