Two Minnesota organizations have released an important document, the Statewide Conservation and Preservation Plan. Created by the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment and the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR), the new plan makes policy and research recommendations that are intended to preserve the state’s natural resources in the face of increasing demands and impacts from our society, including climate change. Carbon emission reductions are one of the important goals of the plan.

I haven’t yet had time to do more than a cursory reading of the report’s executive summary and its transportation chapter. Here are a few excerpts from the executive summary:

The Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR) funded a unique partnership among the University of Minnesota and the consulting firms of Bonestroo and CR Planning to evaluate the state’s natural resources, identify key issues affecting those resources, and make recommendations for improving and protecting them. More than 125 experts, including University scientists and public and private natural resource planners and professionals, participated in the 18-month effort. …

• The key issues for which recommendations are made in this report are:
• Land and water habitat fragmentation, degradation, loss, and conversion
• Land-use practices
• Transportation
• Energy production and use, and mercury as a toxic contaminant related to energy production

Here are the three recommendations from the Transportation chapter:

• Transportation Recommendation 1: Align transportation planning across state agencies and integrate transportation project development and review across state, regional, metropolitan and county/local transportation, land use and conservation programs.
• Transportation Recommendation 2: Reduce per capita vehicle miles of travel (VMT) through compact mixed-use development and multi- and intermodal transportation systems.
• Transportation Recommendation 3: Develop and implement sustainable transportation research, design, planning, and construction practices, regulations, and competitive incentive funding that minimize impacts on natural resources, especially habitat fragmentation and non-point source water pollution.

The report clearly deserves closer reading and the attention of state leaders. Note especially the involvement of leading state scientists and planners.

For more information, see the official press release and a Star Tribune article.

While any hope for a federal response to climate change this year died today in the U.S. Senate, I’m at least somewhat encouraged by the fact that my wife has located another resource that catalogs the many claims made by climate change skeptics and offers responses to each. It’s in Grist, the environmental news and commentary web site that’s based in Seattle, and it’s titled “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic.” I don’t know what you’re community is like, but mine has plenty of skeptics, and I need all the help I can get.

I’m not a regular reader of Grist, though my wife is. They take a lighter approach to environmental issues - lighter than yours truly, for example. I like their slogan: “Grist: it’s gloom and doom with a sense of humor. So laugh now - or the planet gets it.”

See also their commentary on the carbon footprint of biking versus driving, in which they run some of the numbers and, as commonsense would indicate, find that biking comes out ahead.

Earlier this month the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group (MCCAG) released its final report. This group of over 50 stakeholders was formed by Governor Tim Pawlenty to assist in developing a Minnesota Climate Mitigation Action Plan (that’s a lot of capital letters). It has some impressive names on it, including Will Steger, the polar explorer and climate change activist; Prof. David Tilman of the University of Minnesota, one of the most esteemed biologists in the world; and J. Drake Hamilton of Fresh Energy, whom I heard recently give an excellent speech on climate change and our response to it. The group also has many other prominent figures representing business, labor, churches, environmental organizations, and other groups.

I’ve read the executive summary and Chapter 5: Transportation and Land Use and was encouraged by what I found. The group has outlined policies for achieving a nearly 30 percent reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2025 (with 2005 being the base year), and most of the recommendations were approved unanimously.

The public can now enter comments about the report online (deadline is midnight on Sunday, April 27), and I encourage people to do so. At the very least, you can read the executive summary before doing so, though it is not all that short at 16 pages.

It wasn’t entirely clear to me whether the report claimed that enacting the policies would provide a net savings to the state and its people. It seems the policies would save the public money rather than cost them money, judging by the discussion on page 6 of the executive summary. The report does attempt to quantify the cost of various policies. The most cost-effective measure, for example, is improved statewide building codes; that’s the no-brainer. Read the rest of this entry »

In its December 2007 issue, Scientific American Body published one of the best articles I’ve read on the topic of the relationship between the “built environment” - our roads, buildings, etc. - and our health. The article, by Kathryn Brown, presents some of the relevant statistics; describes efforts by “built-environment advocates” in communities such as Atlanta, Georgia, and Columbia, Missouri; and examines the scientific debate on how best to build communities that foster physical activity.

I was especially interested in the paragraphs below (emphasis added), which describe research that shows the positive influence of densely populated, mixed-use communities on physical activity. (Mixed-use communities mix different land uses together - residential, commercial, recreational, public, etc. - to give people shorter distances between different destinations.) Just to show that I’m interested in an open inquiry, I’ve included the author’s brief discussion of a Heritage Foundation editorial that questions the role of the built environment in determining a condition such as obesity. Read the rest of this entry »

An excellent article in the January/February issue of MIT’s Technology Review magazine looks at the contributions of University of Minnesota researchers to biofuels research. Writer David Rotman interviewed Vernon Eidman, Stephen Polasky, C. Ford Runge, and David Tilman, U of M faculty members who have examined the economics and ecology of biofuels. “There may be no better place to get a realistic appraisal of biofuels than the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota,” Rotman writes (p. 2).

The article expands beyond this Minnesota connection to look at the work of other researchers and venture capitalists such as Vinod Khosla. It examines future biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol and novel hydrocarbons. The latter would most likely be created by “superbugs,” yet-to-be-discovered or -engineered microbes that would break down feedstocks into hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbons would have more energy per unit than ethanol.

Reading about such genetic engineering, my mind always wanders to uncomfortable thoughts about superbugs that have unintended consequences. Should I be so worried?

This past year turned out to be a record-breaker for Arctic warming, according to scientists quoted in an article by Seth Borenstein, Associated Press science writer. The portents are not good and should embolden us to act more aggressively to curb carbon emissions.

Below are some excerpts from the article. Warning: some of the quotes from the scientists are among the most alarming that I’ve seen on the climate change issue.

Greenland’s ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer’s end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.

“The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning I read an article in the StarTribune about today being Blog Action Day, during which all bloggers are invited to address a common issue of concern - in this case, the environment. That topic comes up regularly in this blog, and I had already planned on addressing one aspect of it.

I was pleased that the Norwegian Nobel Committee gave its Peace Prize to the scientists of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore for their work on global warming. During the past year I’ve commented about the most recent IPCC reports (see posts on February 26, May 4, and May 11), which predict disastrous consequences if humanity does not take steps to mitigate global warming. Fortunately, we’re seeing more action on this issue every day. Read the rest of this entry »

Sen. Tom Neuville, who represents my district in the Minnesota Senate, has posted a number of blog entries indicating that he does not believe that global warming is caused by human activity. These posts mainly contain information from sources that support that view.

A letter to the Northfield News on May 26 by Bob Ewing criticized the views of Sen. Neuville on this issue. It captured my own sentiments regarding the senator’s position quite well: Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I heard Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, speak about global warming on Minnesota Public Radio. Oppenheimer is a lead author of the recent “Fourth Assessment Report” from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It was a sobering talk, and I strongly recommend that people listen to it. Oppenheimer was unequivocal in stating that global climate change is the leading environmental problem of our time. He said that if the planet warms at the higher end of estimates - that is, if it warms a lot - the results would be very catastrophic in terms of lost water resources, higher sea levels, and other effects.

One comment from Oppenheimer particularly caught my attention, and I will paraphrase it from memory: When asked about the “controversy” regarding climate change among scientists, Oppenheimer said that there are about 2000 climate experts in the world, and he only knew of about 5 who think that human-induced climate change is not a serious problem confronting humanity.

Think about that the next time a climate change skeptic quotes one or two scientists to back up his or her argument. Good science is not determined via consensus or vote, but I’d still put more trust in the opinion of 99 percent of experts than I would in a tiny minority of contrarians.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued its third report of the year, this one titled “Climate Change 2007: Mitigation of Climate Change (Summary for Policymakers).” It mentions reduced driving and the use of “non-motorised transportation” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; it also makes reference to sustainable development and land use policies.

Andrew C. Revkin of the New York Times is one good journalist to read on the topic of climate change. See his article on this current IPCC report and his April 7 article on an earlier report. Here is what Revkin writes about the IPCC reports issued this year:

This is the third report this year from the climate panel, which was formed under the auspices of the United Nations in 1988 to brief nations periodically on risks from human and natural changes in climate and options for limiting dangers.

In February, one team of experts concluded with near certainty that most warming since 1950 has been driven by the rising concentrations in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

A second working group reported last month that the warming trend was already measurably shifting weather, water and ecological patterns, and that hundreds of millions of people faced risks by mid-century ranging from lost water supplies to inundated coasts should trends persist.

The April summary, “Climate Change 2007: Impact, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Summary for Policymakers), as well as the current report are all part of what’s called the Fourth Assessment Report from the IPCC. See the Wikipedia article on the Fourth Assessment Report for a good overview.

What the vast majority of scientists have to say continues to capture the attention of the planet. And what they have to say isn’t good: global warming will affect the planet in a massive way. Low-lying areas will be inundated by rising sea levels, water resources will be negatively affected in many areas, and humanity will have to endure huge costs to adapt to this relatively rapid warming of the planet.