“How to Save the Polar Bears” Global Warming Panel from SkepchickCon 2012

Now that I’m back from TAM 2012, I am finally catching up on some blogging.  In this post, I wanted to share a rough transcript I made of another panel I saw the weekend before TAM at Convergence/SkepchickCon 2012 titled “How to Save the Polar Bears” – as the name implies, the subject was on how to address questions of the effects of global warming as well as climate change denialism.  Read on…

How to Save the Polar Bears

with Greg Laden, Shawn Otto, Maggie Koerth-Baker, John Abraham, and Desiree Schell (moderator)

Introductions

Desiree: Let’s all commit now that climate change is indeed a real thing that is occurring. Greg, can you start with telling us the effects of climate change?

Greg: I’ll first talk about the effects of all the CO2 being released. The first effect is that it is warmer. For example, we are now experiencing the warmest year on record (so far). There are also likely to be drastic shifts in the weather patterns due to the amount of heat the atmosphere can hold. It probably means in more areas more rain in short bursts – so more droughts interrupted by heavy rains.

Also, the oceans will become more acidic, so organisms which are affected by high acid water will be hurt.

Finally, see level rise… glaciers melt, water expands, so the ocean level goes up. It could be a big factor in the short term.

Desiree: there are other more tangible effects like on agriculture.

Greg: yes, for example, many trees are getting killed by parasites because those parasites valve moved into regions (due to climate change) they never were before. Also, plants are drying out due to drought and this is leading to a lot of nasty wildfires.

People think that climate change effects is a future thing, but since the 1970s we have seen agricultural failures and desertification which are likely already linked to climate change. It is currently occurring.

Desiree: one thing that might change is disease patterns.

Greg: yes, many disease patterns have changed. Most epidemic diseases we as humans experience are due to things we have changed about our environment.

We have become a bit complacent about diseases, because in the 1930s we developed antibiotics. The problem is with the changes we are making now due to climate change, these disease effects are not so easily fought.

Desiree: Maggie, can you speak to power usage?

Maggie: the biggest energy usage we have now is buildings, more than transportation, and we use most of that energy to perfect our indoor climate (AC) which affects the outdoor climate, and so on. This also affects our power grids, because there is an increase in demand for electricity due to the higher temperatures. And the grid is much more sensitive than people think, and in these extremes you can get blackouts.

Desiree: Shawn, what was the political response to these issues?

Shawn: Nothing. An attempt was made in 2010 to address these issues, but about 500 million dollars was poured into Congress by the energy lobbyists to defeat any kind of climate bill. And the Obama administration had to make a calculated decision to go with healthcare reform instead.

There have been many on the right who have attempted to downplay climate change mitigation. Many people are pushing a “teach the controversy” argument against the teaching of climate change science. They wish to replace political opinion with actual science. There have been political attempts to make sea level rise “illegal” – North Carolina almost passed a bill making it illegal for communities to consider the effect of sea level rise unless the legislation gives prior permission, and if they do the community cannot go with the science
(about 1 meter in a century) but instead about 8 inches.

Virginia recently followed suit, saying we cannot talk about “sea level rise” but “frequent flooding” instead. This kind of throwing up political smokescreens is what is going on now.

In a way, you cannot blame the (public) corporations for this so much because they are required by law to pursue profits for shareholders on quarterly basis. So money drives a lot of it.

CFLs and Mercury Militia Hysteria

Yesterday I taught my students about the dissipation of energy in electrical circuits. As part of the lesson we calculated how much energy it takes to use a compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL) in comparison to a standard incandescent bulb. CFLs are great: they provide the same amount of visible light for about 1/4 the energy input, they don’t produce much waste heat, and while they are a bit more expensive to buy they last about 10 times longer than incandescents. So replacing old incandescents with CFLs is a great way to save both money & energy, the latter of which helps to combat carbon emissions and global warming.

So, given all of these great benefits of using CFLs, you would think that everyone would be falling all over themselves promoting the technology, right? Sadly, the answer is no, and the following story illustrates why not.

Later in the day I was hanging around in my science office, talking with some of my colleagues. I brought up the subject of my lesson with a couple of them and how I was encouraging the kids to replace old bulbs with CFLs. One of my colleagues, a science teacher, went a little nuts and said she’d never put CFLs in her house. The reason why not: the mercury in CFLs… argh!

While mercury can be a toxic substance (if a lot is inhaled while in it’s vapor form), the levels of mercury found in CFLs is very small. According to the Energy Star program (a joint effort of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy)…

CFLs contain a very small amount of mercury sealed within the glass tubing – an average of 4 milligrams. By comparison, older thermometers contain about 500 milligrams of mercury – an amount equal to the mercury in 125 CFLs. Mercury is an essential part of CFLs; it allows the bulb to be an efficient light source. No mercury is released when the bulbs are intact (not broken) or in use.

Most makers of light bulbs have reduced mercury in their fluorescent lighting products. Thanks to technology advances and a commitment from members of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, the average mercury content in CFLs has dropped at least 20 percent in the past year. Some manufacturers have even made further reductions, dropping mercury content to 1.4 – 2.5 milligrams per light bulb.

So, the amount of mercury contained in these CFLs is extremely small, far smaller than what would be needed to harm a human. But if you happen to break one, what do you do? Well, it’s pretty easy to clean up a broken CFL, according to the EPA – it pretty much consists of ventilating the room for about 15 minutes and cleaning up the broken parts.

Why is it that some people, even supposedly well-educated folks with a background in science, get so damned freaked out by mercury? Well, many whackjobs in the environmental movement have been making pseudoscientific hay about mercury for many years – these folks are what I like to call the “Mercury Militia”. They glom onto mercury as the cause of all manner of nastiness, regardless of dosage levels & concentrations, including blaming mercury amalgam fillings for teeth for various health problems and insisting that some vaccines containing minute amounts of mercury cause childhood autism. And none of that nonsense is true!

And then, of course, another reason why some people get roped into the anti-mercury hysteria is because of bogus stories like this one from WorldNet Daily, which scares the hell out of people who might use CFLs in their house. Unfortunately, just because someone forwards a scary sounding “news” article to your email doesn’t mean it has any real validity. For example, Snopes.com has a great analysis & debunking of many claims made by the anti-mercury crowd in that WND article.

But the fear-mongering by some extreme nutjobs is worse than just spreading a lack of critical thinking, because it actually results in more mercury being released into the environment – that’s right, more mercury! According to this fact sheet from Energy Star…

EPA estimates the U.S. is responsible for the release of 104 metric tons of mercury emissions each year. Most of these emissions come from coal-fired electrical power. Mercury released into the air is the main way that mercury gets into water and bio-accumulates in fish. (Eating fish contaminated with mercury is the main way for humans to be exposed.)

Most mercury vapor inside fluorescent light bulbs becomes bound to the inside of the light bulb as it is used. EPA estimates that the rest of the mercury within a CFL – about 14 percent – is released into air or water when it is sent to a landfill, assuming the light bulb is broken. Therefore, if all 290 million CFLs sold in 2007 were sent to a landfill (versus recycled, as a worst case) – they would add 0.16 metric tons, or 0.16 percent, to U.S. mercury emissions caused by humans.

So, long story short, by not using CFLs we are actually pumping more mercury into the environment because using a less-efficient incandescent bulb wastes so much more energy that is mostly generated by coal-fired power plants in the United States. And those coal-fired plants spew way more mercury into the environment than all the CFLs on the planet could ever come close to doing!

Thus, the Mercury Militia and those whom they have frightened into buying their bogus b.s. are actually making the situation worse. It is not only costing people more money to use wasteful incandescents, but it is also contributing to higher mercury emissions!

The irony is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

New Phenomenon to Explain UFOs

I posted earlier – in Texas Fireball Mystery – about how many people use the default explanation of aliens to explain UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects), and this is often due to a tendency for people to argue from ignorance due to our lack of knowledge of the natural world. Well, according to new research, another naturalistic candidate to account for many UFO sightings has been discovered… high-energy electrical discharges called sprites.

According to the article on the sprite-UFO research…

“Lightning from the thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite,” said Colin Price, a geophysicist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. “We now understand that only a specific type of lightning is the trigger that initiates sprites aloft.”

Researchers have detected the flashes between 35 and 80 miles (56-129 km) from the ground, far above the 7 to 10 miles (11-16 km) where usual lightning occurs. Sprites can take the form of fast-paced balls of electricity, although previous footage has suggested streaks or tendrils.

The cause or function of the flashes remains murky, but Price suggested that they could explain some of the UFO reports which have cropped up over the years. That might provide some solace for UFO enthusiasts disappointed by human-caused hoaxes in the past.

Here is some really awesome slow-motion footage of a sprite discharge from LiveScience.com. In addition, here is a neat Youtube video…

And another good one of some video footage of sprites caught from the ground…

These are some pretty amazing discoveries concerning electricity & lightning in our atmosphere, and I think they are extremely cool! However, they aren’t alien. It is worth noting again that when confronted by something you see in the sky that is unknown to you (hence the Unidentified in UFO), it is best to simply state the obvious: you don’t know what it is.

To jump immediately from the unknown straight to aliens visiting the Earth and government conspiracies to cover up The Truth is bad not only because it promotes a lack of critical thinking & healthy skepticism, but it can also lead us away from real discoveries, such as the most recent research on sprites.