Daniel B. Botkin
Copyright © Daniel B. Botkin 2007

As someone who has done research since 1968 on global warming and its possible effects on living things, I am impressed and surprised by the great amount of attention that the media, Congress, international bodies, and people in general are paying to this issue, which seemed to be ignored for so long. 

Over the years, people have often asked me whether global warming is happening or not, and whether the terrible possible effects are definitely going to happen or not.  I reply that this isn’t the right question, that we should think about global warming and its possible effects more like the way we think about buying insurance against other natural hazards and catastrophes.

I was on the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara for many years, and when I  moved there I became acquainted with earthquakes and wildfires.  I bought  a house there and asked one of my colleagues in the geology department who was an expert on earthquakes and asked if I should buy earthquake insurance.  “I don’t have it,” he said,  “and here’s why.  It’s expensive.  The deductible is $10,000.  If an earthquake strikes this part of California and does an average of $10,000 damage per house, this will bankrupt the insurance companies and the Feds will have to come in and bail them out and cover our costs anyway.  And it’s very unlikely that that bad an earthquake will happen in my lifetime anyway.  So I don’t have it.”  He was right — the damage of the next big earthquake did exceed the ability of the insurance companies to pay, and the Feds did have to come in and bail people out.

What he was evaluating was, first, the cost of the premium; second, the likelihood of the event; third, the effects (in dollar terms) of that event; and fourth, whether the insurance would likely pay off anyway.

People did the same kind of analysis for wildfires and came to the opposite conclusion. Everybody had that kind of insurance.  The premium was relatively cheap, wildfires were common and likely in one’s lifetime, the deductible was low; and the potential personal costs without insurance were disastrous.

What’s the equivalent of buying global-warming insurance?  Actions to lessen the rate of warming or offset potential effects of global warming.  The intriguing thing is that most of the actions we would take to “insure” ourselves would benefit us even setting aside the issue of global warming.  We would plant trees to take up carbon dioxide; and we would burn less coal, which, aside from its greenhouse gas contributions, is highly polluting both to mine and to burn (and especially hazardous for the miners). We would generate electricity from solar and wind energy, abundant in many places that do not have petroleum reserves; this would reduce international strife over access to oil and gas. We would increase plantings even in our cities, making urban life more pleasant.  We would lower our energy costs (when you take into account all the costs of fossil fuel energy including the oil depletion allowance and wars fought over petroleum resources. We would help save endangered and threatened species. Viewed this way, it would make sense to do the equivalent of buying global-warming insurance. 

Forget about empty debates as to whether or not global warming is going to bring catastrophe and whether it is our fault. Take action that is carefully chosen to both combat global warming and benefit living things with or without global warming. And be particularly careful not to act in such panic as to do things that are dangerous and  damaging to life on Earth.  In short, think about it the way my geologist colleague thought about buying earthquake and wildfire insurance in California.

Copyright © Daniel B. Botkin 2007

Jim Welter lives in Brookings, Oregon, where he has spent his life as a fisherman. I first met Jim when he was in his eighties and blind in one eye — a wiry, thin, smallish man. He came to an open public meeting I ran for fishermen and fishing guides, which was part of a study I was doing for the state of Oregon about the relative effects of forest practices on salmon. I believed that as part of a democratic process in a democracy, we scientists should hear not only from other scientific experts but from the interested public as well — whomever wanted to speak, especially those who had spent their lives dealing with Oregon’s wonderful natural resources, and thought about them and loved them.

At this meeting, Jim made one of the most remarkable, insightful suggestions about salmon that I’d heard during the entire three-year study. But the meeting he attended hadn’t started off so well. To begin with, there was considerable distrust by the fishermen and fishing guides of some scientist from California, paid by the government, who arrived in Gold Beach and was probably going to tell them what to do about their salmon. Before the meeting, the small team of scientists I had organized to do the project ate lunch with a representative of the fishermen. One of my colleagues said to him, “There seems to be some considerably hostility toward the government of Oregon.”

“Darn right,”he said, “When they came down here and told us they could manage salmon, we thought they meant that we could manage to have salmon.”

When I opened the meeting, the audience of hardworking men sat stiffly upright in their chairs with their arms folded, looking hostile, until one of them said, “Professor Botkin, do you believe that the salmon are declining?”

I replied honestly “I’ve just started this project and don’t know much of anything about salmon and don’t have any preconceived ideas. I’m just here to find out what is known.”

The audience immediately relaxed and became very helpful. By the end of the meeting, the leader of the fishing guides got up and said that the guides knew the rivers better than anybody, they spent 360 days a year on them, and they would be willing to make any measurements that would be helpful to our study.”

That was a pleasant turn around. But most remarkable of all was Jim Welter. He got up to speak and said, “I don’t know much about science, but it just makes sense that if these salmon are born and reared in freshwater streams and spend about a year there, and then go to the ocean and return when they’re three or four, that the amount of water flowing in the stream where they were born ought to make a big difference in how many survive and return.”

That made a lot of sense to me, and it was refreshing to hear something constructive, especially when I had only recently learned that the Bonneville Power Administration, which built and ran the big dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers, had spent $2.5 billion on salmon research and restoration and, according to one of their top executives who spoke to me, those dollars hadn’t yielded a single sign of improvement in the salmon. How could a big agency spend that much money and have absolutely nothing to show for it? I wondered. I found out, but that’s the subject of another time, another story.

Jim Welter did more than provide us with a little verbal wisdom based on years of experience — in my career working on natural living resources, I had come across people who did provide that kind of insight, almost always interesting. But Jim took it several steps further. He went to the state of Oregon’s Department of Fish and Game and got the data for the counts of salmon crossing a dam on the Rogue and the Umpqua rivers — these were the only two rivers of the more than 20 rivers that flowed to the Pacific Ocean in Oregon south of the Columbia River, where the state actually counted salmon .

Discovering that the state didn’t know how many salmon it had on most of its rivers was pretty disconcerting to me, as I was hired to tell them what was happening to salmon and why, and this required basic information about changes in salmon numbers over time, which did not exist, I had only recently discovered, for most of the rivers.

Then Jim went to the U. S. Geological Survey and got the data for stream flow for each year on those rivers for the time that salmon had been counted. This was a remarkable step, especially because to my knowledge no agency of the state or federal government had done this comparison.

Even more remarkable was that Jim had gotten a friend who knew a little about science to help him graph the two kinds of data. He brought in a huge hand-drawn graph (this was in the days before PowerPoint, and anyway, Jim wouldn’t have used that). A nonscientist actually doing an analysis of data. Once again, no government agency had gone this far.

Sure enough, as Jim pointed out, if there was a high-water year, then four years later a lot of salmon swam upstream. If there was a low-water year, then four years later few salmon returned. Jim provided the first important insight into what might be a major factor influencing salmon abundance.

We were so impressed with Jim’s suggestion and his graph that we contracted with Ben Stout, a forester and statistician, to do a formal statistical analysis of these two data sets. And sure enough, it turned out that one could account for 80% of the variation in salmon abundance from water flow alone, and you could thereby forecast pretty well four years in advance whether or not there would be a good salmon year. Since the methods in use at the time set the catch sometimes a few months before the fishing season opened, and didn’t give the fishermen much chance to prepare, this seemed a remarkable advance.

We wrote this up as a scientific paper and proposed it to the state and to salmon fisheries scientists.

In the years since, once in a while I call Jim and ask how he’s doing. Sometimes he asks “Them government fellows ever listen to what you told them?” And I would have to admit that they hadn’t. Another time Jim said on the phone “If only we weren’t so greedy, everything would be all right.”

Although Jim wasn’t trained as a scientist, he was a natural at it. Gathering data, looking at it, thinking about it, graphing it, and coming up with insights. That was just good science. And sad to say, we had seen little like it, certainly not from the large staff of the Bonneville Power Administration. But as I said, that’s another story. If you want to hear about why BPA and other scientists did not think to plot water flow against salmon returns, write me and I’ll set that story down.

Jim Welter represents one kind of person we desperately need to help with our environmental problems: a good observer invested in natural resources without any ideological bones to pick, open to new ideas, willing to look at primary data in a fresh way, to construct graphs, and not jump to conclusions.

When I think about acting locally to help nature, I think about Jim Welter, who had more foresight with his one eye that many government employees with two.

Comments by Daniel B. Botkin

Copyright (c)  Daniel B. Botkin 2007

The life of Henry A. Wallace is a fascinating lesson for our times, as we try to solve large problems about food, energy, and environment.  Wallace was a remarkable man: a scientific genius who as a young man invented hybridization of crops; a successful businessman who founded the Pioneer Seed Company, still one of America’s largest producers of crop seeds; a public speaker who could attract large crowds; a man who came from a long line of Iowa Republicans to become Secretary of Agriculture under Democratic president Franklin Roosevelt, and finally to become politically radicalized and run for president in 1948 as a candidate of  the Farmer-Worker party. 

Wallace also managed to do good works in applying science to solve some major societal problems.  He  conceived of,  helped found, and appointed the first director of the International Rice Research Institute and a similar organization in Mexico to develop new strains of crops. IRRI continues to develop hybrids that have increased crop production and nutritional quality, while at the same time remaining controversial among some environmentalists.  Wallace grew up in a family of farmers who believed in doing good works and helping their fellow human beings, and that one of the best ways to do this was through public service serving in the government.  This is an attitude toward life and government little promoted these days. 

Living during the Great Depression and the American Dust Bowl, Wallace but one of many men and women who believed that big government was the way   perhaps the only way to solve large social problems.  It was the time of the start of the Bonneville Power Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority, two huge quasi-governmental agencies that built some of the biggest and most important dams to generate electricity and provide water for irrigation.  It was the time of the Works Project Administration, set up  under a belief that a society should have creativity of many kinds and should support that creativity   writers, artists, and so forth   especially during a depression when there was little other work for many of these people.  For example, to help writers support themselves, the WPA funded a series of books, each about a major river in America.

An irony of Wallace’s career is that, although coming from a politically conservative
background, as secretary of agriculture he created the largest bureaucracy then existing in the world — 140,000 employees   with all the disadvantages that are obvious to us today about huge bureaucracies, as well as the good works that they are sometimes able to accomplish. There is also an irony in the way that that huge bureaucracy set the scene for the rise of others, which seem to many Americans to do more damage than good.

Today we live in a time when we have learned that big bureaucracies tend not to solve the problems they were set up for, yet we don’t know what else to do   we have not agreed on a societal means to solve such major problems.  We live in a cynical time when the media engage in feeding frenzies over the mishaps and mistakes of the famous, including famous politicians, and we have thus come  to believe that there are few honest and ethical people in public service who strive to do good work and help their fellow human beings.  In this situation, Henry Wallace’s life becomes even more important to us.  For there is no doubt that he was a man who truly believed in doing good, who believed in the scientific method and used it properly, who sought the truth without intentional distortion. 

Today, thoughtful people wonder why we no longer can find great leaders like those of the past, who ought to exist in fair numbers among America’s 300 million  but do not appear.  Where are the people of truly goodwill who are in positions of leadership and power and are truly attempting to do good?  Which of our politicians can meet this test. And which of their scientific advisers?  

When we confront global warming, threats to endangered species, consequences of huge hurricanes and large wildfires events that seem beyond the help of individuals working alone, small towns, perhaps even states, and regions, and seem to be the realm only of national governments and perhaps even international agreements, then Henry Wallace’s life, accomplishments, and failures become important stories for us.

MORPH THE MOOSE (TM) Copyright (c) 2003 Daniel B. Botkin 

Change is natural; nature is always changing, and we need a new image that represents this fundamental feature of our environment.  Smokey Bear, who says, “only you can prevent forest fires,” stands for the old idea of nature as static, unchanging.  I was asked to suggest alternatives, and Morph the Moose (TM) won.  Posters of Morph can be ordered.  Ordering information will be available here soon.

  Morph’s main poster

This is the title of a book published first in 1841 by Charles Mackay. 

This is a fascinating book, a classic, still in print, but little known. It has influenced many famous people. Of this book, Bernard Baruch wrote that his study of it saved him millions.

Andrew Tobias wrote, in his preface to a recent edition, that “As with any true classic, once it is read it is had to imagine not having read it.”

Mackay writes in his own preface that his object is “to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes. . . . Popular delusions began so early, spread so widely, and have lasted so long, that instead of two or three volumes, fifty would scarcely sufficient to detail their history. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. . . Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

One of the chapters is about Alchemists, in which Mackay writes “Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling up to seek for remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and ignorance of the future,” and of the last, he writes about our “craving curiosity to pierce the secrets of the days to come.”

This is a beautiful written classic, well worth exploring, if not reading in its entirety.

Copyright ©  Daniel B. Botkin 2007

In a recent  Sunday’s New York Times Week in Review,  J. C. BRADBURY wrote that the problem with baseball is the expansion of teams from 26 to 30, because there just  isn’t enough talent in our population to provide for the difference.  His argument was based on what he understood about the ecology of populations and also, I would guess, about what he thought could happen in biological evolution.  But not being a biologist, he got some simple facts wrong. As a biologist and a baseball fan, I feel we have to get the story right if there’s any hope for great baseball of the future.  So here’s the right story.  (more…)

(Copyright (c) 2007 Daniel B. Botkin)

Everybody I know who uses a computer in their work has a problem with saving
information.  The technical term is archiving.  And I think I’ve found the perfect solution, which I’ll tell you about here.  But first, how did I come up with this idea anyway? (more…)

ENERGY FOREVER: A SOLUTION TO OUR ENERGY PROBLEM

Daniel B. Botkin
Copyright © Daniel B. Botkin 2007

The answer to our energy crisis lies in a farm field in Bavaria, Germany. There, sheep graze beneath an unusual crop: an array of black rectangles mounted on long metal tubes that rotate slowly during the day, following the sun like mechanical sunflowers. This is the world’s largest solar-electric installation, generating 10 megawatts on 62 acres. Scaled up, just 3.5% of Germany’s land area could provide solar energy equal to all energy used in Germany — by cars, trucks, trains, manufacturing, everything! And this would not have to be on otherwise empty land; it could be on rooftops, above parking lots, and integrated with certain kinds of pasture and cropland.

Solar energy collection seems unlikely in Germany’s climate, and even less likely in Bavaria — a landscape famous not for sunshine but for high mountain peaks and beautiful winter resorts. In Munich, Bavaria’s major city, about one-third of the days are rainy all year long, the average January daytime temperature is 34o F, and the average August daytime temperatures a mild 73o.

So why aren’t nations rushing to install solar power facilities? Are costs prohibitive? In 2002 Con Edison built New York City’s largest commercial rooftop solar energy system for $900,000, providing energy for 100 houses. At an average of four people per home, the installed cost is $2250 per person. For the 300 million United States residents, the installation cost would be $675 billion.

The U.S. balance of trade is in the red about $60 billion a month, or $720 billion a year, and much of this trade imbalance is due to the cost of foreign oil. So, for the equivalent of one year’s trade imbalance, the United States could pay the cost of installing solar energy facilities for all domestic electrical consumption.

The war in Iraq — justified, many say, in part to protect our sources of petroleum — has cost an official federal allocation of more than $506 billion. In January, a report by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated that the total true costs of the Iraq war could be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. For the cost of the Iraq war — or perhaps just one-half or one-quarter of that cost — solar energy systems could have been installed to provide domestic electricity for all the people in America: energy forever!

The numbers become even more amazing for the dry, sunny climate of Arizona. Based on facilities already installed there, covering just 1% of Arizona’s land with these solar collectors would produce electricity for 275 million houses — considerably more houses than exist in the United States.

Solar energy, of course, has many other benefits — primarily independence from foreign suppliers and greatly reduced air and water pollution, including less greenhouse gas. It also offers the option of decentralized energy production, which would reduce the risk to our energy supply from terrorist attacks.

Why isn’t the United States pursuing solar energy production? The conventional wisdom of environmental economists I know is that solar will never be more than a minor player in the energy game. World-famous environmentalist James Lovelock says the same thing. Is it just a mind-set that is holding us back?

Perhaps their information is out of date. The efficiency of solar energy devices continues to improve rapidly: Today’s solar devices convert 17% of solar energy to electricity; not too long ago, these devices converted only 1% to 2%.

Perhaps big power companies stand to lose too much revenue (and control over power distribution) if decentralized generation takes over when solar power is produced on rooftops.

Perhaps, despite the clear need to move away from petroleum, there is just too much money riding on oil production and distribution for us to let go easily. Whatever the reasons have been, the facts tell us that we should wait no longer.

Copyright © Daniel B. Botkin 2007

Fans who love to hear the solid thwack of ball meeting wooden bat in a World Series game, especially when it signals a home run, better prepare for the Great Baseball Bat Crisis. Aluminum has replaced wood in high school and college baseball, and many fans resent the “ping” produced when aluminum collides with ball. But unless a sustained source of the wood that goes into big-league bats is established, aluminum bats may be the fate of major league baseball. (more…)

(Copyright © Daniel B. Botkin 2007)

The news that residents of New Orleans are giving up and leaving after trying hard to stay makes us wonder whether the city can survive as anything like it once was. While we may blame events on particularities, including mistakes by politicians and government officials, underlying all this is an ecology of cities, an almost environmental determinism about where and when cities survive, prevail, and rise to glory, especially cities that are on bodies of water, rose because of them, and depend on them. (more…)