More Evidence, As If We Needed It, of Global Warming, part two

As described in the previous essay, I conducted a sixteen-year study of budburst dates in Oklahoma deciduous trees, and I found that winter buds opened in spring earlier and earlier each year, consistent with global warming. The results were highly significant. I did not, however, have time to publish this study in a scientific journal before I retired. I decided instead to publish it on my website. Here is the link to the article, with illustrations. Please note that the mailing address on the cover page is now obsolete; you may contact me through the website email link (stanriceauthor@gmail.com).

I here address an interesting point about this research, aside from its unsurprising conclusion. And that point is, what do we measure?

This photo shows the giant buds, just opening, of black oak (Quercus velutina).

When we talk about global warming, we can mean lots of different things. It is better to talk about global climate change or even global climate disruption. For global warming, it would seem to be a simple matter of measuring temperatures and seeing if they increase from year to year. But this, by itself, is unsatisfactory, for reasons such as these:

Where do you measure the temperature? Air temperature may be warmest near the ground, and cooler the further you go up in the atmosphere. Air temperature is what affects budburst, since buds are up in the air. But soil temperature is also important, since warmer soil might mean earlier root activity and earlier rising of the sap. Aerial buds do not just open when it is warm enough but also in response to sap rising in the wood.

Temperature is enormously variable. You cannot simply measure it in one place and use this temperature to represent the air temperature. Meteorologists have little stations to measure air temperature (and lots of other things) in numerous locations, but even this is not enough. Temperatures can vary from one location to another just a few feet away.

When do you measure the temperature? The maximum temperature in the day, or the minimum at night? Also, we suspect that springtime temperatures are what matter the most, but winter temperatures can also be important. Some tree buds must have a certain number of days of winter chilling before they can open in the spring.

Other factors are always important, such as wind speed, soil moisture, and the moisture status inside the twigs.

It is not just the temperature that matters to humans, but how it makes us feel. Weather predictions indicate not only the actual temperature but the way it feels to the body. The same is true of trees. We are interested not so much in the actual temperature of the air as in how the temperature affects biological activities such as the opening of the buds.

The climate could be getting warmer even if the temperatures do not increase. Springtime could just come earlier and autumn later, without a change in the average temperature.

If all of this makes it seem hopeless to study global warming, I am happy to report that organisms themselves can transduce all the environmental variables, over time, into biologically meaningful measurements. In the case of trees, all of the variations in temperature, moisture, and wind can be summarized by budburst date, something that the plants, not we, control. Budburst date is the one variable I measured. I used weather data as background, but not for analysis.

By opening their buds earlier and earlier each year, the trees are telling us that it is getting warmer. See the next essay for other scientifically important concepts in the study of global warming.

 

Climate Crisis: Where Should I Live?

Despite the recent passage of a Senate bill, the U.S. is still making almost no response to the challenge posed by global climate change.

Separate from this, I plan to move to northeastern France for family reasons. This by itself is a decisive reason for me to move there.

These situations have allowed me to think about where I would rather live—northeastern France vs. Oklahoma—during the upcoming inevitable worldwide climate crisis, and where I would prefer that my grandchildren grow up. These are personal reasons, but some of them may be useful to the rest of you. (I never post essays on this blog that are only of personal interest to me.)

(Photo from The Guardian)

A. Direct responses to climate change

1.     I want to live somewhere away from the coast, where sea level rise is already causing problems. Oklahoma and northeastern France are both equal in being far from the nearest coastlines. Conclusion: America is about the same as France in this regard.

2.     I want to live someplace that is not prone to floods or droughts. Again, Oklahoma and eastern France are equivalent in this regard. Both have occasional severe floods in recent years, as well as droughts and wildfires. In France, the wildfires are in the south. Conclusion: America is a little less safe than France in this regard.

3.     I want to live someplace where heat waves are currently brief. Here, northeastern France has the advantage that their canicules and vagues de chaud are shorter than in the U.S. Conclusion: America is a little less safe than France in this regard.

4.     I want to live someplace that is not utterly dependent on fossil fuels. Though Europe still largely depends on fossil fuels, such as gas from Russia, there are more alternative sources of energy there than in America, on a per-capita basis. This includes nuclear energy, which is common in France. The stresses of international energy politics will have less effect on France than on America in upcoming decades. Conclusion: America is a little less safe than France in this regard.

5.     I want to live someplace with robust agriculture, since droughts and storms will inevitably reduce agricultural production and national food security. American agriculture is famous for its agricultural output, but it is almost entirely dependent on fossil fuel inputs for energy and fertilizer, and to pump groundwater. An interruption of transportation would hobble American agriculture. France has a large agricultural output (it seemed to me that Lorraine was almost one big wheat field, and maize is common in Alsace). A major contributor to stability of food production is farmers’ markets, which are much more common in France than in America. However, agricultural production in France, even the wet part, has been hit strongly by recent droughts. Conclusion: America is a little less safe than France in this regard.

B. Indirect effects of climate change. As detailed in Christian Parenti’s book Tropic of Chaos, the world already has many threats to peace and security, and many of these are related to environmental disasters such as drought. Climate change will exacerbate these problems that already exist. For example, there will be even more climate refugees crossing national borders than at present.

1.     I want to live in a society in which people are willing to give up a little personal comfort for the common good. America is not such a place. Almost a third of Americans have refused to do anything, anything at all, to reduce the spread of covid. Fortunately, the public spirit of the remaining two-thirds (vaccines, masking, social distancing) has brought about the evolution of milder viruses.

a.      Would Americans be willing to use less air conditioning, less heating, or less water in order to prevent a society-wide shortage? I do not think so. Europe is already much more frugal in their use of resources than America, and, to compensate for the reduction in Russian gas supplies, has indicated a willingness to use  a further 15 percent less. In both places, whenever you flip a switch or turn on a faucet, it is called “demand,” as if you insist to the death on your right to use as much as you want, regardless of your neighbors. But in America it really is a demand. Conclusion: America is much less safe than France in this regard.

b.     In America, we insist on the right to create as much public nuisance as possible, especially noise and litter. My house in Oklahoma is right under a flight path for vintage airplanes, which fly low overhead all day every day and sometimes half the night. In Oklahoma, we have (by my repeated count) a hundred pieces of garbage for each mile of highway. France also has bruit and déchets sauvages, but not nearly as much. At least in northeastern France, people are quiet and polite, except in Paris. Conclusion: America is worse than France in this regard.

2.     I want to live someplace with lower crime. This is because, as economic stress spreads worldwide, crime will increase everywhere, and I want to start from a lower threshold. Clearly, France is safer in this respect. I want to live someplace with fewer guns. The French have few; but in Oklahoma, gun ownership is epidemic. It is illegal for a judge to order a mentally unstable person to be denied gun ownership. Recent Congressional legislation has helped a little. Conclusion: America is much less safe than France in this regard.

3.     I want to live in a society without underlying racism. Although northeastern France has Nazi sympathizers who occasionally spray-paint swastikas in public places, the U.S. also has this problem, in addition to frequent police shootings of blacks, and mass shootings that are absent from most other parts of the world. In France, Arabs are a minority with whom the dominant culture has friction. But in America, the friction between whites and blacks, and whites and Hispanics, is greater. France has no equivalent of the utter suppression of Native Americans. Racism, all over the world, will get worse. Conclusion: America is much worse than France in this regard.

4.     I want to live someplace with good public infrastructure. I look forward to not having to own a car or drive. In America, you pretty much need a car unless you live in a rest home. This will become more important as gas becomes more expensive. American infrastructure repair is more expensive than in France because France simply does not have as many big pickup trucks (I don’t remember seeing any), although they do have commercial trucks (les camions). Conclusion: America is worse than France in this regard.

5.     I want to live someplace that has no possibility of rulership by religious fundamentalists. So-called Christian Fundamentalists get their way on almost every issue in America, especially in Oklahoma, where a single fundamentalist teacher can get a whole school system downgraded. France has Fundamentalist Muslims, but they have no chance of controlling national politics. Conclusion: America is much less safe than France in this regard.

6.     I want to live in a country that is at peace with its neighbors. Europe is famous for its seamless union of nations. France’s problem with illegal immigration from the south, across the Mediterranean, is less than America’s problem with illegal immigration not only from Mexico but all of Central and South America, without a sea to slow it down. Illegal immigration will get worse with global warming, more so in America than in France. Conclusion: America is much less safe than France in this regard.

7.     I want to live in a country that is not threatened by Russia, led by the obviously insane Vladimir Putin. All of Europe is in danger from him, while America is protected by an ocean. However, Europe is less likely to be a Russian nuclear target. One of the top targets is right here in Oklahoma. Conclusion: America is about the same as France in this regard.

8.     I want to live in a country that is not totally dominated by major corporations. In France, corporations have more influence than individual citizens, but the problem is worse in America, where at least one corporation has stated (according to This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein) that global warming and its resulting threat of international conflict would be a great opportunity to sell weapons. Conclusion: America is much less safe than France in this regard.

One of the things I will miss about America is the number of spectacular places to travel, especially the diversity of natural areas. America has everything from deserts to forests to alpine tundra. But, fortunately, I did a lot of traveling before retirement age. I been everywhere, man. Now, though I am not elderly, I am old enough to find travel stressful. France has forests in the north and dry scrublands in the south, a much diminished range of landscapes than in America. Relative to area, both countries have about the same amount of beautiful coastline. In France, I can get to lots of nice places without a car. I would be really bummed out if I knew that, in moving to France, I’d never get to see the giant sequoias of California, of which France has no equivalent. Fortunately, I have walked among them about a dozen times. I’ll have to be content with the memories.

I would be moving to northeastern France with my family anyway. But, in a traumatic future of global climate change, I have found twelve ways in which France is at least a little better than America and two ways in which the two countries are equivalent. I found no examples in which France was worse.

There are numerous things about France that many Americans would not like, but which do not bother me. I can summarize these ways: “In France, taxes are high and life is good.”

Moving to a new country, with a new language, is difficult, and it is not a reasonable solution for most of you. But think about it.

Is There Any Hope for the Climate Future?

As I have previously written (see the Real Ecology Manifesto at this permalink), I believe that there is no hope for the world to avoid climate catastrophe, from which the human species will survive, but human societies will not; and from which the Earth, even though minus many of its species, will recover. Nevertheless, I also believe that we need to live in such a way that, as individuals, we do the best work we can at avoiding this catastrophe. That is, even if there is no hope, we can feel that we have lived in the right way (and we can stand before God, if there is one, in the knowledge that we have done the best we could).

We cannot do this if we know our actions to be utterly futile. But what if I am wrong, and there is hope? Or, what if the good things we do will reduce the intensity of the inevitable catastrophe? What we need is some good news, even if the news is not good enough for us to be fully optimistic. But this news has to be factual, not just a fleeting hope.

The Citizens’ Climate Lobby (which consists of citizens who want to effect federal-level policies that will reduce the risk of climate catastrophe, and who know that the apostrophe belongs at the end of the word citizens’) had an online national meeting today, in which Drew Jones, the co-founder of Climate Interactive, gave us some reasons to be optimistic. I happen to believe these reasons are not good enough, but they are verifiably true. I hope that I am wrong in my cynicism, and if I am, these will be the reasons. Here are some of them.

• While Trump has pulled America out of the international climate accords, many cities and states have declared their intention to follow the Paris guidelines. More than half of Americans live in cities or states (or both) that have declared their willingness to cooperate with the rest of the people in the world by reducing carbon emissions.
• World carbon emissions have actually stabilized in the last three years, after decades of not only increasing but accelerating. In 2013, global carbon emissions increased by 2.0 percent over 2012; by 1.1 percent in 2014 over 2013; and actually decreased by 0.1 percent in 2015, compared to 2014, in a report prepared by the Netherlands for the European Union. It is not enough to just stop increasing our carbon emissions, but this leveling-off of carbon emissions has happened seldom since records have been kept. Meanwhile, global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels (not the same thing as carbon emissions) continue to increase, from 405 ppm in 2015, to 409 ppm in 2016, to 413 ppm in April of this year.
• As of today, the Climate Solutions caucus in the U. S. Congress, in which members of both parties agree to do something to reduce carbon emissions, has 24 Democratic and 24 Republican members. (Anyone who joins needs to partner with a member of the other party.) Of course, these few Republicans are easily ignored by the leadership of their party. (John Huntsman said “Call me crazy, but I believe what the scientists say about evolution and global warming.” Guess what. His party called him crazy!) But at least a few responsible Republicans exist!
• China’s use of coal has declined slightly.
• The Paris Agreement still has 194 signatories even after the United States has pulled out.
• Perhaps the most important point is that long-term social change looks impossible until it happens. For example, state bans on interracial marriage seemed like they would never be lifted until the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, in which the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision that interracial marriage must be permitted. If you were a black person in South Africa in 1985, it might have seemed that apartheid would never end, but within a decade it ended. A social consensus that we must do something about global climate change is building, and could quickly become the norm. As Gandhi said, “First they will laugh at you then they will ignore you then they will fight you then you will win.”

I must point out, though, that social change doesn’t always work. As explained by Peter Watson in The Great Divide, a quixotic attempt to summarize all of world prehistory and history, human sacrifice used to be the norm in all known prehistoric societies. In the Old World, in separate locations, human sacrifice was replaced by animal sacrifice and finally by the elimination of physical sacrifice, as religious awareness grew. In the New World, however, human sacrifice grew at a dizzying pace, so that the Aztecs carried out entire wars just to get sacrificial victims; they captured tens of thousands of victims each year, cut their hearts out, threw the hearts in a bowl, tumbled the bodies down the pyramid steps, and made stew out of the bodies. There was a brief attempt by one Mayan leader, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, starting about 968 CE, to bring the vicious cycle of human sacrifice to an end. But he failed. Human sacrifice ended only with the conquest of the Aztecs by the equally brutal Spaniards—brutal, but at least they didn’t carry out human sacrifice.

I will add one of my own to Drew’s list. The other major economies of the world recognize that Trump’s refusal to cooperate on climate issues makes America an outsider. Some of the G20 nations now refer to the group as the G19 + 1. It is possible that international pressure will make enough people rethink their position and at least cooperate with the rest of the leading nations of the world. This is extremely unlikely; I think America will cooperate with the rest of the world only if forced to do so. But, again, I hope I am wrong.

What will NOT happen is that Christian Americans will suddenly feel the Spirit of God calling them to show love to their fellow humans and to God’s Creation by preventing climate catastrophe. Some Christian Americans feel this way; most do not, and are in fact furious at their fellow Christians who do. To wait for this to happen would be like waiting for a decomposing bone to turn back into a cow.

Join with me in trying to make the world a better place for everyone, even if this effort fails, and just in case it succeeds!

Religion vs. Science the Vast Gulf Part Five: Weather and Climate

I just uploaded a YouTube video about Darwin visiting the Petrified Forest in Arizona. The petrified wood comes only from ancient conifers, none from modern trees, proving that it could not have been produced by a big Flood. See other videos here.

This is the fifth in a series of entries about the vast difference between the modern scientific view of the world and the view that people had of the world at the time the Bible was written.

To the Biblical worldview, the climate of the Earth is directly controlled by God. And there are many, many religious people who believe this today. Their proof? Genesis 8:22, in which God makes a promise: while the Earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. I have several students each semester who quote this verse in their supposedly scientific papers on the subject of what I now try to call global climate disruption. In this, they are imitating their great Christian hero, Senator James Inhofe, who quotes Genesis 8:22 whenever the subject of climate comes up in the Senate.

Modern science has demonstrated that Earth’s climate is controlled by many complex factors. In any given year, it is affected by changes in the angle of the sunlight, by the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, by the amount of energy coming from the sun, by ENSO patterns, rain shadows, etc. Long-term changes are caused by periodic oscillations in Earth’s orbit, movements of the continents, etc. A religious person could claim that God works through these natural laws; but we are not talking about that kind of religious person. We are talking about people who believe God is forbidden to use figures of speech. Forbidden, I presume, by them.

That is, we know what causes the seasons. The Earth moves, and is tilted, and as a result a lower angle of sunlight creates winter, and a greater angle of sunlight creates summer. Psalm 93:1 clearly states that the Earth does not move, and it was this verse that got Galileo in trouble with the Catholic Church. Creationists no longer claim that the Earth does not move, but they do so mainly by arbitrarily assigning a figurative meaning to the psalm.

We also know what causes wind and rain. Air blows from high to low pressure areas, and rain results from the condensation of water vapor. In contrast, the Bible says that rains caused Noah’s flood because the windows of heaven were opened. Job referred to the storehouses of the wind. These are perfectly good figures of speech, and are apparently accepted as such even by creationists. But they have to violate their own assumptions by doing so.

There is a dark side to creationist beliefs that God has made sure that global warming has not occurred. At the moment, creationists are denying that global warming is happening (step one), or if so, that humans are causing it (step two). They deny that we should be doing anything right now to reduce carbon emissions. God put all that coal in the ground during the Flood (thoughtfully picking out just the conifers and keeping out the flowering plants) so that we could burn it right now. Not slowly, over centuries, but right now. This is because many of them think Armageddon is right around the corner, so why wait?

But at some point even creationists will have to admit that global warming is a reality. However, when they do so, they will go directly from steps one and two to step three: It is too late and there is nothing we can do about it. They circumvent the entire process of trying to bring our carbon emissions under control. And they will give their own religious twist to step three: they will say that global warming, which in upcoming decades will be greater than most of us have even been able to imagine, is God’s punishment upon the world. Punishment for what? Probably for homosexuality. After all, God said that while the Earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. Creationist stage three belief concerning global climate disruption is that it will in fact occur while God is carrying out His end-time Apocalypse.

By the way, why did God make the Genesis 8:22 promise? One might think there is a lofty reason, based upon Jesus’ version of God. But according to verse 21, the reason is that Noah offered a sacrifice of clean meat on an altar, and when God “smelled the pleasing odor,” he made the promise. So if you ever want anything from God, invite Him to a barbecue. Yeehaw!

Welcome to the Republican Climate!

In an earlier post, I requested ideas about the possible future directions of evolution. Humans are not the first species to change the Earth; photosynthetic bacteria filled the air with oxygen billions of years ago, which forever altered the planet and the course of evolution, and most of this oxygen may have come from one species. But the abuse of human intelligence and technology has transformed most of the Earth into a disturbed habitat, which is best suited to weeds and pests (like Kurosawa’s giant dandelions I mentioned previously).

Right now the biggest human impact on the Earth is habitat destruction. We destroy entire ecosystems and replace them with cities and monoculture farms. The only species that thrive under these conditions are humans, weeds, pests, germs, and our crops and livestock species. Compared to millions of wild species, the list of organisms that might be ancestors of the future is pretty short.

But in less than a century, the major environment in which evolution will take place will be a planet transformed by global warming. Already, species are being affected by it—some have become extinct, while others have evolved new adaptations. Global warming is nothing new, and past global warmings have resulted in lots of new species (especially back in the dinosaur days). But today it is happening so fast that the only species that can respond to it are those species that are already good at responding to disturbances: once again, weeds and pests. Will trees of future forests be the evolutionary descendants of today’s weeds, just as some of the “trees” of St. Helena are descendants of sunflowers? Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing (in her book Mara and Dann) described an African continent in which the rainforests were gone and the earth crawled with dangerous animals, as well as with many new races of humans (who were usually at war with one another). Global warming does not need to be catastrophic, but it will be if it occurs faster than evolution.

There is one major reason that we have not taken further action against global warming. That reason is the Republican Party. In fifty to a hundred years, when the effects have begun to devastate human civilization, people will remember the Bush Administration and Senator James Inhofe (from my state of Oklahoma) and blame them, and their party, for the disaster. And they will blame the rest of us for letting the Republicans get away with it.

On December 7, Republican Congressmen issued a statement that asked, in effect, which was greater: the greenhouse gases emitted by Air Force One taking President Obama to the Copenhagen climate conference, or the hot air emitted from his mouth while addressing Congress. Think about that. That is simply a childish insult. Republican leaders are not only scornful of all scientific evidence, but also of anyone who dares to disagree with their presumed omniscience. Democratic Congressmen never talked like that about Bush. Republican leaders are, besides being destructive, simply embarrassing brats. I wish I could say to those of you outside the United States that the Republican leaders do not represent America. I wish the rank and file Republicans would stand up against them. But even though they are a minority they can still destroy the efforts of those who want to save the Earth from the devastation that humans are bringing upon it.

That is why I wanted to introduce a new phrase into public discourse: Republican Climate. Use it when you get a chance in conversation and writing.