The answer is: ideally the best designed house would be as close to as sphere as possible. A Buckminster Fuller geodesic Dome is a pretty good approximation.
Dan Botkin
Published originally in the International Herald Tribune
December 28, 2007
by Daniel B. Botkin
NEW YORK:
Now that the Bali conference is over and climate scientists have warned us again about the dire predictions of their climate models, a question remains: Will their forecasts come true? Given the current international focus on global warming, you would think that, in 10, 15 or 20 years, many people will want to know whether today’s predictions proved accurate.
But, in fact, people rarely look back to see if their old forecasts were on the mark. Foretelling the future has always been difficult and almost always wrong. Charles Mackay, in his wonderful 1841 book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” observes that the so-called necromancers of earlier centuries who purported to divine the future were grouped with the worst alchemists. Today, however, computers seem to have undermined our natural skepticism. Many of us put our faith in complex software that most of us cannot understand. (more…)
? Global warming and threats of extinction of species are two different issues. They may be connected, but let’s not confuse them.
? There is ample justification for moving away from fossil fuels. This is important to do not only because of the potential threats of global warming, but also because petroleum is going to become harder to get and more expensive, because our need for it poses threats to national security, and because petroleum causes pollution of various kinds in additional to production of greenhouse gases.
? Contrary to many popular assertions in the media, we already have the technology to obtain more than ample energy from solar and wind, and, subsidies aside, the technology is economically viable.
? Biological diversity is of clear importance and we should do whatever we can to conserve endangered species.
? Experts on the fossil record and causes of past extinctions have long argued about likely causes of extinctions. As the famous anthropologist Paul S. Martin has written, “The popular answer, ‘the climate did it,’ is unsatisfactory” for extinctions of large animals during the past 2.5 million years. Martin argues that hunting by people during the past 10,000 years caused extinctions of some of the biggest, fiercest, and most famous land mammals — the hairy mammoth, the saber-toothed cat, among others. Other experts suggest that new diseases may have done it.
? Whatever the causes, the percentages of animal and plant species that are known to have gone extinct during the past 2 ½ million years — a period that saw the evolutionary origin of Homo sapiens and some of our humanoid ancestors — are much smaller than what is forecast by the new report of the United Nations Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change and the new “Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists” (published December 6, 2007), as well as recent assertions by others.
? Today, human actions that pose major threats to endangered species include
? destruction of habitats of these species, as a result of deforestation and human settlement;
? overharvesting, including poaching and international trade in endangered species;
? introductions of exotic species, including parasites and microbial diseases of endangered species.
? Climate scientists appear to be calling primarily for large reductions in the release of greenhouse gases from human activities as a way to prevent extinctions. For example, a group of more than 200 leading climate scientists met in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007 and concluded that the world must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 50% by 2050; otherwise, many animal and plant species will be “in serious danger of extinction.”
? Meanwhile, biological conservationists point to the need for better-protected areas, focusing on specific species that appear to be in danger of extinction, and whose habitats are threatened and are in areas where habitat conservation seems possible, so that actions could have desired results.
? For example, a recent scientific paper with Taylor Ricketts as the primary author identifies 794 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and conifers that are endangered but open to conservation. They write that “only one-third of the sites are legally protected, and most are surrounded by intense human development. These sites represent clear opportunities for urgent conservation action to prevent species loss.”
? The question is: Which way should we devote our resources, our time, money, and effort?
? Pointing to global warming as the primary problem for endangered species, and fearing a catastrophic die-off of species in the future, should we make biological conservation one of the justifications for actions needed to reduce greenhouse gas production?
? Or should we deal directly with species known now to be threatened, and work to preserve and improve habitats, prevent overharvesting and poaching, and reduce introductions of exotic species?
? Can we do both?
? In any case, there are ample reasons other than biological diversity to move away from the use of fossil fuels. Those other reasons should be the primary focus of policies and actions to reduce greenhouse gases.
? Finally, for those who are interested, here are some important scientific references.
Some Useful Scientific Publications about Extinctions and Global Warming.
• Botkin, D. B., Henrik Saxe, Miguel B. Araújo, Richard Betts, Richard H.W. Bradshaw, Tomas Cedhagen, Peter Chesson, Margaret B. Davis, Terry P. Dawson, Julie Etterson, Daniel P. Faith, Simon Ferrier, Antoine Guisan, Anja Skjoldborg Hansen, David W. Hilbert, Craig Loehle, Chris Margules, Mark New, Matthew J. Sobel, and David R.B. Stockwell. (2007). “Forecasting Effects of Global Warming on Biodiversity.” BioScience 57(3): 227-236.
• England, M., Richard Somerville, Andrew Pitman, Diana Liverman, Michael Molitor (2007). 2007 Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists.
• Lovejoy, T. E., Lee Hannah, editors. (2005). Climate Change and Biodiversity. New Haven, Yale University Press.
• MacPhee, R. D. E., editor. (1999), Extinctions in Near Time: Causes, Contexts, and Consequences. New York, KluwerAcademic/Plenum Pub. In particular, see
• Martin, P. S., D. W. Steadman (1999). Prehistoric Extinctions Chapter 2. Extinctions in Near Time: Causes, Contexts, and Consequences. R. D. E. editor. MacPhee. New York, KluwerAcademic/Plenum Pub.: 17-56.
• Martin, P. (1963). The last 10,000 Years. Tucson, AZ, University of Arizona Press.
• Ricketts Taylor H. Ricketts, E. D., Tim Boucher, Thomas M. Brooks, Stuart H. M. Butchart, Michael Hoffmann, and J. M. John F. Lamoreux, Mike Parr, John D. Pilgrim, Ana S. L. Rodrigues, Wes Sechrest, George E. Wallace, Ken Berlin, Jon Bielby, Neil D. Burgess, Don R. Church, Neil Cox, David Knox, Colby Loucks, Gary W. Luck, Lawrence L. Master, Robin Moore, Robin Naidoo, Robert Ridgely, George E. Schatz, Gavin Shire, Holly Strand, Wes Wettengel, and Eric Wikramanayak (2005). “Pinpointing and preventing imminent extinctions.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102(51): 18497-18501.
In his classic book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (originally published in 1941), Charles Mackay discusses how difficult it is to forecast the future, yet how fascinated and focused on this people become. Just how difficult, I came to realize today.
In researching recent literature on global warming, I came across the following quote, made in 1990: “Our projections on global warming suggest that by the year 2000, we will begin to see rapid changes over vast areas. In parts of the North, we expect to see stately old trees beginning to die back. The warmer temperature will make many trees vulnerable to insect attacks and different blights. Hikers will increasingly find themselves among dead trees. Loggers will have to choose between harvesting the dead timber and glutting the lumber and paper industries. And the diebacks will affect water supply and erosion rates. It’s really overwhelming.”
I wondered what idiot made this forecast — and discovered that it was me, in Harper’s magazine. The complete reference is: Pollan, M., Daniel B. Botkin, Dave Foreman, James Lovelock, Frederick Turner, Robert D. Yaro. (1990). “Only Man’s Presence Can Save Nature.” Harper’s magazine (April issue) pp. 37-48.
NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT A SOLUTION TO GLOBAL WARMING
Daniel B. Botkin
Copyright © 2007 Daniel B. Botkin
It has come as a shock to me that some of my fellow environmentalists, and one of this country’s leading newspapers, have recently begun arguing in favor of nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuels and a way to fight global warming. Stewart Brand, according to a recent interview in the New York Times—which calls him one of the originators of environmentalism—is for it and feels “guilty that he and his fellow environmentalists created so much fear of nuclear power.” The famous British scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock has also said that nuclear power is our best choice to combat global warming, and not long ago the New York Times ran an editorial endorsing this kind of power. These opinions are apparently having an effect. The New York Times reported on March 28 that rising concerns about global warming are helping to drive up the price of uranium and leading to a new boom in uranium mining.
Daniel B. Botkin
Copyright © Daniel B. Botkin 2007
Fifty years ago, a group of scholars and scientists — some of America’s greatest humanitarians — published a landmark book titled Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. It was one of the twentieth century’s major statements about how people and their civilizations had changed the environment. Not only did it paint the picture of what people had done that had harmed the environment, it suggested what people might do to improve the environment and at the same time improve the lot of humanity.
Nowadays we hear daily from the media and through the media about the threat of global warming and its potentially dire effects on people and the diversity of life on Earth. The general tenor of these pronouncements is negative for people. You get the sense that people, especially modern technological people, have done wrong by Mother Nature. Having thus sinned against nature, we are warned that we will suffer the consequences. There will be massive flooding and terrible storms, destroying our homes and ways of life; millions if not billions of people displaced, homeless, wandering. Fresh water will be hard to find; we will thirst and our crops will fail. Pestilences and plagues confined to tropical climates will spread, and many of us will die.
A dark picture of the future emerges that sounds like the Medieval explanation of the great plagues as mankind’s punishment for its sins. The obvious implication is that we environmental sinners must pay by becoming material and energy minimalists and misers.
But if a warmer world is inevitable, is it not worth asking what is the role of human beings in that world and how could we make that world livable? Can we more than mitigate the worst effects, perhaps create a globally warmed world where there is music, art, literature, swimming, boating, hiking, picnics, trips to wilderness, views of magnificent forests, wildlife, and ocean shores.
Some biological conservationists are using formal computer models to forecast where habitats for endangered species might be in the future. Sometimes this is cast only negatively, to assure us that our present parks and preserves are doomed. But sometimes there is a glimmer of hope, that perhaps our modern scientific tools and our technology could help us help other creatures and build a world of the future that has biodiversity, life’s wonderful variety, and might even be enjoyed by us.
Perhaps it is time to expand this constructive approach, to look back at the ways of thinking of scholars and scientists of the mid-twentieth century, who saw not only our dark side but also our bright side, and sought to move us and our civilizations to be better.
There are precedents for such positive approaches to dire environmental change. In the 1930s, in response in part to the Dust Bowl and in part to the Great Depression, the federal government, apparently from a conviction that writers, artists, and musicians, that human culture and creativity, were worthwhile and deserved support, set up the Works Project Administration including the Federal Writers Project, and provided things for creative people to do that would benefit them, as well as benefit creativity and society. Today, in a time when large federal agencies and projects are seen often as having serious drawbacks, there could be other paths to this goal: individual creativity, local initiatives, regional responses, actions from the private sector.
Those who don’t believe in global warming will probably say that this kind of activity would be a waste of money. Those who do think global warming is happening may think that this is the worst admission of our failure to avoid it. Those who believe that a democratic society only acts in panic faced with doom and gloom will oppose this as another way to assure that the worst will happen to the environment. But those who love the best of civilization and the best of human cultures and creativity should applaud this suggestion and begin thinking of the best ways to make the globally warmed future liveable and more. Those scientists and scholars who are convinced that global warming is our most likely future have a moral obligation to take constructive actions of the kind I am suggesting. Who will stand up to the challenge?
I will be putting up a list of things you can do, both to help reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and to improve our lives in a global warming world.
We hear a lot these days about what “scientists” are saying, believe, or have discovered. Especially with complicated scientific problems that have major implications for economics, politics, and society, it is important to understand the difference between scientific results and what a scientist says.
Scientists play three roles in our society, as I have written about in my book No Man’s Garden: researcher, expert witness, and “priest.” As a researcher, a scientist reports the results of a specific study he has done, objectively. As an expert witness, a scientist tells us about a subject in which he has worked, but generalizes beyond his own work, and gives a considered opinion based on his professional experience and best understanding. As a “priest” a scientist tells us what to think and what to believe.
Most of us scientists want to appear as the researcher, but in reality, most of the time, especially when we are dealing with complex scientific issues with broad policy implications, we function as expert witnesses. There is nothing wrong with this role, as long as we are honest in explaining that this is the role we are playing.
There is also a difference between what an individual scientist says and what a large group of scientists agree to say, when they are brought together by a political body and engaged in an attempt to reach a consensus. Most of the time, the result is “conventional wisdom” with all of its pitfalls, along with compromises that come about as the large group tries to deal with cultural and political differences. A report by such a large group is not scientific truth; it isn’t even expert opinion; it’s just a general negotiated agreement.
The March, 2007, issue of the scientific journal, BioScience, has a new article by Daniel B. Botkin and colleagues titled Forecasting Effects of Global Warming on Biodiversity.
The news release from this journal’s parent organization, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, writes that “current mathematical models indicate that many species could be at risk from global warming, surprisingly few species became extinct during the past 2.5 million years, a period encompassing several ice ages. They suggest that this ‘Quaternary conundrum’ arises because the models fail to take adequate account of the mechanisms by which species persist in adverse conditions. Consequently, the researchers believe that current projections of extinction rates are overestimates.’ ”
There are 19 authors of this paper, from Australia, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Australia, and the United States; these include some of the world’s top scientists concerning ecological forecasting and the history, ecology, and genetics of extinction.
See the article at The American Institute of Biological Sciences.
One of the paper’s coauthors, Matthew J. Sobel of Case Western Reserve University, said, regarding this paper, that “The simultaneous widespread and justified alarm over global warming and changes in biodiversity has induced both outstanding scientific research and deplorable pseudoscientific work,”
According to a news release from Case Western Reserve, “Sobel raises concerns about the `blurring’ of scientific fact with public advocacy and wants public discussions to center around sound environmental facts. `Where the science has limitations that should be noted, too,’ added Sobel. His concern is that misinformation or poorly constructed forecasts may divert and reduce resources that could be better spent in other areas. Limits of scientific knowledge exist with current forecasting models, according to Sobel, and these need to be acknowledged when reporting global warming.”
Matthew Sobel is the William E. Umstattd Professor at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University.
We still must be concerned about global warming and threats to the diversity of life on the Earth. There is not just one threat from human activities to the diversity of life; there are several major ones, including disruption of habitats, introduction of non-native species into new habitats, and many effects of technology. The good news is that species appear more resilient to rapid climate change than thought previously. The implication is that sound planning and policies to deal with biological diversity needs to include the multiple causes. The new article also calls for better methods of forecasting — better computer models — and better use of available data about past extinctions.
In the BioScience article, the researchers call for eight steps to better forecasting:
* Select one of the many meanings associated with the complex concept of biodiversity and target that meaning as the parameters in a specific forecast
* Evaluate and validate forecasting methods before applying them to general forecasts
* Consider the various factors that might impact biodiversity from climate change to pressures from humans on the native habitat of a species
* Obtain adequate information before making predictions about future outcomes
* Examine fossil records to aid in understanding how some plant and animal species have adapted to changes in their environments
* Improve four widely used techniques in forecasting that model individuals, groups,
integration of species and environmental factors and lastly groups or species based on theories
* Embed ecological principles in the forecasts based on air, water and animal and plant life.
* Develop better models that improve upon modeling forecasts called species-area curves that are based on specific number of species in relation to their habitat and how climate changes can modify the environment.
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.