you will pay tomorrow… gonna pay tomorrow,

Update (Sept. 23/09): The “Planetary Boundaries” paper is now published in Nature. Full access and links to opinion and commentary here. David Roberts at Grist comments here. Carl Zimmer here.

Some interesting bits and pieces I bumped into that I didn’t see much in play elsewhere:

From the June 2009 Tällberg Forum, all of the talks are online. Of the few I’ve watched, I particularly enjoyed the following two. 

First was a discussion and update on “Planetary Boundaries”. At the previous year’s session, a commitment was made to investigate key ”planetary boundaries”, and initial contributors included James Hansen, Tim Lenton, Robert Costanza and others. Apparently there is an upcoming paper in Nature based on the nine identified “boundaries”:

 

What a killer… Cortez, Cortez…

Well, since I don’t see this up on Desdemona yet… and this struck me, personally, as particularly sad: About this time of the year in 1982, my father, brother and I travelled down the Chilcoton and Fraser rivers in B.C. The Fraser teemed with sockeye, and we saw bears all the time… It is quite unnerving to see what appear to be sudden ”flips” of state in these various ecosystems…

Grizzlies starve as salmon disappear
First the salmon vanished, now the bears may be gone too.
Reports from conservationists, salmon-stream walkers and ecotourism guides all along British Columbia’s wild central coast indicate a collapse of salmon runs has triggered widespread death from starvation of black and grizzly bears. Those guides are on the front lines of what they say is an unfolding ecological disaster that is so new that it has not been documented by biologists.

and, earlier on the Fraser salmon:
No answers in B.C.’s sudden salmon collapse
This year was supposed to be a big one, with estimates predicting as many as 10.5 million fish would swim up the Fraser after spending two years in the open ocean… But those estimates have since been dramatically reduced, now putting this year’s Fraser sockeye run at just 1.37 million — the lowest on record.

“He came dancing across the water,
With his galleons and guns,
Looking for the new world,
And the palace in the sun.
.
.
He came dancing across the water,
Cortez, Cortez,
What a killer.”

“So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”

Way to go, Josh Farley and many others!

I seldom read John Tierney’s spew in the NYTimes “science” section… let alone the comments… but I am glad I did today. Tierney lamely offers up the Environmental Kuznets Curve as some sort of shrewd insight into our carbon dilemma… and gets called on it, big time.

The balance of responses from commenters is, frankly, derisive… They call out Tierney’s risible research and bizarre stance that his lack of scientific bona fides is something to celebrate as he “rethinks conventional wisdom about science”….

There are a number of excellent comments that expose Tierney’s cherry-pick and logical fallacies, but I thought I would just highlight this bit from UVM  Gund Institute for Ecological Economics Prof. Josh Farley:

I find it interesting that you willingly point out in your online bio that you recognize that your work would not pass scientific peer review. Scientists make an effort to familiarize themselves with the literature. You seem to rely on the works of Julian Simon and Bjorn Lomborg, both of whom makes exactly the same claim as you…  Right now I wish the scientific review process were not so strict. You could then be a scientist, publishing your ‘research’ in lousy journals that no one would ever read. Instead, because you don’t qualify as a scientist by your admission, the NYT has given you a position as ’science writer’, where thousands of people read your shoddy work… Perhaps you (could) write an article on why belief in science has become a partisan issue.

I know that Tierney is a bit player, but I found this dismantling even more encouraging than those of George Will, et al.  Even the most “scientific” amongst them are being publicly called on their irresponsibility and ignorance, and they are silent in response.

Tell it like it is.   

“But you and I we’ve been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour’s getting late.”
(love this version of All Along the Watchtower… )

Interesting lecture for those in the GTA…

Just a quick note for any interested souls in the GTA. Paul Falkowski is presenting the last of this season’s distinguished lecture series at the UofToronto Centre for Global Change Science. It is tomorrow (Tuesday April 7) at 3:30 pm in the Koffler Centre 

His lecture topic “The Biology of Greed and the Future of Humans” is rather different from most of the lectures earlier in the series, which focussed primarily on geophysics, climate, etc. I suspect his lecture will have some overlap with his talk at the Smithsonian last month; an overview was posted by thingsbreak at A Tale of Two Ocean Lectures.

Hmmm… got my first “can’t make it” from an email I sent around on this earlier… Has a prior meeting to “discuss Usain Bolt”. That actually sounds pretty interesting too!

Set my compass north, I got winter in my blood…

There is a relatively new Canadian climate change blog/site: Zero Carbon Canada, a project of PowerUp Canada. (h/t Mom for bringing it to my attention!) It’s an initiation of several groups, including The Pembina Institute, Environmental Defence Canada, The Ivey Foundation and others. An interesting group of early supporters includes Thomas Homer-Dixon, Marc Jaccard… and even celebrities! My first public post on this little blog tried to convey three things: 1) The most recent science is confirming that our challenges are immediate and immense. 2) A request that you press your political representatives to take the required action as dictated by that science. 3) A request that you get personal about this – “lather, rinse, repeat” some sort of personal verison of this communication with your friends, family and neighbours. Well, the Zero Carbon is doing all three a heck of a lot better than I ever could (and much more to boot!). There are simple letters to the Canadian political party leaders that you can sign/send from here. And Prof. Andrew Weaver’s essay states the scientific urgency case very eloquently and bluntly. Excerpts:

Better to burn out…

Not something I was going to write about, but I don’t see how I can pass up a post on “Rust”!

From the Oil Drum: “The Cost of Corrosion”.

At $2 trillion per year (the earlier rough estimate for the current cost of corrosion) it would take fifty years to rebuild 100 trillion dollars of infrastructure (across all industries). Since much of our infrastructure is 20, 50 or even 100 years old, renewing it over a period of half a century seems reasonable.

On the other hand, it could be reasonably argued that the condition of our infrastructure is getting worse on average and that the rate of spending needs to increase. But there is a limit to how much a $60 trillion world economy can spend on renewing infrastructure…

Whatever the actual cost is, engineers everywhere have plenty of work ahead; managing ageing infrastructure and delivering new projects, while meeting sustainability challenges and protecting scarce resources…

Should I link to “Hey hey, my my”? Nah, that would be too easy… oh, what the heck. Can I still use it later?

“There’s more to the picture
Than meets the eye…

It’s better to burn out than it is to rust.
The king is gone but he’s not forgotten…”

Comes a time…

**This post was originally a personal email that I sent to friends (and may get slightly editted…). I’m responding to Stephen Chu’s appeal “to convince your friends and neighbours of this”. I have a hunch that we need more people doing the convincing directly and one on one, rather than through the “pull” media of websites, newspapers, tv, etc. If it’s coming from reasonably well-informed old hockey teammates, etc., rather than a Nobel physicist, perhaps all the better…**

Hi all,

Well, I know that this note will be a bit out of the blue for many of you, but like the post title (and Neil Young) says – “there comes a time”… This is something important, something I want to “pay forward”.

Right now, we are all understandably concerned and immediately focussed on the global economic turmoil – politicians, business leaders, the media, etc.

But I am convinced we face even larger, urgent challenges with respect to our global energy-environment-economy dilemma.

Why am I writing to you about this? Well, partly because I was inspired by new US. Secretary of Energy Dr. Stephen Chu’s words the night of the recent U.S. Presidential inauguration. At the Environmental Ball, commenting specifically about climate change, he said:

“We all know how serious our challenges are and what the implications would be of unchecked climate change… We are on a path that scares me… We have a hard task ahead of us. What unites us is a concern for a better world for ourselves and our children… You have to convince your friends and your neighbors about this.”

So, that’s what I am trying to do.

Sea of madness…

TED 2009 Prize winner Sylvia Earle discusses the state of the oceans, with striking footage. Her TED Prize wish:

I wish that you would use all means at your disposal – films! expeditions! the web! more! – to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, hope spots large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet.

“How can I bring you
To the Sea of Madness
I love you so much
It’s gonna bring me sadness
I’ve never seen you
Through these eyes before
Now I don’t believe it.” CSNY…

“Half the time has passed away…” (winterlong)

Just for fun, and a test… a public post… without a topic!

Always loved this underappreciated Neil Young gem, which was first released on the “Decade” compilation. There aren’t a lot of decent vids of this one. The selection below starts a little ragged, and gets cut off prematurely, but I like it. And it’s a bit of a stretch to connect the lyrics to the blog topics, although I do think we are a real turning point in human history.

Half the time has passed away
Things we thought of yesterday
Come back now, come back now.