Recently in Academic Thought Category
Alex de Sherbinin et al., “Rural household demographics, livelihoods and the environment,” Global Environmental Change 18, no. 1 (February 2008): 38-53.
The idea I get from this article is that it is possible to use a single household to study their environmental outputs and resource utilisation when the spatial scope of the research area is reasonably small so the homogeneity among most households in the area is significant enough.
The author defined 5 categories of wealth that can be obtained, held and utilised by households: natural capital, social capital, human capital, physical capital and financial capital. It is possible to analyse the interaction between environmental variables and the households' action on these capitals.
In rural area, this theory provides a possibility that by studying a single family's lifestyle and life history, the human-nature relationship can be identified even quantised. However, the author also point out to go beyond case study is the biggest challenge in front of this approach. How will different social and economic conditions influence these household? It is suggested that households should be studied within a broader social framework. The key, I think, is to identify the social heterogeneity within the same geographical location.
An article in Science introduced China’s effort in designing cities that consume less natural resources and are more ecosystem-friendly. This is a plausible proposal which addresses the most pressing environment problem in China. Among these cities that are still in planning phase, Dongtan on Chongming Island, Shanghai, is used by the article as an example.
From the description of the article, Dongtan will employ very different concepts of city development than the rest of greater Shanghai, e.g. carbon neutral and zero tailpipe emission. Yet the article did not mention how Shanghai as a whole would do when the Eco-city is being built, nor how Dongtan obtain energy and material its development needs.
The fact that Dongtan is on a island convinces me that it will require considerable input from surrounding area and further. Whether the city is truly eco-friendly depends not only on how people within the city live, but also how the city’s demand influences the surrounding area. While Dongtan may serve as a model city, its impact on other cities needs closer studies. If Shanghai and other cities take a business as usual approach, their support to Dongtan will still cost dearly, though may be less that supporting a non-eco-city.
Thus I wonder if Dongtan’s implication as a “carbon neutral” and zero car emission pilot area is limited. As these new Eco-cities will contain at most dozens of millions of people, how about the other hundreds of people that are in existing cities? Ideally, the new technologies used in these new cities have to feed back to existing “old” cities, but this would be very difficult if new technologies are developed in laboratory conditions. A better solution, I think, is for a group of adjacent cities begin to take actions that can mitigate environmental problems in the existing framework. The technology can be from a Eco-city, but the key is reducing environmental footprint of both the supporter and the supported.
BBC news and the Independent both report that researchers attempted to identify “tipping point” events resulted by climate change and managed to find 9 so far. The result will be published on the PNAS Journal but as of the moment I create this entry I am not able to find the report on the PNAS site.
Among the 9 irreversible events, I pay most attention to the “collapse” of the Indian summer monsoon. The BBC website states that this may happen in as near as 1 year. I hope that was a typo. This event will have the most direct effect on Asia climate, especially precipitation. Pollution caused cooling over the land, which reduces the land-sea temperature gradient and thus the driver of Indian summer monsoon. Intensified El Niño may also cause increased snow in the winter and reduce land temperature in the summer.
I was considering writing an entry on the snow disaster recently took place in China and what can be done to reduce the loss and accelerate recover. But considering my position, it would be quite unethical to do so.
I’d like to point out that unlike many people’s imagination, even if such disaster took place in some OECD countries with similar latitude and meteorological conditions, people would still be caught unprepared. Even in Midlands and South England, such heavy snows are rare. You can imagine what a turmoil there would be if such a snow hit London.
The real unique characteristic of the snow is that it has shown people how vulnerable everybody is, and how local disturbances impact the whole society. This can well lead to a sense of vulnerability, just like what nuclear tests and Chernobyl did to people in the West. What is different is that Chinese people obtained the sense not purely out of fear, but from their experience. On the other hand, there are report of other unusual snow events in other parts of the world, implying the possibility of a large-scale climate anomaly (La Niña maybe).
These are necessary prerequisites of the forming of a risk society, in which people are aware of risks and are prepared for it. In my opinion China is close to such a state. The exposure to hazard will increase as the mobility and fluidity of the society increases; the range and connectedness will be emphasised both by intensifying global change and the country’s endeavour to be taken into global economics; the understanding of risks by people, as a result, will also be strengthened.
From an environmentalist’s view this is hardly a bad thing. After all risks are always there after mankind altered the environment and their means of production so much, and people are just adapting themselves to more and more risks. But for decision makers, they should notice the unbalanced risk distribution over differing social classes; they should also be open to various voices in the face of a potential risk or actual crisis, and encourage the weak to express themselves by setting good communication channels. From the news report I have the impression that China has done a good job in these two aspects in this particular event.
Think about what other countries may learn from this disaster. You cannot at the same time worry about so many possible disasters. Yet it is possible to make the society more flexible so as to battle unexpected events. Doing so may require considerable investment. How do we measure investment and return so we know what kind of investment is adequate? One cannot measure things it does not expect, can one? Back to what I learn, targeting maintaining a certain degree of resilience could be a way to determine the investment for risk aversion and recovery from crisis.
Crisis in the Drylands: Scientific American
If you do not want to be unpopular, just remember to criticise Mr. Bush and his “War on Terror”. However, after we attribute conflicts to everything from imperialism to terrorism, from religion to civilisation, I am glad to see finally some opinions which reflect on the trapped, or failure state in many arid areas, from a different aspect which has very little to do with politics and military. The article states that:
Washington looks at many of these clashes and erroneously sees Islamist ideology at the core. Our political leaders fail to realize that other Islamic populations are far more stable economically, politically and socially—and that the root of the crisis in the dryland countries is not Islam but extreme poverty and environmental stress.
The article gracefully followed this issue by discussing what is the cause of these areas’ unfavourable state, why military approach is not working and what economic and environmental measures should be taken to salvage these areas and people. The measures include solving water shortage, increasing productivity, building infrastructures and establishing export market. However, to apply the article’s suggestion without consideration to all arid environments in such crisis may not be justified. As each area have differing situation and conditions, and the history before they fall to the undesirable state may be worthy looking at.
I would argue that resilience, and afterwards adaptive cycle and panarchy, can be used as a framework when studying such problems. The objective of improvement, is not only bring people out of poverty, but also ensure that they do not fall into poverty again when another drought or war strikes, i.e. make them more resilient to changes.
To achieve this, one question must be answered is “what state on earth is the system in?”. If we use the ball and basin analogy, we say the system is “trapped” in a state because there is some forces that stop the system from shifting state, just like the terrain around a basin stops the ball from falling out. These forces may be brought by the interactions of slowly and fast changing variables. The article in SA noticed fast changing variables but often the slow ones are more fundamental.
It can be very tricky to find the slowly changing variable, especially in a complex system. An examination of the system’s history sometimes can help. By identifying different periods when the system is more organised or chaotic, or when it is more resilient or more rigid, and compare variables we can get hold of, we may be able to identify slowly changing variables. We can also identify significant changes in the history and examine its impact. This is where the adaptive cycle comes into play. The problem with this approach, however, is that the measures of resilience, connectedness and capital (the three dimensions in the cycle metaphor) are still quite subjective nowadays. But comparison and qualitative analysis is possible.
From the adaptive cycle we can find out how the slowly changing variables influenced the resilience, connectedness and capital varied throughout the history, god-willing, we will be able to tell how they influence the system today. The next step, given slowly changing variables, is to optimise fast changing variables so as to change the shape of the “basin” so the “ball” can fall into a better basin (if any, that is) than the current one.
Back to measures proposed by the SA article, they are all trying to change the fast changing variables, such as water availability and grassland productivity. However without knowledge of slowly changing variable, such as soil texture, organic content, and/or precipitation, such manipulation may well be futile. Not to mention there are also socioeconomic factors in play, e.g. local customs, the psychology of local people and occupant, and the impact of foreign culture. These are even more intriguing to define and quantise.
In a word I think it is correct to begin to address dryland crisis from environment and economy sector instead of military and ideology ones. Yet the frustrating complexity should be covered if long term interest of the system is desirable. So far the most promising helper seems to be the resilience/panarchy network.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Crisis in the Drylands: Scientific American
If you do not want to be unpopular, just remember to criticise Mr. Bush and his “War on Terror”. However, after we attribute conflicts to everything from imperialism to terrorism, from religion to civilisation, I am glad to see finally some opinions which reflect on the trapped, or failure state in many arid areas, from a different aspect which has very little to do with politics and military. The article states that:
Washington looks at many of these clashes and erroneously sees Islamist ideology at the core. Our political leaders fail to realize that other Islamic populations are far more stable economically, politically and socially—and that the root of the crisis in the dryland countries is not Islam but extreme poverty and environmental stress.
The article gracefully followed this issue by discussing what is the cause of these areas’ unfavourable state, why military approach is not working and what economic and environmental measures should be taken to salvage these areas and people. The measures include solving water shortage, increasing productivity, building infrastructures and establishing export market. However, to apply the article’s suggestion without consideration to all arid environments in such crisis may not be justified. As each area have differing situation and conditions, and the history before they fall to the undesirable state may be worthy looking at.
I would argue that resilience, and afterwards adaptive cycle and panarchy, can be used as a framework when studying such problems. The objective of improvement, is not only bring people out of poverty, but also ensure that they do not fall into poverty again when another drought or war strikes, i.e. make them more resilient to changes.
To achieve this, one question must be answered is “what state on earth is the system in?”. If we use the ball and basin analogy, we say the system is “trapped” in a state because there is some forces that stop the system from shifting state, just like the terrain around a basin stops the ball from falling out. These forces may be brought by the interactions of slowly and fast changing variables. The article in SA noticed fast changing variables but often the slow ones are more fundamental.
It can be very tricky to find the slowly changing variable, especially in a complex system. An examination of the system’s history sometimes can help. By identifying different periods when the system is more organised or chaotic, or when it is more resilient or more rigid, and compare variables we can get hold of, we may be able to identify slowly changing variables. We can also identify significant changes in the history and examine its impact. This is where the adaptive cycle comes into play. The problem with this approach, however, is that the measures of resilience, connectedness and capital (the three dimensions in the cycle metaphor) are still quite subjective nowadays. But comparison and qualitative analysis is possible.
From the adaptive cycle we can find out how the slowly changing variables influenced the resilience, connectedness and capital varied throughout the history, god-willing, we will be able to tell how they influence the system today. The next step, given slowly changing variables, is to optimise fast changing variables so as to change the shape of the “basin” so the “ball” can fall into a better basin (if any, that is) than the current one.
Back to measures proposed by the SA article, they are all trying to change the fast changing variables, such as water availability and grassland productivity. However without knowledge of slowly changing variable, such as soil texture, organic content, and/or precipitation, such manipulation may well be futile. Not to mention there are also socioeconomic factors in play, e.g. local customs, the psychology of local people and occupant, and the impact of foreign culture. These are even more intriguing to define and quantise.
In a word I think it is correct to begin to address dryland crisis from environment and economy sector instead of military and ideology ones. Yet the frustrating complexity should be covered if long term interest of the system is desirable. So far the most promising helper seems to be the resilience/panarchy network.
Powered by ScribeFire.
This week’s Nature magazine has provided a chunky supplement under the title “Year of Planet Earth”, discussing earth science topics relevant to global changes. I have not got time to read all articles in this supplement, yet this one I read is of high quality. Its analysis of Westerlies is related to my current research.
2008 is the second year in the three consecutive years’ span of International Year of Planet Earth. The aim is to promote earth science studies and identify the role of earth sciences in the society. More information can be found at the year’s website.
I have written an entry on the topic Ocean Iron Fertilisation to sequestrate carbon. A group of scientists provides their opinion and claim that more experiments will be needed before we can use the technology and incorporate it into carbon trading system:
ENVIRONMENT: Ocean Iron Fertilization—Moving Forward in a Sea of Uncertainty — Buesseler et al. 319 (5860): 162 — Science
Powered by ScribeFire.
GEOPHYSICS: Daggers Are Drawn Over Revived Cosmic Ray-Climate Link — Pasotti 319 (5860): 144 — Science
Some climate change skeptic argue that holding a mainstream view, scientists do not allow opinions other than human-induced climate change to be discussed on. Well, that is conspiracy theory again. Some researchers proposed that climate change may be due to changed geomagnetic field. Although this has been dismissed long ago, the group of researchers say they will carry on to find more evidences and give more solid proofs. Now their idea is published on Science.
This is why we call research of climate change a scientific process: always open to disagreement and debates. The accusation that mainstream voices in science world are abusing the rights of expression is not well-grounded.
Powered by ScribeFire.
I think I am a bio-fuel advocate-turned-skeptic now.
Both NewScientist and SciAm report that a native North American perennial grass, switch grass Panicum virgatum can produce 540% of the energy used to grow it. It has been naturally growing at field margins in U. S. for years, yet recently become a new focus in bio-fuel development. Without doubt its efficiency in producing energy beats the criticism that bio-fuel growing is not energy-efficient. It even has nearly permanent underground root system that offset 94 percent of the greenhouse gases emitted to cultivate it and from derived ethanol. Neat isn’t it?
However I think environment aware farmers will face certain dilemma when they decide whether to plant it or not. By definition it can be grown on marginal land without intensive care. But it would take many households’ yield to form a quantity that is worth further process. The ethanol yield on a field is 2,000 to 3,500 litres/ha, which about equals to 1,300 to 2,250 litres of petrol (using data from here and here). For an average truck that carries the grass from a farm to refinery, the fuel supports it to run for 860 to 1,500 kilometres (using 2005 data from here). There was not an estimate of farm-refinery data that I can find, but this report claims that local food travels on average 56 miles to reach institutional market, convert this to kilometres and times 2, the travel from a refinery to a farm and back along takes about 180 kilometres. This part was not calculated in the model used to calculate net energy yields. Considering that the bio-fuel production is very distributed, it is necessary to incorporate this into the analysis. If the switchgrass is really grown on marginal land, it is very possible that the collector will need to travel more miles before obtaining adequate amount of raw materials for production.
If the grass is grown in field scale, not on marginal land, problems for other bio-fuel plants also exist: investment of land and water, fertilizers and so on. Like all technology, it is dangerous if people are too obsessed and invest their land and money blindly on the switchgrass. With a similar unit area ethanol yield to corn, it still will take considerable land to make the production practical and profitable. The discovery itself is remarkable. But it will not be the single solution to energy problem in the US, nor should it become an excuse to put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Powered by ScribeFire.
