A study that points to a possible link
It is not proven yet, but organophosphate pesticides seem to cause neurological damage in children, which is more obvious in developing countries where more children are exposed to pesticide use due to living in farming communities.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Lynn Posts on Gulf Spill
Lynn wrote a blog post on the gulf oil spill at the Green Blog.
Gulf Oil Spills Onto Political Shores
Gulf Oil Spills Onto Political Shores
Yes, the House Republican Conference has assembled an “Energy Rapid Response Team” ready to convince you that more offshore drilling is necessary, for great fear of rising costs of importing oil and fueling at the pump.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Value of System Dynamics
I've found that a lot of people are skeptical towards system dynamics as a method. I also have a hard time explaining what it is, especially in comparison with other modeling methods such as conventional economic modeling because I don't really know much about other modeling methods.
One common criticism is that it is too subjective because system dynamics models can accommodate subjective variables such as level of material well-being or crowding. While system dynamics can be used to model completely physical systems where we already have a pretty good understanding of the dynamics, such as a pendulum, it is more often used for modeling social systems such as the organization of a business or the urban population.
It seems that many other systems models for engineering and economics are geared towards having inputs and getting outputs. For example, how many kW should each generator on the grid be supplying, how much profit does the company expect this quarter, what percent of the profit should be spent on R&D, etc. The power of system dynamics, in contrast, is not in the accuracy of getting numerical answers, but rather in gaining understanding of the dynamics of a complicated system. A system dynamics model can help users find out the causality of different outcomes, what actions have the most leverage, and what behaviors are just symptoms. I still feel there is a lot of potential for system dynamics, but I am trying to maintain a critical attitude to better understand its limits and differences from conventional models.
One common criticism is that it is too subjective because system dynamics models can accommodate subjective variables such as level of material well-being or crowding. While system dynamics can be used to model completely physical systems where we already have a pretty good understanding of the dynamics, such as a pendulum, it is more often used for modeling social systems such as the organization of a business or the urban population.
It seems that many other systems models for engineering and economics are geared towards having inputs and getting outputs. For example, how many kW should each generator on the grid be supplying, how much profit does the company expect this quarter, what percent of the profit should be spent on R&D, etc. The power of system dynamics, in contrast, is not in the accuracy of getting numerical answers, but rather in gaining understanding of the dynamics of a complicated system. A system dynamics model can help users find out the causality of different outcomes, what actions have the most leverage, and what behaviors are just symptoms. I still feel there is a lot of potential for system dynamics, but I am trying to maintain a critical attitude to better understand its limits and differences from conventional models.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
China Climate Change Policy: Deliberate and Wily
I went to that China Climate Change Policy talk at MIT on Friday. My Chinese isn't good enough to understand everything, but anyway the slides were in English. The presentation was an overview of the current situation of emissions and an overview of the various climate change talks that have happened like Kyoto and Copenhagen. It was fun to hear directly from the Chinese point of view even though I already know it.
Basically, much of China's energy use is in the industrial sector because half of the world's production of things like steel, aluminum, and flat glass is in China. So industrial energy use accounts for something like 70% instead of 30-40% of energy use in the US. Transportation in China accounts for 10% instead of 30% in the US. Most of electricity in China is from coal, and the presenter talked about the need to upgrade and regulate the quality of coal power plants. He also talked about how China has invested a lot of money in clean energy R&D, although he thought that it's not as much as some reports have said (like the Pew).
One thing that I thought was interesting was that he talked about how planting trees for carbon sequestration is needed, but since the carbon is just stored in the trees, it's not a continual emissions sink that can offset the use of the fossil fuels. I'm glad he brought that up because I think that point is not always presented coherently.
He talked a lot about the different climate conferences and what came of them. He pointed out that nobody is doing very well with their emissions targets set in the Kyoto treaty except for Germany, which has had something like 40% emissions reductions from 1997 levels. He also noted that Russia had a lot lower emissions, too, but I think he said it was due to a bad economy. From the Chinese point of view, it looks really bad that the US has not really made an effort at all to reduce emissions and now only promises a 17% reduction from 2005 levels by 2020, and yet there has been no progress towards that goal. On the other hand, Chinese goals don't seem that ambitious, but they have some goals for reducing carbon intensity of GDP by 40% by 2020 compared with 2005 levels, and he showed a graph for that, and they were on track for meeting that target. The speaker talked about how developed nations were supposed to commit between .5-1% of their GDP to emissions reduction, but many have not been doing that. He also summarized the tensions between the EU, US, and China/India where the EU is most frustrated with the US, but the US refuses to do anything unless China is held to the same standards. China then pushes back and wants the US to take the lead and provide more financial and technical support for developing nations. He talked about how the talks, especially COP15 compared to the UN talks, have been disorganized politically, and so China has been messing around (or something like that maybe?). From the Chinese point of view, it is a defensive strategy to protect one's interests when you see there is so much confusion and little confidence in the other parties' abilities to live up to their promises. In contrast, when China announces a domestic policy goal, they have a lot of domestic pressure to meet those goals in order to maintain legitimacy as a government.
Goals for COP16 are to figure out what kind of goals are reasonable for everyone, and how these goals can be enforced.
Basically, much of China's energy use is in the industrial sector because half of the world's production of things like steel, aluminum, and flat glass is in China. So industrial energy use accounts for something like 70% instead of 30-40% of energy use in the US. Transportation in China accounts for 10% instead of 30% in the US. Most of electricity in China is from coal, and the presenter talked about the need to upgrade and regulate the quality of coal power plants. He also talked about how China has invested a lot of money in clean energy R&D, although he thought that it's not as much as some reports have said (like the Pew).
One thing that I thought was interesting was that he talked about how planting trees for carbon sequestration is needed, but since the carbon is just stored in the trees, it's not a continual emissions sink that can offset the use of the fossil fuels. I'm glad he brought that up because I think that point is not always presented coherently.
He talked a lot about the different climate conferences and what came of them. He pointed out that nobody is doing very well with their emissions targets set in the Kyoto treaty except for Germany, which has had something like 40% emissions reductions from 1997 levels. He also noted that Russia had a lot lower emissions, too, but I think he said it was due to a bad economy. From the Chinese point of view, it looks really bad that the US has not really made an effort at all to reduce emissions and now only promises a 17% reduction from 2005 levels by 2020, and yet there has been no progress towards that goal. On the other hand, Chinese goals don't seem that ambitious, but they have some goals for reducing carbon intensity of GDP by 40% by 2020 compared with 2005 levels, and he showed a graph for that, and they were on track for meeting that target. The speaker talked about how developed nations were supposed to commit between .5-1% of their GDP to emissions reduction, but many have not been doing that. He also summarized the tensions between the EU, US, and China/India where the EU is most frustrated with the US, but the US refuses to do anything unless China is held to the same standards. China then pushes back and wants the US to take the lead and provide more financial and technical support for developing nations. He talked about how the talks, especially COP15 compared to the UN talks, have been disorganized politically, and so China has been messing around (or something like that maybe?). From the Chinese point of view, it is a defensive strategy to protect one's interests when you see there is so much confusion and little confidence in the other parties' abilities to live up to their promises. In contrast, when China announces a domestic policy goal, they have a lot of domestic pressure to meet those goals in order to maintain legitimacy as a government.
Goals for COP16 are to figure out what kind of goals are reasonable for everyone, and how these goals can be enforced.
Delay The Inevitable
NYT presentation about the The Gulf Before the Spill, pointing out that there is a lot of environmental degradation anyway that are happening slower than the oil spill so it is not as noticeable. Maybe the Gulf was screwed anyway or maybe the oil spill will cause it to be cleaner than it otherwise would be due to clean up efforts.
Scientists Finally Standing Up For Themselves
Leading scientists condemn 'political assaults' on climate researchers
This is interesting and exciting because one of the things that came out during the panel talk about communicating about science was that scientists need better PR and they need spokespeople.
This is interesting and exciting because one of the things that came out during the panel talk about communicating about science was that scientists need better PR and they need spokespeople.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
China and Climate Change Policy
MIT CEER Pizza Dinner Talk: Climate Change & China's Policy
Looks like an interesting talk tomorrow. He'll be speaking in Chinese. Whoa. I'm going to go, but I probably won't be understanding that much. Haha
Speaker: Mr. Dong Song, Deputy Director of the Climate Change Office, Legal Department of the Foreign Ministry of China
Looks like an interesting talk tomorrow. He'll be speaking in Chinese. Whoa. I'm going to go, but I probably won't be understanding that much. Haha
Speaker: Mr. Dong Song, Deputy Director of the Climate Change Office, Legal Department of the Foreign Ministry of China
Climate change and its adverse effects are a common concern of the international community. As the largest greenhouse gases emitter since 2006, China?s emission trends, policies and actions in addressing climate change attract a lot of attentions from the world. This presentation will brief on the following dimensions of the issue of climate change and China: climate change and its impacts on China; emission trends of China; China?s efforts in addressing climate change; China?s positions on climate change negotiations & cooperation; China?s outlook of the forthcoming COP16 of the UNFCCC.
Speaker bio:
Mr. Dong Song has been serving as the Deputy Division Director in charge of policy planning at the Legal Department of the Foreign Ministry of China since 2009. During the period of 2006-2008, he held the post of Deputy Director of the Climate Change Office at the Legal Department of the Ministry. Now he is a Master of Arts candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of the Tufts University.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Roundup Consequences
NYT article on farmers starting to have trouble this year with weeds as bugs are becoming resistant to Round-up.
“We’re back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Mr. Anderson, who will plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years. “We’re trying to find out what works.”
Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices, lower crop yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and water.
“It is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen,” said Andrew Wargo III, the president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Carbon Price Climate Legislation
The debate continues on the Breakthrough Blog. They respond to two op-ed's by Friedman and Krugman on the topic of pricing carbon. I haven't read through the whole thing, but it's interesting to keep up with the latest articles on the topic.
Expensive Spill
Spill is here to stay for a while.
Honestly, if people can move, I think they should move.
I think that the surprise that people are expressing about the spill shows how most people don't really understand the nature of engineering. In engineering, Murphy's Law is the law of the land, "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." The only question is how much money and time are you willing to put into designing a system to decrease the failure rate. Many consumer products like laptops and cellphones seem like miracles to people, and they are. However, a lot of resources go to quality control where the factories screen for the defective products so that consumers may have overly positive idea of what engineering is capable of. I think if people really understood that, they wouldn't be so cavalier about offshore drilling and other risky engineering projects where the chance of a mistake is low but can be devastating.
1969 Oil Spill off the coast of California shows that any for-profit company will try to spend the minimum amount on disaster-proofing their operations. It may not just be because they want extra profit but because it may be critical to keeping their businesses afloat.
Honestly, if people can move, I think they should move.
I think that the surprise that people are expressing about the spill shows how most people don't really understand the nature of engineering. In engineering, Murphy's Law is the law of the land, "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." The only question is how much money and time are you willing to put into designing a system to decrease the failure rate. Many consumer products like laptops and cellphones seem like miracles to people, and they are. However, a lot of resources go to quality control where the factories screen for the defective products so that consumers may have overly positive idea of what engineering is capable of. I think if people really understood that, they wouldn't be so cavalier about offshore drilling and other risky engineering projects where the chance of a mistake is low but can be devastating.
1969 Oil Spill off the coast of California shows that any for-profit company will try to spend the minimum amount on disaster-proofing their operations. It may not just be because they want extra profit but because it may be critical to keeping their businesses afloat.
Union Oil's Platform A ruptured because of inadequate protective casing. The oil company had been given permission by the U.S. Geological Survey to cut corners and operate the platform with casings below federal and California standards. Investigators would later determine that more steel pipe sheating inside the drilling hole would have prevented the rupture.
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