Scientists solve enigma of Antarctic ‘cooling’

Article in The Guardian of 21st January 2009 (news also covered in New Scientist) about why the Antarctic appeared to be cooling slightly, while the West Antarctic  has been getting warmer and the Ice Sheet (WAIS) has been shown increasing glacier movement and ice-melt, and the earth as a whole has been getting warmer. A new study published in Nature finds the continent has been getting warmer and explains the slight cooling in East Antarctica.  The warming of WAIS  has offset the cooling of the Eastern Antarctic and continent’s mean surface temperature has risen slightly (0.12C per decade since 1957).  The cooling of East Antarctica is likely to reverse soon.

It seems that the cooling of East Antarctica was due to the ozone hole, and now that the release of ozone harming chemicals has been reduced the ozone hole is healing itself and the temperature of East Antartical is likely to warm and catch-up that of  West Antarctica quite rapidly.

The new study uses ground measurements and satellite data and was led by Professor Eric Steig, at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Here’s the demolition of yet another climate change denier’s argument (picking on an anomaly).

And – more concern about sea-levels, amongst other impacts: “The rapid warming now revealed in the west concerns some scientists. The new analysis suggests the West Antarctic ice sheet, like that in Greenland, is precariously balanced, said Professor Barry Brook at the University of Adelaide. “Even losing a fraction of both would cause a few metres of sea level rise this century, with disastrous consequences,” he said.” (from the Guardian Article)

Happiness, urban design and obesity!

Today, October 17th, brings headline news about obesity in the UK. A report by the government’s Foresight section ‘Tackling Obesities: Future Choices‘ is launched today and makes it to the BBC news headlines ‘Obesity ‘not individuals’ fault‘… ‘Obesity was an inevitable consequence of a society in which energy-dense and cheap foods, labour-saving devices, motorised transport and sedentary work were rife….In 2002, those who were overweight or obese cost nearly £7bn in treatment, state benefits and indirect costs such as loss of earnings and reduced productivity. In 40 years’ time, that figure could reach nearly £46bn, as health services struggle to cope with the ill-health such as type 2 diabetes, cancer and stroke which can be associated with excess weight.’

A whole section of the Foresight report is devoted to ‘Obesogenic Environments’. It reviews the evidence, mainly from the USA, Australia and Scandinavia, linking the built environment with obesity and quotes a number of case studies illustrating ‘best practice’. These include traffic-free cycle and walking routes in Sussex, Glaxo-SmithKline which guaranteed employees parking places only if they cycled to work (??) and provided secure cycle parking, showers and lockers, urban planning groups which bring together city planners, transport planners and public health specialists to guide development, remodelling shared public space in Blackett Street in the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne to benefit cyclists and pedestrians and, finally, Aylesbury Vale District Council and others involved with the development of Fairford Leys which aims to promote a better quality of life.

All encouraging stuff, but only some small steps in promoting a change of thinking amongst traffic planners and the public about planning for mobility by means other than the car, or even bus, and even, planning for less mobility.

Interestingly, an article by Pooran Desai in Building Design “What we can learn from ‘the good life‘” comments on lessons learned from the young science of happiness – happiness being related to health and environments which encourage daily physical activity such as walking to the local shops or commuting by bike. ‘Mobility has a more fundamental effect on happiness. Whereas traditional economic ideology promotes mobility to enable economic growth, change and competition, rising mobility has led to breakdowns in social networks and the sense of community…This has profound and negative effects on happiness, particularly on trust. Put simply, if you don’t know your neighbours, you are less likely to trust them — and with good reason, because simple game theory tells us crooks flourish in more anonymous societies.” And “if we create a culture which seeks happiness not consumption, we can avoid environmental damage.”

I’m skeptical about too much emphasis on happiness – it’s an elusive feeling and the more you seek it the harder it is to find. It sneaks up on you when you’re engaged in something else such as working for the benefit of others or making music. However, urban design which makes talking to and meeting your neighbours more likely and more pleasant (without intrusive traffic noise and fumes) and which makes it easier and more pleasant to get around on foot or by bike would tend to promote better health, better communities and more happiness.

Density and Urban Sprawl – new housing in South-east of England

I came across this article on the RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) website on the subject of urban density – How to stop the urban sprawl, RICS website, 12 October 2004, Alan Dobie. This is very relevant to the current debate about increasing the rate of house building in the south-east of England.  Yesterday’s (28th August 2007) Financial Times had much about this.  In “Setback for Brown’s housing targets” by Jim Pickard wrote “Plans for 3m new homes in the UK will be dealt a blow on Wednesday by an official report recommending a lower rate of housebuilding growth for the south-east, the region at the heart of Gordon Brown’s plans to increase home ownership.  The prime minister is keen to see swaths of new estates, not only in “regeneration” areas such as the Thames Gateway and Milton Keynes, but right across the Home Counties.”

I’m concerned that the current system for achieving new dwellings will result in yet more characterless, low-quality, low-density housing already so common on the outskirts of most towns in the region. The RICS article reminds us that “Low-density housing is not just wasteful in terms of land use. It also poses other problems, such as the size of the local population being insufficient for local shops, transport and other services to be financially viable. This in turn leads to increased traffic and pollution as people become more dependent on using the car for short local trips.”  The article discusses the benefits of higher densities and why it has proved so hard to achieve them in the south of England.  One of the key problems is the perception of much of the British public, taken into account by developers when planning new dwellings, is that higher density means poor quality.  

In many cities on the continent relatively high densities are the norm and are associated with high quality, spacious living with excellent facilities around such as cafes, restaurants, shops and parks.  Good quality public transport is also the norm.  This photo shows a typical area in the south of Brussels, Belgium, about 4 km from the centre of the city:

Bogotá – ‘a healthier and happier city’

Two items about Bogotá have excited me, both about the policies of Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá, and both passed on by friend and keen cyclist here at Oxford Brookes, Tim Jones. Colombia on the whole does not enjoy good press in the UK, and South America generally (and generalisations are always false, of course!) is said to combine wealth and influence for the few side by side with much poverty, so it’s especially good to hear of policies being introduced which are designed for general good, and which, in the short time appear unlikely to be popular for the wealthy.

The city’s vision

The first item is an article by Peñalosa describing their policies, which appeared in Environment Matters (in 2005) a World Bank publication, freely available by email, though this paricular copy is hosted by a Netherlands cycling organisation. Here are a few items from the article: “We want dynamic organised communities, with a sense of belonging. We want a city that will not increase road space in response to traffic jams, but rather will further restrict private car use. We want a city that clearly devotes more space and resources to children than to motor vehicles”.

In the UK, European Car Free Day, called I believe “In Town without My Car” (sounds like the title of a children’s story) is barely noticeable. In Brussels, no private cars are allowed an the streets on certain Sundays, and the streets are alive with people strolling, cycling, roller-blading etc. But in Bogotá every Sunday, “120 km of main arteries are closed to motor vehicles for a period of seven hours … more than 1.5 million people, from upper- to lower- income classes come out to bicycle, jog, walk and socialise”.

Bus-based transit system

“The single project that most contributed to improved quality of life was a bus-based transit system called TransMilenio … inspired by the Curitiba system in Brazil.” From a project management point of view the speed with which this project was completed “We were able to design, build the infrastructure, create the private partners that would operate it, get out the thousands of buses that previously operated there, and put the system into operation in three years.” In 2005 with then “only 66 km the system moves more than 1 million people every day, with a public investment of $270 million.”

Promoting cycling

I’m also inspired by the efforts to develop cycling as a means of transport. “While carse tend to be means of social differentiation, bicycles integrate. In dutch and danish cites, more than 35 percent of the population uses the bicycle for transport, while the percentages are insignificant in cities in the developing world …. The main reason is that developing -world cities are designed and built for the wealthier minorities. Costly elevated highways are built for the benefit of a few, while bikewayas and even sidewalks are frequently absent. In Bogotá, we built more than 300 kilometers of physically isolated bicycle paths in less than three years. From nearly none, more than 4.5 percent of the population now use a bicycle for daily transport needs. And many more use it sporadically.”

A message for other large cities around the world – cycling can work

It’s been depressing to see that large cities in China, often with a history of mass cycle use have been rapidly developing car use and associated infrastructure, and sometimes closing certain routes to cycle use. All the problems of noise, severance – both physical and social, and very noticeably pollution have been the result. I had become concerned that the European model of the city which is pedestrian and cycle friendly might not be appropriate in the massive new cities of the developing world, but Bogotá, with a population of some 7 million, provides an encouraging message.

The video

Much of this can be seen on a short video about Bogotá, also featuring Enrique Peñalosa, which can be downloaded, or played, from http://www.nycsr.org/nyc/video-view.php?id=20
The video needs the Quicktime plug-in (free download) to play.
The only thing I have reservations about, in the European context, is having segregated cycle routes. If they’re not busy, and are kept away from car routes there’s danger that they can be quite threatening – like those in Milton Keynes. One of Peñalosa’s comments I particularly like is that if a cycleway isn’t safe for an 8-year-old, it’s not a cycleway, spoken as a New York taxi’s door opens into a cycleway and a cyclist is forced out into fast traffic.

Climate Change: Economics and George Monbiot’s Action Plan

We hear increasingly urgent calls for action, while still being offered larger and faster cars, being encouraged to invest in oil related investments and to take our holidays ever further away. Philip Stephens, writing in the Financial Times (“The Inconvenient Truth that Threatens to Change Everything”, 6th October 2006) comments “They still do not get it. Tune in to the politicians and you could be forgiven for thinking they are finally grasping the significance of climate change. Sustainable growth is the political cliché of our times. Smart politicians have learnt that there are votes to be had from planting trees. Listen carefully and the rhetoric is mostly empty”. He refers to an as yet unpublished report for the British Government by Nicholas Stern, a former World Bank economist, which shows that the “costs of action now are relatively modest – far smaller than those that would flow from delay. In the US, Mr. Bush is looking increasingly isolated, and obsolete, as states and cities pledge to reduce carbon emissions.”

The Huge Cost of Not Tackling Climate Change soon

A fuller account of the Stern report was published on SciDev.net “UK Warns of Huge Cost of not Tackling Climate Change”. His report was presented to a private meeting of environment and finance ministers from 20 industrialised and emerging economies in Mexico. The gathering in Mexico was to establish a framework for tackling climate change after the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end in 2012.

George Monbiot’s Action Plan

I went to a stirring meeting organised by COIN (Climate Outreach Information Network) on 19th October 2006. George Monbiot, the campaigning journalist in favour of tackling climate change and inequity, was the main speaker and, ostensibly, the meeting was to launch his new book “Heat: How to stop the planet burning”, published by Allen Lane. Expecting a large turnout, the Sheldonian Theatre in Broad Street, Oxford, had been booked and even that was filled to capacity, despite bad weather (I cycled home in a heavy downpour at the end – feeling intrepid).

He speaks well, using neither notes or presentation software. It’s refreshing to hear rhetoric and effective argument, uncluttered by images and bullet points.

Some of his themes:

Climate change challenges our imagination and our morality. It’s hard to believe that our individual actions are changing the nature of the planet. In our old morality it is right to travel to New York for a friend’s wedding or to visit relations in Australia, but a new morality is emerging in which those things could be contributing to our destruction. But the danger is that we are witnessing a shift, a tipping point, moving from “is climate change really happening?” to “it’s too late” and abdication of responsibility.

This led to his over-arching theme – we still have time to avert disaster and his action plan.

Firstly, what do we have to achieve, and what are the dangers of not achieving it?

As one expects from Monbiot, this is starkly presented, and research based; an FAO report which concludes that climate change will increase hunger in the 40 poorest nations on earth; the Royal Society paper which demonstrated that forecasts that climate change will increase food production (in the temperate regions – not in regions where poverty is prevalent) are wildly optimistic – ozone levels will rise and will inhibit plant growth; a paper in a hydrometeorology journal concluding that by 2090 climate change would produce a severe net global drying threat.

Monbiot concludes that the west (equity demands that we need to cut more than less developed countries) needs to achieve a 90% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030 in order avoid tipping off an accelerating and uncontrollable global warming trend (an article in New Scientist of 30th September 2006, “One Degree and We’re Done For” explains how warming in Siberia – now almost 2°C warmer than in 1970 – is causing methane to be released and how this could set in train other processes which have ‘the potential to transform the world into “another planet” ..).

Monbiot’s plan is for bringing about this 90% reduction in the UK. As he commented, he’s explained what could be done, but doesn’t deal with the issue of how to achieve the necessary political will. I may devote another posting to his solutions, which cover individual, tradable, carbon rations, electricity generation, energy saving in the home, inter-city transport and aviation. His solutions sometimes run counter to accepted wisdom, for example highlighting the dangers of switching to biofuels and arguing for offshore wind-generation and solar electricity generation in the Sahara Desert while dismissing microgeneration [1] as too costly and ineffective for general consumption (though possibly effective in some situations).

I was disappointed that he did not cover urban design and local transport (and the short-comings of the UK Government’s plans for ‘sustainable communities’ to provide for additional dwellings in the south-east of England) but time was limited. Questioning was lively and strictly managed by George Marshall (of COIN). I was unable to ask my question – whether he’d taken account of the major emissions involved in the infrastructure development involved (such as offshore wind-turbine installation, photo-voltaic arrays in the desert and a new high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission network.

Take Responsibility!

His final words, in answer to a question about how to generate the political will, were “that’s up to you … there are no other people, there is no other time – ten more years and it will be too late – I want you to take responsibility”. Reminded me of Billy Graham’s evangelical meetings of many years ago where people were invited to come up and pledge their lives to Christ – and often the majority of the audience made the pledge. But, as a friend remarked afterwards, Monbiot’s claim was grounded and built on sound science and hard-headed assessment of the risks. Monbiot is right, the dangers challenge our imagination, but the potential for harm is so enormous we must take responsibility and take whatever action we can to bring about a new political reality where governments can introduce tough measures, which, like war-time fuel rationing, are accepted, because the public recognises their need.

1. See his article “Low-wattage thinking: Small-scale power schemes may sound great, but this flawed idea could wreck our chances of stopping global warming” New Scientist (30^th September 2006)

Climate ‘tipping points’, carbon offsets and emergency shelter

I’m relieved that climate change seems to be moving higher up the agenda, although bearing in mind the magnitude of the risks we’ve hardly started tackling the problem.  Last Thursday, 14^th September 2006, I attended an evening organised by COIN (Climate Outreach Information Network) at Ruskin College, Oxford.  The subject of the evening was ‘Carbon offsets – salvation or distraction?’  Mike Mason, the founder and managing director of Climate Care, one of the fastest growing offset companies, gave an excellent talk on the theory of offsets and the problems of selecting projects which reduce emission of greenhouse gases (primarily carbon dioxide and methane) which would not otherwise have taken place.  I intend to give a flavour of the meeting in another posting, but I want to mention a few of the statistics which emerged from the evening.  In 2005, according to their annual report, Climate Care sold of 99 000 tonnes of carbon offsets and Mike claimed that their offsets achieved were running ahead of the offsets sold.  On the other hand the UK’s emissions have increased in the last two years and are now more than in 1995.  The government has the rhetoric but has not achieved reductions and certainly nothing like those needed to achieve climate stability, given IPCC forecasting consensus figures.

Whatever reductions the UK might expect be planning (20% by 2020) this is swamped by increasing emissions from a power hungry China, which is apparently opening new coal-fired power stations at the rate of one every five days, and putting 22 000 thousand new cars on the road every day (I must check that – it seems so incredible).  Incidentally, a programme on BBC Radio 4, ‘Driven by Oil’ considered the effect of China’s aggressive search to secure sources of oil on political stability and on attempts by countries of the West to aim for an ‘ethical foreign policy’ – a phrase marketed by the late Robin Cook as UK Foreign Secretary but long since dropped.

 Last Friday’s Financial Times (15^th September 2006) demonstrated how the urgency of tackling potentially disastrous climate is becoming better known.  An article by Fiona Harvey “The heat is on: how global warming could suddenly tip over and ignite calamity” reviewed some of the arguments and areas where feedback effects can reinforce the impact of a rise in greenhouse gases, namely melting of artic ice, melting of the Greenland ice sheet and  accelerating glacier movement towards the sea, melting of glaciers elsewhere as likely to lead to floods followed by water shortages, melting of the permafrost leading to methane emissions, faster decomposition of organic matter in the soil, Amazon rain forest die-back and acidification of the oceans and lowered agricultural productivity.

This reminded me of an editorial in New Scientist (24 December 2005) Review 2005: Climate going crazy “The ominous phrase “tipping point” entered the vocabulary of climate science – a stark warning that global warming may soon spiral out of control”.  The article reviewed the worrying events, and research published, during 2005 suggesting climate change acceleration.

Meanwhile, I’ve been browsing through Architecture for Humanity’s 2006 book “Design Like you Give a Damn”, some of which deals with ideas for emergency housing, shelter and water supply.  Some of the demand for these arises out of climate change related events such as drought, flood and storms including Hurricane Katrina, the one which hit New Orleans in 2005; even now some of those displaced are living in emergency accommodation.  Let’s hope that we manage to contain our impact on climate change and that we won’t have enormously increased crisis needs to respond to – we’ve got quite enough unmet need as it is.

Welcome

This blog is at a very early stage of development; I’m hoping that it will encourage me to clarify my ideas, undertake research to develop them, and to enter into dialogue with those of like or skeptical mind.  I’m concerned about the mounting evidence that we’re in danger of irrevocably harming the planetary and local systems which make much of the world a hospitable place for mankind.  The risks are enormous – when I’m driving down the motorway at speed and there’s a fog bank ahead I might press on thinking it’s probably clear ahead, but I don’t.  I think of the possibility of a pile-up ahead and I slow down.  Mankind isn’t slowing down despite the possibility of catastrophe.

The link to urban space may seem remote. We need to take all measures to improve the ways in which we consume and support our environment.  More than half the world lives in cities and the proportion growing.  I’d like to help promote steps we can take to make cities places of delight, physically and socially; too often cities are polluted concrete jungles – designed for motor vehicles and not even doing that too well.  Well planned cities can be places of delight and at the same time contribute to reducing pollution in general and carbon dioxide emissions in particular.

In the UK there is ‘flight to the country’.  Conditions in cities and towns are driving many to move to the country leading suburbanisation, congestion and increasing emissions.  In the large parts of the world movement is in the opposite direction, India and China being notable examples.  Those countries have so far not applied the lessons we’ve learned in western Europe and North America and their cities often appear to provide terrible conditions.  I’d like to believe that this isn’t inevitable, and one of the things I’m hoping to use this blog for is to explore is the extent to which it is realistic to cater for the ambitions of the populations of those countries and yet provide good conditions and contribute towards environmental sustainability.