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May 29, 2012, 1:21 pm

Energy Agency Finds Safe Gas Drilling is Cheap

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The International Energy Agency has issued a report that is essential reading for anyone interested in ensuring that the global boom in gas production facilitated by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is carried out with environmental integrity. The report, “Golden Rules for a Golden Age of Gas,” builds an economic case for adopting practices and technologies that limit chances of water or air pollution and produce adequate transparency to gain public confidence.

Pursuing this approach, the report concludes, would add just seven percent to drilling costs. Unchanged practices could, by generating public distrust and resistance, limit the potential harvest.

As the agency’s chief economist, Fatih Birol (also the report’s lead author) put it in a statement, “If this new industry is to prosper, it needs to earn and maintain its social license to operate. This comes with a financial cost, but in our estimation the additional costs are likely to be limited.”

Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations notes the report is a rough sketch, and the costs of best practices and regulations could be higher or lower. But he largely endorsed its findings, as do I. [2:00 p.m. | Updated Ezra Klein at the Washington Post has now weighed in, as well.]

Here’s a link to the presentation that accompanied the release of the report.

May 29, 2012, 10:55 am

A Sherpa’s View of the Mount Everest Traffic Jam

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

On Nepal’s “International Everest Day,” here’s a fascinating “Your Dot” contribution on the impacts from the crush of adventurers trying to scale Mount Everest, sent by Kashish Sas Shrestha, a talented photographer and writer who is also a policy fellow at Nepal’s Niti Foundation. (Read his previous posts on Monsanto’s difficulties in Nepal.) The slide show provides a rare, and revealing, sherpa’s view of the mess:

Pemba Janbu Sherpa has been on 16 expeditions and reached Mount Everest’s summit in 2010 and 2011. Last week, he abandoned his only 2012 summit attempt with a client and rescued an American climber instead. Even before reaching the American, Pemba had already rescued others along the way by giving them his spare batteries for headlights, sharing oxygen, and water. And he had watched a Nepali-born Canadian female climber die as he tried to rescue her.

Late last week at the Thamserku Trekking office in Kathmandu, for which he works as a High Altitude Guide, Pemba spoke about the ‘Traffic Jam’ on Everest, the dangers of giving just about anyone a permit, and the risks stubborn clients pose to themselves and others. And how this season is making him reconsider his profession. 

Also read Everest: Dying for the “high”, his front-page feature from Nepal’s Republica daily newspaper, which has more detail and explores possible solutions to the problems, one of which might be closing Everest for a season or two. There’s also an informative BBC report.

Finally, in 2003, I explored how the ends of the Earth — its poles, its highest peaks, and other spots on the margins of human access — were becoming less remarkable in an age of technology-abetted adventure.

May 28, 2012, 8:44 am

A Memorial Day for War’s Fallen, Perhaps Someday for War Itself?

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

I wrote a song in the early 2000’s called “Arlington,” which partly retells the remarkable history of the nation’s last resting place for its fallen defenders but also notes that the cemetery has been running short of space. I’ve posted a new video version on YouTube to mark Memorial Day:

The core of the chorus is a question: “Where will they go when there’s no more room in Arlington?”

I first posted a version of this song here in 2008. It’s worth revisiting on Dot Earth as a way of reflecting on the seemingly endless chain of sacrifices, generation by generation, in defense of freedom and nationhood. Is it possible that a day will come when warfare will be history, instead of news — when there’ll be a memorial day not only for those who sacrificed, but for war itself?

There’s a long line of argument pointing to an eventual end to war, in part due to the increased connectedness and interdependence of human societies for whom it was once easier to identify someone else on the planet as the “other” — and thus a threat. Those making the case include Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley and, most recently, John Horgan in “The End of War.”

To some extent the roots of such thinking extend back at least to Darwin. In a 2008 piece called “Darwin and Havel’s Unified Planet Theory,” I cited Darwin’s articulation of this notion in “The Descent of Man,” first published in 1871:

As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.

As I’ve been asserting lately, with the buildout of the “Knowosphere,” we may be poised to surmount that barrier. Or not.

We now have the tools and capacity to build a connected, informed, empathic, collaborative world — or to build walls and live in isolated bubbles.

My guess, no surprise, is that we’ll long inhabit a hybrid planet, with the trends largely toward more peaceful coexistence, and with losses in martial clashes — especially as a percentage of the global population — continuing to shrink.

But the bugles — brass or digital — will continue to play several dozen times a day at Arlington for a very long time to come.

May 27, 2012, 4:34 pm

Something to Cluck About – A Bill Endorsed by Egg Producers and Animal Campaigners

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

I love moments when common interests create accord between factions in our society that are otherwise deeply divided. Here’s some news along these lines in a joint release from the United Egg Producers and the Humane Society of the United States about a Senate bill that would, among other things, double the space allotted for each hen in the country’s massive egg industry:

Living conditions for egg-laying hens Click here for a graphic exploring the living conditions of egg-laying hens.

A new bill introduced in Congress this year will amend the Egg Products Inspection Act. This legislation is good for consumers, good for egg farmers, good for grocery and foodservice companies, and good for hens!

The bill will require egg farmers to essentially double the space allotted for 270 million hens in the U.S. and make other important animal welfare improvements during a tiered phase-in period that allows farmers time to make the investments in better housing, with the assurance that all will face the same requirements by the end of the phase-in period. It would provide a uniform, national standard for all egg farmers rather than a patchwork of cumbersome and complicated laws in every state. The federal legislation protects interstate egg commerce and provides the nation’s egg farmers with a stable, clear future while ensuring consumers with an ample supply of economical eggs and a variety of choices.

The legislation is supported by United Egg Producers (which represents egg farmers producing 88% of the nation’s eggs), the Humane Society of the United States, National Consumers League, Consumer Federation of America, American Veterinary Medical Association, American Association of Avian Pathologists,  American Humane Association, and the overwhelming majority of American voters.

Read the rest here. Not everyone is happy. Unsurprisingly, the National Pork Producers Council, according to the Pork Network blog, said “it would set a dangerous precedent for allowing federal bureaucrats to regulate on-farm production practices.” The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is attacking the bill, as well.

May 25, 2012, 10:51 am

Daniel Kahneman on the Trap of ‘Thinking That We Know’

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The National Academy of Sciences did a great service to science early this week by holding a conference on “The Science of Science Communication.” A centerpiece of the two-day meeting was a lecture titled “Thinking That We Know,” delivered by Daniel Kahneman, the extraordinary behavioral scientist who was awarded a Nobel Prize in economics despite never having taken an economics class.

The talk is extraordinary for the clarity (and humor) with which he repeatedly illustrates the powerful ways in which the mind filters and shapes what we call information. He discusses how this relates to the challenge of communicating science in a way that might stick.

Please carve out the time to watch his slide-free, but image-rich, talk. It’s a shorthand route to some of the insights described in Kahneman’s remarkable book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow” (I’m a third of the way through).

Here’s the video of the talk (which is “below the fold” because it’s set up to play automatically): Read more…

May 24, 2012, 4:06 pm

Brazil’s New Leader Mulls Country’s Forest Protections

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Amazon pasture and forestLalo de Almeida for The New York Times In the Brazilian Amazon, a tract of cattle pasture spreads on land that was previously rain forest.

Lou Gold, an American expatriate living in Brazil’s portion of the Amazon River basin who is a frequent presence on Dot Earth, is keeping track of efforts to change the country’s Forest Code and has posted a helpful update on his blog, excerpted here with permission:

Dilma RousseffAndre Penner/Associated Press President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil.

Tomorrow, 25 May 2012, is the deadline for Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff to decide whether to accept or veto (in whole or part) the devastating new national Forest Code that was passed recently by the Brazilian Congress…. There seemed to be a hopeful change during the Lula Administration (2003-2011) as Environmental Minister Marina Silva and her colleagues put in place a new policy architecture of protected areas and sustainable development, and her successor Carlos Minc instituted a “shock-and-awe” campaign of aggressive enforcement of the Forest Code which resulted, along with mega-economic trends such as the 2008 crash, in dramatically reduced rates of new deforestation.

But it also triggered a push-back from the “ruralistas” (the farm bloc in Congress) and their allies among the more unscrupulous developmentalists who were not offended by laws that were not enforced.  When faced with the prospect of having to compensate for past illegal actions and stiff enforcement, they demanded amnesty and generally weakened regulations which now threaten to unravel the progress that Brazil has achieved in recent years. (The environment group WWF lists the negative features of the new forest code here.)

The changed forest law is not only opposed by the usual assortment of environmentalists and social activists. The NY Time’s Simon Romero reports that President Dilma is facing a Forest Code decision, on the eve of the UN’s World Sustainability Conference RIO+20,  that will probably be for Brazil a defining moment:

Prominent voices in Brazil … have weighed in against the new Forest Code, including the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science, two of the country’s leading scientific groups. Anger over the bill has spread into popular culture. Exemplifying the sentiment in the entertainment industry, the actress Camila Pitanga broke protocol at an event here this month, calling on Ms. Rousseff, who was present, to veto the bill. Video images of Ms. Pitanga’s statement spread quickly on social media throughout Brazil. Stunning some of the ruralistas, support for a veto has also emerged among some corporate leaders in São Paulo, Brazil’s business capital. Valor Econômico, the country’s top financial newspaper, likened the moment to the battle over President Obama’s sweeping health care law, calling Ms. Rousseff’s choice “one of those decisions which define a government.” “This bill leaves Brazil in the Middle Ages,” said Paulo Nigro, president of Tetra Pak Brasil, a food packaging and processing company, who was one of several prominent São Paulo business leaders quoted by Valor voicing their opposition to the Forest Code.

The Forest Code is not the only challenge. The leading Amazon researcher Philip Fearnside — author of over 450 publications and identified in 2006 by Thompson-ISI as the world’s second most-cited scientist on the subject of global warming — has an an excellent analysis of the many threats to the forests of Amazonia. But making matters much worse recently is Brazil’s quest for energy to support its expanding economy that has triggered a massive rush toward large hydroelectric projects. [Read the rest.]

May 24, 2012, 1:03 pm

On the Allure of Ostriches and New Paths in Climate Communication

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Lynne CherryDoug GrandtLynne Cherry

Lynne Cherry, a prize-winning environmental writer and illustrator (remember “The Great Kapok Tree“?) who’s now also a youth-oriented filmmaker, recently alerted me to a paper exploring the limits of traditional environmental messages given a deeply ingrained human habit of avoiding inconvenient warnings.

I invited her to weigh in with a “Your Dot” entry, and here it is, along with an illustration she crafted with Doug Grandt showing the ostrich habit she’d like to find new ways to overcome: Read more…

May 23, 2012, 8:08 pm

A Closer Look at Watts and Joules, Power and Energy

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Dale R. McIntyre, a metallurgical engineer from Bartlesville, Okla., who’s been an articulate and constructive voice on Dot Earth for a long time, took issue with aspects of “The WATT,” the planned primer on energy proposed by Focus the Nation. His main concern was with the name.

Given that a prime goal here is to create what the Harvard Internet analyst David Weinberger calls a “smart room” — a place for constructive discourse — I’m elevating McIntyre’s comment to “Your Dot” status: Read more…

May 23, 2012, 10:13 am

How Twitter Matters: Casting a Worldwide Net

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

As regular readers know, I came around to Twitter slowly but now find it an essential combination of sensory apparatus and global conduit for ideas and information. A demonstration of its power to plumb the collective mind occurred on Tuesday, while I was in Washington attending “The Science of Science Communication.”

The meeting was organized by the National Academy of Sciences to explore the rich batch of behavioral research, from Kahneman to Kahan and beyond, illustrating that information, on its own, has little meaning (a favorite phrase of the risk-communication consultant David Ropeik). (The Twitter tag for the conference was #sackler, after the family that sponsored it.)

One discussion touched on patterns of collaboration in research, and that got me wondering if anyone had analyzed trends in co-authorship of science papers as a possible indicator of the global “match.com” potential of various Web tools for fostering collaboration among experts with variegated skill sets. Here’s my initial tweet:

Two hours later Emilio M. Bruna of the University of Florida provided the first clue, pointing to an analysis of patterns in authorship of papers on the biology of the tropics:

That paper doesn’t show trends so much as a snapshot. Bruna’s tweet was followed within minutes by this one below, from Dryad, “an international repository of data underlying peer-reviewed articles in the basic and applied biosciences.” This archive is maintained by a group of journals.

There’s a path to an answer here, or to a research opportunity for someone. My capping tweet conveyed my view that this was more evidence we’re rapidly building what you might call a Knowosphere.

May 22, 2012, 10:11 am

Clean Energy 101

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Ben Jervey, an energy and environment writer formerly of Good Magazine, is helping create an online energy primer for Focus the Nation, a youth-oriented group seeking to build an energy menu that works for the long haul. He sent in a “Your Dot” contribution outlining the group’s plan, for which it’s raising seed funding via Kickstarter.

A related Web tool, “What You Need to Know About Energy,” has been created by the National Academy of Sciences.

Here’s Jervey’s post, along with a Focus the Nation video explaining what’s brewing: Read more…

DCSIMG