Category: Environment

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Environment Science & technology

[1823] Of a important research on anthropogenic climate change

A research formally linked ice losses in the poles with human-caused climate change:

OSLO (Reuters) – Both Antarctica and the Arctic are getting less icy because of global warming, scientists said on Thursday in a study that extends evidence of man-made climate change to every continent.

[…]

The Arctic has warmed sharply in recent years and sea ice shrank in 2007 to a record low. But Antarctic trends have been confusing — some winter sea ice has expanded in recent decades, leaving doubts for some about whether warming was global.

The U.N. Climate Panel, which draws on work by 2,500 experts, said last year that the human fingerprint on climate “has been detected in every continent except Antarctica,” which has insufficient observational coverage to make an assessment. [Man-made climate change seen in Antarctica, Arctic. Alister Doyle. Reuters. October 30 2008]

According to the article, making that conclusion was not possible earlier due to insufficient data.

Categories
Economics Environment

[1807] Of Beijing would do better with congestion pricing

Beijing is notorious for its dismal air quality. I have never been there myself but many news reports have convinced me that Beijing is not really a place I would want to live in. My experience in Kuala Lumpur during the one of those hazy periods was bad enough. I also hate Los Angeles because of its constant smoggy sky and I doubt I would love Beijing for the same reason. The authority there however is trying to do something about it and among it is a requirement for all cars to stay off the streets for a day out of a week.[1] This may work in the short term but in the long run, it could be ineffective.

The policy — in its six-month trial run — calls for car with registration ending with a particular digit to be barred from being driven on the road on a particular day. With this rule, the local authority expects to reduce traffic by 6.5%. The same authority also has an ambition to take half of the cars in Beijing off the road on a very bad day: that is equivalent to 3.4 million cars.[2]

It is not really rocket science to find a way to go around this restriction: buy or use another car with its registration number different from the existing one. Or buy or use other kind of vehicle. Or use public transportation which is probably the ideal path. In any case, one unintended consequence of this policy could be an increase in car ownership per capita while traffic remains to be high, or only see limited reduction, with all else being equal.

The scary part is that in the short run, this policy might work. Individuals probably need some time to acquire new car or vehicles. And it would probably take the most of the public some time to discover a way to beat the system. The bottom line is that adaptation requires time. Slowly however, the policy would be useless as more and more individuals move to capitalize over the weakness of the policy. How long would that be would be anybody’s guess, until the results from the test run are finalized.

Why is this scary?

The trial run will last only six months. The time length is probably insufficient for the authority to obtain the necessary empirical data to prove the ineffectiveness of the policy. The way the test run is being conducted has a temporal bias and may lead those conducting the experiment to a wrong conclusion.

But fret not Beijing for all is not lost in your quest for cleaner and clearer sky! There is a proven superior market-based alternative known as congestion pricing!

Congestion pricing policy suffers no such weakness as no vehicle, save those exempted, will escape the policy, assuming enforcement is carried out. This market-based policy also has the potential of eliminating negative externalities such as traffic congestion and pollution. Another is that the policy, unlike the currently tested in Beijing, fills the city’s coffers. That money could then be used to maintain or even improve the public transportation system!

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[1] — Traffic restrictions have been re-introduced in China’s capital Beijing, in an attempt to bring back the clear skies seen during the Olympics.

Each car must spend one day a week off the road, in a scheme based on registration numbers. [Beijing reintroduces car rules. BBC. October 13 2008]

[2] — The new rules are expected to take some 800,000 cars off the road every day, according to the Beijing Municipal Committee of Communications.

“It’s expected to reduce Beijing’s average road traffic flow by 6.5%,” a committee official told the state news agency Xinhua.

During periods of exceptionally heavy pollution, the restrictions will be increased so that half of Beijing’s 3.4 million cars will be taken off the roads, state media reports. [Beijing reintroduces car rules. BBC. October 13 2008]

Categories
Environment Science & technology

[1768] Of rethinking about invasive species

When one speaks of invasive species, what does come to mind?

Almost inevitably for me, it meant disaster for the local ecosystem. It meant having a sledgehammer hitting a pillar supporting a particular food chain down, collapsing the entire local environment down. A slippery slope fallacy I admit but that was the frame of thoughts whenever I came across the term “invasive species”.

I considered nonchalant introduction of foreign species into a local environment as irresponsible. This perspective was nurtured through countless reading of effects of invasive species on local ones.

In a magnificent University of Michigan’s natural science museum which I loved to frequent in Ann Arbor, there was an exhibition dedicated to lampreys. With the University being one of the only 30 sea-grant institutions, it is only right for the University to having at least something on lamprey.

A certain kind of lamprey, especially the one which devastated the trout population in Lake Michigan, looked like a giant leech to me. Attacked fishes would have deep noticeable and disgusting scare on their body. The lampreys were introduced to Lake Michigan after the canals which connect the Great Lakes was completed in the 19th century.[1][2][3]

Another example of invasive species which adversely affect the indigenous species is the snakehead fish. Unlike the lamprey which originated from Lake Ontario which is really not far of Lake Michigan, the snakehead fish came from Asia. Its creepy name matches its seemingly out of this world ability to breathe and walk over land. Its aggressiveness is likely to phase out indigenous species from the local ecosystem.[4]

The introduction of these species always brings about unknown consequences. The fear of the unknown consequences convinced me to subscribe to precautionary principle, a principle which demands scientific proofs to be presented to alleviate concerns for the unknown.[5]

Truth be told, in retrospect, placing all invasive species in a bad light takes a simplistic view of the world. It ignores some of the benefits which foreign species may bring to the local environment. I do believe I have to a large extent mastered over tendency to make sweeping generalization but I never actually gave my preconception of invasive species much thought, until the New York Times published an article about the matter recently.[6]

The article highlights invasive species contribution to diversity. Again in retrospect, surely that is the case if the introduced species do not compete with indigenous ones. Yet, my first reaction to the article was that of shock. The assumption that I held was easily disproved but yet, I overlooked such flimsy assumption.

Nevertheless, this neither mean that I would suddenly take a diametrically opposing viewpoint nor would I abandon the precautionary principle. What the article teaches me is to be more careful of assumptions in matter concerning invasive species in particular and other matters in general. What it really teaches me is to observe the context as well as the individualized effects of the introduction of any invasive species to specific ecosystems.

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[1] — [The Lampreys Of Michigan. Michigan Natural Resources (Reproduced by The Native Fish Conservancy). Sidney B. Morker. July/August 2008. (Accessed September 9 2008)]

[2] — See Great Lakes: Ecological Challenge at Wikipedia. Accessed September 9 2008.

[3] — See Lamprey: Relation to human as pest at Wikipedia. Accessed September 9 2008.

[4] — The snakehead fish, a voracious Asian invader that’s been known to breathe out of water and scoot short distances over land, has reappeared in Maryland, state authorities announced yesterday. [A creepy catch of the day. Washington Post. David A. Fahrenthold. April 29 2004]

[5] — See precautionary principle at Wikipedia. Accessed September 9 2008.

[6] — It sounds like the makings of an ecological disaster: an epidemic of invasive species that wipes out the delicate native species in its path. But in a paper published in August in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dov Sax, an ecologist at Brown University, and Steven D. Gaines, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, point out that the invasion has not led to a mass extinction of native plants. The number of documented extinctions of native New Zealand plant species is a grand total of three.

Exotic species receive lots of attention and create lots of worry. Some scientists consider biological invasions among the top two or three forces driving species into extinction. But Dr. Sax, Dr. Gaines and several other researchers argue that attitudes about exotic species are too simplistic. While some invasions are indeed devastating, they often do not set off extinctions. They can even spur the evolution of new diversity. [Friendly Invaders. New York Times. Carl Zimmer. September 8 2004]

Categories
Environment Liberty Politics & government

[1739] Of Beijingoist myths

The Beijing Olympics is coming up and it is time to break some myths.

Those who have argued for the beneficial effect of the Olympics on China have made three specific claims, none of which holds water. First, Chinese officials themselves said the games would bring human-rights improvements. The opposite is true. China’s people are far freer now than they were 30, 20 or even 10 years ago. The party has extricated itself from big parts of their lives, and relative wealth has broadened horizons. But that is not thanks to the Olympics, which have brought more repression. To build state-of-the-art facilities for the games, untold numbers of people were forced to move. Anxious to prevent protests that might steal headlines from the glories of Chinese modernist architecture or athletic prowess, the authorities have hounded dissidents with more than usual vigour. And there are anyway clear limits to the march of freedom in China; although personal and economic freedoms have multiplied, political freedoms have been disappointingly constrained since Hu Jintao became president in 2003.

Second, these would be the first ”green” Olympics, spurring a badly needed effort to clean up Beijing and other Olympic venues. This was always a ludicrous claim. Heroic efforts to remove toxic algae blooms from the rowing course do not amount to a new environmentalism. The jury is still out on whether Beijing will manage to produce air sufficiently breathable for runners safely to complete a marathon. If it does, it will not have been because of any Olympic-related change of course. Rather it will be the result of desperate measures introduced in recent weeks: production cuts by polluting industries, or simply closing them down; and the banning from the road of half of Beijing’s cars.

The third boast was not one you would ever hear from the lips of Chinese diplomats. A belief in the inviolability of Chinese sovereignty is often not just their cardinal principle, but their only one. Yet some foreigners claimed that the Olympics would make Chinese foreign policy more biddable. Western officials have been quick to talk up China’s alleged helpfulness: in persuading North Korea at least to talk about disarming; in cajoling the generals running Myanmar into letting in the odd envoy from the United Nations; in trying to coax the government of Sudan away from a policy of genocide. But last month China still vetoed United Nations sanctions against Zimbabwe; it wants a UN vote to stop action in the International Criminal Court against Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir.

China’s leaders remain irrevocably wedded to the principle of ”non-interference” in a country’s internal affairs. In so far as China itself is concerned, they seem to have the backing of large numbers of their own people. The Olympics are taking place against the backdrop of the rise of a virulently assertive strain of Chinese nationalism—seen most vividly in the fury at foreign coverage of the riots in Tibet, and at the protests that greeted the Olympic-torch relay in some Western cities.

And all that was before the games themselves begin. Orwell described international sport as ”mimic warfare”. That is of course infinitely preferable to the real thing, and there is nothing wrong in China’s people taking pride in either a diplomatic triumph, if that is how the games turn out, or a sporting one (a better bet). But there is a danger. Having dumped its ideology, the Communist Party now stakes its survival and legitimacy on tight political control, economic advance and nationalist pride. The problem with nationalism is that it thrives on competition—and all too often needs an enemy. [China’s dash for freedom. The Economist. July 31 2008]

Categories
Environment

[1715] Of a World Heritage Site in Malaysia under threat

The mainstream media is celebrating the status of Malacca and George Town as the new World Heritage Sites. The Star for instance is giving the news a front page treatment.[0] I on the other hand am less than happy. If news of the award could be called a victory, I would call it a hollow victory. What is the point of having new World Heritage Sites when an existing site is under threat?

Late last month, a plan to build dams across Sarawak was leaked to the public. One of the proposed damn would sit on the Tutoh River. According to that plan, part of the Gunung Mulu National Park would be inundated as part of the dam on Tutoh.[1]

If any of us has forgotten amid the celebration, the National Park is one of the three World Heritage Sites in Malaysia.

I would prefer to have the UNESCO to postpone any decision to grant the two cities World Heritage status until the future of the Mulu has been ascertained. If Malaysia cannot guarantee the well-being of Mulu, I am unconvinced how Malaysia could maintain George Town and Malacca in the list in the long run.

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[0] KUALA LUMPUR: The citizens of Malacca and Penang rejoiced as they celebrate the inscription of their state capitals as World Heritage Sites. [Malacca, Penang cheer listing on world heritage site. The Star. July 9 2008]

[1] National treasures such as the world-renowned Mulu National Park may also fall victim when parts of it will be submerged under the planned 220 megawatts dam on the Tutoh river in northeastern Sarawak.

The Mulu National Park is listed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) as a world heritage site because of its biodiversity and its extensive network of caves. [Sarawak’s 12 new dams alarm environmentalists. Fauwaz Abdul Aziz. Malaysiakini. June 19 2008]