Lectures
Lecture #1
Overview of Current Understanding and Implications of Climate Change:
Life is dependent on the energy from the sun and cosmos in order to sustain itself. Life as we know it can be understood as a vast system through which the suns energy travels. These systems are both biological and geological. We harvest energy from both these systems in the form of food and fuel.
Energy; all energy is sun energy in some form, even fossil fuels, they are fossilized deposits of biological matter produced on the earth millions of years ago. They have been called our “ fossilized sunshine”.
Over the past 100 years our understanding of the earths climate has gone from one of a inexhaustible, static system beyond the realm of human alteration to a delicate, interconnected system that can be effected by the impact of human behavior. It is possible to look at the earth’s many systems as manners with which energy is transferred from one place to the next. An activity of our oceans and atmosphere is to exchange energy in the form of heat. This exchange creates the dynamic that is our weather.
Our species is defined by its relationship to energy. Prior to the 19th century
The main sources of energy were wood for cooking and heating, animals and
wind for transportation and human labor for agriculture and manufacturing.
The Modern era/Industrial age is fueled by petroleum and coal. The parallel events of the discovery of fossil fuels and the invention of engines are what have defined our civilization for the past 150years. The mechanics of engines are what give us access to the concentrated energy held by the fossil fuels. Supported by this highly concentrated form of solar energy the worlds human population has expanded extremely quickly.
It is valuable to look at the parallel increase in population that follows this access to energy.
Estimates of world population:
1750: 791 mill. , 1900: 1.6 bill. , Today: 6.6 bill. , 2100: 9.5 bill.
In 150 years between 1750 and 1900 it is estimated that world pop grew by 609 million.
In 107 years between 1900 and 2007 world pop has grown by 5 billion.
Energy Density: Coal has an energy density 75% greater than wood, oil has an energy density
50% greater than coal. So in 200 years we moved from wood to oil, a source of
energy125% denser
To return to the importance of engines: in order to access the energy stored in oil/coal, the substance needs to be burned. This burning does two things; it releases the energy and makes it available to perform work, like pushing a car around or boiling water to make steam for electricity production. And it produces smoke.
When carbon based fuels are burned the carbon locked inside them is released into the atmosphere, these with other manmade or anthropogenic gases (sulfur, methane, nitrous oxide, carbon tetra fluoride) remain in the atmosphere and have come to be termed “greenhouse gases” as they trap reflected solar radiation that would otherwise be released into space. This phenomenon was first identified by British scientist John Tyndell in1859. (coincidentally same year as 1st oil well)
A way of understanding CO2 PPM is to think of a cube of air that is comprised of 1mill. particles. The CO2 PPM number is how many of these particles that are made up of CO2. CO2 is reflective so the greater the PPM # the greater the reflectivity or heat trapping the atmosphere is.
The study of the history of the earth’s climate or “paleoclimatology” has focused since its origins in the mid 19th century around the puzzle of the cyclical nature of ice ages. The recurrence of ice ages over millennia had been recognized by people like Tyndell but what caused them was not well understood. There are many factors that appear to be connected to this cycle, solar variation, the wobbling of the earth’s axis and the presence of C02.
A paleoclimatologist named Lonnie Thompson who was pursuing CO2’s relationship to ancient changes in the earth’s temperature developed the technology and logistics capable of drilling through high altitude glaciers and looking at the air bubbles they contained, as they would show atmospheric conditions, as they were 1000’s of years ago.
The most recent of these cores were taken from the East Antarctic from a depth of 3.2 kilometers; the ice at this depth fell as snow 800,000 yrs ago.
These ice cores are the smoking gun that provide a clear scientifically reproducible correlation between the concentration of CO2 and the earths temperature.
More CO2 = hotter
Less CO2 = cooler
What is evident from the ice core record is that there has never been a period of high concentrations of co2 without a corresponding increase in temperature
While contested as biased the source of this “hockey stick” slide made famous by Al Gore’s film as actually from various US Government websites produced during the Bush administration, chiefly NOAA and the EPA.
That CO2 is the chief cause of planetary warming is what has been under debate for the past 20 years. Some of this has been a debate among the scientific community. A great deal of it though has been a debate generated from the enormous economic and political consequences of a necessary withdrawal from a fossil fuel based economy.
This is an incredibly controversial subject. You will find a wide range of opinions, predictions and scenarios, they will range from ones that see climate change as beneficial in that there will be greater crop yields and a stimulus to scientific and industrial processes to the apocalyptic, ones that state that we are done as a species and there is nothing that can avert extinction of ourselves and most everything else.
For the purposes of sanity and this class we will try and stay to the middle road.
The middle road though is still very bad.
There is now a profound scientific consensus. In 2007 the IPCC, a UN chartered organization released its 4th assessment report. This report is comprised of peer-reviewed findings of 2,500 scientists from 130 countries.
“ Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average of air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising average sea level.”
IPCC 4th report summary NOV 2007
We are now entering an age that is beyond the highest concentration of CO2 in the planets observable history.
The present concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is approximately 387 ppm.
When I first began giving this lecture the amount was 380ppm.
The IPCC states that there is a 90% certainty that manmade CO2 in the atmosphere is the strongest driver of atmospheric changes in 10,000 years. We can now understand ourselves as a force of nature.
What will happen?
This is now an enormous field of study and industry. The need to understand, predict and prepare for the impact of a warming world have engulfed scientists, economists, agriculturalists, world health and disease community, disaster relief agencies, engineering and architecture, and of course art and design.
A warmer atmosphere has consequences that are not fully understood or entirely predictable. (One good consequence of this so far is that in trying to understand CC we are learning a great deal more about the interconnected nature of our world.)
James Hansen of the Goddard Space Flight Institute has stated that the field of Climate Change has gone from one of “predictive science to the observable.”
So, as energy from the sun is trapped by the earth’s atmosphere this energy expresses itself in the form of heat. This is now causes several observable phenomena
This includes:
Sea level rise: as the planet heats the glaciers and polar regions melt, also oceans expand as they become warmer. This affects everything from the flow of ocean currents, the life inhabiting the oceans to the majority of the world’s population that inhabits the coastal areas.
Hurricanes: a 2009 study conducted by the National Science Foundation and published in the journal Nature finds that hurricane activity has increased in both frequency and strength and is at its “highest level in 1,000 years”
Drought and flood: warmer land and sea surface cause greater evaporation rates that cause both droughts in equatorial regions and greater rainfall in higher latitudes. This has a myriad of repercussions from a decreasing water supply in arid areas, stresses on indigenous and agricultural plant species, animal migrations and human refugees.
Species loss: the earths climate is changing faster than species can adapt, predictions for many species and the food chain they are part of is very dire.
Every single study performed on animal species over the past one hundred years has generated results of stress and depletion.
The most recent IPCC report has stated that we are committed to 2-4 feet of sea level rise and 8-10 F degree increase in temperature by the end of the century. The IPCC findings state that this will result in over 70 million refugees.
Seen through an economic lens the cost of coping with such numbers of refugees and the loss of land could cripple even major nations.
I mentioned earlier that the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 387 the next important figure is 450. It is at this level that there is no historical precedent but computer modeling indicates a state of runaway climate change that is difficult for anyone to imagine our civilization continuing in.
We are on a path to reach that level sometime in the next 50 – 100 years.
It is now considered that in order for the atmosphere to remain stable a level of 350ppm must be reached, to do this we need to lower the amount of globally emitted CO2 by 90% by 2050.
What is also understood is that is that we don’t have 50-100 years to act. It takes awhile for the CO2 to reach the upper atmosphere. It also takes awhile to alter the industrial and social fabric of society. In modeling this, the scientific majority first led by James Hansen the Director of the Goddard Institute, the IPCC and now NASA to state in 2007 that we have approximately ten years before we are committed to passing this “tipping point”.
So, according to this timeline we now have 7 years remaining.
Very, very dire.
This is a global problem. It is important to note that the carbon in the atmosphere was put there over the past 100 years primarily by the US and to a lesser degree Europe and former USSR. China and India now have the fastest growing populations and economies, with China now leading the world in CO2 output.
We are on converging paths of crisis. No significant, easily accessible deposits of petroleum have been found in over 40 years. What is known to remain is either technically difficult or politically dangerous to obtain. Its horizon as an available source of energy can now be seen.
Concurrent with this are very serious threats to marine and terrestrial biological systems.
This completely overwhelming dilemma is now defining our current era. How we respond is defining our future.
It is also the focus of this class.
We will look at the range of problems and solutions from the individual to the global. We will look at how the fields of art and design are responding to this situation. We will discuss the possibility of our civilizations realigning its relationship to the planet. We will discuss how we consume its energy and manage our waste. We will study the potential of replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources and look at innovations in designing industrial and social systems that will both mitigate the causes of climate change and adapt to its unavoidable consequences.
Lecture #2
Overview of Solutions
Samuel F. B. Morse electrically transmitted his famous message “What hath God wrought?” from Washington to Baltimore on May 24, 1844,
This can be seen as the beginning of the information age. An age when the “work” produced through the burning of fossil fuels is also the transportation and impacts of information.
To review the primary producers of GHG’s are Electricity (manufacturing residential and commercial),Transportation, De-Forestation, Agriculture and Waste.
But we must look at more. What is an ecology?
Ecology (from Greek: οἶκος, oikos, “house, household, housekeeping, or living relations” ; -λογία, -logia, “study of”) is the interdisciplinary scientific study of life processes explaining adaptations, external relations and interaction among organisms, the flux of materials and energy through living communities, the successional development of ecosystems, and the abundance and distribution of biodiversity in context of the environment.[1][2][3]
or
the branch of biology concerned with the relations between organisms and their environment wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
In 1965 James Lovelock proposed the “Gaia Hypothosis”, now regarded as a scientific theory this set of ideas asks us to regard biological life as a vast interconnected organism that “Maintains the climactic and biochemical conditions on earth”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis
With this understanding we have the opportunity to view our own culture in the same manner. We are a single ecology made up of not only our use of our environmental but also of our social structures,laws, distribution of wealth and resources. As we are utterly dependent on our surroundings the manner in which we effect them can be regarded as our ecological health.
Poverty, crime, Penal system, hunger and concenetrations of disease.
Dissparity between global North and global South.
A sustainable environment and a sustainable society are completely interdependent
In 1987 the Brundtland Commission
Coined the term “sustainable development” as one that
“meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Another way of looking at the term sustainability is that if a process or system is truly sustainable it can be continued indefinitely, and by indefinitely it is meant indefinitely or….forever.
It is actually a very beautiful and highly esthetic way of looking at and interacting with our world.
Replaceing unsustainable systems with sustainable ones will need to be engaged in a vertical manner. That is from the opaque movements of the global energy industry to the motivation of an international political will to the way you and I eat breakfast.
- Individual
- Local
- National
- Global
The global and the local.
Two of the key terms you should know are Mitigation and Adaptation.
Mitigation is the pursuit of ending greenhouse gas emissions.
Or more broadly the ending or cessation of unsustainable practices.
Adaptation is the development of systems that are designed in accordance to the unavoidable ecological changes due both evident and predicted.
This opens up a vast area of human enterprise. Some see it as the economy, industry and cultural fabric of our time. It will involve science, technology, behavior change and most importantly political will.
Already there is an great deal of engagement with solutions. As this situation has been recognized by some segments of society for some time there has been a development of design, technology and thinking that is already in place. There is a growing recognition of successful indigionous practices as well as an observance of natural systems with which to base design and behavior on. We are also in possession of highly sophisticated technology and chemistry. And we are also in possession of our imaginations.
-Art
(- Social Practice )
- Design
What is behavior change? How does it happen? Why doesn’t it happen?
Can we imagine beyond apparent conventions?
Lecture #3 –
Life Cycle Analysis / Individual Carbon Footprint
Overview of LCA > carbon footprint calculator > estimated averages for climate stabilization
All activity depends upon energy
If energy is from fossil fuels
Energy = co2
Footprint: An understanding that what we do, what we use, what we eat is dependent on energy. In a fossil fuel based society, this release of energy will come with a corresponding emission of CO2.
So all actions, products, consumables come with a Carbon Footprint which is the amount of CO2 that has been emitted in order for that activity, product to take place.
A carbon footprint is often expressed as tons of carbon dioxide or tons of carbon emitted, usually on a yearly basis.
Growing awareness that this needs to be part of intrinsic understanding of all materials, products and activities
This is useful not only on a industrial scale but also in a smaller business scale and on a individual behavioral scale
How is this done? LCA, embodied energy and footprint assessments
Overview of LCA> embodied energy>
A carbon footprint is the specific measurement of the co2 emissions of a given system/action
NZ apple, CA strawberry, CSA squash
( primary causes for deforestation ere : commercial logging/timber, land clearing for cattle ranching, ie hamburgers and soy/corn production)
Why is this important?
It is estimated that in order for the climate to remain stable global co2 emissions cannot go over 9 bill tons per year
(9 gigatonnes).
We are currently at 9.4 and increasing at an exponential rate.
The average US per capita co2 emissions per year is around 20 tonnes. The global average is 4.5
If we were to return to 9 billion tonnes under today’s conditions and distribute global energy consumption equally the world per capita average will need to be about 1.75 tons.
CO2 is a pressing and dire issue but the bad news is that it is really a signal of a greater problem caused by our impact on the planet.
It is possible to get an estimate of the earths Biocapacity, which is the amount of productive cropland, fisheries, forests and freshwater , it is also possible to get an estimate of the total ecological footprint which is the amount we consume of the biocapacity, it is then also possible to get an estimate of how much of the biocapacity is being regenerated each year
The current estimate is that we are exceeding the biocapacity by 22 percent.
Lecture #4
CARBON CYCLE
Q. What is Carbon?
A. Carbon is the 4th most abundant element in the universe
Hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon
Q. Where did it come from?
A. Comes from meteorites that bombarded the planet as it was forming billions of years ago
Q. What does it do?
A. Carbon anchors all organic substances, it is a polomer, it binds things together, forms chains, helps things get organized, is basis for all life
Carbon plus hydrogen make hydrocarbons, equals fossil fuels equals crude oil, gasoline,kerosene
When combined with oxygen and hydrogen, carbon can form many groups of important biological compounds including sugars, celluloses, lignans, chitins, alcohols, fats, and aromatic esters. With nitrogen it forms alkaloids, and with the addition of sulfur also it forms antibiotics, amino acids and proteins. With the addition of phosphorus to these other elements, it forms DNA and RNA, the chemical codes of life.
Makes hardest material and softest, diamond and graphite
Q. Where is it found?
A. It is found in all living things, also in the atmosphere and in limestone layers in ocean also in all fossil fuels (coal,oil)
Q. What is CO2?
A. Carbon plus oxygen make carbon dioxide, Co2 is essential for biological life
Q. What does CO2 in the atmosphere do?
A. Our atmosphere is the envelope around our planet where energy from the sun is temporarily stored, giving us the temperatures necessary for life. Co2 along with methane and water vapor are termed greenhouse gases as they are semi opaque gases that allow for the suns energy in the form of visible light to enter the atmosphere but partially block it after it bounces off the earth’s surface in the form of heat. The balance of what is allowed into the atmosphere and the amount that is allowed back out is what determines the atmospheres temperature. In particular the Lower Atmosphere where we live. The higher concentration of greenhouse gases, the more heat confined to the atmosphere.
Q. What is the “Carbon cycle”?
A. With our current understanding of the earth’s dynamics the carbon cycle is the way that we observe carbon cycling through the planets interconnected systems.
The total cycle has within it two systems that operate at different time scales, these are the Geological and the Biological.
Geological Carbon Cycle: millions of years
Carbon is present from the forming of the planet, (bombarding meteorites) H2o and CO2 in the atmosphere form to make a weak acid that releases the carbon from exposed rock and washes it into the ocean where it settles onto the seabed. With the movement of the earth’s crust it is then drawn back into the earth’s mantle through subduction, where it becomes magma, through volcanic eruptions is released again as CO2, volcanic gas and lava. This system regulates amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide which in turn contributes to the regulation of the earth’s temperature. Over the course of the earth’s history this cycle has varied in intensity , this variable is thought to be a contributing factor in the oscillation of ice ages and periods of warming or deglaciation
Biological: days,thousands of years,
photosynthesis is the foundation of the biological carbon cycle system, through photosynthesis plants combine solar energy and co2 into sugars or carbo hydrates, this is the energy of cell division…growth
the “burning” of these carbohydrates is called respiration through which CO2 is released back into the atmosphere.
It is biologically fixed CO2
Plants inhale and exhale CO2, but far greater percentage of the CO2 is sequestered in the biological cycle by being stored in living and dead plant matter, roots, in the soil, eaten by animals (us) – in the oceans CO2 is stored in phytoplankton, clamshells these settle to bottom and form limestone, sediments,fossil fuels this is one place where the biological and the geological carbon cycles interconnect
Photosynthesis and respiration provide both a daily and annual fluctuation in co2 levels
We can look at both the biological and geological as a vast unified carbon regulator, a system the absorbs and releases carbon at different rates over different periods of time,
all things store carbon for differing lengths,
our bodies are a type of temporary CO2 containers
Carbon Sinks – places where co2 is stored for either a temporary or indefinite period of time,
Plants, algae and forests store CO2 through photosynthesis
Oceans store CO2 through absorbtion
The soil, grasslands and deserts are also important carbon sinks
Oceans are by far the greatest absorbers of atmospheric CO2
They accomplish this through the exchange of warm and cold water
As warm surface water travels from the equators to the poles it cools and sinks to deeper depths, this deep cold water then circulates back to the equators and rises as it warms
CO2 is absorbed by the cold descending water and is held there or deposited on the ocean floor
Some of the CO2 remains desolved in the seawater and is then released again into the atmosphere as it warms at lower latitudes
Forests and plants are important carbon sinks though they operate on the biological time scale.
In trees the differential rate of carbon absorbtion through photosynthesis to carbon release through respiration changes over lifetime of tree, at first a majority of carbon is retained as it is fixed to generate growth of tree, as growth slows down and tree begins to loose branches and roots it returns more carbon through decompostion, eventually after tree falls it becomes a net carbon emittor.
Forest fires release all carbon stored in tree, good when naturally occurring because makes way for new forest growth that will take up greater amount on co2, bad when clearing for agriculture because no new forest is allowed to grow and ranching use is huge carbon emmitter
This is why rainforest loss is so critical to CC
Eastern US forest regeneration as carbon sink
Missing carbon mystery, the amount of carbon emitted over past century is far greater than scientists have been able to find, where is it? Ocean? Oak tree roots? Deserts?
This is important because systems can become saturated thereby greatly increasing carbon level in atmosphere
In fact recent studies have indicated that the oceans are absorbing carbon at a slower rate causing some scientists to speculate they they may be reaching their capacity
Anthropogenic carbon – the carbon released into the atmosphere through the activities of Man
We are a force of nature
We are adding 80 billion tons of CO2 per year into the atmosphere and this level is rising
This is the use of the suns fossilized energy in the form of coal oil and gas to provide power for industry, transportation, heating and light.
What has occurred is that we have entered into both the biological and geological carbon cycles and have brought about a massive shift in the distribution and storing of carbon. The carbon in the geological cycle that would otherwise be stored underground for millions of years is prematurely released into the atmosphere by our mining and burning of fossil fuels.
Likewise the carbon in the biological cycle that is stored in trees and soil has been massively released through deforestation and agriculture.
Our task, as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has worded it is to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions”at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”
Or how to find balance, equilibrium, an equity with our planet.
Some sources:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/CarbonCycle/
http://www.harpers.org/TheOilWeEat.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/95report/chap7.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1.shtml
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange1/02_1.shtml
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/thc_fact_sheet.html
http://science.hq.nasa.gov/oceans/system/carbon.html
