Bye bye birdie

The National on CBC Television tonight aired a depressing piece about shrinking bird populations in North America. It's worth watching but it's enough to make you weep.

Carbon sequestration

Climate change solution? I came across this blog entry from a guy in Wisconsin named Glen Barry who doesn’t seem to have much regard for the carbon sequestration idea. I think he raises some valid concerns, esp. i.e. the complexity of systems that prevent the swift action necessary for sequestration to happen anywhere near soon enough to prevent global catastrophe. Of course, perhaps the complexity of systems prevents the swift response of any sort that might be necessary to avert disaster (a view also shared by Dave Pollard over at How to Save the World — see item #5).

Addendum: I asked my knowledgeable friend (you know, as opposed to all my other friends) John what he thought of this. And while he agreed with some of the points Mr Barry made about biofuels, he felt the cynicism about sequestration was not justified. Technologies are, in many instances, more than proven — they are in fact being used and have been for decades. There are some novel types of sequestration that are ‘new’ but it’s unfair to lump all these technologies together. Plus the blog item’s claims about cost are way out of line.

Wow, I feel like a journalist: fair and balanced!

“Zero”

The November 20 issue of the New Yorker has another scary environment essay by the brilliant Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Darkening Sea: What Carbon Emissions Are Doing to the Ocean.” A few pages in, she quotes climate scientist Ken Caldiera:

Caldeira siad that he had recently gone to Washington to brief some members of Congress. “I was asked, ‘What is the appropriate stabilization target for atmospheric CO2?’ he recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, I think it's inappropriate to think in terms of stabilization targets. I think we should think in terms of emissions targets.’ And they said, ‘O.K., what's the appropriate emissions target?’ And I said, ‘Zero.’

“If you’re talking about mugging little old ladies, you don’t say, “What’s our target for the rate of mugging little old ladies?’ You say, ‘Mugging little old ladies is bad, and we’re going to try to eliminate it.’ You recognize you might not be a hundred per cent successful, but your goal is to eliminate the mugging of little old ladies. And I think we need to eventually come around to looking at carbon-dioxide emissions the same way.”