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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-03-25

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Mar 252012

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Posted by oliveridley at 12:57 am

Tracking my mail

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Mar 212012
Nepal Post box

On the sidebar, you will find a new donut chart which is a simple cumulative count of the mail we get at home. The measurement started on the 19th of March, 2012, so not much data yet :)  Useful – Mail I will find useful (yes, including bills). Solicited – Mail I find marginally useful, but comes from organisations I support, so I guess it is okay? Junk – Well, you know it when you see it; RTS – Return to Sender, addressed to previous occupant. Canada Post charges quite a bit for mail forwarding, whereas the USPS does it free for a year, so people get better at updating addresses and not missing a couple. I have lived in my current place for 18 months now, still get mail for multiple different people.

My Mail

No particular reason to do this, I was just curious, and this article about the US postal service starting to solicit more direct mail (what most people regard as junk) customers just triggered me to post the results online. My perception is that the signal/noise ratio on my mail is very low, let’s see… The underlying data is in a simple google spreadsheet and the image is linked dynamically, so should always be current.

Update: I don’t have a red dot on my mailbox, no particular reason, just supporting my economy and increasing the GDP, perhaps? More seriously, I would like a green dot campaign, where unsolicited mail is not welcome unless I place a green dot on my mail box for all unsolicited mail, and an amber dot for not-for profit, advocacy, political and generally non-commercial mail.

Featured image is of a letter box from Nepal, from flickr user manc72 used under a creative commons licence.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-03-18

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Mar 182012

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-03-11

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Mar 112012

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-03-04

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-02-26

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Feb 262012

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Cynthia Enloe: War and Feminism

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Feb 232012
Enloe_Poster

I am what I call a practising feminist. I identify as one and try to act as one. I have never taken a class in feminist theory, or for that matter, more than two social studies classes post secondary school (No, I am not proud of this, ignorance is never good, have the rest of my life to change that). Much of everything I know about feminism, I owe to my intelligent and incisive partner. So when I go to lectures by feminist theory giants like Cynthia Enloe, I never know what to expect, or what I will learn. I am glad I went to the University of Victoria last night for their Landsdowne lecture because Prof. Enloe’s talk  - “How Can You Tell if We Are Living in a ‘Post-war’ Era? Some Feminist Warnings” gave me quite a bit to think about. Her books, especially Bananas, Peaches and Bases, and The Curious Feminist are widely read and quoted, and the reverence and respect the audience had for her was apparent. The idea that gender roles are very distinct in war time is not revolutionary. Enloe was very particular to emphasise that a government’s successful conduct of a war depends very heavily on all the unpaid work done by the mothers and wives of the “warriors” (my word). Women’s patriotism is invoked in this endeavour to keep the war going. In that sense, the two most common genders remember war very differently.

Enloe had some interesting things to say about how wars never end in people’s minds, how “post-war” is a gross simplification, and that this memory is sometimes a problem. Enloe talked extensively about what happens when women push past their assigned war gender roles and start to organise and advocate. Cindy Sheehan came up frequently. Widowhood, a powerful war symbol which is supposed to be suffered in silence, can be a powerful unifying influence for collective organizing. Enloe talked about how ‘war widows’ in Iraq had organised to try and make conditions better for them after huge income and job losses in addition to partner loss (link is her book about it). Enloe talked quite a bit about how army systems actively discourage this kind of organising and public advocacy by the women of war, even using the spouses of army superiors and the army’s natural hierarchy to keep women in place. Enloe also, in the middle of telling the audience how army “spouses” are now discouraged from writing break-up letters to their active army mates, broke into an impromptu rendition of Dear John, gotta love that!

I had an issue that was half forming in my head during questions, so I did not ask it, and chatting with my lecture-mate on our walk back clarified my thoughts a little better. It is clear that war’s effects on people vary widely by nation, gender and class (three big ones, I’m sure there are many). So, it would have been interesting to hear a bit more about why gender identity and class identity rarely cross national boundaries to affect the conduct of wars, let alone end them quickly. Yes, people routinely bring up the suffering of fellow identity groups, whether they be women, or poor, or professor, or journalist, but gender is a really big deal as far as raw numbers go. Wars could not be waged successfully without the participation of many parts of a population that may have more in common with their identity groups across the “border” than with their fellow citizens. It is really important to think about the primacy of nationalism, and nation-state identity in actively subsuming other identities in a war’s cause. This is part, and design of the patriarchy of a war-based nation state. Few words are more incendiary than “traitor”. Of course, I am sure whole books have been written about this (side effect of knowing no theory, the tendency to assume that your thoughts are original and unique), that I might have to hunt down.

While Enloe exhorted the audience to think beyond borders at the beginning of her talk, describing the “Vietnam” war as the US-Vietnam war and how war casualties of the other war participants are rarely mentioned, she still could not shake her nationhood and American centricity off during the talk as successfully as she may have done in her books and theory. She had this interesting and useful device of writing some numbers on the board at the beginning of the talk and repeatedly referred to them through the talk. Most of these numbers were North American war casualties, which I found to be a bit limiting, considering her talk was delivering the opposite message on casualties. She exhorted us to refer to war titles by more location-neutral descriptors, like the US-Vietnam war instead of the Vietnam war, but she did not take the next step of habituating her audience to do that, repeatedly referring to the Iraq War (which one?), or the Gulf War (Which gulf, which war?). As she said, war titling is political, I would not be happy to go to a lecture and have to listen constantly to “the Indian mutiny” (or worse, the Sepoy Mutiny).

Prof. Enloe’s take away message on war was “Ask feminist questions, be realistic”. Yes I will, and not just for war.

Posted by oliveridley at 3:30 pm Tagged with: , ,

Science Rides to the aid of the Oil Sands, apparently.

Climate 1 Response »
Feb 212012
image

Science Rides to the Aid of Oilsands??

Words fail me, oh Globe and Mail. Worst headline ever.

Posted by oliveridley at 12:34 pm Tagged with: ,

Weaver and the Tarsands: What the media missed.

Climate 24 Responses »
Feb 202012

It appears that Canada (or the part I follow) is all a twitter about an interesting analysis ($$$) by prominent climate scientist Andrew Weaver and his colleague Neil Swart that counts up all fossil fuel reserves, then converts them into global temperature increases based solely on their combustion CO2 emissions potential. It turns out that oilsand reserves are dwarfed by the available coal and natural gas reserves and overall tarsands contribution to temperature increase is modest.

If the entire Alberta oil-sand resource (that is, oil-in-place) were to be used, the associated carbon dioxide emissions would induce a global mean temperature change of roughly 0.36 °C (0.24–0.50 °C)  However, considering only the economically viable reserve of 170 billion barrels reduces this potential for warming by about tenfold (to 0.02–0.05 °C), and if only the reserve currently under active development were combusted, the warming would be almost undetectable at our significance level.

The Canadian media has chosen to play up just the fact that on a global scale, the project will result in a small increase in global temperature, so the oilsands are okay to exploit.

Climate expert says coal not oilsands real threat – CBC

Other articles pretty much say the same thing,  Prof. Weaver’s quoted comments don’t help either:

“The conventional and unconventional oil is not the problem with global warming,”  ”The problem is coal and unconventional natural gas.” “One might argue that the best strategy one might take is to use our oil reserves wisely, but at the same time use them in a way that weans us of our dependence on coal and natural gas”

Weaver’s comments to the media posit this as an either-or, coal and natural gas = bad, oil = okay. Knowing him to be a very intelligent person, I suspect this is some selective quoting. Also, oil is primarily used to fuel transportation, coal and natural gas are used for electricity generation, so I am curious as to what Prof. Weaver is suggesting here as far as using oil reserves to wean us off coal use? Would the plan be to use all the money that we get from exploiting the tarsands to develop an electricity infrastructure that puts efficiency, reduced electricity use, 100% renewables first? I wish! I don’t see that happening. Alberta is currently powered mostly by coal, and if the Federal government is serious in its stated goal to phase new coal out (which is fantastic), then Alberta would switch to natural gas to fuel its tarsands exploitation, and that would not be okay either! Also, these infrastructures are all linked. A lot of BC’s natural gas and proposed big damaging dams like Site C are designed to fuel the tarsands. A province and by extension, country that makes most of its money by taking the resources it was provided for free, and selling them at great profit is not likely to want to transition away from that.

It was interesting that a few weeks back, Mark Jaccard, yet another prominent BC climate scientist (we are blessed) looked at the same issue and came to the following conclusion.

Canadian tarsands must contract as part of a global effort to prevent a 4 degree increase in temperatures and catastrophic climate change.

Vancouver Sun – January 26, 2012

So, is this Jaccard vs. Weaver?

Not really.

Is the Swart and Weaver message that simple? Are they actually saying that it is okay to exploit away because it makes no difference?

The media should start by reading the byline:

The claimed economic benefits of exploiting the vast Alberta oil-sand deposits need to be weighed against the need to limit global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions.

That’s how the paper starts. It then calculates global warming potentials based on reserves, current production, total “in place” (present, but not always exploitable) and shows that coal and natural gas are by far the greatest potential contributors. This is of course simply because we have much greater reserves of coal and natural gas, so their global warming potential is going to be huge. The paper makes no mention of rate of use, or whether it is humanly possible to use all that coal and natural gas, and what kind of population growth, and per-capita consumption that would entail.

Here’s a very important calculation from the paper that will be lost in the details. To limit temperature rise to 2 °C or less, the allowed, cumulative per person future carbon consumption is 85 tons of carbon. The per-capita carbon potential of the tarsands alone to US and Canada is 65 tons of carbon. So, by itself, the proven reserves (10% of what’s there) of the tarsands can eat up 75% of our allowed carbon budget, not so small, is it.

Here’s what Swart and Weaver have to say about trajectory:

The eventual construction of the Keystone XL pipeline would signify a North American commitment to using the Alberta oilsand reserve, which carries with it a corresponding carbon footprint

Here’s the last paragraph from the paper, another big trajectory argument.

If North American and international policymakers wish to limit global warming to less than 2 °C they will clearly need to put in place measures that ensure a rapid transition of global energy systems to non-greenhouse-gas-emitting sources, while avoiding commitments to new infrastructure supporting dependence on fossil fuels

Absolutely, 100% agreed, but this is not what the media message is at all, interesting.

So Swart and Weaver point out that we need to avoid commitments to new infrastructure promoting fossil fuel dependence, and that building projects like Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway signal a serious commitment to using the entire tarsands. The message in the paper is much more nuanced, and more measured than what’s in the media, not surprising.

I have long since come to the conclusion that this is not about counting of individual carbon atoms and their non-measurable global warming contributions, of course any single project will not tip us over one way or the other. It is about trajectory. To use two smoking analogies, the argument against smoking is not that the next cigarette will kill you, it is that smoking will kill many people in a population over a lifetime. More aptly in this case, the argument is that  Grand River Enterprises, a small Canadian cigarette concern, doesn’t contribute as much to smoking deaths as does Imperial Tobacco, so it is somehow different and okay.

Every major fossil fuel commitment we make is a commitment we do not make to reducing consumption, or increasing renewable use. Every foreign policy/domestic policy decision we take to keep our dollar high to get maximum revenue from the tarsands to shareholders (not the population) is a commitment to not building renewable infrastructure, or spending money on energy efficiency. So, trajectories count, and that is the underlying message from Swart and Weaver.

To finish it off, here’s the PhD Comics Science News Cycle, which is very apropos.

PS: Is Weaver and the Tarsands a good band name?

Update:

Joe Romm of climate progress responds to the paper here, thanks @softgrasswalker

And from comments, looks like Prof Weaver was on the CBC this morning, reprising his usual climate hawk self, will listen when they put the audio up.

Here’s Prof. Weaver in the Huffington Post commenting on the study. More about this when I don’t have work to do.

References:

Swart, Neil C., and Andrew J. Weaver. “The Alberta oil sands and climate.” Nature Clim. Change advance online publication (February 19, 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1421.
Posted by oliveridley at 10:34 am Tagged with: , , ,

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-02-19

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Feb 192012

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