The continued disruption of air travel and airborne commerce over much of Europe from volcanic ash clouds is a reminder of how flying has become a deeply embedded part of human life in just a couple of generations. (The image above is from NASA’s Earth Observatory.)

There are those who foresee a return to localism in the long run, with the price of flying rising as demand outstrips supplies of liquid fuels in a world of rising populations and energy appetites (with or without restrictions on greenhouse gases). My guess is that the intensifying work toward an aviation biofuel will supply that niche in years to come, while proving utterly inadequate for transport on the ground. In the meantime, the human appetite for globe-spanning mobility shows no signs of ebbing. For evidence, look back at this post on a remarkable animation of North American air traffic by Aaron Koblin:

For more on the evolving situation with the ash plumes from Iceland, and volcanoes more generally, I encourage you to track the fascinating Eruptions blog, created by Erik Klemetti, an assistant professor of geoscience at Denison University. I asked him to weigh in on the odds of such ash disruption from other simmering volcanoes in heavily populated latitudes. Here’s his reply:

The explosive eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland has caused a disruption to air travel in Europe at a scale that modern society rarely experiences. The ash from the explosive phase of the eruption is a significant hazard to airliners and military planes alike. As many of volcanologists and volcanophiles waited to see how this eruption that started over a month ago would progress, we all discussed the potential for local effects like volcanically-generated floods in Iceland or the effect of ash on crops and animals on the island nation. However, this eruption’s effects became much more far-reaching, capturing the world’s attention as tens of thousands of flights in, out and around Europe have ground to a halt. The question for many people is, “Could this happen somewhere else?” Read more…

President Obama — about the most urban president I can recall — today urged Americans to reconnect with “the great outdoors.”

He made the call in a presidential memorandum with no teeth or money behind it, which mainly serves to put pressure on government officials to focus existing programs in ways that give the country’s largely urbanized populace opportunities to get wet or muddy, to see an orange newt wriggling on a leafy park path, to have a chance to toss a fishing line in a reclaimed urban river. In the end, it is families, local communities and schools that create most such chances — sometimes simply by preserving what Thoreau called the “swamp on the edge of town.”

Such efforts can also involve bringing nature into an urban setting. One of the best examples I’ve seen is the longstanding “Trout in the Classroom” program. I saw urban poor kids who were coming to school early and staying late to care for and measure the brown trout fingerlings they were raising in an aquarium in a Brooklyn classroom kept chilled with an improvised cooling system made of an old refrigerator by a custodian.

Where have you seen innovative efforts to connect people with farms, fields, woods and waters?

What patches of habitat are special to you? Two years ago, my younger son, Jack, made a video of our little excursion into a mangrove creek tucked in a crowded Florida suburb that shows you don’t have to go to some faraway national park to find wonder:

I’m on the road to a big conclave of college students, professors and administrators trying to build a better planet and society — organized by former President Bill Clinton through his Clinton Global Initiative. I’ve moved to a university. My third book on the environment, a project of The New York Times, was for middle school kids. There’s a pattern here. Youth matters.

I realized around 2005, while watching young people from around the world challenging negotiators in the climate talks, that if I spent the rest of my career writing only for adults on the relationship between people and their planet, I’d have deep regrets. It’s vital to engage young minds on humanity’s energy challenge, on the merits of vibrant, diverse ecosystems, on the opportunities arising when young innovators from rich and poor places convene.

In Copenhagen (and previous climate-treaty conferences) young activists handed out “Fossil of the Day” awards to delegations that were, in their view, most impeding progress. Here Linda Tong displays one day’s winners:

Sociologists and psychologists studying how humans deal with climate and the environment do seem to conclude that we are, in essence, fossilized. Basic physics dictates that an object at rest likes to stay put. We’re all in a fossil-fueled comfort zone, so why jump to attention?

The editors of School Library Journal recently invited me to write an essay about the merits of communicating with kids on environmental issues. Here’s the “nut”:

I’ve begun focusing on younger audiences for many reasons, one being a growing realization that many adults I’ve met in 20 years of covering global warming have been locked into rigid views of the world that distort how they absorb what scientists are saying—with some grown-ups seeing utter unfolding catastrophe and others aggressively rejecting any reason for concern or action. In most cases, those reactions were more a function of belief than data. In trying to understand this dynamic, I queried some sociologists and was pointed to study after study showing quite clearly that once someone has a deep-rooted stance, new information has little impact on it. So how could I justify another decade or two spent writing only for grown-ups if they were unlikely to be influenced by new information?

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’ve given up on adults. And I and the other environment writers I know who’ve focused increasingly on young audiences don’t have illusions that we can spark some kind of youth-led eco-revolution. After all, kids are also split into factions on environmental issues, often mirroring their parents—and, like adults, many are simply tuned out altogether. To me, communicating to young people simply raises the odds that information about the environment and humanity’s role in shaping it — for better or worse — gets to where it’s most likely to be put to good use. Read more of my essay…

What’s your take on what I call “Generation E“?

Closure is slowly coming for climate scientists whose e-mail messages and files were exposed five months ago in an unauthorized release from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain. Lessons are emerging as a series of inquiries draws toward an end, leaving climate science bruised, but better off in the long run.

One lesson is that anyone hoping to up-end decades of research pointing to a growing human influence on the climate by challenging a single batch of studies (in this case efforts to chart past temperatures using indirect clues like tree rings) is almost surely on a fool’s errand. Another is that scientists, even when under relentless pressure, need to conduct their work scrupulously, carefully and openly and understand that transparency is inevitable in the digital era. A third is that scientists in highly specialized fields would do well to reach out for added statistical expertise when trying to test broader implications of their work.

Here’s the news: A committee of experts recommended by the Royal Society has completed the second of three inquiries into the affair, which foes of restrictions on greenhouse gases tried vigorously to use to undermine public confidence in decades of science pointing to a human-heated climate. This review, like the previous one by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, exonerates the British researchers and their partners of any willful wrongdoing: Read more…

President Obama today urged Americans to honor the upcoming 40th anniversary of Earth Day by acting to improve the environment around them and launched a Web site, Whitehouse.gov/EarthDay, compiling citizens’ success stories.

In the video message above, Mr. Obama describes how the first Earth Day was prompted in part by vivid incidents like a fire on the pollution-stained Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. He listed that era’s suite of environmental laws, most of which were enacted under a Republican president in a time of environmental bipartisanship that long ago vanished from Capitol Hill.

Clearly with today’s Washington paralysis in mind, Mr. Obama notes that people shouldn’t count on elected officials to solve all environmental problems and “should take steps in their own homes and their own communities.” That’s always a fine message. Little acts are valuable, even in the face of planet-scale problems.

But there is what psychologists call the peril of “single-action bias,” by which someone cutting down on fats to live a healthy life or screwing in an efficient light bulb to solve global warming develops a sense that the effort is done.

And a tougher sell for Mr. Obama, particularly as congressional allies try to roll out a new package of climate and energy legislation next week, is making the case for the actions that would be required to cut emissions of greenhouse gases in a world with rising populations and resource appetites. Read more…

It’s always been hard to get a clear view of the intentions of the 193 countries embroiled for nearly 20 years in climate negotiations, which is one reason I captured some video of a CBS radio correspondent in the cacophonous and cavernous press hall in Copenhagen last December. (I’m trying to recall his name; please remind me in a comment!) Somehow, his use of a shroud to muffle the noise of colleagues as he recorded his dispatches reflected the challenges facing anyone trying to get to bedrock on climate diplomacy.

This is why it’s important to read today’s report from John Vidal of The Guardian, in which he describes what appears to be a document outlining the communication and negotiation strategy of President Obama’s climate-diplomacy team. The document, dated March 11, essentially provides talking points for administration officials to use in the months leading to the next big climate-treaty conference in Cancun, Mexico, in December. A central point is a defense of the primacy of the Copenhagen Accord, the short summary of commitments, both in emissions goals and financial steps, negotiated by a core group of rich and poor countries in December.

The document — which administration officials have neither acknowledged or rejected as authentic — has elements guaranteed to inflame folks ranging from Rush Limbaugh (the mention of efforts to “produce a global regime to combat climate change”) to environmental groups pushing for concrete commitments on restricting greenhouse gases (a phrase implying that increasing perception of United States engagement is the goal). Overall, it reinforces the difficulty of moving beyond aspirational language on emissions and qualified language on flows of tens of billions of dollars in climate-related assistance.

I have a query in to the State Department to get input, if not on the document at least on the climate team’s plans for the eight months leading up to the December climate conference in Mexico. I’ll post afresh when that’s in. Here’s the bottom line from the Guardian story, and my bottom line on what’s coming this year, and beyond. From The Guardian: Read more…

The nonprofit group Ecoartspace has posted a sampler of the more than 200 works of art generated in response to my February post asking a variety of environmental thinkers to state, “What Matters Most?”

The pieces, all done in the dimensions of a standard sheet of paper, will be on display from April 15-29 in the Manhattan gallery Exit Art. Here’s one example, “Oil and Water,” by Joseph Smolinski (courtesy Mixed Greens Gallery):

Have a look back at the array of statements, examine the art and weigh in.

Here’s a roundup of reader reactions to the idea that a sustained energy quest should be an organizing principle if humanity wants to avoid hard knocks in the next few decades. I frequently try to highlight notable contributions of non-anonymous readers as a way to keep the discourse here constructive and focused more on argument and less on contradiction (this link goes to the famous Monty Python skit delineating the difference).

Hugh Whalan, New York, on “energy poverty”:

More than 125,000 years ago, your ancestors discovered fire. With it came a source of heat, warmth, and light. Unfortunately, for 1 in 3 people living today, very little has changed. This is energy poverty. Really let that sink in: one third of the world’s population lives like this.

Addressing energy poverty is a key step to alleviating poverty – with the I.E.A. noting that an additional 700 million people need to gain access to modern energy services by 2015 if the UN’s millennium development poverty alleviation goal is to be met (halving world poverty).

Just as importantly, energy poverty is a huge contributor to climate change, as those stuck in energy poverty are forced to rely on fuels like kerosene and firewood which caused enormous amounts of pollution. Read more…

Mike Barrett, Madison, Wisc., on “energy gluttony”:

The greatest tragedy for the earth (and humanity) would be for us to discover a cheap & plentiful fuel source. Think about it. What do we do today with ‘limited’ supplies of energy? We pave. We spew toxins because we can. We mine precious metals to adorn us. We rip up the earth for ores of all kinds to build cars, bigger, faster, more powerful. For what? So we can get fatter. We mow down vast tracts of forests to build oversized houses. And so on. An unlimited supply of a concentrated energy would just allow more of the same destruction. Read more…

Rohit Parikh, New York (via Mumbai), on what might be called “energy irrelevance”: Read more…

Here’s a valuable reaction to my piece on the energy and climate challenge and exploration of why the United States is having particular difficulty in finding traction. It’s provided by Lee Schipper, a longtime student of energy efficiency and transportation with positions at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. Schipper says an innovation push is required, but there is also vital need to raise the cost of wasteful and polluting energy habits:

I find it easy to agree with Richard Somerville. If we continue to wait until we have a climate crisis, it’s too late. But the U.S. is in political crisis over what to do about energy and climate, and has been since the early 1970s. This country did not agree on how to value or price its concerns about oil imports (others taxed oil), whether or not one should move away from oil (others taxed all fuels), and more recently about CO2 (the brave Nordic countries have CO2 taxes). We fought for two decades over whether to strengthen fuel economy standards.

All the while research on energy uses and efficiency continued and efficiency of industrial processes, home heating, water heating, appliances, lighting, etc., improved, prodded in the case of household uses by thoughtful efficiency standards.

Cars got more efficient, too. The average new car today can move twice as many ton-miles of car on a gallon of fuel as a new car in 1980. But because tons and power increased so much, the average new car sold in 2009 used only 10 to 15 percent less fuel per kilometer than one sold in 1990, when the present fuel economy standards maxed out. [More on this phenomenon can be found in an article on the power imperative in car performance by Matt Wald.]

And many ways of saving energy in cars were eaten up as ways to provide more power at constant real fuel economy, rather than save fuel at constant power. Why? Real fuel prices fell to their bottom in the late 1990s, and only when they started upwards in 2003 did consumers begin to buy more efficient cars than the old standards required. Boosting of the standards on light trucks and SUVs helped, too, but that improvement was only 7.5 percent, versus a nearly 15 percent improvement in the test fuel economy of cars bought. Read more…

It’s worth beginning Dot Earth’s new iteration with a few straightforward points about humans and their planet that I feel are powerfully established. Below, I start with several thoughts on energy and climate. In coming days, along with a regular flow of news-driven posts, I’ll add similar foundation-building pieces on relations between people and Earth’s other inhabitants and on ways to mesh humanity’s infinite aspirations with life on a finite planet.

1) Energy matters. Energy can produce bountiful supplies of drinking water. Energy enables food production, storage and dispersal. Energy enables mobility, connectedness, health and comfort. The late Nobelist in chemistry, Richard Smalley, devoted the last years of his life to delivering an admirable distillation of the benefits of abundant energy, and need for an energy quest.

2) Even with spreading efforts to conserve energy, a world heading toward roughly 9 billion people seeking decent lives will require far more of this resource than today’s supplies and systems can provide. There is already an enormous energy gap on the planet, with some 2 billion people lacking the simple gift of illumination or a clean source of heat for cooking meals.

3) If countries like China and India follow the American pattern in transportation, ballooning demand for oil is bound to be a disruptive influence on world affairs with or without the climate impact of all those additional emissions of greenhouse gases. Think of it this way; the United States, with 307 million (heading toward 400 million) people, now consumes nearly 20 million barrels a day; India, with more than 1.1 billion people, is barely in first gear, currently using 2.67 million barrels of oil but poised for vastly increased demand. Add in projections of car use in China and you see why status-quo fuel choices don’t hold up.

4) If humanity stays stuck on the coal rung of the “heat ladder” for another generation, there’s an unacceptable risk of driving disruptive, long-lasting shifts in climate through the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

5) Nonetheless, if I had to choose one of two bumper stickers for our car — CLIMATE CRISIS or ENERGY QUEST — I’d choose the latter. This doesn’t mean I reject the idea that we face a climate crisis. I just don’t think that phrase is a productive way to frame this challenge, particularly as defined over the last few years in the heated policy debate. The definition I’d choose is much like the one stated by Richard Somerville of the University of California, San Diego, during a climate debate several years ago over the proposition that “Global Warming is Not a Crisis.” Read more…

After 940 posts as a news blog, Dot Earth is moving to the Opinion side of The New York Times, where it will re-emerge in about a week. Don’t expect momentous changes. I’m not going to suddenly be revealed as an ardent liberal or conservative.

I am an advocate, for sure — for reality.

I’ll try to maintain the discipline to be “caustically honest” (to steal a phrase used by a climate scientist in a story of mine on tipping points last year) in weighing the issues and opportunities confronting humanity as its astonishing 200-years-and-counting growth spurt crests.

As a freelance blogger, I will say what I think in ways I could not when I was a Times reporter. I’ll do this in a space occupied by other ex-Times reporters, including Timothy Egan and Linda Greenhouse.

One other facet of Dot Earth won’t change: the blog will remain home to a dynamic, sometimes exhausting exchange of reader comment. Many blogs focusing on the environment seem mainly focused on creating a comfort zone for like-minded citizens. Dot Earth will continue to be a place for the expression of all points of view — as long as those views are expressed in civil and constructive ways.

I’ll keep rewarding authenticity by occasionally featuring contributions by those of you who choose to state your views without the cloak of anonymity. I’ll also keep listening to you as we jointly explore and test drive this evolving form of discourse.

As recently as 2006, geoengineering — using countermeasures to blunt the heat-trapping impact of accumulating greenhouse gases or sop them up directly — had a someday feel to it. The following video clip is a fun introduction to some of the basic ideas:

But the failure of recent efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions has built some momentum toward expanding research on such options. One step on that road was a big meeting on geoengineering science and policy questions at the Asilomar Conference Center in northern California last week. The result is intensifying debate over what is still widely viewed as a last-ditch option should worst-case projections of warming pan out. The questions transcend simple worries about environmental impacts. The biggest, perhaps, could be one of global diplomacy. Who gets to set the Earth’s thermostat? Russia and Maldives would probably have entirely different views.

A few environmental groups — including the Natural Resources Defense Council and Friends of the Earth (U.K.) [pdf] have started to express conditional support for some of this research. Many environmentalists still oppose such techno-fixes as either bound to produce unintended consequences or a cop-out that could reduce pressure to stop emissions at the source. (A list of new books on the issue can be found at the bottom of this post.)

To my mind, some of the intensity in the discourse over this broad suite of possible climate interventions — on top of the unintended one under way now — derives from the uncomfortable situation the human species finds itself facing at this moment in its history. Read more…

April 7, 9:59 a.m. | Updated The Colbert Report has weighed in on meteorology and climatology:

Original Post: In the war of words over global warming, a seemingly counterintuitive rift has emerged between climate scientists and meteorologists.

“Meteorologists are far more likely than climatologists to question the science of climate change,” Leslie Kaufman reports in an article in The New York Times.

One reason, the article suggests, is that climate scientists study long-term weather patterns and meteorologists make short-term forecasts. There are also suggestions that some meteorologists resent the primacy of climatologists with Ph.D.’s.

Whatever the cause of their standoff, meteorologists appear to have the upper hand when it comes to influencing public opinion, Ms. Kaufman writes.

Following are some video excerpts of on-the-air remarks by meteorologists.

Read more…

In a world of shrinking conventional coverage of (non-medical) science and the environment, it was refreshing recently to become aware of the The Agenda with Steve Paikin, a popular current-affairs program on public television in Ontario — particularly its five-hour string of shows devoted to some of the prime facets of the climate challenge.

The guests in the series ranged from Joe Romm, “America’s fiercest climate blogger,” to Richard Lindzen, the climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has been variously lionized and pilloried for his arguments against science pointing to a dangerous human influence on climate. (I was invited earlier this week to join two climate scientists in a segment focusing on the value and limits of computer-generated climate simulations.)

All of the programs have now been posted online for anyone to see. Here they are, from newest to oldest. Dive in and weigh in.

Climate Models

Geoengineering Read more…

Here’s a brief update on the great heat-toting oceanic currents that at one time were thought to be at risk from human-driven warming of the climate. There’s been no slowdown at all through much of the past decade and probably none since the early 1990s, according to new work using methods developed by Joshua Willis at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

The prospect of a circulation slowdown driven by increasing flows of fresh water from melting ice sheets had built around early work of Wallace Broecker at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and culminated with the caricatured climate calamity in The Day After Tomorrow.

But through much of the last decade, Dr. Broecker adjusted his view as new information came to light, concluding that the “angry beast” of climate hidden in the Atlantic Ocean was a creature of the Earth’s cold periods and not likely to appear in warm times. In the 2007 reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the prospects for a disruption of the currents were downgraded substantially from earlier reports.

My 2004 article and online package on the possible contribution of Greenland’s ice to such a slowdown (through the release of vast amounts of fresh water) explores the complexities and hints that the picture was not simple.

I’ll be posting more here soon on new research showing an expanding area in western Greenland where ice mass is being lost and what this may, and may not, portend for sea levels in this century.

Here’s an animation showing the currents: