Global Warming

It turns out, methane clathrates are a recurrent theme in sci-fi pop culture. While googling for the words "John Barnes" and "methane" I found a copy of an old Wikipedia page that included a hilarious list of fictional references. I will cite one just to delight in its whacked out poetry.

In "The Great Sea Battle," an episode of Zoids: Guardian Force, the Ultrasaurus was able to fend off an attack from the Death Stinger by using depth charges to ignite an undersea pocket of methane hydrate.

Go Ultrasaurus!

Now, I'm not going to argue that as a society we should be taking policy cues from science fiction novels. But my world today is already packed with so many science fiction tropes from my youth that I'm not willing to rule out any scenario unconditionally, good or bad.

Which brings me to an entirely different subject. At Grist, Todd Woody has has written the best, most complete article I've read so far on the debut, earlier this week, of the Bloom Energy Server, a fuel cell that will supposedly deliver affordable electricity with low greenhouse gas emissions. The product of a stealth startup that has sucked up hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital from Silicon Valley's biggest names, the "Bloom Box" attracted equal amounts of hype and skepticism in its first week.

New technologies come and go in the Valley. Some do change the world, but most don't. I make no prediction as to the prospects of the Bloom Box. But one passage, near the end of Woody's piece, caught my attention.

The pressure will be on Bloom to build cleaner and cleaner versions of its fuel cell if they are to be placed in cities and, as the company predicts, in backyards one day.

For instance, Bloom has patented and tested a next-generation fuel cell that would tap solar electricity from a rooftop array to produce hydrogen that could be stored and used to generate electricity at night or when the sun does not shine.

"That's the killer app," said Sridhar.

Imagine -- an affordable solar-powered fuel cell that wouldn't need to be connected to a transmission grid but provided all the power we needed to run our homes. Without doubt -- clearly the stuff of science fiction. And maybe the physics (or economics) are impossible. But if you look back just at the last 100 years of technological progress, you have to concede that we humans are capable of extraordinary things. My day started with a nightmare of human-induced ecological disaster. I prefer to end it with a vision of a clean energy killer app.

From "China Prepares For an Ice-Free Arctic," an exceedingly well-sourced monograph by Linda Jakobson, the Acting Program Director and Beijing-based Senior Researcher of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's China and Global Security Program: (Thanks to Ben Muse for the link.)

Because China's economy is reliant on foreign trade, there are substantial commercial implications if shipping routes are shortened during the summer months each year. Nearly half of China's gross domestic product (GDP) is thought to be dependent on shipping. The trip from Shanghai to Hamburg via the Northern Sea Route  -- which runs along the north coast of Russia from the Bering Strait in the east to Novaya Zemlya in the west -- is 6400 kilometers shorter than the route via the Strait of Malacca and the Suez Canal. Moreover, due to piracy, the cost of insurance for ships travelling via the Gulf of Aden towards the Suez Canal increased more than tenfold between September 2008 and March 2009.

Since the prospect of climate change isn't a hotly contested political football in China, the country is free to pay serious attention to the real-world implications of rising temperatures. China has no territorial rights to the Arctic, but nonetheless boasts "one of the world's strongest polar scientific research capabilities," writes Jakobson.

Chinese research remains primarily focused on how the melting Arctic will affect China's continental and oceanic environment and how in turn such changes could affect domestic agricultural and economic development. However, a small number of Chinese researchers are publicly encouraging the government to actively prepare for the commercial and strategic opportunities that a melting Arctic presents. Li Zhenfu of Dalian Maritime University has, together with a team of specialists, assessed China's advantages and disadvantages when the Arctic sea routes open up. "Whoever has control over the Arctic route will control the new passage of world economics and international strategies," writes Li, referring both to the shortened shipping routes between East Asia and Europe or North America and to the abundant oil, gas, mineral and fishery resources presumed to be in the Arctic.

Hmm, maybe we'd better send Senator James Inhofe to Beijing, to tell them about how the whole climate change thing is a crock. He's doing a pretty good job at stalling action on climate change in the U.S., so perhaps he can also prevent the Chinese from controlling "the new passage of world economics and international strategies."

Now comes this, from a paper to be published today in Science:

A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to the findings of an international research team led by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov.

The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.

Matthew Yglesias is funny:

It's a good thing this is all part of some giant conspiracy, because if I thought scientists at the University of Alaska were undertaking good-faith scientific research I'd be really worried ...

Joe Romm has more. A lot more.

"It gave it a pretty big nudge," Young said of the 60-mile (97-kilometer) -long iceberg that collided with the giant floating Mertz Glacier and shaved off a new iceberg. "They are now floating right next to each other."

The new iceberg is 48 miles (78 kilometers) long and about 24 miles (39 kilometers) wide and holds roughly the equivalent of a fifth of the world's annual total water usage, Young told The Associated Press.

Experts are concerned about the effect of the massive displacement of ice on the ice-free water next to the glacier, which is important for ocean currents.

This area of water had been kept clear because of the glacier, said Steve Rintoul, a leading climate expert. With part of the glacier gone, the area could fill with sea ice, which would disrupt the ability for the dense and cold water to sink.

This sinking water is what spills into ocean basins and feeds the global ocean currents with oxygen, Rintoul explained.

As there are only a few areas in the world where this occurs, a slowing of the process would mean less oxygen supplied into the deep currents that feed the oceans.

"There may be regions of the world's oceans that lose oxygen, and then of course most of the life there will die," said Mario Hoppema, chemical oceanographer at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany.

The icebergs, weighing 860 billion tons and 700 billion tons respectively, are located in water over the Antarctic Continental Shelf, Young said.

"We expect them to head west along the Antarctic coastline," he said.

Young said it was not likely they would reach as far north as Australia, and noted icebergs are very slow movers.

Oxygen levels being fed into the world's ocean currents are now changing "and the overturning circulation currents will respond to that change," Rintoul said. Observing what happens "will ... allow us to improve predictions of future climate change," he added.

If you'd like a detailed response destroying the thesis that the IPCC consensus on climate change has in any way been compromised by the minor errors revealed in recent months, go here.

If you'd like to know what Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who currently runs the Department of Energy thinks, a a recent interview in the Financial Times offers a nice contrast to Inhofe's bloviations.

FT: On the climate threat, do you think there is legitimate concern now about the fact that some of the science, even if it's not flawed, it's been misrepresented, which has undermined the case in many people's eyes.

SC: First, the main findings of IPCC over the years, have they been seriously cast in doubt? No. I think that if one research group didn't understand some tree ring data and they chose to admit part of that data. In all honesty they should have thrown out the whole data set. But science has a wonderful way of self-correcting on things like that. What the public doesn't understand is that as you go forward there will be these things and they will self correct. On balance if you look at all the things the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of experts convened by the United Nations to advise governments in responding to global warming] has been doing over the last number of years, they were trying very hard to put in all the peer-reviewed serious stuff. I've actually always felt that they were taking a somewhat conservative stand on many issues and for justifiable reasons.

FT: But as a distinguished scientist yourself, don't you think that the IPCC crossed the line between scientific research and advocacy?

SC: I don]t think so. My impression about watching them working is that it is one of the things where they have been held up to a very high standard.

FT: In the last three months.

SC: No, since the beginning. Since report number one. Their reports get reviewed. Lots of people are asked to take shots at this in a very serious way that I think is all right because what they're saying is so important. It has economic consequences worldwide. They should be able to say that this is serious science and take a somewhat conservative view. If you look at the climate skeptics, I would have to say honestly, what standard are they being held to? It's very asymmetric. They get to say anything they want. In the end, the core of science is deeply self checking.

Finally, if you're wondering how to keep up with the non-stop barrage of pseudo science and abysmal ignorance -- latest example: widespread misinterpretation of the significance of a retraction of a paper about rising sea levels -- well, there's an app for that.

At this point, you just to have to choose your reality. I will choose Steven Chu and endlessly self-checking , self-correcting science over James Inhofe every single day.

De Boer is known to be deeply disappointed with the outcome of the last summit in Copenhagen, which drew 120 world leaders but failed to reach more than a vague promise by several countries to limit carbon emissions -- and even that deal fell short of consensus.

But he denied to the AP that his decision to quit was a result of frustration with Copenhagen.

"Copenhagen wasn't what I had hoped it would be," he acknowledged, but the summit nonetheless prompted governments to submit plans and targets for reigning in the emissions primarily blamed for global warming. "I think that's a pretty solid foundation for the global response that many are looking for," he said.

De Boer told the AP he believes talks "are on track."

He recommended the next talks take a different tack. Rather than convene several negotiating sessions involving nearly 200 countries, Mexico, which is chairing the negotiations throughout this year, should prepare the November conference to work in smaller groups to lay the groundwork of a deal.

The Mexicans should "engage more intensively early in the process, so that you don't only rely on formal meetings but through bilateral contacts and frequent meetings in a smaller setting and an earlier understanding of how the process can be advanced," he told AP.

"At the moment, it tends to be very much a stop-and-start affair with everything concentrated in the formal negotiations, where I think a much more continuous engagement by (Mexico) is needed."

The partial agreement reached in Copenhagen, brokered by Obama, "was very significant," he said. But he acknowledged frustration that the deal was merely "noted" rather than formally adopted by all countries.

"We were about an inch away from a formal agreement. It was basically in our grasp, but it didn't happen," he said. "So that was a pity."

The media-savvy former Dutch civil servant and climate negotiator was widely credited with raising the profile of climate issues through his frequent press encounters and his backstage lobbying of world leaders.

But his constant travel and frenetic diplomacy failed to bridge the suspicions and distrust between developing and industrial countries that barred the way to a final agreement at the climate change summit in Copenhagen in December.

People who know de Boer say he was more disheartened by the snail-paced negotiations than he was ready to admit.

"I saw him at the airport after Copenhagen," said Jake Schmidt, a climate expert for the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council. "He was tired, worn out." The summit "clearly took a toll on him."

Schmidt, speaking from Washington, said the Dutch diplomat was "very effective in pushing the envelope" and winning attention for climate change. "He's done a powerful job ... in getting the world to focus on this."

During de Boer's tenure, climate talks rose "to a standing item on the agenda of political leaders," said Oxfam International, a nonprofit group that monitors the talks and advises delegations. World leaders "could learn much from de Boer's perseverance as well as his uncompromising commitment to do what's necessary -- not just what's easy."

The German Green Party said de Boer's departure presented a chance for a strategic reorientation of his U.N. office.

"The failure of the Copenhagen climate conference was due partly to bad preparation and organization," the Greens' climate change specialist Hermann Ott said in a statement. "Now a credible and experienced successor has to be found to make sure the international process to combat climate change continues without delay."

De Boer, 55, was appointed in 2006 to shepherd through an agreement to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which required industrial countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions an average 5 percent.

He said the high point of his efforts was the agreement by developing countries, reached at the 2007 conference in Bali, Indonesia, to join in efforts to contain global warming in return for financial and technical help from the wealthy nations.

The Bali meeting was so intense that during its final meeting, when he was accused of mishandling negotiating arrangements, de Boer walked off the podium in tears. He came back later to an ovation from the thousands of delegates.

His assertiveness sometimes led to accusations that he was overstepping the bounds of a neutral U.N. facilitator.

"They are absolutely right. I did that because I felt the process needed that extra push," he told the AP.

When he was hired, he said, he told U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, "If you want someone to sit in Bonn and keep his mouth shut then I'm not the right person for the job."

Yet De Boer habitually put a positive spin on events. Though he occasionally chastised governments, he did it in diplomatic tones. At times when his aides were describing him as "furious" -- especially with the administration of George W. Bush -- de Boer kept his public comments so modulated that it sounded like praise.

De Boer said he will be a consultant on climate and sustainability issues for KPMG, a global accounting firm, and will be associated with several universities.

"I have always maintained that while governments provide the necessary policy framework, the real solutions must come from business," he said in a statement released later Thursday. "Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming. This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and I now have the chance to help make this happen," he said.

De Boer, who comes from a diplomatic family, was born in Vienna and traveled the world before attending a British boarding school. He studied social work at university in The Hague, and one of his early jobs was as a parole officer. He worked for the United Nations in Canada and Kenya, then joined the Dutch housing ministry. He has been involved in climate change issues since 1994, and three years later became the chief climate delegate for the Netherlands.

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Associated Press Writer Verena Schmitt contributed to this report from Berlin.