Category: Environment

…the long, hot summer? You want to be a rebel and turn your hosepipes on! — Damon “Badly Drawn Boy” Gough (Born in the UK).

Great song, a very British version of Born in the USA, and far better to be frank.

Anyway, where was I in ’76, just entering my second decade in the North East of England and then to the scorched earth of Great Yarmouth for our summer hols…we visited The Norfolk Broads and even Lowestoft. The day after we got home, that town was flooded, and the Minister for Drought (Denis Howell) was quickly renamed the Minister for Floods and rather than organising water bowsers, standpipes, shared baths, and demanding we let our plants die, was forced to organise buckets for the bailout.

Fellow science journalist David Shuckman is also reminiscing about the summer of ’76. He was doing his A-levels, so he must be 7 or 8 years older than me. He’s looked at the differences between that long, hot summer and the current one. It was 30+ in the shade here, just outside Cambridge, earlier in the week, and while the patio slabs feel hotter and have scorched my bare feet (only myself to blame), it’s actually only got to 29 today.

Apparently, it’s a weak jetstream and cyclic Atlantic surface temperatures that have led to this long hot, dry spell (I don’t think it’s rained here since May). But, there’s also the effects of global warming, which may well have nudged on the effects of the weak jetstream and the Atlantic temperature. However, as Shuckman points out, the high pressure keeping the British Isles warm and dry in ’76 was further to the East, which meant it sucked up hotter, more humid air from the south that made it even more sultry at night than it has been this year (honest!).

But the current UK heatwave isn’t just a UK phenomenon, countries across the globe that aren’t directly affected by the Atlantic, the jetstream, and shared baths are also suffering. It’s possible that the heatwave will persist through August, there are storms forecast here for the weekend, but minimal chance of rain. Shuckman points out that East Anglia generally gets less per capita rain than Jerusalem. So, it could be that those standpipes are going to have to be brought out of storage, and if you’ve only got a cubicle shower in your en suite and no bath, you’re going to have get even more intimate than they did in ’76. Oh, and back then, they had two years to wait till Jilted John.

 

At this time of year, give or take a week or two, we expect to see snowdrops in flower. They are purportedly one of the first signs of spring and a welcome sight, despite the imminent snowstorm we’re supposed to be facing in the coming days. Now, earlier varieties of Galanthus nivalis aside, are snowdrops really vernalising sooner rather than later? Here’s a quote from the experts at Kew Gardens, London, who keep an eye on such things and study phenology (year to year changes in seasonal events):

Recent signs of change include a shift in the average flowering date of the common snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis). In the 1950s the flowers commonly opened around the end of February, but over the decades flowers have gradually appeared earlier, such that since the 1990s the flowers have opened in January.

So, climate change, what we used to call global warming, is indeed leading to earlier snowdrops, or is it? What about the years before the 1950s. I did a quick scan of the scientific literature and found a paper (albeit on a study in Germany) that looks at the trends in the emergence of snowdrops and has done a Bayesian analysis of the data (to get a better statistical picture than would normally by available of any trend. That study (PDF here) seems to show (Figure 2a) that back in the 1920s snowdrops emerged around the end of January, as they seem to be doing these days, but there was a trend towards blooming in late February in the 1950s and 1960s. Their plot as is often the case looks like a shotgun has been fired at a target, but the Bayesian analysis provides the curve based on sound statistics.

I’m not making any claims to a detailed inspection of the science, but hearsay and folk memory about when snowdrops first bloomed that might be skewed by particular weather patterns, different varieties available then and now and moreover, the difference in altitude and longitude that people might have experienced could all skew the perceived trends.

Greenhouse gases –> global warming –> climate change

Country by country temperature anomalies from 1900 to the present day as a neat chart, an international problem

Animation by Antti Lipponen, a physicist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

Many of us are worried by future climate change, rising sea levels, storms and flooding, hurricanes and soaring temperatures in some parts of the world predicted to occur as atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide continue their upward trend. That trend had its origins in the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century Europe and the USA – the “first world” and the rapid development and growth of nations once dubbed “second” (communist states) and “third” world.

Today, increasing road and air travel, heating and cooling our homes and workplaces and the growing pile of electronic gadgets we recharge daily are all contributing to that well-trodden cliché – our carbon footprint. Those of a guilty disposition often try to “offset” their carbon expenditure by buying into schemes that purportedly negate the impact of the carbon pollution their activities produce. Such schemes commonly involve planting CO₂-absorbing trees, but there are many that simply trade carbon pollution allowances and are in some ways worse than the notion of sweeping the problem under the proverbial carpet.

To mix a metaphor, it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, the classic double accounting used by multinational corporations who somehow trim the fat away from their tax bills by charging out their services to subsidiary companies so that their profit line is rendered negligible. Offsetting carbon, however it is done, might appear superficially to be a promising way to tackle the problem of carbon emissions, but it’s environmental double accounting: in this sense the bottom line is not a reduction of carbon emissions and so no environmental impact, rather a shuffling of paper and an offsetting of the moral obligation and the guilt associated with energy use and mass consumerism.

Larita Killian of Indiana University at Columbus, USA, might agree. She has taken an accountancy approach to the ethics of carbon offsetting and reports details in the International Journal of Critical Accounting this month. Killian reveals that while it might appear to be the ethical choice if one must take international flights, drive luxury cars, or consume exotic, non-local food and drink. But, the physical activities involved in offsetting or searching for alternative energy sources involve carbon emissions of their own.

Killian suggests that the whole offsetting industry moves the onus from the providers to the consumers and may well lull individuals into a false sense of security regarding the impact of their activities on the environment without pushing governments and corporate bodies to carry out truly effective measures such as efficiency drives on a massive scale and an enforced reduction of power consumption, the main drives for carbon emissions. She adds that, “The remedy is not to eliminate personal carbon offset accounting, but to augment voluntary offsets with more effective measures such as carbon taxes, formal restrictions on emissions of greenhouse gases, and investments in renewable energy.” Of course, that also assumes the renewable energy sources are wholly sustainable and do not in themselves generate greater emissions in their manufacture, installation, servicing, and decommissioning nor impact on ecosystems to such a degree that their benefits are outstripped by environmental harm.

Killian L. (2013). The rhetoric of personal carbon offset accounting, International Journal of Critical Accounting, 5 (6) 663. DOI: 10.1504/IJCA.2013.059026

There’s a cute video montage currently doing the rounds in which a re-working of the Billy Joel song “We didn’t start the fire” reminisces about growing up in the 1970s and the 1980s and cites the countless games, toys, TV shows and other cultural references we had during that time years before anyone had an iPad, mobile phone or other essential gadget. Featured is the Rayleigh Chopper bicycle, Atari video games, Tiswas, and Swap Shop (it’s very British, did I already say?). Most of the references are positive but a few things are missing the ever-present mutually assured destruction and the threat of nuclear war and in those pre-climate change times when were knew about greenhouse gases but were worried about the coming Ice Age, there was acid rain.

Researchers in India point out that acid rain was certainly a major environmental concern for North America and Western Europe during 1970s, but mitigation efforts such as the addition of sulfur scrubbers to coal-fired power stations and catalytic converters to remove acidic nitrogen oxides from vehicle exhausts, reduced significantly the amount of sulfur compounds entering the atmosphere to create the corrosive rain. Today, the chattering classes are more likely to be concerned about the sulfites in their cheap wine than sulfuric and nitric acid destroying the trees in their gardens. But, while the “West” has all but forgotten acid rain and the majority presumably assume it is no longer an issue, in the developing world acid rain is, unfortunately, alive and well and wreaking havoc year on year.

S.A. Abbasi of the Centre for Pollution Control and Environmental Engineering at Pondicherry University, India and colleagues have reviewed current understanding of the evolution of acid rain, its eradication in some parts of the world and how its emergence in the developing world, particularly the so-called BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) will inevitably have a detrimental effect on the whole world.

Their review leads to three important conclusions concerning acid rain:

1. Acid rain is a slow-acting scourge – its impacts are not dramatically evident over a short timespan unless, in exceptional cases, the acidification of the rain has taken place suddenly and sharply.
2. Some regions feel the impact of acid rain more readily than others and this essentially depends on the availability, or the lack of, acid-neutralising dust/soil/water in the region.
3. It is simplistic to believe that if in a particular region acidification of rain is not presently causing proportional acidification of receiving water and soil, this shall continue to be so indefinitely. If not checked, acid rain would gradually wear down the acid-assimilative capacity of the receiving environments.

“Acid rain and its effects will not go away overnight. Increasing public awareness of the problem is the first step towards finding some of the solutions. The cost of control versus the cost of damage must be considered while evaluating the merit of any management alternative. Given the fact that past studies has indicated that the benefits of acid rain control easily outweigh the costs, it is a problem not without hope,” the team concludes.

Abbasi T. (2013). Acid rain: past, present, and future, International Journal of Environmental Engineering, 5 (3) 229-272. DOI:

Oh and that nostalgic video?

Exergy is perhaps an unfamiliar concept. Energy we can fairly easily get to grips with, it’s a measure of the ability of a system to do work. Work is what causes a system to change its energy state…hmm…first law of thermodynamics. But, what is exergy and where does it fit into the energy equation?

By definition: the exergy of a system is the maximum useful work possible during a process that brings the system into equilibrium with a heat reservoir. If we consider the surroundings of a given system as being that reservoir, then exergy is the potential of the system to cause a change as it comes into equilibrium with its environment.

Now, Enrico Sciubba of “La Sappienza”, the University of Rome, Italy, has used the concept of exergy as an ecological indicator, a way to measure our environmental footprint. He points out that conventional measurements of material and energy balances do not take into account the loss or discharge of exergy. They also usually fail to account for other factors such as the detrimental effects toxicity, pollution and other “externalities” including labour intensity, economic capital, and environmental remediation costs, might have on those energy balances. Extended Exergy Accounting has been mooted as a possible solution to those shortcomings allowing us to consider the complete lifecycle and impact of various processes.

Writing in the appropriately named International Journal of Exergy, Sciubba explains how Extended Exergy Accounting is not merely “another measure of cost”. It is, he claims, the only true measure of cost based, in a lifecycle sense, on the global consumption of primary resources. It’s very much a cradle-to-grave measurement, Sciubba says allowing researchers and decision makers to assess natural and anthropogenic processes with a metric that reflects the “cost” of a resource-to-final-use and disposal. It offers a holistic rather than deconstructionist approach to environmental considerations and policy that avoids simply sweeping the carbon and pollution under the proverbial carpet and reveals how more clearly than other metrics how dwindling resources are, of course, entirely finite.

There are gaps in what EEA can achieve, admits Sciubba. For instance, its foundation in thermodynamics means it cannot be used to pass moral judgements or resolve problems of choice, ethics or politics. However, it can provide a more solid and realistic frame of reference on which to make such decisions.

Enrico Sciubba (2012). An exergy-based Ecological Indicator as a measure of our resource use footprint International Journal of Exergy, 10 (3), 239-266

There are many educational and ethical issues regarding the environment and environmentalism that are generally not addressed, especially when it comes to teaching non-science students. Independent environmental services professional and college professor Chyrisse P. Tabone, who is based in Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida has spent several years attempting to find a way to remedy this situation.

Sciencebase covered her work on teaching environmental science some time ago, now in this post we put a few questions to Professor Tabone about her follow-up paper in which she examines a new approach to teaching environmental issues and the responses of a group of students confronted with those problems.

What is the basis of your approach?

I have honed and perfected my non-traditional teaching instruction using “cognitive dissonance” as a motivator and educational tool for the last six years. Creating a purposeful use of dissonance in the classroom is probably the antithesis of traditional pedagogical instruction. However, I believe its cutting edge tactic melds perfectly with the “science/technology/science” approach to science education.

What is cognitive dissonance and how does it relate to issues that cause “upset”?

Cognitive dissonance was first described in “When Prophecy Fails” by Leon Festinger in 1956 after profiling and researching a UFO cult in the Midwest. Basically, it is the “emotional pang” or dissonance one feels when observing or experiencing something that goes against one’s moral or ethical grain. It is that nagging feeling or disgust one feels when hearing something that utterly collides with one’s upbringing or inner core values. One can react to such dissonance by either justifying the act or actively pursuing change to “make things right”. I have seen the “Theory of Cognitive Dissonance” applied to research relating to criminology, marketing, and nursing but not in the field of education.

What first turned you on to cognitive dissonance as an approach to teaching environmental science?

As a little bit of history, I had the epiphany about using cognitive dissonance as an educational tool one day while opening a piece of mail from PETA. I was formerly a member and got tired of opening mail with photos of abused, caged, or tortured animals. I notice that a lot of groups (even Doctors Without Borders) use these photos to provoke cognitive dissonance so people react as follows: 1) write a cheque or 2) rationalize the situation in one’s head and do nothing. This is why my model is critical to research. It confirms the elements and supports what Festinger (Theory of Cognitive Dissonance) and Lerner’s (Belief in Just World) theories were trying to say!

Where did you test the theory?

The study was performed at a private suburban liberal arts college with a multicultural cross-section of traditional and non-traditional students. The students at the college are required to take a science course for their degree programs and environmental science is offered as this option. Most of the students enter the class with dread and disdain based on prior experience with science or earth science courses taken in high school. They ask “Why do I have to take this stinking science course? I am a [blank] major.” The challenge to an instructor is “How do I motivate non-science majors to like science, especially environmental science?” The ramification of this study exceeds the classroom and enters into mainstream society which is essentially a group of “non-science majors”!

What environmental issues were raised with the group and in what way?

The course consisted of lectures on traditional environmental science and public health topics (required content for the course) through the use of open discussions, films, and YouTube news clips interspersed throughout the four-hour weekly class. Since the tone of the class was often dissonant during serious discussions, humour (e.g. silly animal photos embedded in a serious lecture or moment, “redneck” recycling photos) was invoked to offer a pressure relief valve. The course is really a roller-coaster ride.

What examples of topics were discussed during the study?

We looked at the use of depleted uranium in Bosnia/Croatia, Afghanistan, and Iraq (the film “Poison Dust”). The CHEERS pesticide study in Jacksonville, Florida (about three hours from the college). A contaminated African-American neighbourhood in Brooksville, Florida (about 1 ½ hours north of the college). I gave the students a lot of personal anecdotes since I did pro bono work for the community. We studied the movie “Climate change – An Inconvenient Truth”, which was a real eye-opener for students that can get past having Al Gore as the narrator. Some have bought into the Fox News rhetoric. We investigated the case of a local man who got hassled for installing a plastic lawn, students get very emotional when discussing a grandfather thrown in jail for not wanting a brown lawn.

Were there any other topics?

We also discussed: the case of a local woman who owns a string of apartment complexes arrested for knowingly using unskilled labour (homeless) people to remove asbestos, a known carcinogen, from her buildings; the controversy of Teflon and PFOA, a Class B carcinogen, still being used in products without a warning label; the effects of radiation after Hiroshima and Nagasaki; white phosphorus weapons in Iraq; the bedbug epidemic, the BP oil spill; fracking (the movie “Gasland”); healthcare in the world (the movie “Sicko”).

With what did you task the students?

Students wrote Reaction Papers every week describing their emotions of “disgust” or “anger” with the topics we discussed. Qualitative data was acquired from the reaction papers and observations during classroom discussions. Keywords and themes were derived from the data. Overall, the students seemed to be more interested and moved by the “planted” experimental topics rather than the obligatory mundane science content which was required to meet course objectives.

What, then, does it take to interest students?

Real-world connections, personal relevance and societal relevance! A local story of groundwater contamination means more to a student than contaminated groundwater in a Third World Country. Students relate to facts affecting their personal life-home, family, and health. After doing the “cold memory test” at the end of the school term they recalled the topics which affected them as well as seeming to tie these “memories” to the required science content.

That’s a positive, but does the approach have a lasting effect?

I have bumped into former college students years later who told me “I loved your class. It was never boring. The discussions were great.” When I quizzed them asking, “O.K. What do you remember from the class?” They could actually recite a “laundry list” of topics we studied and discussed. It was very impressive and rewarding as an educator to experience this.

Other than improving understanding does the course affect the students’ daily lives?

During the course (and after) students have expressed sharing information with friends and family, particularly their children. They also get interested in conservation of water at home, recycling at home and even starting programs at work. Some get involved politically, join environmental groups and online networks. I have had students change their major or minor in environmental science after taking the course. I ran into a former interior design student who proudly told me she is designing “green” and incorporating environmental sustainability into her designs. I have seen former students at rallies and protests concerning political causes.

So, conventional approaches are failing, where this approach succeeds?

Traditional environmental science teaching of the “Amazon rainforest, extinction of panda bears or polar bears, and volcanic eruptions” kind do not motivate students to learn more about science. Not discussing current events or shying away from controversy is doing a disservice to the students. Discussing the “elephant in the room” or what educators deem as the “null curriculum” is even more critical today since science has become politically charged. It is important that students, especially non-science majors, have exposure to these topics in a safe, academic setting where they can be thoughtfully presented and discussed.

How do you define a controversy for use in education?

My research set out to define the elements of a controversy and allow the students to “react” to a slew of introduced environmental science and public health topics. Certain topics stood out as “controversial” because they had the key defining element-injustice. Topics concerning injustice, particularly in relation to intentional afflict/abuse, absence of freedom, ignorance, inequality, neglect, and greed stir people’s emotion and evoke degrees of cognitive dissonance. To awaken a student or non-science person, you must get their attention first. Using cognitive dissonance as an educational tool does this.

Does it work for all students?

Most students enjoyed the course and seemed to gain an interest except a minority of self-proclaimed politically conservative students. They reacted in classic Festinger cognitive dissonance fashion by clinging to their scientific misconceptions. These students became even more entrenched in their misconceptions by becoming argumentative at times and hostile in classroom discussions. As Festinger noted, it is much easier to justify a misconception or hang with like-minded people to support a flawed notion than to give up the notion.

Tabone, C. (2011). Controversial issues in an environmental science course: how do students respond? Interdisciplinary Environmental Review, 12 (3) DOI: 10.1504/IER.2011.041818

Live fast, die young. You’re a long time gone. Sleep when you’re dead. The hedonists mantras. Lifestyle choices whether in terms of food consumption, alcohol and drugs or sexual activity are down to the individual. Nannying by governments, who have their own mantras: Smoking Kills, Know your limits, Get your five-a-day, Use protection, etc, all costs money, is apparently ignored by most people, and probably has little effect on those lifestyle choices.

But, some researchers believe that the concept of freewill when it comes to smoking, drinking, poor eating habits and other health risks is not entirely independent of external forces. Claudio Ricciardi of the Department of Environment and Primary Prevention, at the Italian National Institute of Health, in Rome, goes so far as to say that these lifestyle choices are in fact “environmentally induced” and for that reason involve much more complex considerations of social responsibility and ethics than you might at first imagine.

Writing in IJEH (reference below), Ricciardi, a toxicologist by training and a bioethicist by practice, suggests that personal choices are defined by the culture around us, by the political mores, and local environmental conditions. Obvious perhaps, but given that many cultures emphasise the notion of personal freedoms and the individual’s right to choose how they live their life, one might assume that we are entirely free. He argues that the perception of specific risks varies from society to society and among cliques within those societies. Some groups are wont to ignore the risks of extreme sun exposure or heavy smoking while others will frown on such activities while gorging their prandial predilections, for instance.

Economics, politics and the law play an important role. If you’re priced out of a particular market you are unlikely to indulge so frequently in your baddest of habits while prohibition of your treat of choice might prevent you from ever partaking. Hobbies and activities, job (or lack thereof), economic conditions and educational level together with religious and political conditions, all contribute to lifestyle choices good or bad. Then there are your genes to consider…

“All too often,” says Ricciardi, “we witness, without being able to intervene, the growth of a ‘mean attitude’ which claims that smokers, obese and alcoholics should be punished, for their unhealthy lifestyles, with healthcare provided less urgently than that accorded to others. Their behaviours, considered antisocial, represent an added cost to the state and therefore should be punished rather than cured. No one asks, declares or explains the reasons for these unhealthy behaviours and lifestyles.”

I asked Ricciardi for an additional comment regarding my interpretation of his paper. Aside from confirming that I’d got my facts straight regarding what he published, he added that my the emphasis on the notion of “blaming the victims” is what he most wanted to communicate in his paper. “Blaming the victims is actually a very interesting reversal situation,” he told me. One might suppose that it occurs in several other social contexts, such as family and interpersonal relationships and even in historical situations such as The Holocaust. He also pointed out that the issue of genetics is “definitively part of the complexity of the human biological reality,” but he adds that, “its role in developing different lifestyles is limited in comparison to that of the socio-economic components.”

Claudio Ricciardi (2011). Induced harmful lifestyles and healthy choices Int. J. Environ. Health, 5 (3), 262-273

Graphic by Cosimo Marino Curianò

Earth Alerts for natural disasters – Earth Alerts is a Windows-based application that allows you to keep a weather eye on natural disasters as they occur across the globe. Alert notifications, reports, and imagery gleaned from National Weather Service, U.S. Geological Survey and Smithsonian Institution and elsewhere as they happen and before the media even know about them, give you a convenient way to view natural phenomenon as they occur. The app has been around for some time, but more recently they have developed a Google Maps version, which is currently in beta – http://earthalerts.manyjourneys.com/web/