The Award for Best Use of a Pogoism in Climate Change Journalism Goes To...

...Bill McKibben for "we have met the enemy and they is Shell" in Global Warming's Terrifying New Math (Rolling Stone, published online July 19, 2012, coming out in the Aug. 2, 2012, print edition). A really great piece of journalism, hopefully not falling on deaf ears in Washington as the summer brings about one superlative after another (hottest/ dryest/ biggest heatwave/ drought/ wildfire/ etc.).

This is a tweak on the 1970 Pogoism "we have met the enemy and they is us" by Walt Kelly. It is a parody of "We have met the enemy, and they are ours" (authored by U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry after the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813). In 1953 Walt Kelly first parodied this phrase in the Pogo Papers' forward ("A Word to the Fore"): 

...it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.

(From Wikiquote)

It was later used on a 1970 Earth Day poster.

After you read what McKibben says -- that we can't control climate change until we put a price on carbon -- it's something of a relief to read Walt Kelly, reminding us of all that makes us human, bad and good. As much as Shell is the enemy, Shell is also a company of people, and we are people. It is just as true, therefore, by my lights, that we are the ones who can make this right-- put a price on carbon and make the fossil-fuel industry as a whole internalize the externality of climate change. Hopefully not after the focusing event that I fear will be required to motivate the people at Shell and ExxonMobil and BP-- the catastrophic flooding of an economic center like lower Manhattan.

The Adaptation Fund commits $50 mill+ to seven projects, but what is it exactly?

A June 29, 2012, press release from the Adaptation Fund just drifted into my inbox. It is committing over 50 million dollars for seven projects. The Adaptation Fund's brief FAQ tells me it issues decisions about funding four times a year. The footer on the press release says:

The Adaptation Fund is a self-standing fund established under the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which receives most of its funding from a two percent share of proceeds of all Certified Emission Reductions issued under the Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism projects. The Fund is designed to finance concrete climate change adaptation projects and programs based on the needs, views and priorities of developing countries. The Global Environment Facility provides secretariat services to the Adaptation Fund and the World Bank serves as its trustee, both on an interim basis.

I confess I still feel in the dark about this fund and how it works. 
Well, poking around a bit more, I realized that I had heard about it as a theoretical funding instrument with terms under negotiation. It was proposed in 2001, but has been issuing grants only since Sept. 2010.

Poking the internet a little, I found a nice break-down of the working parts of the Adaptation Fund, housed on the Climate Funds Update, a really user-friendly site with information on climate change action funding that's updated twice a month, a joint project of Heinrich Böll Stiftung and the Overseas Development Institute.

As with the Adaptation Fund, I can't tell from their site when they actually started functioning. More internet poking.

Aha! A 12-page briefing issued by Heinrich Böll Stiftung, dated May 2012, reporting on the work of the Climate Funds Update, says:  

CFU was launched in 2009 and seeks to monitor 22 dedicated public climate change finance initiatives from the point when donors pledge funding, through to the actual disbursement of climate finance. 

I wish the authors of these helpful sites would be a little more explicit and up front about who they are, what they do, and when they started doing it! In the meantime, adaptation funding mechanism watchers should add the AF and CFU to their bookmarks.

New Birch Trees in Arctic Speeding Climate Change

Growing up in the foothills of the Adirondacks, and having spent other formative times of my life in Russia, I have a deep, abiding love for birch trees, and so it comes as VERY unwelcome news that their northward expansion into the Arctic tundra may contribute to climate change.

"[U]sing a novel methodology based on measuring the radiocarbon content of the carbon dioxide being released, the researchers found that the birch trees appeared to be stimulating the decomposition of soil organic matter. Thus, the research was able to identify a mechanism by which the birch trees can contribute directly to reducing carbon storage in soils."

(Found through "Expansion of Forests in the European Arctic Could Result in the Release of Carbon Dioxide" - Science Daily, June 17, 2012)

Retiring the term "no regrets" - Optimal solutions instead

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Thank you Shaun Martin,WWF Managing Director of Conservation Leadership and Capacity Building, for this article on the problems of the term "no regrets" on the WWF ClimatePrep site.

He suggests avoiding "low regrets" as an alternative, instead offering "optimal solutions" - actions which "maximize benefits while minimizing negative consequences."

I couldn't agree more that we need to stop focusing on the amount of "regrets" and focus on the appropriateness -- optimality -- of the action to respond to the known climate threat. Besides being a syntactically clearer word, for me using the word "optimal" also serves to turn towards the desire for sufficient preparation and away from all that we fear in adapting to climate change-- whether it be spending too much money or planting the wrong thing in a threatened landscape.

"The World Daily" - cool new iPhone app for tracking climate impacts

Kirk Klausmeyer, my friend and fellow climate change researcher over at the San Francisco office of the Nature Conservancy -- author of this cool 2009 map showing drought and heat stress for California under climate change -- has just come out with the World Daily for the iPhone, the first app to display near real-time satellite images of any location on the planet ($1.99, not yet available for Android).

Kirk writes of the app:

[Its] images are from MODIS and are medium-resolution so you can see cities, landforms, weather patterns, wildfires, and snow cover, but not smaller things like houses.  ... It is a great way to watch the effects of climate change in real time. You can monitor hurricanes, typhoons, super cells... The app also has an option to view non-visible light bands to track changes in wildfires, even through thick smoke.  The [app's] facebook page has a time series album that shows the progression of the New Mexico wildfire in the Gila National Forest.  There is also another sensor on the satellites that show snow and ice, so you can track shrink[ing] glaciers all over the world.  Keep an eye on Greenland and be the first to report the loss of the ice shelf!  So while this may not help with adaptation, you can at least monitor climate change in the comfort and safety of your own home.  

Comfort and safety, unless of course you live somewhere like the Gila National Forest or Greenland, I suppose...

"Adaptation Futures" is here!

This week hundreds of climate change adaptation planners and researchers are convening for Adaptation Futures, the second international climate change adaptation conference, being held in Tucson, Arizona. It's going to be 100 degrees F and the conference organizer has warned us to dress for the heat. He wrote, "Tucson is famously casual and hot. Not used to either of those? Take a cue from the conference – adapt!" (I think I'm going to enjoy this conference. They are using imperative verbs in the orientation e-mail telling us to leave our pretensions at home.)

Here's the current program. I'm scheduled to present about my scenario planning case study in a panel with robust decision-making folks from Rand on Thursday (2:45 - 4:00 PM, Session C, in Gallagher). After that I should be answering questions at my poster in the poster session room (4:00 - 4:45).

Watch the plenary sessions streaming online here.

Some of the adaptation researchers I'm looking forward to hearing speak are Saleemul Huq, someone who has been writing about adaptation in the developing world for a decade or more, now a Senior Fellow in the Climate Change Group at the International Institute for Environment and Development in the UK, Patrick McCarthy of the Southwest Climate Change Initiative, and, from the West Coast, Susi Moser, one of California's top climate change adaptation thinkers/researchers, and -- representing the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington -- Amy Snover  and Lara Whitley Binder, who brought us the famous 2007 guidebook used by governments all over the U.S. "Preparing for Climate Change, A Guidebook for Local, Regional and State Governments."

Right now it is 54 degrees F in Oakland, so packing for 100 degrees is an exercise in imagination. Truly, this is one of the biggest challenges in climate change adaptation planning-- trying to imagine and sufficiently prepare for a completely different climate from the one you know! I'm packing my bathing suit, sandals and a paper fan--  and a sweater just in case.

When the Climate Tells You It's Time to Go

In "Addressing Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific," an 80-page report released March 13, 2012, by the Asian Development Bank, researchers attempt to tease out climate change factors from the many other factors driving migration and displacement in the region expected to sustain the worst population impacts from climate change.

[I]t [is] hard to predict with any degree of certainty the number of people who will be displaced by climate change. However, it is possible to identify the processes by which these migrations will occur, as well as the places where they are most likely to happen. This is what this report aims to do, focusing on extreme weather events, water stress and land degradation, and sea-level rise.

Based on one report I read from the International Organization on Migration (Migration and Climate Change, from Oli Brown, 2008), those who STAY worry me more than those who GO. The ADB report addresses this in their chapter "Strengthening Adaptation Through Migration" (from page 46):

At the same time that an increasing number of populations find themselves forced to move because of climate change, significant numbers of populations often find themselves forced to stay. Climate change could indeed prevent the most vulnerable from migrating, as their resources will be reduced [...]. 

I like that this report (a) doesn't raise alarms about invading hoards of poor climate migrants sweeping up on rich countries' shores (which Brown calls out as a myth in his 2008 report) and (b) points to the need to anticipate and plan for wise migration rather than waiting for it to happen on its own, possibly in ways that leave people in greater danger.

Basically, where Asian Pacific countries are concerned, good migration policies make good neighbors! This has always been true, but the pressure is on to strengthen these policies now. The report ends on this note:

Governments at all levels, regional bodies, and international organizations have a responsibility to act with urgency on this issue. They have before them an opportunity to shape a future of human mobility that promotes better, more inclusive living conditions for the people of the world’s most populous region. 

You can't force a person to move out of harm's way, but you can-- and governments must-- create the conditions that allow for safe passage to a better place when the climate tells you it's time to go.