Ecological Economics

Is promoting climate change disinformation a new type of crime against humanity?

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Donald Brown,a professor of law and environmental ethics at Penn State University,on his blog Climate Ethics wonders whether funding climate disinformation is A New Kind of Crime Against Humanity?. He writes:

On October 21, 2010, the John Broder of the New York Times, reported, that “the fossil fuel industries have for decades waged a concerted campaign to raise doubts about the science of global warming and to undermine policies devised to address it. According the New York Times article, the fossil fuel industry has ” created and lavishly financed institutes to produce anti-global-warming studies, paid for rallies and Web sites to question the science, and generated scores of economic analyses that purport to show that policies to reduce emissions of climate-altering gases will have a devastating effect on jobs and the overall economy.”

Without doubt those telling others that there is no danger heading their way have a special moral responsibility to be extraordinarily careful about such claims. For instance, if someone tells a child laying on a railroad tracks that they can lie there all day because there is no train coming and has never checked to see if a train is actually coming would be obviously guilty of reprehensible behavior.

Disinformation about the state of climate change science is extraordinarily if not criminally irresponsible because the consensus scientific view of climate change is based upon strong evidence that climate change harms:

(1) are already being experienced by tens of thousands in the world;(2) will be experienced in the future by millions of people from greenhouse gas emissions that have already been emitted but not yet felt due to lags in the climate system; and,

(3) will increase dramatically in the future unless GHG emissions are dramatically reduced from existing global emissions levels.

These harms include deaths and harms from droughts, floods, heat, storm related damages, rising oceans, heat impacts on agriculture, loss of animals that are dependent upon for substance purposes, social disputes caused by diminishing resources, sickness from a variety of diseases, the inability to rely upon traditional sources of food, the inability to use property that people depend upon to conduct their life including houses or sleds in cold places, the destruction of water supplies, and the inability to live where has lived to sustain life. In fact, the very existence of some small island nations is threatened by climate change. …

The October 21 New York Times article … concludes that some US corporate sponsored activities are helping elect politicians that have been influenced by the most irresponsible climate change scientific skeptical arguments. These corporations are clearly doing this because they see climate change greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategies as adversely affecting their financial interests. This fact leads to even greater moral culpability for American corporations because their behavior is as offensive as if the person who tells the child train that no train is coming when they don’t actually know whether a train is on its way makes money by misinforming the child.

The October 21 New York Times article concludes that the oil, coal and utility industries have collectively spent $500 million just since the beginning of 2009 to lobby against legislation to address climate change and to defeat candidates who support actions to reduce the threat of climate change. It would be one thing for an American corporation to act irresponsibly in a way that leads to harm to Americans, but because of climate change’s global scope, American corporation’s have been involved in behavior that likely will harm tens of millions of people around the world. Clearly this is a new type of crime against humanity. Skepticism in science is not bad, but skeptics must play by the rules of science including publishing their conclusions in peer-reviewed scientific journals and not make claims that are not substantiated by the peer-reviewed literature. The need for responsible skepticism is particularly urgent if misinformation from skeptics could lead to great harm. For this reason, this disinformation campaign being funded by some American corporations is some kind of new crime against humanity.

General

Corals and reality of climate change

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Simon Donner writes on Maribo about climate change and coral reefs:

In 2007, my colleagues and I published a study examining of the likelihood of the 2005 “hot spot” occurring with and without human influence on the climate system. The study contrasted model simulations of the Caribbean with historical data and then computed the statistics of extreme ocean temperature events. The second slide summarizes some of the key results of from study. In a nutshell, our best analysis concluded the 2005 Caribbean “heat wave” would likely be on the order of a once in a thousand year event, had there been no human-generated greenhouse gas or aerosol emissions since the Industrial Revolution (“natural forcing”). By the 1990s, the human forcings increased the odds to once in 10-50 years. And continued warming under “business as usual” would make such heat waves happen in three out of every four years.

Five years later, a Caribbean “heat wave” has happened again. I’ve been writing for months that there was a strong likelihood of extensive coral bleaching in the Caribbean this fall according to NOAA’s advance forecast of sea surface temperatures (in fact, we had a good inkling of this last summer). Now we’re getting reports of bleaching from observers in the Caribbean. Add this to the observations (following predictions, once again!) from Southeast Asia and the Equatorial Pacific, and we have what may be the most, or second most, extensive “global” coral bleaching event in recorded history.

For all those writing about this event, keep in mind the predictions. This is what the scientific community predicted was likely to happen. An event which we calculated would be a once in a millennium occurrence without human impact on the climate, happened again five years later.

Ecological Management

Phd and Postdoc funding on marine protected areas

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Helen Fox of WWF writes to tell me that:

WWF is offering Fuller Fellowships to support doctoral and postdoctoral marine protected areas (MPA) research in our marine priority geographies that shows promise to enhance scientific understanding of their ecological and social impacts.

She is also co-organizing a 1-day symposium New Perspectives on MPA Performance:
Linking Knowledge to Action on November 5 which will be webcast.

Networks, Visualization

Spread and mutation of panarchy

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The Database of the Self in Hyperconnectivity is a graphic created by Venessa Miemis a Media Studies student, who created the figure for a course project, to communicate different ways people interact with online information (there is also an interactive version).

She used Holling’s adaptive cycle, which she calls a panarchy (but because she misses the x-scale aspect its really an adaptive cyle) to identify contexts in which individuals act, but acknowledges this in a comment discussion.  Its interesting to see resilience thinking ideas pop up in other contexts.

I’m curious to the path by which panarchy moved into media studies (a quick google showed research in tagging classification systems using it) , and I wonder if any of the research on roles of people in environmental management done by Resilience Alliance researchers (e.g. in Panarchy book or Frances Westley, Per Olsson, and Carl Folke‘s work) was carried over with the concept.  However, there are no references and no explanation of how the figure was created, but she does link to an Ecology and Society paper.

General

How to write scientific papers

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A Nature article syntheses suggestions from authors and journal editors on how to get manuscripts noticed, approved and put in print in an article  Publish like a pro

These days, the dreaded blank page is a white screen with a blinking cursor, and distractions such as e-mail and online Scrabble are just a click away. But there are tricks to getting past the terror-inducing start.

Aspiring writers should have a template to hand — a previous paper published by the lab or a ‘near-neighbour’ article from the same journal. Nazaroff advises paralysed would-be writers to take the template concept one step further by counting the number of paragraphs in each section, the number of figures and the number of references. “Then you will get a sense of the length you are shooting for,” he says. Counting paragraphs can also break down a daunting section, such as the introduction, into more manageable portions.

When a writing task seems insurmountable, Nazaroff gets over writer’s block by making a list of all the parts that need doing and tackling the easy items first, such as calling a collaborator or checking a reference. He lets that momentum carry him past the block. Nazaroff likes to start every day of writing by editing the previous day’s material — a useful tactic that helps to ease him into a writing mindset. “Recognizing that writing is a long process is valuable. Find a mentor in that process, somebody to guide and coach you,” he says.

… The usual writing advice applies to manuscript writing as well — be clear and concise and use simple language whenever possible … “Don’t say ‘rodents’ when you mean ‘rats’ — that kind of creativity is horrible. Science is complicated enough,” says Blumberg, who has also authored several popular science books. Important but poorly written papers could end up being sent back unreviewed by busy editors.

Editors stress the importance of clarity above all else, to help convey arguments and logic to them and to readers. They say that most writers make the mistake of assuming too much knowledge on the part of their audience. In reality, even at the most specialized journals, only a handful of readers will be such close colleagues that they don’t need any contextual set-up.

… Often, less is more for junior scientists crafting manuscripts. The introduction need not cite every background article gathered, the results section should not archive every piece of data ever collected, and the discussion is not a treatise on the paper’s subject. The writer must be selective, choosing only the references, data points and arguments that bolster the particular question at hand.

Once a first draft is complete, says Hauber, the work has only just begun. “Revise and revise and revise,” he advises. Hauber says that new authors tend to think that “once a sentence is written, it’s gold or carved in diamonds”. In reality, however, editing is crucial. Even polished authors go through an average of 10–12 drafts, and sometimes as many as 30.

Writers should ask not only the principal investigator to view drafts, but also every co-author, as well as fellow students or postdocs, and colleagues outside the immediate field of research. Lead authors should give co-authors set deadlines of 10 days to two weeks to suggest changes. Experienced authors counsel letting the draft sit for a few days before reading it with fresh eyes to catch mistakes or problems in flow. Blumberg prefers to read drafts aloud with his students to spot errors.

Writing Tips:

  • You are only as good as your last paper — previous success does not guarantee future acceptance.
  • You’ve got to hook the editor with the abstract.
  • Don’t delete those files. Keep every version. You never know what aspect you can use for some other piece of writing.
  • Writing is an amazingly long learning curve. Many authors say that they’re still getting better as a writer after several decades.
  • The most significant work is improved by subtraction. Keeping the clutter away allows a central message to be communicated with a broader impact.
  • Write every day if possible.
  • Once you’ve written what you wanted to convey, end it there.
Visualization

Remembering Benoît Mandelbrot

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Benoît Mandelbrot the discover/inventor of fractals has died at 85. His work has been hugely influential in areas as diverse as computer graphics, finance and ecology.

In computer graphics fractals have been used to produce more realistic landscapes and vegetation, in finance his work as inspired people such as Nassim Taleb and others to think about the distribution of events, and in ecology fractals have been extensively used to understand the scaling of landscapes.

Mandelbort described his own career as a fractal:

“If you take the beginning and the end, I have had a conventional career,” he said, referring to his prestigious appointments in Paris and at Yale. “But it was not a straight line between the beginning and the end. It was a very crooked line.”

There have been obituaries in the New York Times Benoît Mandelbrot, Novel Mathematician, Dies at 85, The Telegraph (UK), the Guardian, NPR, and The Atlantic.

Below are some links to his work:

Some Mandelbrot obituaries and appreciations have been published in The Telegraph (UK), The New York Times and The Atlantic.

Mandlebrot is probably most famous for the Mandelbrot set seen above and many version of which are seen below. R code to generate a mandelbrot set is here.

Ecosystem services

Restoring the American Chestnut

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Fromer range of American Chestnut. From American Chestnut Foundation

In an interesting story of restoration ecology, Juliet Eilperin writes about the citizen science movement that is trying to restore the American chestnut.

The American chestnut was a dominant tree in the forest of the Eastern US, making up about 25 percent of the hardwood canopy in some eastern forests. Chestnut blight was was accidentally introduced to North America from Asia, through imported chestnut wood or trees in the early 20th century, and by the middle of the century almost 4 billion chestnut trees had dwindled to a few hundred, transforming the USA’s eastern broadleaf forests.

Currently, by crossing surving American trees with blight resistant Chinese chestnuts, volunteers have created trees that are genetically mostly American chestnut, but are also resistant to blight.

Juliet Eilperin writes in the Washington Post about The mighty American chestnut tree, poised for a comeback:

The foundation has roughly 75,000 “mother” and “father” trees in 300 volunteer-run breeding orchards across the United States, including 15,000 in Maryland. Saplings and nuts from these orchards are distributed for plantings. The group is cultivating different trees in separate states and continues to cross-breed, volunteer John Bradfield said, “to bring in the diversity that geography brings to a species.”

Now that they’ve got trees with a shot at survival, volunteers have joined federal officials to begin reforestation. They’ve planted 20,000 to 25,000 chestnuts, and some of the most promising work is being done on land decimated by strip mining that must be restored under federal law.

“Surface mines may make the best springboard for the American chestnut back into the Eastern forest,” said Patrick Angel, a senior forester at the Office of Surface Mining who is helping to oversee the effort. “The natural range of the American chestnut and the Appalachian coal fields overlap perfectly.”

There are three-quarters to a million acres of abandoned mining land between Pennsylvania and Alabama that could be reforested with chestnuts and other hardwoods, Angel said. “That’s a huge amount of non-forested land in an area that used to be contiguous forest,” he said.

Below is a video from the US Forest Service about experimental American Chestnut replanting in the wild:

General

Lin Ostrom’s Life After Winning A Nobel Prize

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A fun NPR interview with Elinor Ostrom on Life After Winning a Nobel Prize:

KELLY: Now, to a Nobel of a more recent vintage. Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in economics last year for her analysis of economic governance. We’ve reached her in Bloomington, Indiana, where she lives and where she teaches at Indiana University. And, Professor Ostrom, how’s the last year gone?

Professor ELINOR OSTROM (Indiana University): Well, you have no warning of the heavy, heavy demands on you afterwards. It is a very great thrill to win a Nobel Prize, and I’m very, very appreciative. But I was not fully prepared for the amount of interest around the world. And I’m coping, but it’s been very intense.

KELLY: A lot of calls from people like us wanting to interview you and on speaking invitations, that type of thing. Is that what you mean?

Prof. OSTROM: Yes, yes. I’ve been receiving about 15 invitations a week, and I am no longer able to accept any talks during 2011.

KELLY: Wow.

Prof. OSTROM: And the accumulation for 2012 is piling up, and I’m going to have to tackle that in another couple of weeks.

KELLY: Well, do you enjoy doing this? It sounds like you’re traveling a lot, meeting interesting people.

Prof. OSTROM: Yes, I am traveling a lot, and I do enjoy it. But I also am teaching, and I have ongoing research and graduate students. And keeping up with it all is a challenge.

KELLY: Well, I have to ask, what did you do with the prize money?

Prof. OSTROM: Oh, well. We have a very, very active research center here at Indiana University. And our foundation is very responsible, so I gave the full sum to the Indiana University Foundation as part of an endowment to support ongoing research.

KELLY: You know, here’s one thing I wonder. Winning a prize as huge and prestigious as the Nobel could, I guess, influence you in a number of different ways. And I wonder does it, in some way, take a bit of the pressure off to have had your work – your lifetime’s work recognized at that kind of level? Does it take a bit of the pressure off in terms of what you feel you still have to do?

Prof. OSTROM: Oh, no.

(Soundbite of laughter)

KELLY: No?

Prof. OSTROM: I wasn’t aiming to win a prize. And so winning it doesn’t take pressure off in terms of future research. Colleagues and I have been puzzling about a variety of key issues. It’s a big challenge, and we’re still working on that.

KELLY: You were kind enough to speak to us last year when you won. And you are the first woman who won the Economics Nobel. I remember when we spoke to you last year, we asked you about that and whether this opens the door for more opportunities for women. Have you been able to see any of that come to fruition?

Prof. OSTROM: Yes, I think. I’m very pleased that women will not be facing the conditions that I faced where I was repeatedly asked why I needed education when I would be barefoot pregnant and in the kitchen.

KELLY: Oh, my.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Prof. OSTROM: So I think that phrase isn’t going to be repeated to current graduate students as frequently as I heard it.

KELLY: Good. Well, it’s been great speaking with you. Thanks so much, Elinor Ostrom.

Cities

Bhopal 2011: Requiem & Revitalization

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MJ writes about BHOPAL 2011: Requiem & Revitalization an International Students’ Workshop and Symposium, Bhopal, India January 23 – February 04, 2011.  The workshop is organized by the School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi, modern Asian Architecture Network (mAAN), India and The International Committee for Conservation of Industrial Heritage (TICCIH) India.  More information is available on the conference website.  MJ writes:

Bhopal is known the world over as the city that witnessed the Union Carbide Gas Tragedy in 1984 and continues to struggle with the fallout of this disaster. The significance of the disaster however, extends beyond Bhopal. The factory site of the disaster, now an urban void in a dense neighbourhood of Bhopal lies abandoned and the stories that it contains, lie untold. Over the course of two weeks in January-February 2011 students and experts from multiple disciplines and backgrounds will converge in Bhopal and work together with local citizens in an attempt to understand the tragedy and its site in its conflicting interpretations. Through exploring the possible transformation of the site into a place of remembrance and a resource for empowering the local community the participants will also address the broader issue of how heritage sites with a troubled and troubling legacy can contribute to a better understanding of our times.

BHOPAL2011 looks at the possible protection, decontamination and rehabilitation of Union Carbide Factory as potential to revitalize the precinct and the community around the site and explores the possible approaches and mechanisms to do so. In exploring key issues linked to the emergence of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Site as a cultural heritage site, BHOPAL2011 sets the ground for an collaborative and creative dialogue between disciplines of cultural heritage, architecture, urban design and applied arts.

Within a collaborative framework the conference and the workshop will explore three main themes:

  1. Challenges in Recognizing Contemporary Sites with a Conflicting Past as Heritage
  2. Challenges in Interpreting and Rehabilitating Sites with Contemporary and Conflicting Heritage
  3. Challenges in Harnessing Sites with Contemporary and Conflicting Heritage for Society Building

Last date for registration is December 1, 2010.

Papers are invited for the following (but not limited to) themes and proposals for organizing sessions are welcome.

  1. Commemoration & the Politics of Construction of Public Memory
  2. Public Participation in Revitalization of Sites of Memory
  3. Challenges in Rehabilitating Landscapes of Disaster
  4. Protection, Preservation and Interpretation of Sites of Conscience
  5. Heritage, environment and economy – Conflicts and Resolutions
  6. Gaps in the World Heritage list. Industrial & Modern Heritage of Asia, Africa and Latin America

The last date of submission of abstracts is November 15, 2010.