Now that I’m spending more time in classrooms than the newsroom, I often face students displaying a peculiar kind of bifocal gaze divided between the front of the room and the laptop screen. So I know about the frustrations of teachers in trying to engage students in the real world even as they’re buffeted with digital information.

That’s why I love the ongoing experiment in learning being conducted by Margaret Rubega, who teaches ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut and has employed Twitter as a learning and communication tool in her ornithology syllabus. When I describe innovation as a prime driver of progress in years to come, I’m not just talking about photovoltaics and genetics, but also innovation in communication and education. This is why I’m convinced that 140 characters can matter.

In each new semester, Rubega requires students — most of whom, she finds, initially are not using Twitter — to open an account and post any time they witness some interesting bit of bird behavior. (I’ve since required my communication students to do the same, and they’ve almost universally embraced this; you can track one class’s forthcoming documentary on shrimp farming, for instance, via @got_shrimp.) Read more…

Population Projections

Following up on the latest United Nations projections for population growth through 2100, Room for Debate, drawing on some familiar Dot Earth voices, has elicited five fascinating takes on alternative human futures:

We Can Change the Future , Joel E. Cohen, Rockefeller University

Educate the Masses , Warren Sanderson, economist and historian Stony Brook University

Africa’s Daunting Challenges, David E. Bloom, economist, Harvard School of Public Health

How 10 Billion Can Survive, Jamais Cascio, Institute for the Future

More Efficient Food Production, Jason Clay, World Wildlife Fund

In case you missed it the other day, here’s video of my exploration of some of the possible paths with Braden Allenby of Arizona State University, who’s right up there with Vaclav Smil in his ability to twist one’s preconceptions into knots:

Wrigley Lecture Series – Andy Revkin and Braden Allenby from Sustainability @ ASU on Vimeo.

A transcript is here.

Tornado damage (map).

Missouri flooding (slide show).

Here’s a deeper discussion of efforts to clarify productive steps, both in science and policy, in the face of deadly tornado outbreaks, extraordinary midwestern flooding and climate change.

Kevin Trenberth, distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, sent this reaction to yesterday’s post on the importance of addressing deep vulnerability to tornadoes in the South even as efforts are made to curb greenhouse gases. He notes that high sea temperatures linked to human-driven climate warming are contributing to extreme rainfall and thunderstorm activity and possibly tornado outbreaks:

There are certainly issues related to warnings and building codes, but you seem to unduly discount climate change and high sea surface temperatures in the Gulf.  Tornadoes are difficult to deal with because they are so small.

The observational record is not reliable. However less mistakable are the exceptionally heavy rains that accompanied the outbreaks. The multiple supercell thunderstorms are easily evident in satellite pictures and a nice movie of this made by NASA.

There were areas of over 20 inches, more extensive regions over 18 inches (especially southern Missouri) and a huge area with over 6 inches of rains, and so flooding is a result.   But this is not confined to North America.  The extensive flooding in South America: Columbia, last september and again now (they have 2 wet seasons a year) is record breaking.  For instance in today’s El Espectador you can see a photographic review of the effects so far of La Nina 2010-2011 in Colombia.

Summarizing:

Deaths: 428

Wounded: 525

Missing:  77

Affected persons: 3,070,372

Homeless families:  721,603

Affected Departments (States): 28 out of 32

Affected towns: 1,030

Number of affected hectares: 1,060,000

Please don’t lose the bigger perspective and the undoubted effects of high sea surface temperatures, of which a component is human induced climate change, on these events. I think the evidence is emerging that quite small changes in sea surface temperatures have huge effects on hurricanes and these events.

Kerry Emanuel, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology climatologist who has for decades studied the relationship of climate change to hurricanes and other severe weather, posted this reaction: Read more…

As communities across the storm-raked stretch of the South cope with the aftermath of the country’s second deadliest tornado outbreak, it’s worth reviewing the prime sources of vulnerability behind the terrible death counts: the substantial growth in southern populations in recent decades, a dearth of basements and the enduring popularity of mobile homes.

Mobile homes, where half the nation’s tornado deaths have occurred over recent decades, are essentially death traps in twisters, particularly given the frequent lack of adherence to standards for anchoring such buildings and having, at least, community storm shelters nearby (most are not in mobile home parks).

Keep in mind there are no standards for such structures that make them capable of surviving tornadoes in the higher tornado intensity classes. To get the idea, just watch this video from the wind laboratory at Texas Tech University showing how a two-by-four traveling at tornado speed deals with various types of walls:

Below you can learn more about mobile homes in tornadoes and find links to background on building “safe rooms” — small havens with reinforced walls that improve the odds of surviving a potent windstorm. One design is easy enough to erect that middle school students in Fort Morgan, Colo., built one as a demonstration for their community.

But, first a brief diversion. Given continued assertions that human-driven global warming could be playing a role in the havoc down south, it’s also worth revisiting something that Walker S. Ashley, a meteorologist at Northern Illinois University, said last week on Dot Earth:

The heart of the matter lies with a growing and increasingly vulnerable population. That is what is driving “disasters.”

There’s no doubt that Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University is right when he says “climate change is present in every single meteorological event” — in the sense that the buildup of greenhouses gases is a background nudge everywhere.

But that’s a meaningless assertion without asking whether there is evidence of a meaningful influence — meaning enough of a nudge to the atmosphere that the contribution from greenhouse gases is relevant to policy and personal choices, in this case in tornado zones.

For the moment, there’s scant evidence to support this at any level — in the basic data on storm patterns or in tallies of damage and deaths. I’m not denying it’s possible, just that it’s relevant.

It’s fine for Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research to say he feels “it is irresponsible not to mention climate change” when discussing tornado outbreaks. Everyone’s entitled to his or her view.

My response would be that it is irresponsible not to mention the need to reduce inherent and avoidable human vulnerability to tornadoes in the crowding South, particularly in low-income regions with flimsy housing. I saw barely a mention of these realities in recent posts by climate-oriented bloggers on the tornado outbreak.

The same issue has played out in discussions of hurricane trends in a warming world. In 2006, amid persistent scientific debate over the possible role of greenhouse-driven warming in shaping hurricane patterns, 10 leading researchers in the field issued a single statement on vulnerability.

Here’s the relevant section from my story on that effort (which was just about the only coverage of this attempt to find common ground):

Ten climate experts who are sharply divided over whether global warming is intensifying hurricanes say that this question, a focus of Congressional hearings, news reports and the recent Al Gore documentary, is a distraction from “the main hurricane problem facing the United States.”

That problem, the experts said yesterday in a statement, is an ongoing “lemming-like march to the sea” in the form of unabated coastal development in vulnerable places, and in the lack of changes in government policies and corporate and individual behavior that are driving the trend.

Whatever the relationship between hurricanes and climate, experts say, hurricanes are hitting the coasts, and houses should not be built in their path.

I’d love to see a similar statement now from meteorologists, climatologists and other specialists studying trends in tornado zones. Any takers?

Assertions that human-induced climate change could have played a significant role in shaping what unfolded last week run headlong into the overwhelming reality that the fast growth of southern populations vastly overwhelms any theorized contribution from changing climate conditions, Ashley said:

In my opinion, a possible global climate change-induced increase of a percent or two here or there in the number of [tornadoes/hurricanes] (enter your favorite hazard here) is orders of magnitude smaller (in terms of a problem) in comparison to vulnerability issues.

Finding ways to curb emissions of greenhouse gases is an important part of this century’s energy challenge, for sure. But for the millions of Americans living involuntarily in flimsy housing in the tornado hot zone, the imperative is to learn the location of the nearest strong structure or shelter and to heed warnings when, as was the case last week, forecasters point to extraordinary danger.

In a telephone interview Friday afternoon, Ashley told me that anyone living in tornado country in a home lacking a safe room should make sure, at the very least, to invest in a $30 weather radio and a serious escape plan. Other tornado researchers agreed, noting that because tornadoes in the South have a greater tendency to form at night, such a plan should include sleeping at a neighbor’s house or shelter if a front is projected to sweep through in the wee hours. There will be false alarms as a result, but a better shot at avoiding big regrets in the long haul.

Mike Smith, a meteorologist and the author of “Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather,” said there’s plenty to explore in the wreckage of this spring — including different death counts in different places — that could lead to improved resilience in the tornado zone:

It is distressing to see so many lose their lives in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia after things went like clockwork in St. Louis (zero deaths in an F-4 tornado in a densely populated area and in the city which has historically more tornado deaths than any other) just five evenings before. There are three possible differences:

The St. Louis area is pretty well equipped with tornado sirens which warn people even if they are not tuned to the media or on their computers. The latter may have been (I’m still investigating) a significant or even major issue in Alabama due to the first wave of storms that knocked out the power prior to the arrival of the violent tornadoes in the late afternoon/evening. As I said, I’m still trying to get a handle on the extent of the earlier power failures and the extent to which those might have prevented the warning from being received. I do know that, when compared to the good siren coverage in St. Louis, fewer people in the South are in siren range.

In St. Louis, people by in large have basements. These are much less frequent in the South and, in a major tornado, underground shelter is the place to be. A bathtub in an interior bathroom gives reasonable shelter in an F-1, F-2 tornado but is no match in an F-4, 5 where everything is swept away.

Finally, it is unclear to me whether people respond to the warnings as well in the South as they do in the Midwest.  This is something that meteorology needs to better understand.

More access to safe rooms and shelters would be a great starting point. Visit the National Storm Shelter Association for information on shelter designs and manufacturers.

If you live in, or know people who live in, mobile homes in tornado country, the vintage, design and installation methods can make the difference between life and death for occupants.

This was most glaringly revealed in an analysis of a 2007 tornado outbreak in central Florida, studied by Daniel Sutter of the University of Texas, Pan American, and Kevin M. Simmons of Austin College, economists who also are the authors of “Economic and Societal Impacts of Tornadoes,” a new book from the American Meteorological Society. (Here’s a YouTube discussion of the book.)

Here’s what Sutter said* in an e-mail about their analysis of the Florida tornado deaths:

What was interesting there is that where we could document the age of the mobile home, all of the fatalities occurred in homes installed prior to the 1994 HUD Wind Rule, which was designed for mobile homes in hurricane-prone areas. Homes installed in 1995 or later were much less likely to have been destroyed in the 2/2/07 outbreak, as well. We found no effect for homes installed after the state of Florida’s tie-down rule for manufactured homes went into effect in 2000.

This is just one event and we haven’t been able to do a wider study to try to confirm the results, but it does suggest there is a possibility of building mobile homes which can better withstand tornadoes, particularly F2 and F3 tornadoes where the relative vulnerability of mobile homes is much higher.

For mobile homes located in parks, community shelters would seem to offer cost effective protection, particularly in more tornado prone parts of the country. Some survey work by Tom Schmidlin suggests though that although reasonably common in Kansas and Oklahoma, such community shelters have not been adopted in the southeast.

Just to be sure the point is clear, here’s the abstract of their paper on that Lake County disaster, which killed 21 people, all of them in mobile homes:

On February 2, 2007, a severe thunderstorm moving across central Florida spawned three tornadoes, which resulted in 21 deaths in the second-worst tornado outbreak in state history. The outbreak exhibited three vulnerabilities for tornado casualties revealed by prior research: The tornado hit at night, during a fall or winter month, and in an area with a large proportion of manufactured homes. We combine property and damage characteristics to examine risk factors for fatalities in this high-vulnerability event. All the fatalities occurred in mobile homes, and 16 of 17 fatalities for which we have property characteristics occurred in homes that were leveled. Newer manufactured homes were 60% less likely to be leveled than older homes, which is evidence that the stricter construction and tie-down codes enacted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the state of Florida after Hurricane Andrew and the 1998 tornado outbreak are saving lives.

The bottom bottom line?

Limiting emissions of greenhouse gases is a long-term challenge that needs to be addressed in ways that achieve results; building and living resiliently in tornado zones is a real-time imperative, with or without a push from climate change.

[* I accidentally mixed up Daniel Sutter and Kevin M. Simmons and initially attributed this to Simmons. Both researchers concur with the observations.]

Rumors of an impending human population crash are not borne out by the latest United Nations projections, offering further proof that human beings are the least certain factor in efforts to project the course of events on this planet in this century.

There’s more in the news article by Celia Dugger and Justin Gillis: “U.N. Forecasts 10.1 Billion People by Century’s End.”

There’s enormous plasticity in the system, as Warren Sanderson, an economics and history professor at Stony Brook University, stressed to me when I attended the school’s Earthstock celebration last week.

As he put it in a followup e-mail exchange: Read more…

The three Dalhousie University researchers whose 2010 analysis of plankton trends and ocean warming has been challenged by other marine scientists have sent this reaction to last week’s post:

As is typical with many new findings published in leading scientific journals, our work documenting global declines in marine phytoplankton has been subjected to further scrutiny by the scientific community. This is necessary and important, especially given the nature of our findings, and we appreciate the issues raised by three other research groups which have now been published as brief communications in the Journal Nature. In order to test the robustness of our results in light of these specific concerns we conducted extensive new analyses in Nature that are not mentioned in the blog post. In these analyses we accounted for a possible bias between different plankton measurements. We looked at the different data sources in isolation and in combination. We looked at phytoplankton trends the North Atlantic in more detail. These sensitivity analyses revealed that our results are robust and that a long-term decline in phytoplankton is unequivocal. Read more…

Osama bin Laden, 1957-2011.

The thing that scared us most about Osama bin Laden, I think, was what seemed to be his — and many of his acolytes’ — rational mega-murderousness. In American action thrillers, the bad guys sometimes used what appeared to be blind terrifying terrorism as a guise for merely felonious behavior. (The “Die Hard” franchise nearly always centered on that construction.) But here were engineers and others with advanced degrees whose obsession was an end to modernism and a return to primal law.

They pulled off an astonishing feat of coordinated anti-engineering in the takedown of the towers that for so long gave Manhattan’s skyline a balance that it still lacks. Facilitated by the Internet, they used one vital modern device, jet aircraft, to destroy another, the vertical structures that enable concentrated urban life and the ferment of creativity and commerce that goes with it.

If Bin Laden’s cause were to spread, the prospect of expanding human progress based on education, communication, commerce and innovation itself would have been imperiled.

Even Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist, added a proviso to his book, noting that the spread of fundamentalism could still derail innovation-driven human progress.

But the remarkable courage and skill of the team that assaulted bin Laden’s lair in Abbottābad, Pakistan, over the weekend made that outcome a little less likely.

It’s appropriate, perhaps, that discussions of the death of Bin Laden are taking place on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates those lost in another period of rational fanaticism — centered on mechanized, normalized mass murder.

Humanity, then and now, tamped down such unthinkable darkness. It scares us a little less today.

But it should always scare us enough to realize that vigilance, preparedness and agility are as vital in fighting terrorism, rational or not, as they are in limiting losses from other kinds of inevitable hard knocks.

[You can also weigh in on Twitter or my Facebook page.]

I encourage you to read John Tierney’s article, “How Happy Are You? In a Boston Suburb, It’s a Census Question.” Here’s the nut of the story, which speaks of an interesting effort in Somerville, Mass., to follow the lead of Bhutan and other countries testing new ways to gauge progress:

Officials here want this Boston suburb to become the first city in the United States to systematically track people’s happiness. Like leaders in Britain, France and a few other places, they want to move beyond the traditional measures of success — economic growth — to promote policies that produce more than just material well-being.

There are plenty of issues, of course, as I’ve noted ever since 2005, when I first wrote about Bhutan’s experiment with “gross national happiness.” Does simply asking people if they’re happy on a survey measure anything meaningful? One issue, as I wrote in my earlier coverage, is that there can be many meanings for that amorphous word:

The founding fathers, said John Ralston Saul, a Canadian political philosopher, defined happiness as a balance of individual and community interests. “The Enlightenment theory of happiness was an expression of public good or the public welfare, of the contentment of the people,” Mr. Saul said. And, he added, this could not be further from “the 20th-century idea that you should smile because you’re at Disneyland.”

Mind you, there have been fascinating global surveys of happiness showing that income is not always a predictor of mood. If simply asking whether someone is happy doesn’t work, then what blend of indicators — access to health care, feeling engaged in a community, financial security… — is a better approach?

The United States Census Department has been studying ways to gauge well-being. I encourage you to explore a fascinating New York Times interactive “map of national well-being,” drawing on Gallup survey data. Here’s the related article on “The Happiest Man in America.”

There’s plenty more on Dot Earth exploring the pursuit of happiness.

The awesome power of great tempests is bad enough. But the terrifying destructiveness of the hundreds of roaring funnels that have ripped apart dozens of communities this year in the worst tornado season in decades is unimaginable except for those who’ve experienced it. *

My heart goes out, particularly, to people who, out of poverty or lack of awareness, live without access to a basement or shelter — particularly those who live in trailer parks. As Walker Ashley, a meteorologist at Northern Illinois University, found in 2008, 44 percent of deaths in tornadoes occur in mobile homes [1:27 p.m. | Updated He just told me it's up to about 50 percent now.]

And, as Kirk Johnson discusses in an excellent overview of the mix of hazard and vulnerability in Tornado Alley, the fast growth in many parts of the South has generated precisely the wrong kind of housing in the wrong kinds of places.

Johnson’s piece, sifting for a cause for this terrible storm season, explores the climate-change question and finds no easy answer. (The story I reported in 2002 from the wreckage left by an F4* tornado in La Plata, Md., has more of the basic science.) While there’s evidence that increasing greenhouse heating of the planet is exacerbating hot spells and extreme downpours, and may be related to hurricane intensity (but not frequency), a combination of imprecise records and deep complexity in the mix of forces that generate killer tornadoes has clouded any link to global warming. Anyone implying such a connection is in the spin zone.

There’s certainly no reliable trend in the categories of tornadoes that matter — those designed 2 to 5 on the Fujita scale of twister ferocity. The graph below, of data from the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., shows trends over the last 60 years. The big increases in weak tornadoes and slight dip in the F2 class are thought to be mainly the result of changes in reporting methods and also a far greater reporting rate as the South has grown more populous and radar has helped identify tornadic storms. Read more…

The Op-Ed page has published “Pain at the Pump? We Need More,” a very retro-feeling proposal for a rising price on carbon-emitting energy sources by Daniel C. Esty, the new commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, and Michael E. Porter, a professor at the Harvard Business School.

In this piece, they join the stalwart crew of economists, climate campaigners and others who are holding on to the notion that the climate challenge is a 20th-century style pollution problem that essentially goes away if the indirect costs are “internalized,” prompting polluters (all of us) to shift energy habits and choices and move from energy consumption to energy innovation.

I’m all for the latter shift, but I’m among those who see better prospects of accomplishing that through some mix of a modest, even patriotic, “pay as you go” fee, an eventual end to distorting subsidies — something some conservatives seek, as well — and boosted and re-focused federal investments in research and development (and education). (You can catch more of my thoughts on where we go from here in fresh interviews with Treehugger Radio and EarthSky.)

[April 29, 5:45 p.m. | Updated The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has offered a detailed rebuttal of the Esty/Porter thesis. Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations revealed some deep flaws in their thesis (hat tip to Keith Kloor).]

At the global level, the limits of a carbon restriction or price seem pretty well established. A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that emissions reductions claimed by industrialized countries adhering to the Kyoto Protocol’s greenhouse-gas limits (the United States stayed on the sidelines) simply occurred elsewhere. Read more…