Tag: climate change

Carrots and Farm Work on a Blustery Day

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date October 25, 2013

RURAL SOLON— It was a blustery day at the two acre farm where work took me yesterday. Carrots to harvest, tomato cages to deconstruct and roll up, and irrigation line to find and remove to the roads for later pickup. It was cold to the bone.

My time in the military prepared me for days like this. The key is to focus on the work and the cold will take care of itself, falling neatly into the background. Once one accepts there is no place to go to get warm, and nothing to do but the work, life doesn’t seem so bad and neither does the cold.

It was recently reported that September was the 343rd consecutive month of above average global temperatures. No surprise there, and October will be the 344th. What I would rather see is a tally of the actions people take, on a daily basis, to reduce their carbon footprint. That and a measurement of the aggregate impact it has on global warming. We would do better to collect our progress and see how we are doing than tick off the number of months of doom.

Working in a sustainable agriculture operation is said to help solve the climate crisis. According to Wikipedia, sustainable agriculture is the act of farming using principles of ecology, the study of relationships between organisms and their environment. A couple of things seem most important. Sustainable agriculture is site-specific. What one farmer does on his/her land may last over the long term to satisfy human food and fiber needs, sustain the economic viability of farm operations, and enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole. It is hard to find fault with this, and the connection to the climate crisis is clear.

Where it gets sticky is that as the environment changes, so too do the organisms encountered on a parcel of land. This suggests that the work of adaptation is never really complete in sustainable agriculture. Most farmers I know are engaged in a process of constant experimentation to determine what does and doesn’t work to solve ecological problems. What is worrisome is they seldom, if ever, talk in terms of adaptation to climate change, even if that is what sustainable agriculture represents at its core. Note to self: initiate this conversation.

After noon, the two of us harvesting carrots and working in the field were called to the barn for lunch. Grilled cheese sandwiches, vegetable soup and sweet carrot bread for desert. Much better than restaurant fare, and an unexpected perquisite to break the cold. Not to mention the conversation about the fall share, and our hopes, dreams and experiences. Brief and pleasant interval in another day’s work in our ever changing environment.

Tags climate change, farming, local food, The Climate Reality Project, worklife

Environment

A Rising Challenge to Iowa Agriculture

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date October 19, 2013

DES MOINES— In the wake of 2013’s extreme weather roller coaster, marked by the wettest spring on record, followed by the second-driest July through September ever, a statewide group of leading Iowa science faculty and researchers released the Iowa Climate Statement 2013: A Rising Challenge to Iowa Agriculture at Drake University in Des Moines on Oct. 18. Below is the text of the statement. The document with the names of Iowa scientists endorsing it is here.

Iowa Climate Statement 2013: A Rising Challenge to Iowa Agriculture

Our state has long held a proud tradition of helping to “feed the world.” Our ability to do so is now increasingly threatened by rising greenhouse gas emissions and resulting climate change. Our climate has disrupted agricultural production profoundly during the past two years and is projected to become even more harmful in coming decades as our climate continues to warm and change.

Swings from one extreme to another have characterized Iowa’s 2013 weather patterns. Iowa started the year under the widespread drought that began in 2011 and persisted throughout 2012. But the spring of 2013 (March‐May) was the wettest in the 140 years of record‐keeping, creating conditions that hampered the timely planting of corn and soybean fields. During those months, sixty‐two Iowa counties experienced storms and flooding severe enough to result in federal disaster declarations.

By mid‐August, very dry conditions had returned to Iowa, subjecting many of the state’s croplands to moderate drought. These types of weather extremes, which are highly detrimental to Iowa’s crops, were discussed in our 2012 Iowa Climate Statement, where we also noted that globally over the past 30 years extreme high temperatures are becoming increasingly more common than extreme low temperatures. In a warming climate, wet years get wetter and dry years get dryer and hotter. The climate likely will continue to warm due to increasing emissions of heat‐trapping gases.

Climate change damages agriculture in additional ways. Intense rain events, the most notable evidence of climate change in Iowa, dramatically increase soil erosion, which degrades the future of agricultural production. As Iowa farmers continue to adjust to more intense rain events, they must also manage the negative effects of hot and dry weather. The increase in hot nights that accompanies hot, dry periods reduces dairy and egg production, weight gain of meat animals, and conception rates in breeding stock. Warmer winters and earlier springs allow disease‐causing agents and parasites to proliferate, and these then require greater use of agricultural pesticides.

Local food producers, fruit producers, plant‐nursery owners, and even gardeners have also felt the stresses of recent weather extremes. Following on the heels of the disastrous 2012 loss of 90 percent of Iowa’s apple crop, the 2013 cool March and record‐breaking March‐through‐May rainfall set most ornamental and garden plants back well behind seasonal norms. Events such as these are bringing climate change home to the many Iowans who work the land on a small scale, visit the Farmer’s Market, or simply love Iowa’s sweet corn and tomatoes.

Iowa’s soils and agriculture remain our most important economic resources, but these resources are threatened by climate change. It is time for all Iowans to work together to limit future climate change and make Iowa more resilient to extreme weather. Doing so will allow us to pass on to future generations our proud tradition of helping to feed the world.

Tags climate change, environment, farming, The Climate Reality Project

Home Life

Dealing with the Storm

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date September 20, 2013

LAKE MACBRIDE— A neighbor posted this message to our community email list last night,

Dear Neighbors,
Our garden has produced tons of great tomatoes this year, more then we can or can. Tomorrow I will pull my trailer up to the road with some of the surplus tomatoes on it. If you would like some home grown organic heirloom tomatoes help yourself.

It was a generous gesture, the kind of which we need more in this dog-eat-dog world, where the Darwinian struggle for existence is taken literally and has also taken a turn toward the coarser side of human nature. He posted before the storm rolled in.

One neighbor called the brief storm, “(the) worst in 20 years.” He and his family built about the same time we did, during the early 1990s. The rain was intense and the wind sharp. With the climate crisis, one expects this sort of storm, and seeing how it plays out is never a pleasant experience.

We lost a tree, some lilac bushes and a big branch from our favorite tree, the autumn blaze maple in front. The apple crop was mostly knocked from the trees. When the sun rises we’ll see what is left to finish ripening, and whether there was any structural damage. I won’t be going to the farm today while spending time with post-storm cleanup. It could have been a lot worse.

Next steps are to finish coffee and breakfast, make a list and start doing things on it when the sun rises. There’s a song about that.

Tags climate change, homelife

Environment

Al Gore’s Optimism

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date August 23, 2013

Wednesday, the Washington Post published an Ezra Klein interview with former vice president Al Gore, titled, “Al Gore explains why he’s optimistic about stopping global warming.”

Gore finds there is reason to be optimistic that public sentiment is changing regarding the rapidly increasing amount of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere and the fingerprints of man-made pollution found in severe weather occurring around the world. While climate deniers get upset, even outraged when people mention this fact, Gore believes it is possible to win the conversation on climate change. What does he mean by that? He explained,

I think the most important part of it is winning the conversation. I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, hey man, we don’t go for that anymore. The same thing happened on apartheid. The same thing happened on the nuclear arms race with the freeze movement. The same thing happened in an earlier era with abolition. A few months ago, I saw an article about two gay men standing in line for pizza and some homophobe made an ugly comment about them holding hands and everyone else in line told them to shut up. We’re winning that conversation.

Winning the conversation on climate change means making it socially unacceptable to deny the science of man-made global warming pollution. According to Gore, “the conversation on global warming has been stalled because a shrinking group of denialists fly into a rage when it’s mentioned.” Focus on the word shrinking.

“… in spite of the continued released of 90 million tons of global warming pollution every day into the atmosphere, as if it’s an open sewer, we are now seeing the approach of a global political tipping point.”

According to Gore, it has already begun among politicians, including conservatives, who have grown weary of politicization of the science of global warming by climate deniers.

Another reason for optimism is the sharp and unexpectedly steep decrease in prices for electricity produced from wind and solar, providing a financially viable alternative to fossil fuels.

Some people really dislike Gore and what he represents. The film “An Inconvenient Truth” prompted some of this reaction,

The single most common criticism from skeptics when the film came out focused on the animation showing ocean water flowing into the World Trade Center memorial site. Skeptics called that demagogic and absurd and irresponsible. It happened last October 29th, years ahead of schedule, and the impact of that and many, many other similar events here and around the world has really begun to create a profound shift.

The truth about the man-made contribution to climate change is out. As it is understood, Al Gore’s optimism is expected to be vindicated.

Read the entire Ezra Klein interview with Al Gore on the Washington Post site here.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

Tags climate change, environment, The Climate Reality Project

Environment

Iowa and Climate Change

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date August 16, 2013

What will climate change mean for Iowans? That climate change exists and is happening now is accepted by any Iowan who employs a rational thought process and considers scientific evidence. As the crazy talk from Ames last weekend indicated, not all Iowans are included in such a group.

That climate change is happening is also acknowledged by our government. In 2007, Iowa Code established the Climate Change Advisory Council, which produced a panel of reports about climate change and on how the state could reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The council was disbanded on July 1, 2011, shortly after the election that brought Terry Branstad back into Terrace Hill.

For now, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) maintains a web page that lists climate changes Iowa is already experiencing, and it is worth noting what our government says about the effects of climate change happening now in Iowa. They include:

More Precipitation

Increased frequency of precipitation extremes that lead to flooding.
Increase of eight percent more precipitation from 1873 to 2008.
A larger increase in precipitation in eastern Iowa than in western Iowa.

Higher Temperatures

Long-term winter temperatures have increased six times more than summer temperatures.
Nighttime temperatures have increased more than daytime temperatures since 1970.
Iowa’s humidity has risen substantially, especially in summer, which now has 13 percent more atmospheric moisture than 35 years ago as indicated by a 3 – 5 degree F rise in dew-point temperature. This fuels convective thunderstorms that provide more summer precipitation.

Agricultural Challenges

Climate extremes, not averages, have the greater impact on crop and livestock productivity.
Increased soil erosion and water runoff.
Increased challenges associated with manure applications.
Favorable conditions for survival and spread of many unwanted pests and pathogens.

Habitat Changes

Plants are leafing out and flowering sooner.
Birds are arriving earlier in the spring.
Particular animals are now being sighted farther north than in the past.

Public Health Effects

Increases in heart and lung programs from increasing air pollutants of ozone and fine particles enhanced by higher temperatures.
Increases in infectious diseases transmitted by insects that require a warmer, wetter climate.
An increase prevalence of asthma and allergies.

Whether the DNR will continue to maintain this web site is an open question. The influence of agribusiness over Iowa’s government is no secret. Emblematic was the public clash between Iowa board of regents chair Bruce Rastetter, a Branstad campaign contributor and agribusiness leader, and Jerry Schnoor, a University of Iowa professor and former chair of the Iowa Climate Change Advisory Council. It is easy to predict that there will be pressure from agribusiness interests to minimize the importance of climate change. As Blog for Iowa reported, the Farm Bureau idea “they think it’s (climate change) always been happening and therefore is unlikely to have much to do with whatever us humans get up to down at ground level,” is ridiculous.

What Iowans can expect is increased politicization of the science of climate change, especially as President Obama’s plan for climate action is implemented.

There is overwhelming evidence that climate change is anthropogenic. Scientists don’t know where the tipping point lies, but the effects of climate change on humans are getting worse, and we can do something about it without changing our way of life or hurting our economy. We should do something about it before it’s too late.

~ This is part of a series of summer posts on climate change written for Blog for Iowa.

Tags climate change, environment, The Climate Reality Project

Environment

Doubt and Climate Change

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date August 15, 2013

Public discussions about climate change are closely connected with sales.

Anyone who has taken professional sales training knows creating doubt about a competitor is a key tool used to gain favorable consideration from prospective clients. If there is a legitimate way to point out flaws in a competitor’s product and create a value proposition for a customer, a sale can be made.

A cottage industry has grown up around creating doubt about the reality of climate change, with money flowing from the hydrocarbon business community to fund politicized scientific thought. Unfortunately, it has proven to be effective as was noted in Tuesday’s post.

Most professionals know that in sales, the truth will out and the consequences for future sales depend on a faithful representation of the value proposition. During my recent time with former vice president Al Gore, he displayed an acute awareness of the need to use language in a way to convey truth and not hyperbole. If a salesperson makes false statements about competitors to make sales, or misrepresents the value of his own product during the sales process, the prospective customer will eventually discover the deceit and reject the purchase, and future sales.

The hydrocarbon industry has been very effective in creating doubt about the science of climate change, putting the best face on a dirty source of energy. Most T.V. viewers are familiar with the American Petroleum Institute’s Energy Tomorrow campaign featuring former beauty queen, soap opera star and spokesmodel Brooke Alexander. The value proposition has varied over the years but recently has been safe extraction of natural gas through hydraulic fracturing, jobs, energy security and tax revenues to build infrastructure and fund public employees like teachers, fire fighters and law enforcement officers. It all sounds pretty good until we consider the fact that burning fossil fuels adds tens of millions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere like it was an open sewer every day. This directly contributes to global warming and a changing climate, putting infrastructure, jobs and energy security at risk. Ms. Alexander doesn’t mention that in the ads.

One business group that has no doubt about the climate crisis is the re-insurance industry, companies who insure catastrophic loss. Check out why Munich Re and Swiss Re support reduction of CO2 emissions in the New York Times article, “For Insurers, No Doubt on Climate Change.”

To learn how the hydrocarbon industry borrowed from the tobacco industry’s 1960s sales campaigns to create doubt about the fact that tobacco use causes cancer, to create doubt about climate change, view the five-minute, 12 second video below. While those of us fighting for climate action believe the truth will out, we also hope it will be told and understood before it’s too late.

~ This is part of a series of summer posts on climate change written for Blog for Iowa.

Tags climate change, environment, The Climate Reality Project

Environment

Global Warming is not a Liberal Hoax

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date August 13, 2013

Global warming is settled science, but one wouldn’t know if from conversations heard in Iowa. Blog for Iowa reported on Congressman Dave Loebsack, who wrote, “as Iowans, the threat of flooding never seems far away, and it’s only getting worse… flooding is costing taxpayers billions of dollars a year for preparation and recovery. The prediction and prevention tools from a National Flood Center would help prevent damage and allow our communities to better allocate resources such as sand bags, machinery, volunteers, and temporary flood walls. Every year flooding costs taxpayers, and the new technologies and methods already being put to use in Iowa could save our country untold millions.”

Loebsack was giving Iowans half a loaf. He did not mention the cause of the worsening weather events, saying Iowans should adapt to a climate that produces more frequent and stronger flooding, without mentioning the fact that mitigating the causes of global warming, which strengthens extreme weather events like Iowa’s recent flooding, is equally important.

This is not surprising for a politician. Inculcated in our culture is the erroneous idea that global warming is a liberal hoax, and to get elected in Iowa’s second congressional district, the liberal moniker is more liability than asset. Global warming is not a hoax. The idea that it is has been the direct result of a conscious effort on the part of American businesses with an interest in perpetuating our carbon culture for short term profits.

Noam Chomsky, linguist and political critic, said, “the chamber of commerce… the American Petroleum industry and other business lobbies have publicly proclaimed, in fact with enthusiasm, that they are carrying out a campaign to try to convince the population that global warming is a liberal hoax… and it’s succeeded unfortunately. The latest polls I have seen show that maybe a third of the population believes in anthropogenic global warming.”

It is easy to say Iowa should do something to reduce the cost of increasing and more devastating floods in the state and a National Flood Center, as Loebsack proposes, may help. What would help more is doing something about the causes of these floods, and that falls to what is a politically unmentionable, reducing CO2 emissions drastically and immediately through the assignment of a price on carbon.

Below is a link to the Noam Chomsky YouTube video where he discusses global warming. The part from the beginning up to the 5:43 mark is most relevant.

~ This is part of a series of summer posts on climate change written for Blog for Iowa.

Tags climate change, The Climate Reality Project

Environment

Countdown to Labor Day

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date August 13, 2013

Trish Nelson has been enjoying her break from Blog for Iowa and reported that in addition to following coverage of the Kent Sorenson – Michelle Bachmann – Ron Paul affair, she has been checking out the technology of Iowa,

looking for and finding Elvis,

and watching sunsets.

We miss Trish, and hope she enjoys some rest during her break from Blog for Iowa. Expect to see her back on Sept. 2

That leaves me with sixteen posting days to fulfill my commitment to post about the challenges of temporary workers in Iowa; implications of immigration reform; Iowa’s role in mitigating and adapting to climate change; and occasional posts on energy policy, local food, and peace and justice activities in the state. I have already touched each of those points and want to focus more on the climate crisis.

Since I began posting on July 15, I have written and posted here about climate change exactly five times. Check them out here, here, here, here, and here.

I affiliate with the Climate Reality Project, and our team put together a starting point for the conversation I hope to have about the science of climate change before I fade into the background again on Sept. 1. To understand that climate change is real, and caused by us, it is important to understand the science. This four minute, 34 second video with Bill Nye the Science Guy helps set a scientific framework for the discussion. More follows, but that will be another post.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

Tags climate change, environment, The Climate Reality Project

Environment Social Commentary

The Founders and Climate Change

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date August 9, 2013

It must get a Republican’s hackles up when a Democrat talks about the founding fathers. After all, it was Republican Warren G. Harding who coined the term, first using it in his keynote address at the 1916 Republican National Convention. The term is less than one hundred years old, much younger that our family roots in Virginia where ancestors named their male children after well known revolutionaries from the state. Leave it to a Republican to omit women as founders, but women’s suffrage and the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution wouldn’t come until four years later. Harding, while elected as president in a landslide in 1920, was never a visionary, unable to see the scandals in his own administration.

What we know about the founders was they were part of a natural aristocracy, or gentry, as Stow Persons described it in his book “The Decline of American Gentility,” based more on talent and taste than birth or financial status. 13 were merchants, seven were major land speculators, 11 were large scale securities speculators, 14 owned or managed plantations or large farms operated by slaves, eight received a substantial percentage of their income from holding public office and the rest were occupied as small farmers, scientists, physicians, retirees and other occupations. There is no evidence my forbears were included in this group, although they were in Virginia by 1680.

I never thought much about the founders while growing up, focusing on those revolutionary figures who were from Virginia, where my father’s family settled: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and James Madison. I also liked Thomas Paine, who while not a Virginian, wrote the practical sounding and popular pamphlet “Common Sense.” He also wrote “The Age of Reason,” his book that advocates deism, promotes reason and freethinking, and argues against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. We’re getting to the point of this post.

Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen and George Washington were deists, or influenced by them. Deists insisted that religious truth should be subject to the authority of human reason rather than divine revelation. Consequently, they denied that the Bible was the revealed word of God and rejected scripture as a source of religious doctrine.

They were also products of the Age or Enlightenment which was a cultural movement intending “to reform society using reason, challenge ideas grounded in tradition and faith, and advance knowledge through the scientific method.” These views proved to be unpopular, and emblematic of this was the fact that only six people attended Thomas Paine’s funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.

Anyone who knows this history must see the irony of modern day citizens who constantly refer to the founders, yet eschew the scientific method, especially as it pertains to climate change. We know why that is.

In mass society, media plays an important role in educating the public, just as Paine’s “Common Sense” informed the American Revolution. The public’s attention has been bought and sold by the hydrocarbon industry through prolific and continuous advertising. The executives of the oil, coal and gas industry must know the science of climate change, and that they are mortgaging their children’s future to make a buck near term. Yet they continue their work as slaves in the fields of corporatism.

There was an age of enlightenment, but its promotion of scientific inquiry has today been replaced by something else. A combination of misinformation, partisan politics and fundamentalist faith. Arguments about the science of climate change fall on many deaf ears, and opposing voices create a voluminous din that echoes in valleys carved over millennia that predate Europeans on this soil.

As I write this post, I am reminded of William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

My response is simple, climate change is real, it’s caused by us, the effects on humans are getting worse, and we can do something about it without changing our way of life or hurting our economy. We should do something about it before it’s too late. The founders resolved the issue of their time, now is the time for us to return the favor by solving the climate crisis.

Tags climate change

Environment

Troll Work on Climate Change

Post author By Paul Deaton
Post date July 16, 2013

In response to a writers group opinion piece that appeared in the Iowa City Press Citizen on July 14, 2013. Posted on July 16 via Facebook.

“The Public Policy Institute, housed at Iowa Wesleyan College, and with which Ms. Thornton is affiliated, can accurately be characterized as a home for climate change deniers. On their website it says, ‘…data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows an upward trend in the earth’s temperature over the twentieth century. However, satellite date (sic) compiled by climatologist John Christy shows no such trend. Nor does data provided by readings from weather balloons.’ There are other examples of denial.

The reality is Earth’s temperature is warming and burning the fossil fuels referred to in this article has played and continues to play a substantial role in global warming and climate change. Ms. Thornton’s purpose is to cast doubt on the the public discussion of climate change. In a free society, that is her choice, but the reality is her economic arguments will prove vapid if society cannot adapt to and mitigate the causes of global warming fast enough.”

Tags climate change, environment, The Climate Reality Project