Can we share our planet with wildlife?

Monty Don, Shared Planet, BBC Radio 4

Our environment provides us with amazing resources. As well as the obvious things like food, wood and water, it provides services like pollination, climate regulation and waste decomposition. However we are putting our delicate ecosystem out of balance by destroying habitats, over-exploiting animals and plants, polluting the air and rivers and causing climate change at a rate that hasn't been seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Last week the Cabot Institute hosted a debate for BBC Radio 4's Shared Planet programme, asking whether we can better manage resources to live within our planet's means, or whether there are simply too many of us to co-exist with wildlife.

Fred Pearce

Fred Pearce, science and environment writer, was one of the panellists. He argued that nature is dynamic and with better management of the resources we already have, we can reduce our consumption and live within the planet's ability to recover.

Kieran Suckling

Kieran Suckling, Executive Director of the Center for Biological Diversity in Arizona, had a more pessimistic view. He believes that the human population is going to rise to a level far greater than the planet can sustain, and if we do not control our population level we will not be able to prevent ecological destruction on a global scale.





Global Extinctions
We are losing biodiversiy at an unprecedented rate. The 2012 Living Planet Report by the WWF estimated that we lost 28% of global biodiversity between 1970 and 2008. Fred took a more holistic view, that while of course we have a huge effect on the natural environment and should try and minimise damage, nature is resilient and will fight back. Foxes invading urban environments, weeds in a garden and rainforests' ability to regrow in 15 years show that nature isn't as fragile as we think. Animals and plants that depend on very specific environments are likely to be more at risk than more generalist species however and Kieran argued that we have an "ethical responsibility" to keep all remaining species alive.

How can we feed everyone sustainably?

Riau deforestation for oil palm plantation
Image by Aidenvironment, 2006

Every day around 870 million people do not get enough food. How can we hope to feed a predicted 9.6 billion people by 2050 whilst growing food more sustainably? Suckling described how industrial agricultural practices are highly damaging to the environment, for example pesticides which probably have a severe impact on bees. He argued that organic farms are unlikely to provide enough food for the growing population.

Globally, 19% of forests are protected, but rising demand for fuel and agricultural land means we are losing 80,000 acres of rainforest each day and probably 50,000 species of animals and plants every year. The good news, Pearce said, is that that we already produce enough food to feed the predicted 9 billion people, although we waste enough for 3 billion. Recent reports showed that 15 million tonnes of food is thrown away in the UK each year. He argued that we should be encouraged by the notion that "we can reduce our footprint just by being more economical". The real challenge is how to make people understand that food waste is both socially and environmentally unethical.

Education
Fred mentioned that overall women are having half the number of children that their mothers had. This is in part thanks to medical advances, meaning that most children will survive to adulthood so fewer births are needed to build a family. It is also an education success story. Both the panellists agreed that "when education and freedom levels rise, the population starts to grow more slowly". Opportunities for women to educate themselves will be critical in changing gender stereotypes and reducing the numbers of unwanted pregnancies. This is good news for human rights as well as managing our growing population's impact on the environment.

"It would cost $76bn annually to protect
the environment - which is 20% of money
spent on soft drinks each year."
Image from bringdrink.com

Economics
The environment provides $33 trillion of benefit to us every year by pollinating crops, purifying water, cycling nutrients and keeping our climate stable. It would cost an estimated $76 billion annually to protect the environment, which is only about 20% of the money spent on soft drinks each year. Fred believes that putting a true price on economic resources and the cost of carbon emissions means that simple economics could solve the problem of environmental degradation by showing businesses that conservation is the less costly option. Kieran disagreed, arguing that both environmental and social problems stem from a capitalist consumer society. As the WWF Living Planet Report stated, "in too many cases, the over-exploitation of resources and damage or destruction of ecosystems are highly profitable for a few stakeholders in the short term". Businesses and politicians work on too short a time scale to care about the long-term effects of environmental degradation.

So are there too many people for wildlife to thrive?
The debate ventured into the ethical question of whether animals and the environment should have the same right to live as humans. Does sustainable living have to be an "us versus them" question? Fred took a humanist view, but argued that we as a species need the services that nature provides. Kieran argued that we must not simply steal the most resources we can get away with, but live sustainably with other species.

Before the debate I believed that there are too many people on the planet for wildlife to flourish and at the end I would probably say I still felt the same way, however Fred managed to instil a bigger sense of hope in me. If governments really do get their acts together and we as a global population get our wasteful consumerism under control, we can turn the tides and make this a better world for both people and the wildlife we share it with.

If you would like to listen to the Shared Planet programme, it will be aired on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 24 December 2013 at 11 am.

This blog is written by Sarah Jose, Biological Sciences, University of Bristol

You can follow Sarah on Twitter @JoseSci

Sarah Jose

Global carbon budget reveals dangerous footprints

Carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas produced by human activities, and one which is likely to cause significant global climate change if levels continue to increase at the current rates. This year's Global Carbon Budget holds disappointing yet hardly unexpected news; in 2012, carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions rose by 2.1% to the highest levels in human history, a total of 9.7 billion tonnes.

CDIAC Data; Le Quiere et al 2013.  Global Carbon Project 2013. Data not adjusted for leap year.

The annual Carbon Budget report is compiled by the Global Carbon Project, a collaboration of 77 scientists from around the world including the Cabot Institute's own Dr Jo House. They predict that in 2013, global carbon emissions will have increased by a further 2.1%, setting a new record high.

Major CO₂ emitters

China produced the most CO₂ in 2012 (27% of total), which was almost twice as much as the second worst offender, the USA (14%). The European Union (EU) contributed 10% of emissions. China's emissions increased 5.9% between 2011 and 2012, whilst the USA and EU continued to decrease their CO₂ output (by 3.7% and 1.3% respectively). 

CDIAC Data; Le Quiere et al 2013.  Global Carbon Project 2013.

While developing nations like China and India have high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, it is important to note that per capita the USA has by far the highest emission rate at 4.4 tonnes of carbon per person per year (tC/p/yr). China has reached EU levels of 1.9 tC/p/yr, while India produces just 0.5tC/p/yr. Since the Industrial Revolution the USA and Europe still have the highest cumulative output of CO₂ from burning fossil fuels, something to consider before we become too self-righteous.

CDIAC Data; Le Quiere et al 2013.  Global Carbon Project 2013.

Carbon sinks

Image by Manfred Heyde

Increased CO₂ emissions are absorbed by carbon sinks, specifically the atmosphere, the oceans and the land. On land, trees and other plants absorb around 27% of emitted CO₂ for photosynthesis, which results in more growth and eventually more carbon stored as leaf litter in the soil.

In the oceans, algae may absorb some CO₂ for photosynthesis (although not as much as was once hoped), but the water itself absorbs most of the 27% of CO₂ stored in the oceans. Unfortunately when carbon dioxide dissolves in water it can react to form carbonic acid, a leading cause of ocean acidification. Since the Industrial Revolution, oceans have become approximately 30% more acidic. If present trends continue, oceans will be 170% more acidic by 2100, a devastating change for shellfish and corals which rely on an alkaline calcium carbonate exoskeleton, and the other marine life that depend on these species.

The atmosphere absorbs the remaining 45% of CO₂ emissions. Over the past 250 years the atmospheric CO₂ concentration has risen from 227 parts per million (ppm) to an average of 393ppm in 2012.  Back in May, the first CO2 reading of 400ppm was recorded, a significant milestone in the relentlessly increasing greenhouse gas levels. We are now on track to see a ‘likely’ 3.2-5.4°C increase in global temperature by 2100, causing severe droughts and desertification of agricultural land around the world and flooding of low lying coastal areas.

The Kyoto protocol

In 1992, 37 industrialised countries agreed to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by an average of 5% below 1990 levels during the period of 2008 to 2012. The Global Carbon Budget reported that whilst some regions such as Europe did reduce their CO₂ output, other areas (eg. Asia, Africa, Middle East) doubled or even tripled their emissions, resulting in a net gain of 58% more CO₂ emissions in 2012 than in 1990.

The biggest CO₂ emitter, China, recently joined almost 200 other countries in agreeing to sign the pledge to reduce their carbon emissions at a summit in Paris in 2015. It is hoped that this climate change summit will follow on from the work started by the Kyoto protocol to reduce CO₂ emissions to a more sustainable level.

What's your carbon footprint?

We are at a critical stage in history. The Global Carbon Budget suggests that we have already produced 70% of the carbon dioxide it is possible to emit without causing a significant and irreversible change to the planet's climate. It is vital that all nations work together to reduce carbon emissions to a sustainable level, preventing a 2°C increase in global temperature.

If you would like to calculate your carbon footprint, visit the government's carbon calculator. 

This blog is written by Sarah Jose, Biological Sciences, University of Bristol

You can follow Sarah on Twitter @JoseSci

Sarah Jose

35 years monitoring the changing composition of our atmosphere

I work on an experiment that began when the Bee Gees’ Stayin’ Alive was at the top of the charts. The project is called AGAGE, the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment, and I’m here in Boston, Massachusetts celebrating its 35-year anniversary. AGAGE began life in 1978 as the Atmospheric Lifetimes Experiment, ALE, and has been making high-frequency, high-precision measurements of atmospheric trace gases ever since.

At the time of its inception, the world had suddenly become aware of the potential dangers associated with CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons). What were previously thought to be harmless refrigerants and aerosol propellants were found to have a damaging influence on stratospheric ozone, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. The discovery of this ozone-depletion process was made by Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland, for which they, and Paul Crutzen, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995. However, Molina and Rowland were not sure how long CFCs would persist in the atmosphere, and so ALE, under the leadership of Prof. Ron Prinn (MIT) and collaborators around the world, was devised to test whether we’d be burdened with CFCs in our atmosphere for years, decades or centuries.

Fig 1. The AGAGE network

ALE monitored the concentration of CFCs, and other ozone depleting substances, at five sites chosen for their relatively “unpolluted” air (including the west coast of Ireland station which is now run by Prof. Simon O’Doherty here at the University of Bristol). The idea was that if we could measure the increasing concentration of these gases in the air, then, when combined with estimates of the global emission rate, we would be able to determine how rapidly natural processes in the atmosphere were removing them.

Fig 2. Mace Head station on the West coast of Ireland

Thanks in part to these measurements, we now know that CFCs will only be removed from the atmosphere over tens to hundreds of years, meaning that the recovery of stratospheric ozone and the famous ozone “hole” will take several generations. However, over the years, ALE, and now AGAGE, have identified a more positive story relating to atmospheric CFCs: the effectiveness of international agreements to limit gas emissions.

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was agreed upon after the problems associated with CFCs were recognised. It was agreed that CFC use would be phased-out in developed countries first, and developing countries after a delay of a few years. The effects were seen very rapidly. For some of the shorter-lived compounds, such as methyl chloroform (shown in the figure), AGAGE measurements show that global concentrations began to drop within 5 years of the 1987 ratification of the Protocol. 

Figure 3. Concentrations of methyl chloroform, a substance banned under the Montreal Protocol, measured at four AGAGE stations.

Over time, the focus of AGAGE has shifted. As the most severe consequences of stratospheric ozone depletion look like they’ve been avoided, we’re now more acutely aware of the impact of “greenhouse” gases on the Earth’s climate. In response, AGAGE has developed new techniques that can measure over 40 compounds that are warming the surface of the planet. These measurements are showing some remarkable things, such as the rapid growth of HFCs, which are replacements for CFCs that have an unfortunate global-warming side effect, or the strange fluctuations in atmospheric methane concentrations, which looked like they’d plateaued in 1999, but are now growing rapidly again.

The meeting of AGAGE team members this year has been a reminder of how important this type of meticulous long-term monitoring is. It’s also a great example of international scientific collaboration, with representatives attending from the USA, UK, South Korea, Australia, Switzerland, Norway and Italy. Without the remarkable record that these scientists have compiled, we’d be much less informed about the changing composition of the atmosphere, more unsure about the lifetimes of CFCs and other ozone depleting substances, and unclear as to the exact concentrations and emissions rates of some potent greenhouse gases. I’m looking forward to the insights we’ll gain from the next 35 years of AGAGE measurements!

This blog was written by Dr Matt Rigby, Atmospheric Chemistry Research Group, University of Bristol.

Matt Rigby

Making decisions in an environmentally uncertain world

Improved decision making in the face of environmental uncertainty is at the heart of the Cabot Institute. Although individuals, businesses and society aspire to make logical decisions, informed by evidence and wisdom, we are also influenced by a complex mixture of emotions, ethics, political opportunism and personal beliefs.  These murky waters become even more challenging to navigate when dealing with the inherent uncertainty in the basic evidence.  And it becomes almost impossible when pre-conceived beliefs and opinions replace evidence.  In such scenarios, uncertainty can be manipulated as a tool to undermine evidence and justify flawed decisions.  This is the particular challenge of decision making in the context of complex environmental, economic and ecological issues.

To a scientist confronted with evidence that human activity is changing our environment at unprecedented rates, it is apparent that environmental uncertainty is rarely appropriately deployed in policy making.  Most perniciously, it is commonly argued that the risk of an action (i.e. loss of biodiversity or increasing CO2 emissions) could be at the low end of the probability distribution – ‘the temperature might not warm that much’, ‘we might not get more hurricanes’.  That is not proper governance; that is hiding behind uncertainty and hoping for the best.  Nor is it appropriate to govern based on the worst-case scenario.  But nor can we govern by solely considering the most likely outcome.  We must recognise the range of possibilities and plan within it – strategically, flexibly, resiliently.  In other words, the uncertainty brought about by ongoing environmental change is itself a profound cause for concern and a challenge for governance.

However, environmental uncertainty is not an opaque label for things ‘we do not understand’ and by an extension it is not a cause for inaction.

Rich Pancost's old farm, US Midwest

I grew up on a farm in the US Midwest and so environmental uncertainty to me mainly concerns our food and the people who provide it.   Anyone who has ever been involved in farming understands how uncertain our environment can be. And they understand how undermining and economically challenging that uncertainty is, especially with respect to the weather (weather is not the same as climate, but it makes for a useful environmental analogy).

We had about 30 head of cattle on our small Ohio dairy farm , and my brother, parents and I needed to put aside 4000 bales of hay every summer. I loved that job – I remember the smell of drying hay and the fat bumble bees buzzing in the clover. I remember being with my family, the satisfaction of completed work and the closeness that came from achieving things together. But it was hard and uncertain work, my father cutting the grass, raking it and baling it, quickly over successive hot days so that it would dry before a summer rain shower could strip away the nutrients. Or worse: before an extended few days of rain saturated the mowed hay on the ground, causing it to become fungus-ridden and rotting it away in the field.  We could work with a prediction of rain and we could work with a prediction of no rain or even drought.  But we could not work with an overly uncertain prediction.  Even worse were wrong (i.e. overly certain) predictions.  We navigated the probabilistic terrain of the daily weather forecasts somewhat by instinct, but the stakes were high, and just three or four bad decisions in a summer would have been financially catastrophic.  The farm is long gone but my Mom is still addicted to the weather reports.

The barn

But uncertainty does not mean paralysis; it means risk management.  We mitigated the risk of wasted crop by renting and working fields that could yield 4500 bales rather than 4000.  And those 4000 bales of hay were themselves, risk management, exceeding our likely needs.  Gathering the bales and storing them in our barn’s loft was hard, sticky, hot and gritty work.  The hay was delivered to the loft by a metal elevator – metal plates carried by metal chains up a metal chute, all powered by our forty-year old International Harvester tractor’s power take-off shaft.  I loved doing this work on the farm – its physicality and the stimulus of all of your senses – but I do not miss that tremendous rattling, clanging noise!  The loft itself could reach temperatures of 110°F and was filled with clouds of dust and darting, irritated wasps.  Our necks would burn and our forearms would be filled with tiny splinters of hay.

We worked hard and put away 4000 bales each summer even though we would probably only need 3500, because we had to err on the side of caution in case there was an early winter. Or a long winter.

That is environmental uncertainty – and risk management – to me.  Cutting the hay when the forecast predicts a 35% chance of rain and watching 400 bales of alfalfa rot in the field.  Renting more land than we would likely need. Working 20% harder than necessary – just in case.

All of us understand this, whether it be maintaining the garden, managing the allotment or planning a holiday. This is part of human history: sound, profitable, secure decision-making has always required a confrontation with environmental uncertainty; consequently, almost all societies have strived to mitigate risks by understanding the environment, managing essential resources, and building up our own resilience.

From IPCC 2013, Working Group 1

What is disturbing and unique about the 21st century is that we are no longing mitigating environmental uncertainty but instead, we are very rapidly increasing it. We are changing our planet and where and how we live upon it.  Increasing carbon dioxide emissions might warm the planet by 1.5°C.  Or 3°C.  Or 5°C.   Such warming will probably cause the Southwest of England to have wetter summers and the great food-supplying regions of the American Midwest to become drier.  But there is a probability that the opposite will happen.  How does the small farmer plan?  For that matter, how does the huge international agritech firm plan? I would argue that the greatest challenge posed by our changing environment is not how much the Earth warms but the uncertainty in how much it will warm and the uncertainty associated with the consequences of that warming. Planning for our future – perhaps for the first time in human history – is actually becoming more uncertain every year.

But we are also learning much more about ourselves and our environment, and this perhaps makes the future a bit more certain than it might otherwise be.  Currently the Met Office is improving our prediction tools and tailoring specific advice to farmers; engineers are learning how we might mitigate or even adapt to this uncertainty; and we are developing methods to limit our dependence on fossil fuel and thus the associated climate change.  And we are learning how to make sound decisions in the face of it. To achieve these objectives, the Cabot Institute and similar entities are bringing together a wide variety of scientists, social scientists, managers and engineers, all of whom share expertise with the community and industry.  That expertise includes those who deal specifically with quantifying uncertainty, the underlying psychology and sociology of decision making, and the clash of ethical and pragmatic ideas that inform policy making.  The world’s population is growing and with it our basic food, water and energy needs; to provide for those needs, we must make our future more certain but also more resilient and adaptable.

This blog was written by Professor Rich Pancost, Cabot Institute Director, University of Bristol

Prof Rich Pancost

Who is responsible for communicating environmental science?

On the evening of 28 October journalists, broadcasters, scientists and NGO’s came together in the House of Commons with the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group (APPCCG) to discuss a report launched by the International Broadcasting trust entitled “The environment on TV: Are broadcasters meeting the challenge”.  The report aimed to investigate how well environmental issues and in particular climate change is communicated to the public.  The research combined quantitative analysis of current television material and qualitative analysis of interviews with range of broadcasters and producers. The report examines non-news television with an environmental theme broadcasted over a 12 month period between June 2012 and May 2013 across the mainstream TV channels (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky). A total of 394 hours of new environmental programming was shown over the studied period and 84% of this was broadcast at peak times (between 18.30 and 22.30). Natural history was shown to be a firm favourite, making up 160 hours however, climate change coverage did not even get one hour, why?

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and his Fish Fight

The report highlights that the main challenge is that the environment is perceived as a difficult theme for audiences to engage with, especially climate change. It is extremely difficult to present the problems facing the planet under climate change as a ‘local’ problem and as a result it is perceived as doom and gloom and something that you or I have no control over and therefore cannot influence. With this in mind, it is not the content which broadcasters are lacking, but the format for communicating the information to reluctant audiences. The key element to designing a TV programme is to get the narrative and story-telling to work, for example Hugh’s Fish Fight (Channel 4) successfully tackled the rather dry topic of EU fishing directives. Given the correct format, the audience engaged and 850,000 people signed up online to the ‘Fish Fight’ campaign and 42,000 tweets were sent over a 24-hour period to the country’s biggest supermarkets. So perhaps with the correct format audiences will engage with the topic of climate change?

The meeting saw a panel come together to give their reactions to the report findings, including Chris Rapley (Professor of Climate Science, University College London), Ralph Lee (Head of Factual, Channel 4), Bill Lyons (Executive Editor, Countryfile, BBC), Leo Hickman (Chief Advisor, Climate Change, WWF-UK and formerly at The Guardian), and Caroline Haydon (author of the report).

Chris Rapley

Chris Rapley provided a scientist’s prospective on the problem and stated that there can be a lack of connections between scientists and the media, making it difficult for scientist to gain an avenue toward public engagement through TV. In addition to this, scientists come to the job for the joy of discovering new things about how the world works but that does not mean that they are inherently good communicators to a non-science audience or can be creative and design a great TV format for their work. Therefore support is needed from producers and broadcasters to provide this link to the general public.

Audiences prefer soaps to documentaries.

Panel members representing the broadcasters had a slightly different view on the problem, with Bill Lyons suggesting that it was not part of a broadcaster’s remit to make sure that climate science is communicated to the public, and that to a certain extent it is the problem of the scientist to get their message heard. It was also highlighted that given the right format broadcasters would be happy to communicate climate science, but it has to be packaged in an appealing way for audiences. Ralph Lee suggested that a documentary focussed on climate change would not hold audience’s attention and that a new idea was needed to tackle the subject of climate change. In surveys of what people like to watch on TV, documentaries are always high on the wish-list, however viewing figures do not reflect this in reality, people like to watch TV for escapism and therefore the highest ratings go to reality TV and soap operas rather than hard-hitting documentaries! Perhaps we need a talent show contestant to stand up and sing a song about climate change or a soap character to get a sudden interest in recycling in order to make a widespread impact!!

In summary, the meeting showed that all were in general agreement that environmental issues and climate change were important subjects to communicate to the public, but much thinking is needed regarding the best way forward to achieve these aims. It seems that in order to engage the general public the issues need to be made local so that they feel that they are directly affected at that we are facing these issues now and not in 10 years time. I feel, given the debate that it should be seen as a joint responsibility between scientists and broadcasters to solve this problem. As a scientist I can provide data and other factual information, I can perhaps also provide a narrative, but links with broadcasters are key if the information is ever going to get directly into millions of people’s homes. I do believe that if we engage together then it is possible to find a mechanism to inspire ordinary people to act on difficult, intangible and sometimes unpopular issues such as climate change.

This blog has been written by Dr Charlotte Lloyd, Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol.

Dr Charlotte Lloyd

The opportunities for and limits of green growth in cities

Andrew Gouldson

Prof Andrew Gouldson of the University of Leeds ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics & Policy, came to visit the Cabot Institute on 10 October 2013 and gave a talk entitled Towards low carbon, climate resilent cities? The opportunities for and limits of green growth. Here I outline some of the key points made by Andrew and whether green growth is a viable way to grow the economies of cities whilst undertaking decarbonisation initiatives, using facts and figures taken from Andrew’s talk.

The emergence of green growth

There has been a rapid emergence of green growth over the last few years but there has also been a big debate around whether green growth is a valuable way to tackle climate change.  Andrew himself said that responses to climate change should be scientifically justified, socially supported, technologically possible, economically viable and politically acceptable.  It could be said that green growth really emerged from the publication of the infamous Stern Review which changed the political landscape on climate change.  The Stern Review, published in 2006, is the most widely known publication properly costing the impacts of climate change on the global economy.

Andrew pointed out that Stern’s work looked at the global scale whereas his research looks at the economic impact of climate change on the local or ‘city’ scale.   Andrew asked himself is there a similarly compelling economic rationale for action on climate change in cities?

Why cities?

Economics of low carbon cities report.
Image from Low Carbon Futures

There are several good reasons why we should be looking at economic impacts of climate change on cities.  Cities are home to over half of the world’s population, they are rapidly growing and 70% of GDP is generated in these big urban spaces.  Cities are also major growth poles and drivers for economic growth.  Any climate change impacts are going to be felt hard by the vast populations that live there.

With this in mind and the fact that cities account for 70% of global energy consumption, cities seemed a good place for Andrew and his team at Leeds to conduct a ‘mini Stern review’ resulting in the publication of a report called The economics of low carbon cities.  The city of Leeds was looked at as a starting point, but this initial report led to looking at other UK cities and now other cities around the globe including Kolkata in India. 

The economics of low carbon cities report has built a baseline that develops scenarios based on the continuation of current trends, for example, water use in the city. Realistic data is collected on costs, benefits and scope for the deployment of each carbon saving measure in a city.  For example, how many south facing roofs are there in the city which can be fitted with solar PV panels? How much would it cost to install the panels? What are the benefits and how much could be saved on energy bills?  This valuable information can be collected and presented to city councils to show them how they could decarbonise their city, and how householders could save on energy bills in the long run.

Case study: Birmingham

Birmingham city, image from Business Desk

In Birmingham, Andrew suggested that approximately £5.1 billion left the city economy in 2011 just from the payment of the energy bill.  If Birmingham invested £3.6 billion into green growth, this would cut energy bills by £950 million a year and would pay back investments in only four years.  This could potentially cut carbon by almost 11% (read the Birmingham report for more information).  Obviously much bigger carbon savings are to be had with more investment and by tackling the decarbonisation of the National Grid, increasing energy prices and utilising further cost-effective and cost-neutral measures within the city. 

Looking at energy use in the UK, it has actually decreased by 15% in the last 4 -5 years.  Two reasons could be the recession and rising energy costs.  Recently there have been announcements by energy companies to increase their energy bills even further, some by over 8%, and it is estimated that this increase could lead to a 22% cut in energy usage.  This is all good for decarbonisation targets but not good for energy justice.  This is why it is imperative that green growth receives investment in all UK cities so that having ways to save energy and produce your own energy are embedded into the structure of cities and people’s households.  This makes households more resilient to rises in energy prices.

Can we decarbonise cities in the next 10 – 20 years?

Future proofed city? Image from Dornob

There is definitely potential for green growth in cities however this will not happen unless institutions innovate and unlock the potential for decarbonisation and there is governance right from the start of early stage transitions.  It would be sensible to realise that green growth may only lead to partially decarbonised and mildly carbon resilient development in cities due to our current political and economic resources.  Andrew suggested the sobering conclusion that the benefits of green growth are likely to be eroded by continued growth and by on-going climate change and this is the crux of the limits to green growth.

Eventually as we transition our cities towards decarbonised goals, cities will have to be future proofed.  As Andrew pointed out, this means drastically changing their structure, function and efficiency.  It is up to us to create the future of cities by embracing decarbonisation and encouraging our local governments to invest in decarbonisation projects such as retrofitting and changing people’s behaviour.  As Andrew concluded, it’s no good having an A-rated home if there is an F-rated person living in it!

Listen again to Andrew Gouldson's talk.

This blog was written by Amanda Woodman-Hardy, Cabot Institute Administrator, University of Bristol.

Follow @Enviro_Mand

Amanda Woodman-Hardy

Bristol Green Doors: Measuring the impact of retrofitting

Energy has recently dominated the news, with headlines proclaiming that household costs (as well as company profits) are on the increase.  Overshadowed in this discussion are the environmental impacts:  over a quarter of the UK’s carbon emissions come from a domestic context, primarily through energy use.  Over the past decade, the field of HCI (human-computer interaction) has become increasingly concerned with issues of sustainability, and a number of researchers have chosen to focus on energy reduction strategies.  Many of these efforts have resulted in technology that aims to persuade the user to use less gas and electricity by providing them with personalised information, whether in the form of facts and figures (e.g. home energy portals) or through ambient displays like the Power Aware cord.

However, there is one method of reducing home energy use that has received little attention: retrofitting.  Installing measures such as double glazing, wall insulation, or a more efficient boiler can not only reduce carbon emissions, it can also reduce a household’s energy bills and make it more comfortable to live in.  Yet unlike the incremental behavioural changes tackled by persuasive technology, retrofitting is a one-time intervention in which the focus of energy saving shifts from an individual’s behaviour to the physical fabric of the building itself.  As a result, it sits at the curious intersection of sustainability through product consumption, requiring present expenditure for future monetary savings, and trades current disruption and inconvenience for the hope of future thermal comfort.  Retrofitting is further complicated by its very nature: there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Enter the community initiative Bristol Green Doors.  Founded in 2010, the organisation runs an eco-homes open house event approximately every 18 months.  Householders who have already installed retrofitting measures open their opens to the public to share their experience, the pros and cons of different measures, the benefits that the retrofitting has brought, or what they wish they had done differently.  This allows those who are interested in retrofitting to see the measures in action and learn more from trusted sources: their own neighbours.

Yet measuring the impact of such an event is difficult.  Anecdotally, there were indications that visitors would be inspired by the open weekend to contact local companies who provided retrofitting services, but no easy way of directly tracking activity back to the event.  Without this quantitative data, it is difficult for Bristol Green Doors to secure additional sponsors and become self supporting.  Dr. Chris Preist’s involvement as a Bristol Green Doors householder helped him identify that technology could play a role in bridging this gap, and a successful funding application allowed the Digital Green Doors project to proceed.

A series of brainstorming sessions were held with key stakeholders to determine what features would be most useful to both Bristol Green Doors visitors and to the organisation itself.  A number of intriguing ideas were put forward, with several chosen to be made into a smartphone application.  The Greendoors app was developed by researcher Daniel Schien around a basic mapping application that shows the location of the participating Bristol Green Doors houses.  Users can then delve further into the houses to learn what features each has installed, take notes on the individual houses, and some householders have agreed to be contacted by email after the event.  This allows visitors to get questions answered beyond the weekend itself.  Other features include being able to filter houses by measure and save houses to a shortlist, e.g. showing just the houses that the user plans to visit.

The final feature of the app is a QR code scanner, which the Digital Green Doors team has chosen to deploy in an unusual way.  QR codes are the square barcodes that have proliferated on advertisements and products.  QR typically stands for Quick Response, with a user scanning a code and their smartphone immediately linking to a website or displaying the encoded information.  However, in this case it’s a matter of “delayed response”.  A specific QR code was produced for each retrofitting measure in each Bristol Green Door house, and when scanned by the app it is saved to the user’s account.  This is then used to produce a personalised report of information about the measures the user is interested in, grouped by measure type to allow for easy comparison.  The report is in emailed to the user after the event.  In addition to providing a numeric view of each measure (i.e. the cost and the level of disruption as rated by the householder), the householders also share a few words of advice, such as this blurb about loft insulation:

“This measure is cheap yet effective.  Do spend the extra and use environmentally friendly insulation such as sheeps wool. Double up rafters to board out afterwards. We have topped this up further ourselves -- very simple so long as you follow the guidelines about leaving ventilation space at the eaves.”

The suppliers, products, and general sites of interest contained within the report are all hyperlinked.  The purpose of this is two-fold.  First, it intends to assist the user by giving them the information they want in one place, making it easier for them to conduct research about the measures they wish to install.  It is hoped that this will help turn intention to retrofit into action.  Second, by allowing basic tracking to occur via click throughs, it allows the initial goal of the project to be fulfilled by directly measuring interest that has occurred as a result of the event.  While it cannot yet determine whether a user has gone ahead with the purchase of a retrofitting measure, it is a step towards helping Bristol Green Doors become self supporting.  For the Digital Green Doors team, it allows research to be carried out on a novel way of using QR codes, and also allows retrofitting to be introduced to within the discipline of HCI by showing how it is possible to move beyond persuasion and behaviour change.

IKEA solar panels. Image from Witchdoctor.co.nz

It is too early to report on the effect of the app and the reports, but the initial responses have been positive.  This is encouraging news as it will allow the Greendoors app to be used at other eco-homes events in the future, with the possibility of a nationwide rollout.  With IKEA selling solar panels and now an app designed around retrofitting, it is hoped that the process of retrofitting, and its associated carbon reduction, will become more mainstream.

This blog is written by Dr Elaine Massung, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, University of Bristol.

Dr Elaine Massung

Measuring our world: Notes from the V.M. Goldschmidt Conference

Galileo Galilee

‘Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.’ - Galileo Galilee

Science is measuring.

Of course, it is about much more than measuring.  The scientific approach includes deduction, induction, lateral thinking and all of the other creative and logistical mechanisms by which we arrive at ideas. But what distinguishes the ideas of science from those of religion, philosophy or art is that they are expressed as testable hypotheses – and by testable hypotheses, scientists mean ideas that can be examined by observations or experiments that yield outcomes that can be measured.

Earth scientists use astonishingly diverse approaches to measure our world, from the submolecular to the planetary, from bacterial syntrophic interactions to the movement of continental plates. A particularly important aspect of observing the Earth system involves chemical reactions – the underlying processes that form rocks, fill the oceans and sustain life. The Goldschmidt Conference, held this year in Florence, is the annual highlight of innovations in geochemical methodologies and the new knowledge emerging from them. 

Geochemists reported advances in measuring the movement of electrons across nanowires, laid down by bacteria in soil like electricians lay down cables; the transitory release of toxic metals by microorganisms, daily emissions of methane from bogs, and annual emissions of carbon dioxide from the whole of the Earth; the history of life on Earth as recorded by the isotopes of rare metals archived in marine sediments; the chemical signatures in meteorites and the wavelengths of light emitted from distant solar nebulae, both helping us infer the building blocks from which our own planet was formed.

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The Goldschmidt Conference is often held in cities with profound cultural legacies, like that of Florence.  And although Florence’s legacy that is perhaps dominated by Michelangelo and Botticelli, Tuscany was also home to Galileo Galilee, and he and the Scientific Revolution are similarly linked to the Renaissance and Florence. Wandering through the Galileo Museum is a stunning reminder of how challenging it is to measure the world around us, how casually we take for granted many of these measurements and the ingenuity of those who first cracked the challenges of quantifying time or temperature or pressure.

And it is also exhilarating to imagine the thrill of those scientists as they developed new tools and turned them to the stars above us or the Earth beneath us.  Galileo’s own words tell  us how he felt when he pointed his telescope at Jupiter and discovered the satellites orbiting around it; and how those observations unlocked other insights and emboldened new hypotheses:

‘But what exceeds all wonders, I have discovered four new planets and observed their proper and particular motions, different among themselves and from the motions of all the other stars; and these new planets move about [Jupiter] like Venus and Mercury... move about the sun.’

The discoveries of the 21^st century are no less exciting, if perhaps somewhat more nuanced.

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Laura Robinson

The University of Bristol is one of the world leaders in the field of geochemistry.  Laura Robinson co-chaired several sessions, while also presenting a new approach to estimating water discharge from rivers, based on the ratio of uranium isotopes in coral; the technique has great potential for studying flood and drought events over the past 100,000 years, helping us to better understand, for example, the behaviour of monsoon systems on which the lives of nearly one billion people depend.  Heather Buss chaired a session and presented research quantifying the nature and consequences of reactions occurring at the bedrock-soil interface – and by extension, the processes by which rock becomes soil and nutrients are liberated, utilised by plants or flushed to the oceans. Kate Hendry, arriving at the University of Bristol in October, presented her latest work employing the distribution of zinc in sponges (trapped in their opal hard parts) to examine how organic matter is formed in surface oceans, then transported to the deep ocean and ultimately buried in sediments; this is a key aspect to understanding how carbon dioxide is ultimately removed from the atmosphere.  The Conference is not entirely about measuring these processes – it is also about how those measurements are interpreted. This is exemplified by Andy Ridgwell who presented two keynote lectures on his integrated physical, chemical and biological model, with which he evaluated the evidence for how and when oceans become more acidic or devoid of oxygen.

What next?  Every few years, a major innovation opens up new insights.  Until about 20 years ago, organic carbon isotope measurements (carbon occurs as two stable isotopes – ~99% as the isotope with 12 nuclear particles and ~1% as the isotope with 13) were conducted almost exclusively on whole rock samples. These values were useful in studying ancient life and the global carbon cycle, but somewhat limited because the organic matter in a rock derives from numerous organisms including plants, algae and bacteria. But in the late 1980s, new methods allowed us to measure carbon isotope values on individual compounds within those rocks, including compounds derived from specific biological sources.  Now, John Eiler and his team at Caltech are developing methods for measuring the values in specific parts or even at a single position in those individual compounds within those rocks.  This isotope mapping of molecules could open up new avenues for determining the temperatures at which ancient animals grew or elide what microorganisms are doing deep in the Earth’s subsurface. 

Scientists are going to continue to measure the world around us.  And while that might sound cold and calculating, it is not!  We do this out of our fascination and wonder for nature and our planet.  Just like Galileo’s discovery of Jovian satellites excited our imagination of the cosmos, these new tools are helping us unravel the astonishingly beautiful interactions between our world and the life upon it.

This blog was written by Professor Rich Pancost, Cabot Institute Director, University of Bristol

Prof Rich Pancost

Jared Diamond: The World Until Yesterday – What can we learn from traditional societies?

Jared Diamond

On 27 September, Pulitzer Prize-winning polymath, author Jared Diamond, gave the first talk in the Bristol Festival of Ideas series, in conjunction with the Cabot Institute, to promote the paperback release of his new book “The world until yesterday”. The book surveys 39 traditional societies and their attitudes to universal problems such as bringing up children, treatment of the elderly and attitude to risk. The aim of the book is neither to idealise nor disparage these traditional societies, but to investigate what lessons can be learned from unindustrialised peoples.

Constructive paranoia

Photo©JahodaPe­tr.com (Papua Guide)

One such tribe was the Dani whom Diamond lived with while studying local ornithology in Papua New Guinea. He opened his talk with a tale of the fear and trepidation that the New Guinean tribe showed when he suggested making camp under a dead tree in the jungle. Their “constructive paranoia” – while completely at odds with Diamond’s own Western attitude – was essential to their survival in an ecosystem rife with environmental dangers. Diamond mused that not only were accidents caused by the physical environment less frequent in Western society, but the consequences were less likely to be fatal or permanently disabling, due to our healthcare system. This alters our perception of the risks associated with hazardous behaviour.

Perception of risk

We worry too much about dangers that do not kill many people – like terrorism, nuclear accidents, plane crashes and DNA based technologies – but are comparatively blasé about the risks of alcohol, smoking and cars. Westerners tend to overestimate the risk of things beyond our control; things that are unfamiliar; that kill many people at once or in a spectacular way, while we underestimate risks that we encounter every day but assume “It will never happen to me”. This can be demonstrated by comparing personal ratings of danger with the number of actual deaths, but this does not take into account changes in personal behaviour to protect against significant risks. Diamond recounted another tale of a tribe living in close proximity to a pride of lions. Though the risk of being killed by a lion was very real, few tribes people were actually killed due to the various precautions taken such as travelling in groups and making a lot of noise so as not to startle the lions.

Conflict management

Image from Penguin Books

Jared also briefly covered further topics from the book, such as our treatment of the elderly, whose collective wisdom and knowledge is now usurped by the rise of the world wide web. He also examines differing strategies for dealing with conflict. While in the West we concentrate on perceived wrongs, and who is “in the right”, more traditional societies contend with disputes with those who they will continue to live with and trade with for the rest of their lives. Their model for conflict-management more closely resembles the idea of ‘restorative justice’, where victims and perpetrators meet to discuss the incident. The emphasis is on restoring a working relationship rather than assigning blame or retribution.

“The world until yesterday” goes on general sale by Penguin Books in paperback on 29 October 2013.

This blog has been written by Boo Lewis, Biological Sciences, University of Bristol.

Boo Lewis, Cabot Institute blogger

Watch the Jared Diamond event again online.

Will global food security be affected by climate change?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just released an important report outlining the evidence for past and future climate change. Unfortunately it confirms our fears; climate change is occurring at an unprecedented rate and humans have been the dominant cause since the 1950s. Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) has reached the highest level for the past 800,000 years, which has contributed to the increased temperatures and extreme weather we have already started to see.

As a plant scientist, I’m interested in the complicated effects that increased temperatures, carbon dioxide and changes in rainfall will have on global food security. Professor David Lobell and Dr Sharon Gourdji wrote about some of the possible effects of climate change on crop yield last year, summarised below alongside IPCC data.

Increased CO₂

Image credit: David Monniaux

Plants produce their food in a process called photosynthesis, which uses the energy of the sun to combine CO₂ and water into sugars (food) and oxygen (a rather useful waste product). The IPCC reports that we have already increased atmospheric CO₂ levels by 40% since pre-industrial times, which means it is at the highest concentration for almost a million years. Much of this has accumulated in the atmosphere (terrible for global warming) or been absorbed into the ocean (causing ocean acidification) however it may be good news for plants.

Lobell and Gourdji wrote that higher rates of photosynthesis are likely to increase growth rates and yields of many crop plants. Unfortunately, rapid growth can actually reduce the yields of grain crops like wheat, rice and maize. The plants mature too quickly and do not have enough time to move the carbohydrates that we eat into their grains. 

High temperatures

The IPCC predicts that by the end of the 21st century, temperatures will be 1.5C to 4.5C higher than they were at the start of it. There will be longer and more frequent heat waves and cold weather will become less common.

Extremely high temperatures can directly damage plants, however even a small increase in temperature can impact yields. High temperatures means plants can photosynthesise and grow more quickly, which can either improve or shrink yields depending on the crop species (see above). Lobell and Gourdji noted that milder spring and autumn seasons would extend the growing period for plants into previously frosty times of year allowing new growth periods to be exploited, although heat waves in the summer may be problematic. 

Image credit: IPCC AR5 executive summary

Flooding and droughts

In the future, dry regions will become drier whilst rainy places will get wetter. The IPCC predicts that monsoon areas will expand and increase flooding, but droughts will become longer and more intense in other regions.

In flooded areas, waterlogged soils could prevent planting and damage those crops already established. Drought conditions mean that plants close the pores on the leaves (stomata) to prevent water loss, however this means that carbon dioxide cannot enter the leaves for photosynthesis and growth will stop. This may be partly counteracted by the increased carbon dioxide in the air, allowing plants to take in more CO₂ without fully opening their stomata, reducing further water loss and maintaining growth.

Image credit: IPCC AR5 executive summary

These factors (temperature, CO₂ levels and water availability) interact to complicate matters further. High carbon dioxide levels may mean plants need fewer stomata, which would reduce the amount of water they lose to the air. On the other hand, higher temperatures and/or increased rainfall may mean that crop diseases spread more quickly and reduce yields.

Overall Lobell and Gourdji state that climate change is unlikely to result in a net decline in global crop yields, although there will likely be regional losses that devastate local communities. They argue that climate change may prevent the increases in crop yields required to support the growing global population however.

The effect of climate change on global crop yields is extremely complex and difficult to predict, however floods, drought and extreme temperatures will mean that its impact on global food security (“when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”) will almost certainly be devastating.

On the basis of the IPCC report and the predicted impact of climate change on all aspects of our planet, not just food security, it is critical that we act quickly to prevent temperature and CO₂ levels rising any further.

This blog is written by Sarah Jose, Biological Sciences, University of Bristol

You can follow Sarah on Twitter @JoseSci

Sarah Jose