A Change in the Wind

Enjoying the May Grey

Forecasts say it won't last much longer this week, with interior valley temps in SoCal expected to climb into the 80's and even the 90's by Wednesday. (Some uncertainty remains in the forecast, but a high is expected to build that will end the onshore flow, I regret to report.)

Enjoy it while it lasts, I say to those in this area. If we get some June gloom, savor it. After a good wet January, we've had little or no rain since, a phenomenon the climatologists link to a La Nina strengthened by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (here).

Take a look at this graph of rainfall over the last few years (in LA). The wave form is the "average" -- which of course in SoCal is something of a statistical artifact, but nonetheless shows how dry it's been lately...like, nothing, basically. 

Deserts Far Better Carbon Sink Than Expected

Some actual good news today, from a research team at one of this countries premier climate research centers, the Desert Research Institute, which reports that unspectacular desert plants may be far better at taking CO2 out of the atmosphere than previously thought.

The annual removal of the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere was upwards of 100 grams of carbon per square metre, on a par with some temperate forests, with the majority being consumed during spring months.

So reported Nature in a short piece today posted on the study by Georg Wolfhardt and colleagues at the DRI.  They're quoted in the press release:

Our results indicate that if all the desert ecosystems in the world--which together make up more than 30 percent of Earth's land surface--are taking up carbon dioxide at the same rate as our Mojave Desert site, then the amount of carbon dioxide taken up each year would match the amount emitted to the atmosphere globally through burning of fossil fuels (about 6-7 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year)." Arnone said. "Another way to look at this is, without deserts, the annual rate of anthropogenic carbon dioxide rise might be twice as rapid as it is presently and might therefore promote more rapid global warming.

Amazingly, "the authors suggest that a significant portion could be stored in the biological crusts, such as blue-green algae, lichens and mosses, that cover most desert soils."

Who would've thunk it? Gives a whole new meaning to the concept of crusty...

The Black Swan vs. Power Law

Much talk this year about Nicholas Taleb's Black Swan. (For short and long -- but remarkably lucid -- discussions of the concept, from a completely non-mathematical perspective, take a look at this excellent introduction from Grumpy Old Bookman.)

Most of the coverage of the concept has been laudatory, so it's useful to hear a discouraging word, especially from the great thinker Stewart Brand.

Like most readers, I expect, I know Brand for his incredible outpouring of new ideas -- about ways to live, to see, about how buildings learn, on and on beyong recounting except on Wikipedia.

So it's actually refreshing to hear Brand sounding a little grumpy about Black Swans, in Edge:

Taleb seems oddly innocent of "power law" behavior, in which Black Swans hold a much different position than "outlier," "tail," etc. -- all Bell Curve denotations, in power law phenomena, nothing is far from typical, because nothing whatever is typical.

The violence/incident of terrorist incidents can be charted on a power law curve, not a Bell curve.

At base, this criticism is indisputable: a Black Swan is nothing but an extreme example of a familiar phenomenon, the impact of the improbable. You cannot predict a 9/11 or Katrina with a Bell curve.

But it helps us put it in a context. Power laws are nothing new, if not easy to remember. Numerous named examples exist. The Black Swan is a point on a distribution itself. Mustn't leap to the assumption that the highly improbable must be bad...it's not necessarily the case. (Taleb would agree, but that's not why his book is being read around the world.) The graph in Wikipedia makes the point wonderfully clear by charting not a horror but a delight. Popularity.

To wit:

"An example power law graph, being used to demonstrate ranking of popularity. To the right is the long tail, to the left are the few that dominate (also known as the 80-20 rule)."

Democrats Poised for November Landslipe, Economic Model Predicts

Krugman runs the numbers and concludes:

Right now, GDP is flat (falling in the monthly estimates); Bush has a negative net approval of 30 percent or more; and people are tired of Republicans. So it ought to be a smashing Democratic victory. When I plug current numbers into the Abramowitz model (making a guess about 1st-half GDP and assuming that Bush approval in June will be about where it is today), it says 57-43 Democrats.

And although general election polls this early aren't meaningful historically, they too point to a Dem victory. To GOP pollster Frank Luntz, the landscape looks grim:

"It used to be that Republicans won [in polls] on economic and values and foreign policy issues," he says. "Democrats won on quality of life. Now Democrats are winning on everything."

Luntz is quoted in a piece called Gloomy Republicans in the The Weekly Standard by its editor Fred Barnes, Bush's adoring biographer. He reports that Republican goals for 2008 are "modest:

There are three major goals: Hold the White House, avert sweeping House losses, and keep the Senate defeats to four or fewer.

Basically, avoid a landslide. But the latest poll numbers from a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll look alarming: In fact, the graph for McCain vs. Obama looks downright landslidey...yet the pundits (and the electoral college) say the race will be close. Should be innaresting...

Biggest Right-Wing Lie Ever: Liberals Have No Sense of Humor

As Ted Rall, who probably still would like to see Edwards, Kucinich, or someone leftward as prez, proves:

Mel Gibson to Star in Eco-Thriller

According to Ecorazzi. Judging from the description on imdb, it sounds as if he's trying to rehab his image. But I won't judge the movie until I see it -- Gibson, for all his flaws, is a star, more than capable of transcending ideology, and the British original won a raft of awards and featured some great dialogue. Here's the villain, Jedburgh, explaining the usefulness of plutonium:

That's the problem with plutonium, Craven; it's limited in its application. It's not user-friendly. But as a vehicle for regaining one's self-respect, oh, it's got a lot going for it. Damn right I turned it into a bomb.

A vehicle for regaining one's self-respect? Hmmm...

Kurt Vonnegut: No One's Thinking about the Future

From the late great Kurt Vonnegut, a brief comment on climate change, via Dan Bloom.

(The drawing below is signed by Vonnegut, though it doesn't show up well.)
 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: The planet is sort of trying to shed us as if we are some sort of toxin.

KURT VONNEGUT: Look, I'll tell you. It's one thing that no cabinet had ever had, is a Secretary Of The Future. And there are no plans at all for my grandchildren and my great grandchildren.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: That's a great idea. In other words a Cabinet post--

KURT VONNEGUT: Well, it's too late! Look, the game is over! The game is over. We've killed the planet, the life support system. And, and it's so damaged that there's no recovery from that. And we're very soon going to run out of petroleum which powered everything that's modern. Razzmatazz about America. And, and it was very shallow people who imagined that we could keep this up indefinitely. But when I tell others, they say; Well, look there's-- you said hydrogen fuel. Nobody's working on it.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: No one is working seriously on it is what you're saying.

KURT VONNEGUT: That's right. And, and what, our energy people, presidents of our companies, energy companies never think. All they wanna do is make a lot of money right now.

Obama Claims American Voters Not Stupid

This blog has been pounding the issue of the gas tax "holiday" because it's the one serious issue with enviro implications that's developed in the campaigns over the last month.

Turns out it may have been decisive.

As Jonathan Alter of Newsweek wrote:

Obama's decision to push back on the gas tax actually worked. Refusing to pander reminded his base among college-educated voters of the reasons they liked him in the first place.       

It also helped Obama recover his rhythm. After watching him sink some baskets on Sunday, I had a few words with him. "I feel really good about that [the gas tax position]," he said. "We had veered into the conventional, and now we're back."

This was a huge gamble and it paid off.

Last night on a plane with the press, Obama's campaign director David Axelrod also discussed the gas tax "holiday," which Clinton pushed hard. According to the WSJ's Washington Wire, a reporter asked Axelrod why it worked:

The reply was blunt: “Because it was a stupid idea and we said so.”

You mean Obama and his campaign believes the American voter isn't stupid? Whoa. Radical...

Sierra Snowpack Low: Drought Stalks California

According to officials quoted by The Los Angeles Times this weekend (here).

"I have not seen a more serious water situation in my career, and I've been doing this 30 years," said Timothy Quinn, executive director of the Assn. of California Water Agencies. An outmoded delivery system and court rulings that protect endangered fish are also straining the system, he said.

"This is a harbinger of relatively tough times, not just for this year but for a set of years," Quinn said.

He and others urged Californians to rein in water use.

"We need to recognize that we're in a water shortage and begin to act accordingly," state Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman told reporters at a Sacramento news conference.

[edit]

Statewide, early hopes of a wet year faltered when snowfall in some areas of the Sierra -- the source of much of the state's water -- virtually stopped in early March. The months of March and April combined were the driest in the northern Sierra since 1921.

The Sierra Nevada snowpack has shrunk to 67% of normal, down sharply from 97% in late March, according to results of the snow survey, released Thursday by the state Department of Water Resources. The May 1 measurements are crucial in forecasting California water supplies as well as hydroelectric production, state officials said.

Here's a graph of conditions via NOAA's Drought Monitor as of 4/29.

More, Better War in Afghanistan, Promises Bush

Cheney or the equivalent says it's "The re-Americanization of the war." 40,000 or more troops: nearly two-thirds the total in Afghanistan. Up from an original number of 5,000. NATO nations refuse to live up to earlier promises to help in the war effort. Gee I wonder why not.

[Soldiers of the Kalagush Provincial Reconstruction Team prepare to walk to the remote village of Balik during a patrol in the rugged Titin Valley in the Nuristan province of Afghanistan on June 14, 2007.DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Michael Bracken, U.S. Army.]

Ocean Oscillations to Slow Global Warming until 2025, Researchers Say

So say a team of researchers led by Noel Keenlyside. (Those interested in seeing the full article, which I bought at the ridiculous price of $32, please let me know during the next week -- I'll send it to you.)

For an excellent report and discussion, see the dean of climate reporters, Andy Revkin at The New York Times (here). To wit:

The team that generated the forecast, whose members come from two German ocean and climate research centers, acknowledged that it was a preliminary effort. But in a short paper published in the May 1 issue of the journal Nature, they said their modeling method was able to reasonably replicate climate patterns in those regions in recent decades, providing some confidence in their prediction for the next one.

In other words -- hindcasting. Checking a climate model by seeing how well it replicates the climate of the past. By adding calculations for the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC), the Labrador Sea Convection, and the North Atlantic Oscillation, the researchers' results improved. Raypierre encapsulates the result well in a comment on Revkin's blog:

Yes, there’s a decadal vacillation superimposed on an overall warming trend. Without CO2 increase you’d get warm,cold,warm cold, etc. with no long term trend. With CO2 increase, instead you get warming,plateau,warming,plateau, warming,plateau. The value of this kind of study is that it lets you say more about what is going on when you observe the warming to be interrupted for a while. Any model with a good enough ocean will have some kind of PDO [Pacific Decadal Oscillation] in it. The difference with THIS study is that they try hard to initialize it with an accurate representation of the current state of the ocean, and therefore try to get the PHASE of the PDO right, so they can attempt a prediction of what will happen in the coming years.

This study makes a lot of sense to me. Looking over long term simulations in some of the AR4 models, I’ve often gotten the impression of a decadal warming/plateau alternation (and in some the Dust Bowl warm years even line up with a warm phase). This study makes that much more precise and convincing.

This is why we need models. Without a study like this to tell us what is going on, we might see a temporary interruption in the warming and think “aha, CO2 isn’t doing anything anymore,’ or “clouds are saving us from warming, finally!’ This study shows the pause is temporary, and says that the plateau will be compensated by more rapid warming later. Time will tell whether they have it right, but it’s a good direction to go in.

And for the graphically-minded, a chart! (To put it as simply as possible: the black line represents a previous consensus projection; the orange line represents a Hadley Centre dataset, and the green line represents the new decadal projection, based on a more skillful understanding of the data.

One does wonder about the substantial gap as of the year 2000 between the observations and the hindcast/forecast, but presumably that will narrow as skill improves.

Methane Levels Jump: AGW to Accelerate?

According to a press release from NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmopheric Association), the percentage of methane in the atmosphere jumped sharply in 2007.

Could this be the beginning of the long-feared melting of the methane deposits frozen in permafrost?

Methane levels rose last year for the first time since 1998. Methane is 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but there’s far less of it in the atmosphere—about 1,800 parts per billion. When related climate affects are taken into account, methane’s overall climate impact is nearly half that of carbon dioxide.

Rapidly growing industrialization in Asia and rising wetland emissions in the Arctic and tropics are the most likely causes of the recent methane increase, said scientist Ed Dlugokencky from NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory.

”We’re on the lookout for the first sign of a methane release from thawing Arctic permafrost,” said Dlugokencky. “It’s too soon to tell whether last year’s spike in emissions includes the start of such a trend.”

Nonetheless, the graph (called "Methane Trend") doesn't look reassuring.

Happy Birthday, Willie

Willie Nelson turned 75 today. Saw him perform last year at the Santa Barbara Bowl. He didn't perform the song below, unfortunately, my personal fave, but never have I seen a performer more loved by an audience than Willie Nelson.

A President: Somebody Who Will Tell You the Truth

By God, an issue has cropped up in this three-person race for the Presidency, and two candidates have shown themselves ready and willing to become Panderer-in-Chief, and one has not.

Numerous commentators have made the point:

James Fallows:

The pandering and ignorance-across-party-lines represented by the John McCain-Hillary Clinton united front for a temporary reduction in the gasoline tax should make Americans hold their heads in their hands and moan. No one who has thought about this issue thinks that it will actually reduce prices or -- more important -- help the the people disproportionately hurt by $100+/barrel oil and $4 gasoline. And to the extent it has any effect on America's long-term approach to energy policy, transportation, oil dependence, and climate change, the effect will be perverse.

Ezra Klein:

Policy is hard. Lots of people come to different conclusions. Unanimity is rare. Except on this gas tax holiday. Just about no one thinks it a good idea. Conservative economists loathe it, liberal economists loathe it, energy experts loathe it...it's shameless pandering of the worst sort. So is the media going to create a scandal around McCain's pander? Around Clinton's copy-pander? Will they hound them at press conferences, run segments about the derailed "Straight Talk Express," bring on pollsters to ask whether Americans are tired of being lied to? Well, not quite.

Tom Friedman:

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

To his credit, Friedman then goes on to explicitly credit Barack Obama for resisting this pathetic pandering to the least-intelligent of voters. And yes, Obama deserves credit. If he loses, because he refuses to indulge in this nonsense, all I can say is -- he gave us credit. Go Barry!

"That's what you need from a President. Somebody who's going to tell you the truth."

I ain't ashamed to support that.