What Is Geodesignand Can It Protect Us from Natural Disasters?

As New York, New Jersey and other states hit hard during Superstorm Sandylast fall begin their long road to recovery, the decisions they make on how to rebuild are crucial to determining how well theyre weather than next big storm. The choices range from installing large storm-surge sea barriersnear Staten Island and at the mouth of New York Harbor to keep rising waters at bay, to cultivating wetlands around the southern tip of Manhattan that can provide a natural buffer. Both concepts are on the drawing boards and are being fiercely debated on their merits. Although they are radically different, each one takes geographic design into consideration to some degree. Geodesign is an approach to city planning, land use and natural resource management that takes into account the tendency in recent years to overdevelop land at the expense of natural habitats, as well as population growth and climate change, which have left communities increasingly vulnerable to natural disasters. Geodesign arose thanks largely to the availability of geographic information system (GIS) data. Such data is gathered from maps, aerial photos, satellites and surveys and stored in large databases where it can be analyzed, modeled and queried. Particularly useful is data provided by the Landsat program, a joint initiative between the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA, has been placing satellites in orbit since 1972 to collect GIS data. With GIS, we have the tools to understand our landscape and [the] impact of our design decisions, says Tom Fisher, dean of the University of Minnesotas College of Design. As an analytical tool, GIS is more than geographical informationits a way to visualize weather, climate and demographic data as well, he adds. Careful study of GIS datawhich includes weather data but also takes into account population demographics, land use and a variety of other factorscould uncover clues about the likely intensity and impact of future storms as well as the extent to which zoning decisions can mitigate potential damage, according to Fisher, the emcee and moderator of this weeks Geodesign Summit hosted by GIS mapping software maker Esri at the companys Redlands, Calif., headquarters. This is an issue with Sandydo we rebuild on the same sites, considering there could be another [major] storm within the next seven or so years? My sense is not that we lack data but that weve lacked the ability to visualize it and apply it to certain places, he adds. Geodesign is not entirely new, of course. After the1930s Dust Bowl across the over-farmed Great Plains, the U.S. government initiated changes in land cultivation,Fischer says. Federal organizations such as the Civilian Conservation Corps cultivated grass on government-protected lands to keep topsoil in place and retain moisture. They also planted millions of trees from Canada to Texas to block wind gusts and likewise keep soil in place. Farmers were also educated on how to rotate crops, implement soil terracing and use other more sustainable farming methods. Regardless of how New York and New Jersey decide to rebuild, geodesign projects are already underway nationwide. The city of Asheville, N.C., offers an interactive mapping tool called Priority Places to help local businesses determine where best to put their offices and factories, help urban planners find neighborhoods for renewal projects and help real estate developers make decisions based on population demographics and zoning regulations. In Montana, the Yellowstone Ecological Research Centers data processing and modeling capabilities help biologists and land managers with landscape planning and management of local species and their habitats. Meanwhile, Florida planners are turning to geospatial data that reveals information about the states population distribution to anticipate the states needs in 2060, by which time the population is expected to have doubled to 36 million people, placing a heavier burden on already overcrowded urban areas and infrastructure. Does Increased Energy Efficiency Just Spark Us to Use More? Last year, the U.S. raised itsfuel economy standards for cars and trucks for the first time in decades. By 2025, the fuel efficiency of vehicles will be required to double. As a result, oil consumption is predicted to fall andgiven that the U.S. remains the worlds largest consumer of oilglobal crude prices might fall as well. That makes using oil cheap again, encouraging yet more consumption that ends up reducing the energy saving impact of the initial policy. That is the story of the so-called rebound effect, more properly called Jevons paradox, after W. Stanley Jevons, the British economist who first proposed it in his 1865 book The Coal Question. Jevons paradox is undoubtedly real and has to be considered in any energy efficiency policy. After all, the last time the U.S. raised its fuel economy standards significantly in the late 1970s, global oil prices cratered not too long thereafter in the early 1980s. Or consider the refrigeration paradox: freezers have become better and better at using less energy to keep food cold. As a result, many Americans now have two: a modern, efficient one in the kitchen for comestibles and the old fridge in the garage or basement to keep the beer cold and freeze extra supplies. But, although the rebound effect may be real, it is too small to derail energy-efficiency policies, argues a team of four economists in a comment published inNature on January 24. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Using data from the Energy Information Administrations annual forecast, the researchers estimate that the rebound effect will reduce energy savings from the new fuel efficiency standards to 5 percent from 7 percent. The economists take care to note the distinction between direct and indirect effects. So, for example, savings on fuel leads to an increase in driving, eliminating nearly a third of the efficiency savings. At the same time, money not spent on fuel is then often spent on other items that in turn require energy to produce causing an indirect drop of five to 15 percent. Finally, at the scale of the national and global economy, oil not used in cars in the U.S. will be used in cars in China, along with other displacement effects. Lumping all these factors together, the economists estimate that total combined rebound effects [are] in the range of 20-60 [percent]. They add: in sum, rebound effects are small. Only an economist could argue that 60 percent is small. Consider another modern tale: in the 1960s computing was confined to energy-hogging mainframes to which only a few people had access. Today, billions of people on the planet have much more energy efficient laptops, desktops or smartphones and rely on the constant processing power of rack after rack of servers for services such as Internet search or email. As energy efficiency researcher Harry Saunders observed in an interview with The Breakthrough Institute: The total energy use for computing is probably at least an order of magnitude greater, despite the fact that mainframes individually used more power. At the same time, individuals often ignore energy efficiency measureseven when they save moneyperhaps because of the hassle of changing a light bulb. There is some evidence, however, that tapping into a more primal instinct than savingscompetitioncan spur individuals to undertake energy efficiency improvements. It can even be as simple as a smiley or frowny face on an electric bill. Some argue that, over the long-term, the rebound effect actually backfires and ends up promoting even more energy use than was saved in the first place. This is the argument Jevons made about coal use and, given global coal consumption trends 150 years later, its hard to argue with him. Or consider the rise of the sport-utility vehicle in the 1990s after a decade of low oil prices in the 1980s. Global oil consumption has never been higher. But efficiency measures do save some energy. California has kept per capita electricity use the same for the last 30 years, despite the proliferation of gadgets, heated swimming pools and air conditioners, among other modern conveniences. In fact, energy efficiency is a much better way of meeting growing demand for power than building a new power plantas the U.S. economy has grown, efficiency has kept energy use from rising anywhere near as fast. And efficiency can

help combat climate change. Consider this: simply switching all Canadian furnaces to the most efficient natural gas ones could cut that countrys (growing) greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent, according to energy expert Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba. The world requires a lot of power16 terawatts per year and growing. Most of that power comes from burning fossil fuels and, as a result, the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change continue to swell34.7 billion metric tons of carbon and growing. Given that twin challenge, even slowing the rate of growth is a major achievementand it should be a requirement for any serious effort to combat climate change. Emotional Smarts Tied to General IQ The same brain regions that perform cognitive tasks may also provide social intelligence, according to a new study. Emotional smarts and general intelligence may be more closely linked than previously thought, new research suggests. In a group of Vietnam veterans, IQ test results and emotional intelligence, or the ability to perceive, understand and deal with emotion in oneself or in others, were linked. And in brain scans, the same regions of the brain seemed to perform both emotional and cognitive tasks, the study found. The findings were published in the journal Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience. "Intelligence, to a large extent, does depend on basic cognitive abilities, like attention and perception and memory and language," said study coauthor Aron Barbey, a neuroscientist at the University of Illinois, in a statement. "But it also depends on interacting with other people. We're fundamentally social beings and our understanding not only involves basic cognitive abilities but also involves productively applying those abilities to social situations so that we can navigate the social world and understand others." In the past, scientists believed that emotional intelligence and general intelligence were distinct, and books and movies are rife with depictions of intellectually brilliant but socially clueless nerds. But Barbey and his colleagues wondered whether emotional intelligence and IQ were more tightly coupled than previously thought. To find out, the team used emotional intelligence, and intelligence tests drawn from 152 Vietnam veterans. Barbey's team found that as IQ test scores went up so did measures of social abilities. Next, they studied brain scans from the veterans. Participants had suffered injuries in different parts of the brain, so the researchers created a map of the brain, then broke it into tiny sections. They then compared emotional and general intelligence test results between those with and without injuries for each individual section. Those with brain injuries in the frontal cortex and the parietal cortex had impairments in both general and emotional intelligence. The frontal cortex plays a key role in regulating behavior, planning and memory, while the parietal cortex plays a role in understanding language. How Should We Write about Statistics in Public? I am exited to be attendingScienceOnline in Raleigh, North Carolina later this week. And Im even more excited to be co-moderating two sessions! One of them, at noon on Thursday, will be about Public Statistics. Hilda Bastian, my partner in crime, has written a cartoonintroduction to our session, and Ive been trying to think of what to write here about it. There have been a lot of statistics in the news this year, from Nate Silver to the five-sigma discovery of a Higgs-like particle to every health story ever. Where to start? Last week I was flipping through the Chicago Reader over breakfast one morning and came upon the article A greener Chicago would be a safer Chicago. In my sleepy morning state, my eyes glossed over the page a bit, but they latched onto a paragraph with several numbers in it. Numbers are important and objective (right?), so the part with the most numbers in it must make a clear, convincing argument for the authors main point. Before I share and critique this excerpt, please know that I love community gardens, and I think it would be good if there were more of them. The thesis of this article is that urban vegetation provides many benefits to a community, including lower crime rates. I am not arguing for or against this position; I am stepping back and thinking about the way statistics are used in this paragraph and whether we should take them as supporting evidence for the articles conclusion. I also dont intend to insult or malign the author. I dont think he is stupid or dishonest, and the online version of the article does provide links to summaries of some of the studies he cites, which can help readers evaluate the claims themselves. I just think he might not have turned a skeptical eye to the statistics he quoted in the article and how they might be interpreted. Without further ado, heres the paragraph that jumped out at me: A recent mapping of gardens [in Chicago] by University of Illinois researchers showed that the vast majority of Chicago residents2.4 million out of 2.7 millionlive in census tracts with no community gardens; that nearly half of these tracts have a poverty rate above the city average of 21 percent; and that most of these low-income tracts are on the south and west sides. These are areas with many sprawling vacant lots that would benefit from farming. What do these numbers mean? The author is clearly trying to make a point, but to me, its a bit confused and even somewhat contradictory. Almost 90 percent of Chicago residents dont live in a census tract with a community garden. But how big are census tracts? If a census tract is only a few square blocks, you could be quite close to a community garden and not get counted. Perhaps a better measure would be living in a tract adjacent to a tract with a community garden, or within two tracts. From the article, it is unclear. (For what its worth, I looked it up, and it looks like my neighborhood, which is about 1.65 square miles, has 14 census tracts in it. My census tract does not have a community garden in it, but at least one adjacent tract does, and I think Im a four-minute walk from that garden.) The article continues, nearly half of these tracts have a poverty rate above the city average of 21 percent. Is that good or bad? Put another way, more than half of these tracts have a poverty rate at or below the city average of 21 percent. That sounds like a different story. But beyond the nearly half vs more than half issue, how should we assume poverty is distributed in the city? Do the tracts have very similar populations, or do affluent areas have more census tracts per capita? Overall, how many tracts have above- and below-average poverty? I honestly dont know what we should assume about this distribution, but on first reading, it doesnt sound too bad for about half of the census tracts to have above-average poverty. It sounds about as bad as half of our students are below average, a fairly meaningless but generally true statement. Furthermore, in a sample of 2.4 million out of 2.7 million citizens, we would expect the statistics to be very close to the statistics for the city as a whole; only a large deviation from those numbers would be remarkable. Without information about the percentage and location of high-poverty census tracts in the city in general, we are unable to make a meaningful comparison of the areas with urban gardens to those without. Doing some research for this post, it became clear to me that the author took these numbers almost word for word from the research paper (sorry, its Elsevier, and theres a paywall) he mentioned, which includes the figures somewhat in passing and does not editorialize about the south and west sides benefitting from urban farming. The paper is about using Google Earth to track urban farming and get a more accurate idea of the numbers and types of urban gardens in Chicago. Why does the author of the Chicago Reader piece feel the need to quote these statistics? Clearly, using numbers seems to give the argument more credibility, and his readers may well respond to numbers this way.

This article is not an isolated incident. Statistics are used and misused all over newspapers, magazines, and the Internet. And theyre necessary. Without them, science papers cant accurately describe the size of an effect or the probability that it was due purely to chance, and reporters cant let people know what a new study means. How can we, as bloggers, reporters, and editors, increase the quality of statistics reporting in the media? And what should the media consumer look out for when reading these stories? If youre going to ScienceOnline, I cordially invite you to come talk about statistics with us. Well be talking about our statistics reporting pet peeves, how to write about statistics responsibly without boring our readers, and resources for those of us who would like a refresher course in what all those numbers in science papers mean. Well also talk about some of the biggest stories in statistics from the past year and where the media got statistics right and wrong. Whether youll be at the session or not, feel free to share your public statistics pet peeves, resources, and requests for resources in the comments. You can follow along with our session on Twitter on Thursday. Well be using the hashtag #PublicStats. The hashtag for the (un)conference itself is #scio13. Finally, if you have access to some data about the distribution of poverty in Chicago census tracts, I would love to learn about it! Science in Ten Hundred Words: The Up-Goer Five challenge. A central question of communicating science to a wider audience often boils down to this: can you take a complex scientific topic and explain it in a way that someone unfamiliar with the field can understand? The commonly-cited techniques for meeting this challenge, such as cutting out jargon and using relatable analogies, sound easy in principle but are often quite tough in practice. Perhaps that is why the Up-Goer Five text editor, created by geneticist Theo Sanderson, has struck such a cord with many scientists, including me and my coblogger Anne Jefferson. Inspired by a brilliant xckd comic that took the elimination of jargon to an almost absurd degree by attempting to describe the blueprints of the Saturn V moon rocket using only a list of the most thousand commonly used English words (hence, Up Goer Five the only flying space car that has taken anyone to another world), the text editor compares anything that you type into it against that same list and gently chides you when you use a word that isnt on it. Anne and I were not the first scientists to discover the Up-Goer Five editor, but when we blogged about our attempts to describe urban hydrology (without stream or river), and paleomagnetism (without magnet), and challenged other scientists to try their hand at describing what they do in Up-Goer Five-speak, we were inundated with responses so many that to record them all for posterity, and to allow future entries to be more easily collected, we set up a dedicated Tumblr blog called Ten Hundred Words of Science to showcase them all. In just over a week, it has accumulated almost three hundred entries, with subjects ranging from string theory (the different kinds of bits we see come from just one kind of wrapped long thing moving in different ways) to cognitive science (I study what it is about human minds that allows us to speak to each other), via volcanology (Tiny pieces of fire rock from inside the world can fly through the air), plate tectonics (Even though the ground under your feet feels very still, it is actually moving really, really slowly), nanotechnology (If you take a big thing and make it small, it does something different than what youd expect) and everything else in between. Some might not see this as anything more than a gimmick, and argue that the constraints you are forced to work under are too severe; that by replacing jargon with a dense thicket of simple words, you are just replacing one sort of linguistic complexity with another. That certainly can happen, but only if you miss the point of the exercise. What the vast majority of the submissions weve read in the past week clearly show is that if you seek to move beyond the straight replacement of forbidden words and seek to recast the concept youre trying to explain, then something quite profound can result. Here for example, is Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection, distilled down to its essence by Richard Carter: all the animals and green things we see in the worldhave all been made by the same, fixed, easy steps acting all around us. These easy steps, taken in the largest sense, being growing and having babies; being like your parents (but not exactly like them); and being able to avoid dying for as long as possible. If the unifying theorem of all biology can be so vividly described despite the limitations being imposed by the Up-Goer 5 list, then I think we can find it within all of us to do the same with our own research. I certainly feel that my own attempt to recast the magnetic signals I study as memories of past locations stored within the rocks, that they can give us if we ask them in the right way, did give me some insight into explaining what I do. As Anne remarked: In many ways, I think telling people that you study little green things that lived more than 10 hundred times 10 hundred years ago gives more of a sense of the enormity of geologic time in a palpable way than saying that you study organisms that lived more than a million years ago I think this is a great vehicle for getting us to be thoughtful about the way we explain our work to each other and to non-scientists. It definitely takes more thought to distill a complex topic down to a jargon-free explanation of the core principles and why they are exciting. And sometimes it takes more words. But, in the end, if it helps people to understand what science is all about, then that effort and those carefully chosen words are totally worthwhile. As such, we hope that people continue to take the challenge, and submit them to Ten Hundred Words of Science. Because youre not just explaining something to other people youre also explaining it to yourself. And if you want a slightly less stringent vocabulary to work with, then Theo Sanderson has now come up with Up-Goer Six, an editor that colour codes your words based on their frequency of usage, rather than rejecting them outright. Top 25 Science Stories of 2007 The past year has been both tempestuous and excitingfrom pet food, E. coli and toy poisoning scares to political fireworks over embryonic stem cell research to forest fires ravaging California. A controversial Nobel scientist (James Watson) went down in a blaze of infamy, tumbling from grace after putting his foot in his mouth one time too many, whereas a former vice president and defeated presidential candidate (Al Gore) rose from the ashes to become a Nobel Peace prize (and Oscar) winner for raising awareness on the urgency of global warming. The honor came on the heels of official worldwide recognition that climate change is not only a pressing problem, but one that was almost completely caused by humansand one, too, that humans must fix. On a related note, we discovered that the North Pole is melting, beloved freshwater dolphins are practically extinct and nuclear powerfeared since the 1979 near-meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuke plant in Middletown, Pa.has become the clean-energy alternative du jour that even has the backing of some enviros. For the first time, too, we enjoyed (depending on how you look at it) an extra month of daylight saving time, thanks to Congress, which made the move to save energy and, lawmakers said, to cut down on traffic accidentsand, perhaps most important, to make Halloween more special and safe. Alas, 2007 was the year in which hopes were dashed that human growth hormone might be the key to eternal youth. It was also when parents everywhere became alarmed as school kids began contracting an antibiotic-resistant superbug (MRSA), and air travelers found themselves wondering whether their fellow passengers harbored serious contagious illnesses after it was revealed that a man with a virulent form of tuberculosis flouted official warnings to stay home, instead flying to

Italy to get married. It was the year, too, when an American pastime became an American tragedya report on steroid use by pro baseball players revealed that even sports heroes are flawed. The past year was one filled with mysteries as well, such as disappearing honeybees and the fate of famed computer scientist James Gray, who departed one fine day from San Francisco on a sailing trip never to be seen again, despite a massive, high-tech all-out search by friends and colleagues. There were ethical dilemmas that came to light, too, such as the decision by the parents of a severely disabled girl dubbed "Pillow Angel," who, after consulting a panel of doctors and ethicists, decided to have their daughter undergo surgery to stunt her growth, thereby keeping her small so that they could continue to care for her themselves. But there were also some exciting new developments and discoveries: human skin cells were transformed to stem cells; primates came within a hair of being successfully cloned; scientists found that if they killed the virus behind some cancers, they might also kill the cancer; the discovery of a new planet with the most Earth-like characteristics yet observed; and, the unveiling of the first quantum computer. On the political science front, Libya finally freed five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, each of whom had served eight years of life sentences for allegedly deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV, despite evidence of their innocence. And who could forget the long-awaited debut of the Apple iPhoneand the dramatic price cut for the nifty new device that soon followed, angering early purchasers? Or robots sent in to help in the fruitless search for trapped miners after a deadly Utah mine collapse? Or the first wireless power transmission? There was some promising genetic news on autism, Parkinson's and other elusive disorders, not to mention the discovery that Neandertals may well have spoken and, what's more, may have been redheads. Plus, 2007 is the year that getting parts of one's own genome mapped became as simple as plunking down a few hundred bucks (closer to $1,000, but still). State of the Science: Beyond the Worst Case Climate Change Scenario The IPCC has declared man-made climate change "unequivocal." The hard part: trying to stop it. Climate change is "unequivocal" and it is 90 percent certain that the "net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming," the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) a panel of more than 2,500 scientists and other expertswrote in its first report on the physical science of global warming earlier this year. In its second assessment, the IPCC stated that human-induced warming is having adiscernible influence on the planet, from species migration to thawing permafrost. Despite these findings, emissions of the greenhouse gases driving this process continue to rise thanks to increased burning of fossil fuels while cost-effective options for decreasing them have not been adopted, the panel found in its third report. The IPCC's fourth and final assessment of the climate change problemknown as the Synthesis Reportcombines all of these reports and adds that "warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible, depending upon the rate and magnitude of the climate change." Although countries continue to debate the best way to address this finding, 130 nations, including the U.S., China, Australia, Canada and even Saudi Arabia, have concurred with it. "The governments now require, in fact, that the authors report on risks that are high and 'key' because of their potentially very high consequence," says economist Gary Yohe, a lead author on the IPCC Synthesis Report. "They have, perhaps, given the planet a chance to save itself." Among those risks: Warming TemperaturesContinued global warming is virtually certain (or more than 99 percent likely to occur) at this point, leading to both good and bad impacts. On the positive side, fewer people will die from freezing temperatures and agricultural yield will increase in colder areas. The negatives include reduced crop production in the tropics and subtropics, increased insect outbreaks, diminished water supply caused by dwindling snowpack, and increasingly poor air quality in cities. Heat WavesScientists are more than 90 percent certain that episodes of extreme heat will increase worldwide, leading to increased danger of wildfires, human deaths and water quality issues such as algal blooms. Heavy RainsScientific estimates suggest that extreme precipitation eventsfrom downpours to whiteoutsare more than 90 percent likely to become more common, resulting in diminished water quality and increased flooding, crop damage, soil erosion and disease risk. DroughtScientists estimate that there is a more than 66 percent chance thatdroughts will become more frequent and widespread, making water scarcer, upping the risk of starvation through failed crops and further increasing the risk of wildfires. Stronger StormsWarming ocean waters will likely increase the power of tropical cyclones (variously known as hurricanes and typhoons), raising the risk of human death, injury and disease as well as destroying coral reefs and property. BiodiversityAs many as a third of the species known to science may be at risk ofextinction if average temperatures rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Sea Level RiseThe level of the world's oceans will rise, likely inundating low-lying land, turning freshwater brackish and potentially triggering widespread migration of human populations from affected areas. "As temperatures rise, thermal expansion will lead to sea-level rise, independent of melting ice," says chemical engineer Lenny Bernstein, another lead author of the recent IPCC report. "The indications are that this factor alone could cause serious problems [and] ice-sheet melting would greatly accelerate [it]." Such ice-sheet melting, which the IPCC explicitly did not include in its predictions of sea-level rise, has already been observed and may be speeding up, according to recent research that determined that the melting of Greenland's ice cap has accelerated to six times the average flow of the Colorado River. Research has also shown that the world has consistently emitted greenhouse gases at the highest projected levels examined and sea-level rise has also outpaced projections from the IPCC's last assessment in 2001. "We are above the high scenario now," says climatologist Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, an IPCC lead author. "This is not a safe world." Other recent findings include: Carbon Intensity IncreasingThe amount of carbon dioxide per car built, burger served or widget sold had been consistently declining until the turn of the century. But since 2000, CO2 emissions have grown by more than 3 percent annually. This is largely due to the economic booms in China and India, which rely on polluting coal to power production. But emissions in the developed world have started to rise as well, increasing by 2.6 percent since 2000, according to reports made by those countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also recently argued that U.S. emissions may continue to increase as a result of growing energy demand. Carbon Sinks SlowingThe world's oceans and forests are absorbing less of the CO2 released by human activity, resulting in a faster rise in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases. All told, humanity released 9.9 billion metric tons (2.18 X 10 13pounds) of carbon in 2006 at the same time that the ability of the North Atlantic to take in such emissions, for example, dropped by 50 percent.

Impacts AcceleratingWarming temperatures have prompted earlier springs in the far north and have caused plant species to spread farther into formerly icy terrain. Meanwhile, sea ice in the Arctic reached a record low this year, covering just 1.59 million square miles and thus shattering the previous 2005 minimum of 2.05 million square miles. "The observed rate of loss is faster than anything predicted," says senior research scientist Mark Serreze of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. "We're already set up for another big loss next year. We've got so much open water in the Arctic now that has absorbed so much energy over the summer that the ocean has warmed. The ice that grows back this autumn will be thin." The negative consequences of such reinforcing, positive feedbacks (white ice is replaced by dark water, which absorbs more energy and prevents the formation of more white ice) remain even when they seemingly work in our favor. For example, scientists at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel in Germany recently discovered that plankton consumes more carbon at higher atmospheric concentrations of CO2. "The plankton were carbon-enriched," says marine biologist Ulf Riebesell, who conducted the study. "There weren't more of them, but each cell had more carbon." This could mean that microscopic ocean plants may potentially absorb more of the carbon emitted into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, other research (from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) has shown that such plankton does not make it to the seafloor in large enough amounts to sequester the carbon in the long term. Further, such carbon-heavy plankton do not begin to appear until CO2 concentrations reach twice present values750 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere compared with roughly 380 ppm presently (a level at which catastrophic change may be a certainty)and they are less nutritious to all the animals that rely on them for food. "This mechanism is both too small and too late," Riebesell says. "By becoming more carbon-rich, zooplankton have to eat more phytoplankton to achieve the same nutrition" and, therefore, "they grow and reproduce more slowly." The IPCC notes that there are cost-effective solutions, such as retrofitting buildingsfor energy efficiency, but says they must be implemented in short order to stem further damage. "We are 25 years too late," Schneider says. "If the object is to avoid dangerous change, we've already had it. The object now is to avoid really dangerous change." The North Pole Is Melting The permanent Arctic ice cap dwindled to a record low this week, presaging a future of a summertime Northwest Passage and obscuring fog. Tis the season in the Arctic when the sun disappears below the horizon and twilight replaces daylight. Temperatures drop andice that melted throughout the Arctic summer begins to cover the world's northernmost ocean again. Scientists have used satellite pictures since 1979 to map the extent of such ice at its minimum, and the picture this year isn't pretty. Covering 1.59 million square miles (4.12 million square kilometers), this summer's sea ice shattered the previous record for the smallest ice cap of 2.05 million square miles (5.31 million square kilometers) in 2005a further loss of sea ice area equivalent to the states of California and Texas combined. "The sea ice cover this year has reached a new record low," says Mark Serreze, senior research scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. "It's not just that we beat the old record, we annihilated it." As a result of atmospheric patterns that both warmed the air and reduced cloud cover as well as increased residual heat in newly exposed ocean waters, such melting helped open the fabled Northwest Passage for the first time [see photo] this summer and presaged tough times for polar bears and other Arctic animals that rely on sea ice to survive, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Such precipitous loss of ice cover far outpaces anything climate models or scientists have predicted. This new record low continues the trend of steadily shrinking summer sea ice. "We're already set up for a big loss next year," Serreze notes. "We've got so much open waterin the Arctic right now that has absorbed so much energy over the summer that the ocean has warmed. The ice that grows back this autumn will be thin." In fact, a German expedition on the icebreaker Polarstern has revealed that existing Arctic sea ice in the center of the ice cap is only about three feet (one meter) thick, 50 percent thinner than it was just six years ago. As a result, more melt water is mixing with the salty seawater and pulses of warmer Atlantic seawater have intruded into the Arctic Ocean. Whereas the South Pole remains protected by differing geographic, atmospheric and oceanic conditions, the North Pole is undergoing rapid change not seen in at least 6,000 years and perhaps as much as 125,000 years, and which may spread to lower latitudes. "It is reasonable to think that if you lose the sea ice cover that is going to have an impact elsewhere, in the midlatitudes," Serreze says. Some modeling studiesof such effects have suggested drought in the western U.S. or changes in precipitation patterns across Europe. Serreze expects the ice will bounce back somewhat next year, if only because he cannot imagine it shrinking any more so swiftly. But ice-free summers in the Arctic may become the norm in the near future. "At this point, I'd say the year 2030 is not unreasonable" for a summer without sea ice in the Arctic, Serreze says. "Within our lifetimes and certainly within our children's lifetimes." When that occurs, the Arctic Ocean may become a spooky, foggy place, haunted by diminished populations of spectrally thin polar bears clinging to life in residual habitat. "It's going to be a different world," Serreze notes. "The observed rates of change have far outstripped what we projected." Combating Climate Change: Farming Out Global Warming Solutions Changes to agricultural practice and forestry management could cut greenhouse gas emissions, buying time to develop alternative technologies. Saving the trees could slow climate change, new research shows. Each year, nearly 33 million acres of forestland around the world is cut down, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Tropical felling alone contributes 1.5 billion metric tons of carbonsome 20 percent of all man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissionsto the atmosphere annually. If such losses were cut in half, it could save 500 million metric tons of carbon annually and contribute 12 percent of the total reductions in GHG emissions required to avoid unpleasant global warming, researchers recently reported in Science. Forest depletion ultimately contributes more GHG emissions than all the cars and trucks in use worldwide, says Werner Kurz, a forest ecologist with Natural Resources Canada, who was not involved with the study. "What we are doing in these tropical forests is really a massive problem." Changes in forest management and agricultural practices could significantly reduce the threat of global warming much more quickly than can technological solutions such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) from coal-fired power plants, according to experts. "We don't know how to do CCS. These are things we could do today," says Bruce McCarl, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University in College Station. "They are a bridge to the future." Among proposed changes: more widespread adoption of so-called no-till farming, a practice that involves leaving unharvested crop stalks and other plant matter behind in the field undisturbed by plows and other soil-agitating instruments. "Anything that reduces soil disturbance increases carbon storage," McCarl notes.

Basically, the carbon stored inside the remains sinks into the soil instead of being stirred up and into the atmosphere when the soil is prepared for planting using conventional means. Such no-till farming provides a double benefit for farmers: improved soils and reduced fuel use, because it negates the need to harvest the stalks with tractors and other equipment (although it can lead to short-term reductions in crop yields) says Chuck Rice, a soil scientist at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan. The opportunity to pour carbon back into the soil exists because farming over the past century has depleted its levels of organic carbon, Rice notes. But, as with water, the soil can only hold so much carbon before it is saturated. "Sequestration could be provided for the next 30 to 50 years," before the soil will reach its limit and other actions will be needed, he says. Growing crops for fuelknown as biofuelsrepresents another potential way of cutting GHGs by replacing fossil fuels (biofuels created underground by nature over millions of years). "Biofuel production also shows promise for directly offsetting some reliance on fossil fuels," says Stephen Ogle, an ecosystem research scientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. "This represents a direct reduction in emissions from the current trends, because dedicated energy crops will reassimilate some of the carbon dioxide emitted by energy use." Such changes, however, are not without peril. They could lead to higher food prices as well as to converting marginal lands back into crop production, which would, in turn, lead to GHG emissions. Further, pursuing cellulosic ethanol (a biofuel brewed from stalks and other leftover plant material) could eliminate the same remnantsand, therefore, their carbon storage potentialthat no-till practices would otherwise sequester, Rice adds, noting that the risks and benefits of any solutions must be carefully weighed. There are some radical (and less likely) solutions as well, given that more than half of U.S. acreage is used to produce animal feed. "If we really want to solve the world greenhouse gas problem, we will all become vegetarians," McCarl says, pointing out that it takes seven pounds of feed to raise a pound of beef, 1.4 pounds for chickens and three pounds of feed per pound of hog. "If everyone was a vegetarian," he says, "then you could farm a lot less acreage." If adopted, this significant lifestyle change would also cut down on another animal problem: waste. Cow, pig and chicken excrement fester in lagoons, emitting methanea short-lived but potent GHG. On the other hand, capturing that methane also offers an opportunity to create electricity. Biodigesters (covered tanks that employ bacteria to break down animal waste) produce abundant methane, says Albert Morales, executive vice president of Environmental Power, a purveyor of such systems. "The gas goes to a generator,'' he explains, "that generates power for the [electricity] grid." Economists and other experts argue that offsetting coal-fired electricity generation may be the most promising use of such agricultural and forestry biofuels. While roughly 20 percent of the carbon in corn, for example, is recycled if turned into the motor fuel ethanol, as much as 95 percent of the carbon in the whole corn plant can be recycled if burned in electric power plants, McCarl says. The pulp and paper industry, which creates large amounts of waste, is already utilizing such carbon recycling and generation. In fact, such manufacturers have become net exporters of energy in Canada by burning residue wood. This kind of efficiency could reduce GHG emissions in the U.S. alone "in the neighborhood of 300 million metric tons on an annual basis," McCarl says, "principally from burning biofuels for electricity and [from] forest management." Forest management is the linchpin of any effort to combat climate change in these sectors, contributing the largest share of greenhouse gases. And it will not be as simple as building a fence around the world's forests. "We need to understand the dual role of forests of storing carbon and providing carbon to serve society's needs," Natural Resources Canada's Kurz says. "Choosing wood-based products has a much lower fossil fuel footprint than using some other building materials," such as concrete. In Scandinavia, for example, forests cover more land now than in the previous centurythus increasing their carbon storagewhile still being regularly harvested. "The more we can prolong the storage of wood products in human structures, the longer the carbon is kept out of the atmosphere. When we do get rid of it, we should burn it to offset fossil fuels, part of a cascading system of multiple uses," Kurz says. "Good forest management is typically also good carbon management." Climate Changing Pollution RisingAgain For years, emissions of greenhouse gases in developed countriesand throughout the worldhave been going down while economic activity increased. Even as the economies of the U.S. and European Union continued to grow, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO 2) per car built, burger served or widget sold was on the decline. No more. "It appears that the carbon intensity of economic activity has stopped improving," says Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, Calif. "Each dollar of economic activity is requiring more rather than less carbon, which reverses a long-term trend." In fact, the growth of CO2 emissions tripled between 2000 and 2004growing by more than 3 percent per yearaccording to a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. From 1990 to 1999, emissions growth had averaged a little over 1 percent per year. (Researchers based their findings on data from the U.S. Department of Energy, the United Nations Statistics Division and the International Monetary Fund.) Carbon dioxide is responsible for trapping roughly 63 percent of the extra heat blamed for global warming. By 2005, emissions from man-made fossil fuel combustion had reached 7.9 billion metric tons per year (or 1.7 x 1013 pounds), according to the Global Carbon Project (GCP)an Australia-based research consortium devoted to analyzing the problem. Developing countries such as China and India, which have experienced economic booms, are leading the charge in increasing CO2 emissions. Although the U.S., Europe and other developed countries have contributed 77 percent of the cumulative emissions since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, developing nations were responsible for 73 percent of the total growth in 2004 alone. "Basically, the increase reflects a surge in economic activity," Field says. "There is a tight link between economic activity and energy use." In other words, the more widgets produced, the more energy consumedand therefore the more CO2 emitted. Carbon intensity is going up because countries like China are relying on the cheapest and dirtiest of fossil fuels to power their growth. "Basically, their economy is growing on coal," Field notes. But according to the U.S. Department of Energy, pollution is on the rise in the U.S. and world energy use is expected to grow 57 percent by 2030, with coal being the fastest growing energy source. Study lead author Michael Raupach, GCP co-chair and atmospheric physicist at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, says it will take economic, policy and social changes to reverse the trend, such as capturing the CO2 emitted by coal-fired power plants and increased international cooperation. This is particularly true as national governments continue to strive to enhance the economic well-being of their populations. "In an era of rapidly increasing economic growth and increasing carbon emissions, you can't assume that we're going to continue to see improvement in carbon intensity," Field says. "We have to figure out some way to get the carbon intensity of the energy system to go down."

Fields argues the burden rests with countries like the U.S. that have the resources and technological know-how to undertake solutions, such as carbon capture and storage, which will be needed quickly. "We have to try harder to control global warming," Raupach adds. "The final judge of our efforts is the global atmosphere and its judgment at present is harsh." Final Report: Humans Caused Global Warming The world gets a wake-up call from Paris that climate change is man-made and likely will worsen without emissions curbs. PARIS -- For the first time, a panel of climate experts has confirmed that global warming is occurring and that it is "very likely"--90 percent certain--man-made. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a working group of some 3,000 delegates from 113 countries, today issued its final report here on the state of climate change--and the findings were grim. "There can be no question that the increases in these greenhouse gases are dominated by human activity," says Susan Solomon, co-chair of the working group and an atmospheric scientist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "Warming of the climate system is now unequivocal. That is evident in observations of air and ocean temperature as well as rising global mean sea level." "The 2nd of February in Paris will be remembered as the day that the question mark was removed from the idea that humans had anything to do with climate change," adds Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) "The focus of attention will now shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity and whether the science is sufficient to what on earth are we going to do about it." A wealth of new data in the years between this report and the last one in 2001 provided improved accuracy and precision. For instance, thanks to a diversity of computer models--as well as several runs of each--the scientists can now provide a best estimate for the temperature change based on a doubling of carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere: three degrees Celsius. This doubling is based on preindustrial levels of the most prevalent greenhouse gas--roughly 280 parts per million (ppm). Concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere had already reached 379 ppm in 2005. "Some of the models show an ice-free Arctic. We see more severe extremes, heat waves. We see a lot of heavier precipitation, drought increases in a lot of regions. Tropical cyclones are projected to become more intense in a lot of areas with ongoing increases in sea surface temperatures," says Gerald Meehl, an atmospheric scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and a contributing author. "We see what we've already seen but everything becoming a lot more extreme." This warming would vary from place to place, with some regions experiencing far more. "The last time our polar regions of the earth were significantly warmer than they are today over an extended period occurred 125,000 years ago," Solomon notes. "At that very different time we did see reductions in the polar ice sheets that led to four to six meters (13 to 20 feet) of sea level rise." Adds geoscientist and lead author Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona, some scientists "drilled through an Antarctic ice sheet and it wasn't there then. That's going to be a big focus for the future." The process of drafting this summary report proved contentious at times. For example, a sentence was ultimately removed that said man-made greenhouse gases outweigh the contribution of the sun by a factor of five. "The difference is really a factor of 10," says atmospheric scientist and lead author Piers Forster of the University of Leeds in England. In fact, this report, despite its gravity, represents a very conservative estimate of what may happen as a result of man-made climate change. Future reports from the IPCC will focus on impacts and strategies for mitigation, culminating in November in a summation of their findings. Action is already being taken: many countries have committed to reducing greenhouse gases under terms of the Kyoto Treaty; but this IPCC document represents the international consensus on the state of climate science. "It's important that all governments have agreed to the conclusions of this science," notes Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). "The economic costs of waiting to act will be severe." The U.S., which emits the most greenhouse gases, has so far not accepted any form of reduction in such emissions, either as part of international efforts or domestically. But it also acceded to this summary, saying it "summarizes the current state of climate change research and will serve as a valuable source of information for policymakers," according to a statement from Sharon Hays, leader of the U.S. delegation and deputy director for science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Efforts to combat climate change include proposals to mimic the natural cooling effect of volcanic eruptions or to place an enormous parasol in space to block sunlight. "We could probably offset the effects now by having a big volcano every 10 years or so," Forster says. "You would have to do it now, you'd have to do it for the rest of time or until you find some other alternative. It can only ever be temporary." But there are other, less intrusive options. "The largest opportunity is energy efficiency," says Halldor Thorgiersson, deputy executive secretary for scientific and technological advice at the UNFCCC. "There are also new technologies such as carbon capture and storage." Already, potential impacts of climate change should be taken into account for long-term planning, such as hydroelectric projects or sewer systems that will last a century or more, says lead author David Wratt, principal scientist for New Zealand's National Climate Center. "Let's not do the minimum, let's put in some tolerances or at least make it so that putting [in] more pipes in 50 years isn't too difficult." It is now clear that the world will undergo even more rapid changes this century if the levels of greenhouse gas emissions are not slowed. "If we were to have continued emissions at or above the current levels, the changes in the 21st century would very likely be larger than they were in the 20th century," Solomon says, just as the rate of sea level change in the 19th century is dwarfed by the rate of sea level change in the 20th century. "We now know we have warming and it is due to humans, there should be no real debate," Overpeck adds. "We know there have been a variety of associated changes: stronger hurricanes, reduction of snowpack. These are the kind of changes we have had that are detectable with just a fraction of a degree of warming." "We're going to see these same patterns continue in the future and get more and more severe," he continues. "We have a really clear picture of what is going to happen if we don't do anything or if we make some reduction in emissions." Climate Change Verdict: Science Debate Ends, Solution Debate Begins The IPCC summary for policymakers definitively proclaimed the globe to be warming as a result of human activity, now the science shifts to impacts and solutions. The debate over whether Earth's climate is changing and if humanity is responsible for that change closed in Paris on February 2. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its summary for policymakersa summation of the salient science in its much longer report due in Mayin which it said that climate change is "unequivocal" and estimated the chances of humans being behind it at 90 percent, or "very likely." New observations and new models contributed to this certainty, ranging from Antarctic ice cores to improved understanding of solar fluxes. Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere379 parts per million (ppm) in 2005have reached levels not seen in the last 650,000 years, which have varied between 180 ppm and 300 ppm. The burning of fossil fuels is the main CO2 contributor to the atmosphere, followed by clearing land for agriculture.

A better understanding of the constituents of the atmosphere, as well as various natural processes on Earth and on the sun, has allowed scientists to sum the various forcingsfactors that can increase or decrease the retention of heat on the planetfor the first time. [see graph above). While the sun is contributing an extra 0.12 W/m2(watts per meter2)and aerosols and cloud cover combine to cool Earth by 1.2 W/m2CO2, methane and nitrous oxide, among other greenhouse gases, are warming the globe by 2.3 W/m2. Such radiative forcing is easy to see in the recent climate record: 11 of the past dozen years "rank among the 12 warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature (since 1850)," the scientists note in the summary. The Arctic has led the way, its temperatures increasing at twice the global average, but worldwide days of extreme temperatures have become far more frequent over the past 50 years on every continent except Antarctica [see graph below]. The ocean absorbs most of the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gasesmore than 80 percentwith temperatures rising up to 3,000 meters below the surface. Such warming provides stronger fuel for the furious storms called tropical cyclones that form over open waters (known in the Atlantic as hurricanes). It also causes the wateritself to expandso-called thermal expansioncontributing to a sea level rise of 0.17 meter (nearly seven inches) in the 20th century. And the rate of that expansion appears to be accelerating, averaging 3.1 millimeters (0.1 inch) per year between 1993 and 2003. But, as the world's glaciers recede, melting ice is also contributing to the rise in sea levels. In fact, the last time the Arctic and Antarctic were three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmerroughly 125,000 years agosea levels rose by as much as six meters (20 feet) thanks to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Such warmingthree degrees C (5.4 degrees F)is the scientists' best estimate of how much average temperatures would rise if greenhouse gas concentrations were allowed to double from preindustrial levels. Warming of 0.6 degree C (one degree F) is already guaranteed for this century, due to the CO 2in place, which will remain there for centuries. That will have a host of impacts, from more severe droughts to more and stronger floods as a result of downpours. A study of such impacts is now in the works by an assemblage of scientists under the auspices of the IPCC. That report is scheduled to be released in April, followed in May by another group's report on options for adaptation and mitigation. By November a complete synthesis of all three reportstotaling more than 1,600 pageswill be available. But the basic message is already clear: climate change is occurring and efforts must be made to minimize its dangerous consequences. Climate Change Is Happening, Effects Will Be Severe, Now What Will It Cost to Fix It? Could it be true that staving off the severe effects posed by climate change won't impose ruinous costs? The IPCC thinks so. Bangkok, Thailand, represents one future for global transportation. Short trips last hours, whether by bus or car, and by evening traffic can average half a mile an hour in some spots, far slower than walking speed. Bangkok's nine million or so denizens support two million personal vehicles. "Unfortunately, the personal vehicle has become sort of synonymous with being a rich, civilized person," notes Steven Plotkin, a transportation energy analyst at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. "It's one of the first things you buy when you get some money together." Worldwide, the desire for automobiles and the traffic it inspires burns fuel at an alarming pace, contributing to an ever increasing amount of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide. As the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released today in Bangkok reveals, cutting back on those emissions is a critical task. Worldwide emissions of all greenhouse gases have nearly doubled since 1970 thanks to a rise in the worldwide use of energy, whether fuel in cars or electricity from a coal-fired power plant. In that time emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) alone rose by "about 80 percent," according to the report, with 28 percent of that increase occurring since 1990 alone. Nothing in sight will check this rise: cars are only getting more popular and more of the world is consuming coal-fired electricity. China alone added 90 gigawatts of coal-fired power plants in 2006, roughly equivalent to the total power production of Germany, according to Richard Bradley, head of the energy efficiency and environment division at the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris. If CO2 levels in the atmospherecurrently 379 parts per million (ppm)reach roughly 550 ppm, scientists estimate temperatures would rise by three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) on average. Such a rise would have a host of impacts, ranging from shrinking glaciers (and imperiled supplies of fresh water) to extremeweather events and natural disasters such as forest fires and pest outbreaks, according to the IPCC. Fortunately, a range of options exist to attempt to mitigate the amount of CO 2 and other greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. First and foremost is simply using energy wiselyso-called energy efficiency. "The most benefit with the least cost would come from energy efficiency," argues Harlan Watson, the senior climate negotiator for the U.S. "If we are going to address climate change in the long run we have to reduce and indeed reverse the growth in global emissions. The best way to do that is to employ a portfolio across many sectors." For example, the report calls for more efficient buildings. "For new buildings, this runs the gamut from proper insulation; good windows; energy-efficient heating, cooling and ventilation; efficient appliances and plug loads that have much-reduced standby losses," says Mark Levine, a senior staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. "It will be possible as time goes on to construct commercial buildings that are much more energy efficient than at present." And it doesn't have to cost more. The report notes that "by 2030, about 30 percent of the projected [greenhouse gas] emissions in the building sector can be avoided with net economic benefit." From increasing the use of low-carbon sources of energy such as nuclear and solar power to reducing the nearly 13 megahectares (about 50,200 square miles, or roughly the size of New York State) of forest cleared every year (which contributes roughly 5.8 gigatonnes of CO 2 to the atmosphere annually), the report lays out ways the world can reduce emissions. Even transportation can be improved. "You can double the efficiency of the U.S. fleet [of vehicles] with technology that is in existence today," Argonne's Plotkin says. "It just takes the will." Of course, transportation shows how difficult it will be to achieve the long-term goal of nearly eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors. "Decarbonizing will require a dramatic change in the energy supply infrastructure," notes David L. Greene, a transportation analyst at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Options include hydrogen fuel cells, electric hybrids fueled with biomass or electric cars that plug into the grid. "There is not enough biofuel," Greene adds. "So you will need hydrogen or electricity to decarbonize surface transport, plus strong policies to ensure that the carbon emissions from producing these energy carriers are sequestered." Such carbon capture and storage will be critical to any efforts to combat climate change, particularly if coal continues to play a large power generation role. Unfortunately, sequestration has yet to be demonstrated on a large scale. Significant government funding will be required to prove this technology, admits James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "This report underscores the need for collective action, underscores the need for action across all sectors of the economy, and underscores the need for some breakout technologies in fossil fuel power generation as well as in the area of fuels," he says. "The goal is reducing emissions and growing economies."

The report also provides estimates of what such changes might cost. These estimates range from an actual improvement of overall economic health to a loss of as much as 3 percent of global gross domestic product by 2030, depending on what level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is targeted. But "costs may be substantially lower under the assumption that revenues from carbon taxes or auctioned permits under an emission trading system are used to promote low-carbon technologies," the report notes; associated health benefits, such as decreased particulate pollution from cars, could make stringent action economically beneficial. "The IPCC report demonstrates that costs can be manageable if action begins soon and is clearly articulated," IEA's Bradley adds. "Because of the long-lived nature of the energy supply capital those investment decisions are needed now." That will require leadership on both domestic and international levels from the U.S., the world's largest developed emitter, which has yet to commit to international reduction targets or even a preferred level of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. "The U.S. taking a step is the next major thing to happen," says Billy Pizer, a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Resources for the Future. "I don't know if it's going to happen in this administration but I think it's possible. It is not impossible to imagine this president coming up with a proposal." Voluntary measures, like those the U.S. government currently employs, will not be enough. "Voluntary measures will not work, though they have some very modest impact," says Charles Kolstad, an economist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "Countries need to take actions that provide incentives to individuals and businesses to reduce carbona price needs to be put on carbon." According to the report and its authors, whatever action governments undertake will need to be faster than the sluggish flow of Bangkok traffic. "Mitigation efforts over the next two to three decades will have a large impact on opportunities to achieve lower stabilization levels," the report says. In transportation, it offers mandatory fuel economy standards and better infrastructure planning as ways to both avoid the nightmare of catastrophic climate change and urban gridlock. "The short term is efficiency," Argonne's Plotkin says. And in the longer term? "Urban form has a big effect on how people travel and also what kinds of public transportation you can have. This is a long term thing but you have to start somewhere soon." Combating Climate Change: Industrial-Strength Efforts to Eliminate Excess Emissions If controlling global warming is a priority, then industriesfrom banking to cement manufacturingwill have to become efficient energy users, which will require a transformation of their basic operations. Making cement, which requires heating to 1,450 degrees Celsius a mass of limestone and other ingredients, caused the release of nearly 46 teragrams (roughly 50.7 million tons) of greenhouse gases in the U.S. in 2005, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is the basic ingredient in concrete (first used by the Romans), which paves our walks, supports our walls and even is used in our furniture in some cases. It is the essential substrate of modern lifeand therefore the third largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (though dwarfed by fossil fuel consumption). Following it in the list of significant industrial sources in the U.S. are the production of iron and steel, ammonia, aluminum and petrochemicalsthe building blocks of much of modern endeavor. A host of new techniques and technologies will be required to reduce emissions from these sources that includes reusing heat and power generated in manufacturing processes; recycling materials or substituting them; controlling greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide (CO2); and, ultimately, capturing and burying the CO2 produced. "The key approach is energy efficiency, but its application has to be tailored to each specific industrial situation," says Lenny Bernstein, an environmental consultant and coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report chapter on mitigating emissions from industry. For example, cement manufacturers can use either blast furnace slag from steel mills or pozzolansnatural or manufactured reactive materials that increase the long-term strength of concreteas substitutes for other, more traditional materials. Either reduce the energy needed to form the cement. Or manufacturers can use alternative fuels. "Cement kilns are great for disposing of almost anything," Bernstein says. "You can extend the fuel source with these and thus avoid the energy associated with newfossil fuels." Already, a host of industries have voluntarily begun to cut back on their greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, primarily by controlling the gases other than CO2 that contribute to climate change, such as methane (CH4). "The cost of reducing non-CO2emissions is cheaper relative to reducing CO2 emissions, mainly because many of the technologies used to reduce emissions [in the former] also reduce costs to the firm through conservation and reuse of the gases," explains Casey Delhotal, another IPCC lead author who contributed to the industry chapter. For example, Dow Chemical Co. has saved approximately $4 billion in energy costs between 1994 and 2005 by cutting greenhouse gas emissions 32 percent and its chemical industry competitor DuPont saved $3 billion between 1990 and 2005 while cutting such emissions 60 percent. "These [voluntary] activities have led to significant reductions in emissions from some companies and some industries, but overall have not had a significant effect on emissions at the national or regional level," Bernstein says. "Industry has certainly applied a great number of energy-efficiency options but so far those have been only or largely things where there's a return in terms of cost savings. There's a lot more energy efficiency that could be done but it has a cost to it." Dealing with the emissions of CO2, the most ubiquitous greenhouse gas, will require carbon capture and storage (CCS) for the ammonia, cement and iron industriesand that will cost. But it will also be easier to applyand therefore may pave the way for this critical technology to come into widespread use. "The gas that comes off a blast furnace contains higher CO2 concentrations than a coal-fired power plant," Bernstein says. Concentrated CO2 is easier to capture, compress and inject into the ground, and ammonia plants, for example, are already typically built on or near subterranean deposits of natural gas, which might serve for geologic sequestration. "For actually doing [CCS], that would be the lowest cost and the technologically simplest way to do it," says Bill Moomaw, an international energy policy expert at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Ultimately, however, energy efficiency and technology improvements will have the most critical role to play in the developing world, such as China and India, where much of the world's energy intensive industry is now located. And, although the physical manufacturing facilities are often more modern and efficient in these countries, simply because they are newer, the economic capacity and will to address emissions from these sources may not exist. "How their future development goes and what they do or don't do to improve the performance of existing plants is going to determine the global emissions from this sector," Bernstein says. "China is already the leading producer of steel, cement, nitrogen fertilizers and a couple of other energy intensive products."