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May 27, 2011, 3:12 pm

Officials: No Need to Protect Bluefin Tuna Under Species Act

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
atlantic bluefin tunaCourtesy of Jay Rooker, Texas A&M An Atlantic bluefin tuna at the dock.

The Atlantic bluefin tuna, while under pressure from intensive fishing, does not need protection under the Endangered Species Act, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has concluded.

That doesn’t mean the species’ status as a sustainable fishery is not threatened, of course. There’s more on the general situation on Dot Earth. The Center for Biological Diversity, which had used the courts to press for species protection, expressed strong displeasure. Personally, given the big difference between sustaining a fishery and avoiding outright extinction, I see this as another case of trying to deploy the wrong tool for the job.

Here’s an excerpt from the news release: Read more…

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May 27, 2011, 2:30 pm

Perceiving the Anthropocene

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
EarthNASA Home.

The excellent science writer Oliver Morton has written a captivating feature for the Economist exploring the hypothesis that Earth has entered a new geological epoch of our making, the Anthropocene. It has a gem of a closing “kicker”:

It may seem nonsense to think of the (probably skeptical) intelligence with which you interpret these words as something on a par with plate tectonics or photosynthesis. But dam by dam, mine by mine, farm by farm and city by city it is remaking the Earth before your eyes.

I like this framing because it gets at the challenge we face, given aspects of our “inconvenient mind,” in fully absorbing, and responding to, this state of affairs.

In case you missed it when I posted “Pedal to the Metal,” here’s my distillation of the human predicament:

It’s like we’ve woken up at the wheel of a vehicle, we haven’t done driver’s ed, there isn’t even a manual that’s been finished yet –- meaning on the complexity of this global system –- and our foot is on the pedal and pushing down, and we’re heading toward a curve. And there’s a lot of uncertainty…. Knowing that stasis, business as usual, is not going to give us a smooth ride through this century is step one… [Listen to the rest.]

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May 27, 2011, 12:22 pm

Tornadoes and Warming, from the Archives

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
tornado trendsNOAA/NSSL Frequency of reports of strong (red) and weak (blue) tornadoes since 1950. Experts say the rise in weak tornadoes is from more reporting, not more storms. (From 2008 post.)

7:11 p.m. | Updated
Anthony Watts has posted a Wattsupwiththat.com item wrongly asserting that my concerns about statements implying a link between recent tornado outbreaks and human-driven climate change are new.

I just told him that he must have missed my 2008 piece including this section and the graph above*:

Tornadoes. There was a spate of Instanet attacks on Senator John Kerry yesterday for discussing projections of stronger storms in a warming world in the context of the catastrophic tornado strikes. His comment was nuanced, but by even bringing climate policy into a conversation on severe weather, he was probably destined to get roughed up. The reason? The science remains utterly equivocal on how global warming might boost the longstanding peril from tornadoes in the storm belt.

Making analysis tougher, any trends in annual counts of tornadoes are clearly a function of shifting patterns of monitoring and reporting, not actual changes in the numbers of funnel clouds, according to several experts at the National Severe Storms Laboratory. The ballooning numbers of weak tornadoes in the chart above are known to be the result of more weather watchers, with more ways to report funnel clouds, as well as more radars and the like. The steady drumbeat of potent twisters, which are easier to track, shows a declining trend, but that, too, the federal experts say, was likely the result of a change in data crunching, not a drop in actual tornado numbers.There is no evidence of any trend in the number of potent tornadoes (F2 and up) over the past 50 years in the United States, even as global temperatures have risen markedly. There has been one modeling study from NASA projecting that warming could make potent thunderstorms more powerful, and potentially tornado makers.

As Roger Edwards, a forecaster at the federal Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., told me this morning, the data are not only “soft, but spongy, in other words full of holes through and through.”

[*Shortly after I pointed out the issue, Watts added an update with my note "below the fold" (after the "more" click), which I only noticed this evening.]

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May 27, 2011, 11:45 am

Lawmaker Explores Climate Solution in Clearing Rain Forests

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
deforestationAndrew C. Revkin Is this the solution to greenhouse-driven warming? One congressman appears to think so.

John Collins Rudolf of the Green blog got some reaction from experts on tropical forests to an unorthodox climate solution proposed at a Wednesday House hearing by Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California. Here’s an excerpt, starting with Rohrabacher outlining his thinking for a witness, Todd Stern, the Obama administration’s climate envoy:

“Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of rain forests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases?” the congressman asked Mr. Stern, according to Politico.

“Or would people be supportive of cutting down older trees in order to plant younger trees as a means to prevent this disaster from happening?” he continued.

Forestry experts were dumbfounded by Mr. Rohrabacher’s line of questioning, noting that the world’s forests currently absorb far more carbon dioxide than they emit — capturing roughly one-third of all man-made emissions and helping mitigate climate change.

“He’s seriously confused,” said Oliver Phillips, a professor of geography at the University of Leeds in Britain and an expert on terrestrial carbon storage. “He’s just got half of the equation. Natural things decay, of course, but they also grow.”

Read the rest of the post here, and you can explore more reactions on Twitter.

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May 26, 2011, 1:44 pm

Demography, Design, Atom Bombs and Tornado Deaths

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

tornado scienceThe New York Times

Graphic: A Twister Forms

[5:03 p.m. | Updated | There's more tornado common sense from Chuck Doswell at the University of Oklahoma appended below and Curtis Brainard has written a comprehensive critique of media coverage of the climate-tornado question.]

I encourage you to read a fresh exploration of the outsize tornado death count this year by Kevin Simmons, an economist focused on the impacts of extreme weather, and particularly tornadoes. He’s also the co-author, with Daniel Sutter, of “Economic and Societal Impacts of Tornadoes.” Here’s the nut of his piece and a link to the rest:

How could this happen? Is it climate change or just bad luck? I am not a climate scientist, so I will leave that question for more qualified researchers. But I do have some insight into why this year has been one that we will likely never forget. First, it has been almost 50 years since we have seen an outbreak of this magnitude. And over that time we have come to believe that outbreaks of this size are so rare that we just don’t consider that they could happen in our lifetime. But, 50 years is a blink of an eye to Mother Nature. Our records and oral history only go back a few hundred years at best. The Midwest was not aggressively settled until the latter part of the 19th century so our experience with tornadoes is limited.

Secondly, we have increased the population in vulnerable areas dramatically. Land that was once uninhabited is now crammed with subdivisions. When my wife and I attended the prom in 1974 the Dallas/Ft. Worth area consisted of 2 counties, Dallas and Tarrant. It now stretches across 10 counties with a population of about 6 million. The same can be said for Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Little Rock and other metropolitan areas in “Tornado Alley”… [Read the rest.]

Below you can read an excerpt from an impassioned critique of oversimplified explanations for this year’s tornado tragedies by Chuck Doswell, a senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Elsewhere in the piece, Doswell notes that in the last terrible tornado year, 1953, media pointed to atomic bomb tests as the cause: Read more…

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May 25, 2011, 3:45 pm

Tornadoes and Natural Gas in the Greenhouse

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

May 26, 12:28 p.m. | Updated
I’m in the middle of a two-day faculty meeting on innovation in university education (with great talks on borderless learning by Gardner Campbell of Virginia Tech and Tamar Lewin of The Times). But I wanted to note some fresh coverage of a couple of issues explored here recently — the climate implications of expanded drilling for natural gas and the relationship, if any, of tornadoes to human-driven climate change.

Tornadoes and warming

tornado mapMap of the Tornadoes Across the South, Day by Da

Joe Romm has rounded up a mix of atrocious and reasonable reporting and commentary on whether, because of global warming, “tornadoes ‘r us.” (To my eye, Al Roker’s climate comments were among the least informed and most egregious considering his audience size.) I disagree with his laudatory assessment of Bill McKibben’s Washington Post op-ed piece lumping the disaster in Joplin, Mo., in a discussion of all kinds of extreme events that justify action on curbing greenhouse gases. You can’t exclude climate change, but there’s simply no evidence through a half century of tornado history in the United States of a connection to warming. [4:37 p.m. | Updated Wednesday afternoon saw tornado warnings sprout from Texas into the Great Lakes states.]

I do agree with Romm’s prime take-home points: Read more…

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May 23, 2011, 10:20 pm

Tough Issues With Warnings in Tornado Zones

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

1:53 p.m. | Updated

storm predictionNWS/SPC

The challenges in maintaining vigilance and responsiveness in America’s tornado hot zones can best be understood by reviewing the sequence of National Weather Service storm prediction updates below.

The federal forecasters and their private counterparts have gotten great at identifying the distinctive set of turbulent conditions that can spawn tornadoes, often days in advance. But any resulting tornadoes, in the end, are hyper-local calamities and remain tough to pinpoint until just before they touch down.

Even with improved tornado forecasting, hour-by-hour shifts in the level of risk in various regions speak to the challenge of maintaining public responsiveness when sirens finally sound. Another enormous problem is the high rate of tornado warnings that end up being false alarms — often 75 percent.

Recent research has found a substantial “false alarm effect,” in which areas of the country with higher rates of errant warnings have more deaths and injuries. Here’s the takeaway line from this study, by Kevin M. Simmons, an economist at Austin College, and Daniel Sutter an economist at the University of Texas-Pan American (both of whom provided valuable insight in a recent post on sources of vulnerability to tornadoes):

A statistically significant and large false-alarm effect is found: tornadoes that occur in an area with a higher false-alarm ratio kill and injure more people, everything else being constant.

Here are some of the severe weather alerts issued since Monday afternoon:

1:17 p.m. |Update

…AN INTENSE OUTBREAK OF TORNADOES AND WIDESPREAD SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS IS EXPECTED LATER TODAY OVER PORTIONS OF KS/OK/TX… [Read the rest.]

9:55 a.m. |Update

The prospect of a substantial tornado outbreak has ebbed since Monday night (see below), but the new Storm Prediction Center forecast still sees more tornadoes likely late today:

…TORNADO OUTBREAK EXPECTED OVER PARTS OF THE SRN AND CNTRL PLNS AND OZARKS LATER TODAY INTO TONIGHT…

May 23, 6:00 p.m. |Update
This extraordinary year of the twister continues. The Storm Prediction Center of the National Weather Service has issued a blunt warning to Kansas and Oklahoma and adjacent regions (risk map) to be prepared for the worst on Tuesday:

…TORNADIC OUTBREAK POSSIBLE ACROSS THE CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN PLAINS TUESDAY. AN UPGRADE TO HIGH RISK MAY BE WARRANTED AS SITUATION BECOMES MORE CERTAIN…

A CLASSIC PLAINS TORNADIC OUTBREAK APPEARS TO BE EVOLVING ACROSS THE CNTRL/SRN PLAINS… ESPECIALLY FOR KANSAS AND OKLAHOMA. [Read the rest.]

Here’s a brief discussion I recorded on the challenges of living with sporadic or infrequent, but severe, hazards — whether in tornado zones or earthquake zones:


Postscript: And if you live in hurricane territory, it’s worth noting that this week is designated as Hurricane Preparedness Week, with the Atlantic season beginning June 1. The hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean should be more intense than normal while the Eastern and Central Pacific should have unusually quiet storm seasons, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced late last week.

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May 23, 2011, 1:27 pm

More Trauma in America’s Tornado Hot Zone

By ANDREW C. REVKIN


2:55 p.m. | Updated
The devastating tornado that shredded Joplin, Mo., Sunday night is a reminder of the incredible destructive potential from storms in America’s heartland. Here’s video of the tornado’s arrival, recorded by Jeff and Karen Piotrowksi.

a tornado destroys a town Tornado video.

In the tornado zone, the focus, going forward, should remain on improving responsiveness to warnings, construction standards and the availability of shelter.

I encourage you to read an excellent examination of this spring’s extraordinary tornado death tolls by Patrik Jonsson of the Christian Science Monitor. Here’s just one snippet from a piece that’s worth reading end to end: Read more…

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May 23, 2011, 11:40 am

Cities Embrace the Adaptation Imperative

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Chicago adapts to climate change The anatomy of a resilient city block.

Leslie Kaufman has written an excellent story on how one great city, Chicago, has vaulted past stale debates over the causes and consequences of disastrous weather to begin boosting its resilience to conditions that are most likely to dominate in coming decades.

In many parts of the world, prospering cities are making climate-resilient design a priority.

DESCRIPTIONJean Chung for The New York Times Picknickers enjoy a quiet moment along the Cheonggyecheon, a revived stream in the heart of Seoul.

The variegated benefits of such efforts are on display in Seoul, where in 2005 Mayor Lee Myung-bak (now South Korea’s president) peeled back pavement and revived a long-vanished stream, cooling temperatures, lessening traffic and noise and creating a corridor that is both a haven for picnickers and a conduit for flood waters when necessary. (For more seee my 2009 article, post and video report on Seoul’s makeover.)

Handling flooding rains is a particular priority, given how urban deluges can blunt economic activity. One of the most interesting efforts, to my mind, was the privately financed storm-water drainage tunnel completed in Kuala Lumpur a few years ago. (The Malay name of the megacity, now a hub of global commerce, translates to “muddy confluence,” reflecting its soggy geography.)

Where’s the profit in such a half-billion-dollar venture? This “Smart Tunnel” is a toll road nearly all the time. The flash floods from downpours in that part of Malaysia, funneled toward the city from surrounding hills, come with more than enough warning to close the system to cars and prepare for gushing floods. The system handles about 30,000 cars a day and has been closed to handle floodwaters around 44 times so far.

That system has prevented flooding in one small part of the huge city, but, as one paralyzing flood in 2009 illustrated, there’s a lot more work to do there.

And there’s plenty to do elsewhere around the world. Where do you see communities getting climate smart?

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May 21, 2011, 12:15 pm

Can Humans Move from Tweaks to Leaps?

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Reacting to my post on “Embracing the Anthropocene,” Bob Doppelt, executive director of the Resource Innovation Group, posted a response that’s worth highlighting here as a “Your Dot” contribution:

Humans suffer from what psychologists call “bounded rationality.” We just can’t think about everything and are especially bad at projecting the consequences of our actions over time and space or imagining delays in the social and ecological systems we are embedded within.

If we are now in control of the planet, transformative cognitive and cultural changes will be needed in a very short time frame to prevent us from continually making conditions worse all while thinking we are doing good. That’s because humans are mostly skilled at “first-order change” — tweaks and improvements to our existing cognitive, behavioral, social, institutional systems that leave the basic goals, structures — and outcomes — of those systems in tact.

But if we are now charged with sustainably managing the planet, second order changes will be needed. These are transformative shifts in values, beliefs, and thought processes that produce fundamentally different types of behaviors, practices, institutions, technologies and policies. Second order change does happen — but mostly through major crisis — and even then there is no guarantee that the outcomes will be constructive.

So yes, we are now in control of the planet. This means our primary task must be to put massive amounts of resources into figuring out how to manage the process of human change so that second-order change comes about with as little harm as possible.

Doable? Yes.

Likely? The jury is out, as most of our resources now go to technologies and resources rather than to scaling up human change processes.

Can we take a “crude look at the whole,” as Murray Gell-Mann recommends for complex problems, and then maximize our capacity to leap?

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Andrew C. Revkin on Climate Change

By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where, scientists say, humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. In Dot Earth, which recently moved from the news side of The Times to the Opinion section, Andrew C. Revkin examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits. Conceived in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Dot Earth tracks relevant developments from suburbia to Siberia. The blog is an interactive exploration of trends and ideas with readers and experts.

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