Lots of media coverage today of a special edition of Nature that’s just been published, and in particular on two articles that discuss what it will take to limit global average warming to 2 degrees C.

The headline finding that most of the press coverage runs with is that the total, cumulative carbon budget that the world can emit without hitting catastrophic tipping points is estimated at 1 trillion tonnes of carbon – and that we’ve already used up half of this. What’s more, as Wired notes, at present we’re sending another 9 billion tonnes of carbon up into the air each year – meaning that on present rates, we’re going to hit the buffers within half a century.

So, according to the authors of the studies, we need to reduce global emissions by around 80% by 2050 – quite some distance more demanding a target than the 50% by 2050 target that the G8 has committed to, though in line with Obama’s headline objective. (As I noted here back in 2007, the G8 should have known better than to take 50% as their headline global target – which rested on a rather optimistic interpretation of figures set out in the last IPCC assessment report.)

One thing that confused me in the two Nature articles, though, was this point – summed up on Real Climate (emphasis added):

Both [articles] find that the most directly relevant quantity is the total amount of CO₂ ultimately released, rather than a target atmospheric CO₂ concentration or emission rate. This is an extremely useful result, giving us a clear statement of how our policy goals should be framed. We have a total emission quota; if we keep going now, we will have to cut back more quickly later.

Needless to say, the question of what metric we use to measure success on climate change is a very big deal, given the extent of policy implications that flow from it.  So are the authors right to suggest that instead of aiming for a target CO2 concentration level, we should be focusing primarily on cumulative emissions?

Well, by way of comparison of the different metrics, think of the atmosphere as a bath-tub and CO2 as water.  Too much water, and the bath will overflow (as we start hitting buffers, tipping points, positive feedbacks, abrupt climate change and other Bad Things). In this metaphor:

• Emissions = the amount of water flowing into the bath
• Sinks (the amount of CO2 soaked up by oceans, forests etc.) = the amount of water flowing out of the plughole
• Concentration levels (how much CO2 or CO2e there is in the air, in parts per million) = the level of water in the bath

Now as Myles Allen, lead author of one of the Nature articles, observes in the Guardian today, it’s clearly true that if cumulative emissions matter more than our current rate of emissions right now. To return to the bath-tub metaphor: if you’re worried about the risk of the bath overflowing, then the question of the rate at which is flowing into the bath is clearly less relevant than the total amount of water that’s flowed into the bath since you turned on the tap.

But what I don’t get is why we should be more interested in cumulative emissions (how much water has flowed into the bath) than in concentration levels (the level of water in the bath).

(more…)

Avaaz must be delighted with this spoof of Exxon’s climate change ads.

Not only has it raised enough money to show its spot on CNN ($110k at time of publication), it’s already managed to provoke this self-pitying response from Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers:

They seem to be critical of our desire to communicate our positions on climate change, which we don’t understand. If someone chooses to use our approach as a way to generate revenue or to make a point, I guess they’re free to do that.”

Memo to Jeffers: limping around like a harpooned walrus won’t make anyone love you.

In the New York Times, think tanker, James Jay Carafano (areas of expertise: homeland security, defense, military affairs, affairs, post-conflict operations, and counterrorism) gets hot under the collar about “news stories [that] play fast and loose with terms like ‘outbreak,’ ‘epidemic,’ and ‘pandemic.’”

His advice: “We should all just wash our hands and go to the doctor if we have flu symptoms.” Er, wrong. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (area of expertise: public health):

If you get sick with influenza, CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.

CDC is happy for people to contact their doctor if they need advice, but it only recommends adults seek emergency medical treatment if they have: (i) Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath; (ii) Pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen; (iii) Sudden dizziness; (iv) Confusion; (v) Severe or persistent vomiting. (The advice for children is similar – the list of warning symptoms different.)

In the UK, health authorities are even more explicit about the fact they don’t want people with flu sitting around in doctor’s waiting rooms. “If you have flu-like symptoms and have recently travelled to Mexico or been in contact with someone who has, stay at home and contact either your GP or NHS Direct on 0845 4647,” advises the NHS. Treating people without requiring face-to-face contact with healthcare professionals is at the heart of of the UK’s pandemic flu plan.

Carafano’s sins are minor compared with this preposterous Guardian article by Simon Jenkins (core expertise: frothing at the mouth).  According to Jenkins, swine flu is “a panic stoked in order to posture and spend” – with the public too moronic to resist having the wool pulled over its eyes:

We appear to have lost all ability to judge risk. The cause may lie in the national curriculum, the decline of “news” or the rise of blogs and concomitant, unmediated hysteria, but people seem helpless in navigating the gulf that separates public information from their daily round.

The government was “barking mad” to convene its emergency planning committee, Jenkins argues, while the World Health Organization is not really worried – it’s just making a pathetic bid to shore up its funding. Attention-whore doctors, health and safety hysterics, and rapacious drugs companies are all in on the plot, while ‘professional expertise’ (presumably from shrinking violent newspaper columnists) is being completely ignored.

BSE, SARs and avian flu, meanwhile, provide cast iron assurance that no pandemic is on the way. (more…)

Just think, if it had all gone a bit differently – well, a few million votes differently – we’d be celebrating 100 days of McCain/Palin.  As it is, the Wasilla Frontiersman (the paper of record in Palin’s erstwhile hometown) keeps us up-to-date on the not-veep’s activities:

Gov. Sarah Palin is encouraging Alaskans to sign up again this year for a six-week physical activity competition, and win it again.

Starting this Friday, adults and children can sign up for the National President’s Challenge, sponsored by the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.  Alaska had 2,868 people participate last year. That was the highest participation rate per capita among all the states. Alaska took top honors.

Recent surveys show that about 65 percent of Alaska adults are overweight or obese.

Keep up the good work, Governor.  In the meantime, as we’re unlikely to be returning to the  Frontiersman soon, here’s a quick run-down of its top stories right now:

• “Moose dies at school, students disciplined”
• “Homosexuality not normal” (that’s actually a letter, from Canada)
• “Troopers say students didn’t kill moose”
• “The day christianity disappears, rapture” (an op-ed)
• “Two suspended in moose death” (closing line: “The moose killed itself”)

Ah, the Palin Nation we so nearly were…

Obama has apologised, so too have officials. It’s still not clear why US agencies acceded to an FAA request to keep details about the photo op in which a Presidential Boeing 747 flew low around the statue of Liberty followed by two US Air Force Fighters,  given the potential for concern and a public relations disaster. As The Times reports:

CBS TV reported last night that it had obtained a memo which made clear that the Federal Aviation Authority knew that the low altitude flyover could cause panic and demanded secrecy from the New York Police Department, the FBI, the Secret Service and the mayor’s office.

“The Public Affairs posture for this effort is passive. No media or press releases are planned,” said the memo, which was signed by James Johnston, an FAA security official.

It added: “Due to the possibility of public concern regarding DOD aircraft flying at low levels, coordination with Federal, State and Local law enforcement agencies, emergency operations centres and aviation units has been accomplished.”

Risk Communication. Difficult at the best of times, made worse by idiots. As Amanda Ripley suggests:

Perhaps the most alarming thing about the Air Force One fiasco was that it was planned and announced in advance to several agencies–with an order to keep it SECRET. This, to me, stinks to holy hell. I have talked a lot in the past about people in charge not trusting the public–and the devastation that follows. This is a classic bureaucratic move.

On Monday I spoke at the IPPR’s conference on The National Security Strategy: One Year On. The organisers and the Cabinet Office team would, I hope, have been pleased with the meat of the conference – the three panel sessions on domestic/ international security and a separate session on the key drivers of the global insecurity went pretty well.

But sandwiching the panel sessions were two Ministerial speeches and based on what was said and people’s reactions to the speeches it seems as though we are in middle of a crisis of leadership and strategy in UK defence. This isn’t solely an issue for the Government it is an important issue for the Conservative Party and for the Liberal Democrats too.

To be fair to the Defence Secretary John Hutton he had a more difficult challenge than Lord West who opened proceedings. For Mr Hutton the challenge was to tap into the mood of the conference – a hundred or so participants who had spent the day analysing the global security challenges, identifying key concerns, and raising important issues.

The trick with Mr Hutton’s speech was in some way to reflect this mood, embrace some of the more difficult issues but above all listen (after all Mike Clarke had just gone through all the problems of British defence policy). Lastly the crowd was predominantly white, Anglo-saxon, males – average age 40. In short it was a crowd who know all the problems (some are up to the necks in it) but need leadership and a sense of direction.This was not to be. The speech was littered with utterly pointless and disingenuous phrases like:

‘As a Defence Minister, you would rightly expect me to talk about the role of defence in national security and it is here that I want to confine my remarks today.’

‘And I am not prepared to be reckless with our nation’s security.’

‘Our defence policies have adapted comprehensively in recent years from the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, through the New Chapter of that Review four years later, the Defence White Paper of 2003 and its 2004 companion, leading to the NSS itself.’

‘The world remains a dangerous place after all.’

I could go on. The general feeling from the group I was sitting with was that really difficult decisions are about to made and this speech was meant to be a primer – thing is it didn’t work – finally his officials should have done a better job at briefing him before he made his remarks…

Elsewhere the Conservative Party are fighting over defence spending. George Osborne should have been more aggressive – particularly on wastefulness – rather than focusing on the A400M – which was odd. The big question though for the Tories is who will be Defence Secretary in a Conservative Government – it won’t be Liam Fox so who will it be – there isn’t much strength in depth – and that should worry Cameron and his team.

In Resilient Nation (pdf) I suggest that the main concern with how government’s approach risk communication is not always what they say but how they say it. Often the failure of emergency planners to motivate communities is the failure to accommodate the fact that it is not information that determines action but how people interpret it – which they do in the context of their experiences and beliefs, and expectations that develop in and are sustained by the community and societal contexts in which they live.

So communicating risk (such as swine flu) demands a nuanced, intelligent and multi-pronged approach. Mass communication based on a single approach (leafleting) won’t be effective – not least because it will fail to penetrate the noise already generated by the event; is slow when the potential risk is perceived to be spreading quickly; and ironically is unlikely to reach your whole audience (btw if you don’t receive your leaflet please contact us).

Instead the goverment should adopt a more targeted approach (which it can’t really do now the NHS have said they will send leaflets to 25,000,000 households) and look at where the most obvious places are to communicate their key messages.The information needs to stick as well. For example contrast these two approaches on the NHS website:  The alert and the ‘behind the headlines’- what message did you take away? The NHS also suggests people should establish a network of “flu friends” . Useful but it would have been good if the NHS had thought about taking a networked approach to communicating the risk in the first place.

Finally – and as an antidote to some of the scaremongering in a lot of the press – read Caroline Gammell in The Telegraph and a piece by Simon Jenkins today in the Guardian though David is unimpressed).

And remember, preventing the spread of germs is the single most effective way to slow the spread of diseases such as swine flu. You should always:

* Ensure everyone washes their hands regularly with soap and water
* Clean surfaces regularly to get rid of germs
* Use tissues to cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze
* Place used tissues in a bin as soon as possible

Lord Browne recently complained that not enough private financing was going into the renewables sector, particularly offshore wind farms, and he called for greater government financing, and suggested this could come from some of the newly state-controlled banks.

I suggest the UK sets up a British development bank in order to finance our shift to a zero carbon economy.

At the moment, we have several development institutions which finance clean-tech and renewables projects, such as the EIB, EBRD and World Bank, though they mainly finance them in emerging market countries, or in certain countries ear-marked by the EU as big receivers of renewable subsidies (Spain and Germany).

The UK needs its own institution to drive development of the green economy here.  State-owned development banks have worked well in Asian economies, particularly for critical infrastructure projects which require long-term lending.

We could use the remains of RBS for the bank – RBS has proven experience in infrastructure financing projects.

The bank could also take on deposits, allowing individuals to invest in the transformation of the British economy, and to support the future environmental viability of the island.

Retail investment is a large, and yet mainly untapped, source of liquidity for the renewables industry. The bank could sell ‘eco-bonds’ , for example.

And it could provide government-subsidized mortgages for houses that pass energy efficiency and insulation tests.

Finally, it could provide financing and support to research centres in British universities to make them world-leaders in developing new technology for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Paul Kedrosky has dug up this interesting map of the spread of the Black Death in Europe in the 14th century – a process that took place gradually, over a span of four years.

So how would such a map look if used to plot the spread of a pandemic today, Kedrosky wonders? Well:

there would be similarities, of course, but there would also be big differences. Instead of contiguous, banded advance you would see viruses hurled ahead of the index cases by air travel, like spot fires a mile ahead of a Santa Ana-driven wildfire. Instead of bands you would have clusters and jumps, mostly corresponding to airline disease vectors. And instead of four years to travel through a corner of the known world, you would have the virus around the world in four days, as is the case today with this H1N1 swine outbreak.

Interesting coda: in comments, Matt Dubuque notes that when the Black Death wiped out a significant chunk of the English labour force in 1340, remaining agricultural labourers were able to crank their wage rates sky high. Presto! – major resource transfer from rich to poor.

Heh heh. Jamais Cascio was at an Institute for the Future scenario planning workshop last week, where he gave a presentation on IFTF’s three Fifty Year Scenarios (first one here; others to be published shortly). All of them are rather sobering, he observes – but, he continues, there was also a fourth scenario. Here’s his brief description:

In this fifty year period, a massive depression, coupled with the collapse of a key resource, undermines traditional economic models. Even as the global economy recovers, a global war erupts, a horrifying accident triggered by political systems overwhelmed by increasingly rapid communications, a tragedy multiplied by the almost casual use of chemical weapons. The end of this war coincides with the emergence of a pandemic the likes of which the world has never seen, killing millions upon millions — and, combined with the war, almost eliminating an entire generation in some parts of the globe.

After the pandemic ebbs, a brief, heady economic boom leads many to believe the worst has ended. Unfortunately, what follows is a global depression even more massive than the previous one, causing hyperinflation in some of the most advanced nations, and leading directly to the seizure of power by totalitarian, genocidal regimes.

What follows is perhaps predictable: an even greater world-wide war, nearly wiping out a major culture and culminating in a shocking nuclear attack.

Yep, you’ve guessed it: this ‘scenario’ runs from the late nineteenth century through to 1945.

This is the provocative question that Martin Wolf poses in a recent commentary in the FT, reflecting on an essay by former IMF Chief Economist, Simon Johnson, which compares the crisis in the US to past financial crises in emerging economies.  

In ‘The Quiet Coup’ Simon Johnson points to several striking similarities: profligate spending by the elites, massive pile-up of national debt, and elite capture of government demonstrated in the bending of regulatory systems in their favour. Pat Oliphant’s cartoon in yesterday’s International Herald Tribune is a stabbing illustration of this view:

Here is his description of the typical emerging economy financial crisis:  

Typically, these countries [seeking IMF assistance] are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason–the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit–and, most of the time, genteel–oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are the controlling shareholders. When a country like Indonesia or South Korea or Russia grows, so do the ambitions of its captains of industry. As masters of their mini-universe, these people make some investments that clearly benefit the broader economy, but they also start making bigger and riskier bets. They reckon–correctly, in most cases–that their political connections will allow them to push onto the government any substantial problems that arise.

Substitute Wall Street for the Russian oligarchy and you get a compelling narrative of the unravelling of the financial crisis in the US. (more…)

We’ve been posting regularly here about the various ‘landgrab’ third party food supply deals that have been such a feature of the last year or two (see the map that Mark posted a couple of weeks ago) – particularly in Madagascar, where a particularly dubious example of such a deal is perceived to have played a part in fomenting the recent coup d’etat there.

Over at ForeignPolicy.com, though, Nestle CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe has a different and interesting take on the issue:

The purchases weren’t about land, but water. For with the land comes the right to withdraw the water linked to it, in most countries essentially a freebie that increasingly could be the most valuable part of the deal. Estimated on the basis of one crop per year, the land purchased represents 55 to 65 cubic kilometers of embedded freshwater, an amount equal to roughly 1½ times the water held by the Hoover Dam. And, because this water has no price, the investors can take it over virtually free. It’s not quite a scenario from a James Bond movie, but the rush to lock up scarce water resources in agricultural belts is nonetheless disturbing. It suggests another food crisis might not be too far away.

In a sense, the great water grab is only prudent: Some 70 percent of all freshwater withdrawn for human use goes into agriculture, but underground aquifers are falling—in some regions by several meters per year—and rivers are running dry due to overuse. The worst problems are in some of the world’s most important agricultural areas: eastern Spain, the U.S. Great Plains, the Middle East and North Africa, and parts of Pakistan, northwest India, and northeast China. As the former head of the International Water Management Institute warned, “We could be facing annual losses equivalent to the entire grain crops of India and the U.S. combined” if current trends hold.