Nobel Conference 55 "Climate Changed: Facing Our Future"

September 24 & 25, 2019

https://gustavus.edu/events/nobelconference/2019/

These are my notes from this year’s conference. In past years videos of presenters came weeks later, but this year they are available already. Archived videos of the entire conference are available here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHuAoPzfQhGFUcPPMGQrA8Cwao4TPPg53

From the program description:

The changes being wrought on the earth’s climate system are vast, without precedent, and of such magnitude and scale as to potentially alter life itself. Nobel Conference 55 asks “What tools are available, what research efforts do we require, and what kind of people do we need to be to conceptualize and address global climate challenges?” Nobel Conference 55 will bring together seven leading thinkers to address climate change from perspectives including paleoclimate studies, climate justice, climate modeling, and climate adaptation. We invite you to join us to grapple with the causes and consequences of climate change and with our responses to the challenges it presents us, as individuals and as a society.

Welcome, Rebecca M. Bergman, President of the College

Nobel Conference 55 Introduction, Anna Versluis, 2019 Nobel Conference Chair

One of our presenters is from a Native American tribe and she notes how we can't even see our selves as relatives anymore. She says that what we have the power to do is to stop what we are doing now. Her culture lived for centuries with zero human water, because they only had ice. 

She asks us to take responsibility for what we're owning. Don't point your finger at corporations or others. It's you who is the cause. So at least do that. And that is a subtext for this conference. Be the cause.

?First Day - Session One

First Lecture by Dr. Amitav Ghosh

“A Crisis of Culture: Arts, Literature, and the Humanities in the Anthropocene”

Abstract - How can the study of history help us to prepare for the coming climate crises? In particular, what can we learn from the period known as the “Little Ice Age” in Europe about how climate change will affect our political and social institutions and our belief systems? 

Bio - Internationally renowned writer Amitav Ghosh will explore these questions in his Nobel Conference address. In his latest book of nonfiction, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016), Ghosh directly tackles the problems of inaction and paralysis in our time of climate change. “The climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination.” He asks: Why are humanists, especially literary writers, reluctant to engage directly with climate change? How can addressing climate change be a priority for all humans?

Ghosh, who holds a PhD in social anthropology from Oxford University, is a prolific and celebrated writer, publishing 15 books that range across genres and geographies, from historical fiction to science fiction to nonfiction; and from India to Myanmar to England to Madagascar and beyond. He has always been committed to excavating subordinated histories and in finding new modes of narrating them. He has received numerous literary awards, two lifetime achievement awards, and four honorary doctorates including in 2018 he received the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honor. He was the first English-language writer to receive the award. Most recently, in

2019 Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade. 

Notes - The climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus imagination.

Climate Change refers also to a specialized field of knowledge including economics, law, etc. 

People who sit on Climate Change committees are usually those who present the information on it. They are credentialed, therefore the credentials from institutions set the agenda for this topic. Should it be this way?

When we think of the economy we don't think that only the credentialed can speak of the subject. Others without expertise such as shopkeepers can speak of it as well, often more authentically. The voices and perspectives of those affected by it very rarely figure in the discussion. When they do they are often identified as victims. Victims of floods, famines, ruined economies and such. Their perspectives are personal and valuable.

We would not be talking about Climate Change at all in forums like this unless scientists had uncovered the data describing it. Of course, they are from universities as well as energy companies. Yet we need to recognize that even if work had not been done to study the impact of the climate, the crisis itself would not disappear; any more than the economy would disappear during a crisis if no one studied it.

Our gratitude toward scientists should recognize that they are not the only experts on the climate. Recognize that other experts on the climate include those impacted daily. Farmers, fisherman and foresters also know about the impact of the climate.

While in Italy studying migrants from Syria and Middle East, he noted many immigrants were from SE Asia because of sea level changes forcing their displacement. Bangladesh is one such country represented by refugees fleeing climatic changes and making dangerous crossings of land and sea.

The floods of 2014 were one such cause. But when asked, these immigrants didn't think of themselves as climate refugees. Connections between their journeys and climate were objectively clear but they did not think of themselves as climate refugees. 

Though Ghosh generally understood the reasons for their dislocation, the immigrants themselves knew why much better. Some reasons were longer term issues, like political conflicts. Now Ghosh thinks that migrants and climate change cannot be set part from each other. Some underlying reasons for displacement are deeply rooted in exploitation and conflict. What migrants know is that every aspect of their plight is rooted in intractable injustices in their lives. 

It is common to say that Climate Change should be tackled like a war. Indeed, in some areas it already is being fought like a war with the mobilization of resources. Yet the waging of war is inextricable from climate change and is a major contributing factor. 

Consider that the pentagon is the largest energy consumer in the United States, with the largest carbon footprint. The aircraft carrier USS Independence uses 112,000 tons of CO? per hour, but a F15 fighter with afterburners uses 660,000 lbs of CO? equivalent per hour. The output of CO? during one hour of flying an F15 is equivalent to the car emissions of 28 Americans over a whole year.

The Abrams tank also uses lots of fossil fuels as well, as do other ground transportation vehicles. More than a fifth of US consumption is by the military, yet typically it is not included in the economy sectors when reporting emissions. The US military uses 1.3 B gall of oil annually, which is more than country of Bangladesh.

The US military produces more toxic waste than the top 5 industrial companies in the nation. That is not included when talking about the average US footprint in terms of carbon. Plus, militaries across the world are increasing their emissions as a percent of GDP. Many countries have rapidly growing military. Oman’s military, for instance, is rising fastest. US military expenditures from 1900-2007 have risen sharply. Asia, Europe and Middle East/North Africa (MENA) are all increasing defense investments, with Asia reaching $110,000,000,000 annually.

Military power is at the heart of the climate crisis. When war is mentioned in the context of climate change it is usually with reference to security, but it might evolve into something more like the century-long Indian wars in the US where it is almost impossible to differentiate an ongoing military action from that of peace.

Climate change is not an unfolding phenomenon, as it is already here. And the injustices that are associated with it have been around a long time. Geopolitics, for example, often do not bring about equality and justice, but just the opposite. 

Choke points in the flow of oil are as important as the amount of oil. They can impact maritime trade more than the gross amount of oil available. Limiting the flow of oil and fuels is counter to military buildups. China and India have little to gain from energy use reductions because they are building up their military.

Panel Discussion

Moderator: If the world claims to know justice why don't they agree once and all to Paris accords?

Alley: Credentialed knowledge is different from knowledge gained by those impacted by climate change.

Climate change isn't only about the environment, but about everything: conflict, culture, politics, economics, etc.

Liverman: Immigrants coming to Canada are asked why they came, but climate change is not one of the options they are given. It has to be violence or economics or politics, but they are not given climate change as one option.

Watt-Cloutier: IPCC connected climate change to human rights. The definition of violation of human rights is not right. If you have to define being violated in some way, that doesn't cover climate change, but climate change is not recognized as being violating.

Moderator: Can we have it both ways? Solar powered military tanks? Ghosh: Trying to explore alternative energies. Batteries are only so big... Unless there is some technology breakthrough. Sen. Warren has been pushing for that. 

Liverman: Major push to develop biofuels for military. Even aircraft have been powered by biofuels. 

Ghosh: Demand to create biofuels for the military would succumb to those seeking shortcuts to reduce emissions.

Hume: Transitioning to a different world with sufficient energy is a different path. Maybe it will reside in nuclear or fusion, but suggesting that world would not require military infrastructures and defenses is to me a utopia. Moving from a world dependent upon fossil fuels to one of renewables doesn't mean it will automatically become a peaceful world.

Ghosh: Energy transition of some kind is inevitable. 

Alley: Moving away from militaristic stance won't solve it either.

Moderator: How do you make the voices of migrants more shared? 

Ghosh: Work directly with those migrants. Most don't want to work in another country forever. They want to go home after a while. 

Liverman: Problem is can they go back? Or will the environmental hazard that made them leave keep them from returning? 

Hegeri: Tropics is where you see the change first. Global connection is something we forget. Reason why science is important is its ability to see the global image of our planet as a whole.

Moderator: What are some of the detriments, and how to change to a smaller scale of living? 

Ghosh: A better Iife is often measured in terms of possessions, rather than your community and finding a meaningful life. What is our image of the good life? We want these commodities all the time. In what ways do we create a sense of a good life? Our best guides are indigenous peoples. 

Liverman: The word now is resilience. Participatory governance is moving to create bans, involving communities to adopt resilience bans. Making communities resilient is the new focus.

Hume: Dangerous if we transport this option of global into local communities. Our energy production will look very different depending upon which part of the world you are working in. Don't transport ideas of what economists or scientist want globally to local communities, but have local people take the lead.

Hegeri: Can't see how it can be solved without a guiding global perspective. 

Watt: If we continue to think about separating all these issues and isolating them, denying interconnectedness, we will never be able to solve the issue. As ice is melting the NorthWest passage it means that industry and commerce is going to become even more invasive in the local communities. From the local community’s POV, this will be a worse situation. 

Ghosh: As a novelists and a story teller, how can storytelling improve the chances for change? Not possible for a novelist to approach their work as propaganda. It's the reality, and novelists have to write about realities. Address it, write about it. We are no longer is in a mid-20th century world. 

First Day - Session Two

Second Lecture by Dr. Richard Alley

“Climate Has Always Changed, Sometimes Abruptly: More Evidence That Humans are Changing the Climate”

Abstract - How do abrupt changes in the climate--thresholds in the climate system--affect us? And how can the study of paleoclimates--climates in past geological ages--help us to understand present climate changes? Richard Alley, professor of geosciences at the Pennsylvania State University, will explore these questions in his Nobel Conference presentation.

Bio - Alley’s work focuses on climate reconstructions using polar ice cores and the dynamics of polar ice sheets. By the early 1990s, Alley and colleagues gained widespread attention in the climate science community for seeing in the ice core data evidence that dramatic climate changes had occurred over time periods as short as just a few years. He explores these findings in his book The Two-Mile Time Machine. In the past ten years, Alley has been exploring how Antarctic and Greenlandic ice sheets will potentially respond to climate change, and how those responses will affect sea level rise.

The author of more than 290 scientific papers, Alley is also an important public voice on the science of global climate change. A frequent interviewee for PBS, NPR and the New York Times, Alley has received numerous awards for his leadership in improving climate science communication to the general public. Among his many awards, Alley was a member of the 2007 team awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Notes - The amount of calories a human consumes in a day is about 2,000 kilocalories, which converts to about 100 Watts, about the power of one old style lightbulb.

How much power does one person consume per day in the US? It works out to 57 kWh (killowatt hours) per person per day, or 49,000 kilocalories per day in the world. In the US, annual residential customers use 10,400 kWh of electricity alone.

More than 80% of energy consumed is fossil fuels, 16 tons [oil?] per person per year vs .5 tons of household trash per person per year.

This is warming the climate. CO? rests on the 4 legged stool of evidence (in his book). The warming influence of CO? was discovered in the 1800s.

You can’t say that we don't believe in global warming, it's observed fact, unavoidable by well-known physics.

The UN’s IPCC report on energy and climate included in 5 major reports.

If we use this knowledge we will get a larger economy, more jobs, improved healthier and greater national security in a cleaner environment.

In our climate history there are:

• Records of past climate changes
• Past climate changes causes
• What changed is changeable
• Things that changed together or didn't aren't interesting

It's a predictive science. We collect samples and make measurements. Use results to test models or start in part and then project future outcomes. Either climate science is accurate and predictive with large impacts, or more conservative viewpoints suggest a lesser impact.

Cores reveal their age from annual layers deposited in snowfalls and compressed. It reveals micrometer ivories, cosmic ray tracers, lead from Roman days, and old air bubbles. From it they measure cosmic ray burn (isotope 10Be). There is also lots of older evidence like a fern recovered from Antarctica. What can we learn from ice core samples?

Volcanic eruptions are random, rather than organized, so that's not the cause of climate change. They show no weirdness like climate ignored any magnetic field changes, cosmic-ray changes, and they show that there is not enough space dust to affect the climate since the asteroid that was the dinosaur killer.

Ocean circulation, sea ice matters regionally. Shifts in sunshine from Earths orbit do matter. But through all of this data what keeps screaming at us is the increased presence of greenhouse gases. Ice in Antarctica formed 330 million years ago and stopped 260 million years ago. It runs in cycles. They found other cycles, like there was more ice 40 million years ago. But one thing is clear, when you have low CO? in the atmosphere you get ice buildup. When you have high CO? you get no ice buildup.

What causes it is complicated. When coal formed on earth the amount of CO? dropped 330 million years ago. After that, extra volcanic activity increased so CO? rose. 56M years ago nature released CO? on the same scale as we do now and species died, especially large animals. Extensive migrations occurred, the oxygen was reduced, and increased CO? dissolved sea floor carbonate shells.

Rusty looking areas of cores is where shells dissolved because CO? made ocean water more acidic. 400,000 years of Antarctic temperature history showed clear temperature cycles. Ice retreated from US and Canada as the world warmed.

We can also look at orbital wobbles of the earth. Milankovitch showed features of our planet’s orbit redistributes sunshine slowly. That orbital wobble shifts every 41,000 years. There is also a 100,000 year change in orbit. The end of the ice age pulled some CO? out of deep oceans and into the atmosphere. That in turn warmed the world.

The IPCC says that abrupt climate change and ice sheet collapse has a much smaller probability of happening, but it creates a much more serious problem if it does happen. 

Counter arguments to the predictions say that the climate has always changed and science is always uncertain, but we can’t afford to ignore the science because that would be dangerous.

Third Lecture by Dr. Diana Liverman

“How Can We Respond to Climate Change and Meet Our Goals for Sustainable Development?”

Abstract - Diana Liverman speaks of the “megachallenge” of addressing the climate risks faced by the most vulnerable populations on the planet, while also meeting the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations, including eliminating poverty. In her conference presentation, Liverman will use case studies to explore the conundrums we face in addressing these sometimes- conflicting goals. How can we ameliorate poverty and develop sustainably while adapting to, and limiting, climate change?

Bio - Liverman studies climate vulnerability and adaptation. Who is most vulnerable to climate change? Can better climate information reduce suffering and economic loss? Can we both adapt to climate change and meet sustainable development goals? To answer these questions, Liverman uses the tools of a social scientist, working in collaboration with specialists from a variety of disciplines. She focuses her exploration on small scale farmers in Mexico and Arizona.

Liverman’s work calls us to recognize the complexities of a warming world in a social and political context. As we struggle to develop the political will to mitigate and adapt to climate change, we must understand the range of factors that limit our ability to do so, while recognizing that both the climate and the strategies we implement to deal with it will have impacts on society. Liverman is Regents Professor of Geography and Development at University of Arizona. She was a contributor to the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and lead author of the 2018 IPCC Special Report "Global Warming of 1.5 degrees C."

Notes - Can we reduce climate risks and achieve the global goals for development? UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon says we’re the first generation that can put an end to poverty and we are the last generation that can put an end to climate change.

UN’s Development goals:

• Eradicate poverty
• Secure access to food, clean water, sanitation, education, health
• Protect land and water ecosystems

Twenty years ago the UN adopted millennium development goals (MDGs) and 8 targets:

• Read extreme poverty and hunger
• Universal primary ed
• Promote gender equality
• Reduce child mortality
• Etc

The success of the MDGs worked for reducing poverty, hunger, lack of safe water, lack of sanitation, fertility rate per woman, mortality for children under 5, etc. But the goals not met were carbon dioxide emissions, which increased by 60% over 25 years from 1990 to 2015.

Some of that increase in CO? was due to not acting, but some was due to raising people out of poverty by increasing industrial production, and some was due to increased agriculture used to reduce hunger.

Increasing living standards means more connections to the electrical grid, buying vehicles, etc. and these are major contributors. Income went up 25X in China during that period and so did their CO? output.

The global goals for sustainable development were set in 2015 and are described in 17 goals to be achieved by 2030, for everyone, everywhere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC special report on 1.5o 2018 was the first report since the 2015 goals were established.

Dr. Liverman developed chapter 5 of the report on links between climate change and sustainable development, and included these area:

• How does climate change undermine sustainable development?
• How does development contribute to increased emissions and vulnerability?
• How do responses to climate change - mitigation and adaptation - have synergies and trade offs with sustainable development?
• What pathways reduces climate Reiss and enhance sustainable?

Is a triple win of mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development possible? Can you get people out of poverty with low emission levels?

Here were the key messages of the IPCC 1.5oC report:

• Climate change is already here
• Every bit of warming matters
• We have to act soon and make deep cuts in emissions (~50% by 2030)
• Development could be threatened but triple wins are possible
• Net 0 emissions by 2050, which is more important than the 2030 date (picked because it was convenient), but not apocalyptic

How do the responses to climate change interact with sustainable development?

• Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions
• Increasing carbon capture/negative emissions
• Geoengineering (like adding aerosols to atmosphere)
• Adaptation to warming, sea level rise, extremes events

Substituting bio energy (biofuels) for carbon fuels to reduce emissions can compete with food security and ecosystem protection by diverting food crops to fuels.

Carbon offsets have been touted, but they may not reduce additional carbon or help sustainable development. These carbon trade-offs offer mixed results, but synergies (energy efficiency, diet, and health) have a better prospect. For example a climate resilient development path for Tucson known as the Agrivoltaic Project employs solar panels to reduce emissions and costs, promote rain harvesting, shades plants to reduce evaporation, save water and increases yields of healthy foods.

Cooling solar panels will increase their efficiency and growing crops under them will reduced heat stress for workers. Moreover, they provide study spaces in their shae for educating disadvantaged children where children study under the solar panels keeping them cool.

Panel Discussion

Alley: CO? goes down in spring with plants, up in fall. But only a little gets buried and sequestered in the soil. 

Liverman: She doesn’t get paid to be an IPCC author. The Secretaries reside in Europe. They decide balance of countries, and gender balance of committees. 

Hegerl: IPCC was a milestone. Every sentence in the report is discussed and voted upon. 

Watt: It’s little known that there were 2 tsunamis in Greenland. One was a mountain that slid into the ocean. Another a calving incident which killed people.

Alley: Cautiously optimistic that Greenland's melt will be slow.

Liverman: Need to talk more about the losers when we fight climate change. Need a big research effort on what happens during these transitions. We can't pretend that everyone is going to win. Who decides who looses and wins? The politicians do. You can choose to not buy green beans from Chile because of the emissions, but then what about the Chilean workers? Don't they deserve an income? 

Liverman: The work over last few years is how to adapt to climate change rather than mitigation. The discussions among researchers is not very different from discussions with farmers and neighbors. 

Alley: Climate models tend to underestimate climate change. Because we might be seeing clouds and such that have a bigger role. As ice melts light is no longer reflected, so still working out balance in the predictive models.

Hegerl: A lot of things will get a lot worse, and you don't want these big risks as they could be dangerous. 

Climate Change Workshops

Enhance your learning through attending 15 climate change related workshops.

I attended Global Warming and Our Energy Future, which was an interactive workshop where participants (about 60) self-assigned membership as global negotiators representing US, Europe, China, Developed Countries, Developing Countries, World Press, Climate Activists, Oil Lobbyists and US Climate Partnership (my group). Countries submitted how much carbon they were willing to cut back on emitting, and that was thrown into a computer simulation on outcomes. Our group could not commit to reductions but represented 24 states, 287 cities and counties, and a $11 Trillion economic powerhouse able to influence others to reduce emissions by offering retraining, technology transfer, micro-loans, etc.

Workshop available included:

Climate Change Research – Behind the Curtain

Facilitator: Jeff La Frenierre, Assistant Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies, Gustavus. The rapid retreat of mountain glaciers is one of the most immediate and visible impacts of climate change. Based on ongoing research in Ecuador, learn why mountain glaciers are especially sensitive indicators of climate change, how glaciers in Ecuador are being impacted, and the consequences of glacier loss for nearby communities. Then, try your hand at performing climate change research by analyzing newly collected glacier data using advanced geospatial software. No previous experience necessary! Limited to 34 people.

Facilitated Discussion: How Should We Meet the Challenges of a Warming Planet? 

Facilitators: Pamela Conners, Associate Professor of Communication Studies and students from the Public Deliberation and Dialogue program. Join small-group conversations about how to meet the challenges of a warming planet. Participants will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of three different policy approaches for addressing a changing climate. 

Eating Our Way Into and Out of Climate Change?

Facilitator: James Dontje, Director, Johnson Center for Environmental Education, Gustavus. Agriculture is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions.That leads to the claim that we have eaten our way into climate change, for example, by the kind and amount of animal protein we consume. Likewise, there are claims that we can combat climate change by choosing the right diet, like only eating plant protein.The arguments can be contentious, particularly on the question of meat-eating and vegetarianism.This presentation addresses these ideas, discusses the science behind them, and offers food examples and cooking demonstrations that complement the discussion.

Framing Climate Change in Society and Local Governance 

Facilitators: Rebecca J. Romsdahl ‘95, professor in the Earth System Science & Policy Department at the University of North Dakota. Learn about the significance and variety of ways climate change is and can be framed in societal discussion and policy-making. Framing can bridge divisions and open new solution ideas. Dr. Romsdahl’s teaching and research examines issues at the interface between environmental science and public policy. The workshop was co-created with Dr. Gwendolyn Blue from the University of Calgary, Canada.

How to Speak and Listen So Politicians Will Act on Climate

Facilitators: Members of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby. Citizens' Climate Lobby leaders will lead a hands-on session about the importance of bipartisan citizen engagement on climate solutions and how to communicate with political leaders.The workshop will be action-based and attendees will practice making effective phone calls, writing letters to the editor, and planning for your next visit with your elected officials.

Global Warming and Our Energy Future

Facilitator: Chuck Niederriter, Professor of Physics, Gustavus. Dive into the mitigation of climate change in a workshop exploring ideas in the book Global Warming and Our Energy Future, by Gustie grad Jason Smerdon ’98, Lamont Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University. 

How to Have Difficult Conversations About Climate Change

Facilitator: Nicole Ektnitphong ’15, Deep Canvas Expert at Minnesota 350. It is difficult to have conversations about climate change with people in our lives who don't care about or don't believe in it. In this workshop, participants will learn skills for evoking values-based conversations and finding common ground by practicing asking open-ended questions and actively listening to responses. 

Methane Emissions from Permafrost Thaw in the Arctic

Facilitator: Dr. Katey Walter Anthony is a biogeochemist,ecologist, and climate change scientist at the University of Alaska. Dr. Walter Anthony is a celebrated research scientist who conducts groundbreaking research into how Arctic lakes may be releasing more methane due to global warming. She is a National Geographic Explorer whose research has been prominently featured in the media. She loves field work in remote places such as Siberia and the Alaskan and lives here in Nicollet County!

Using Artistic Techniques to Engage with Climate Change Data 

Facilitator: Bailey Hilgren ’17, graduate student in musicology and environmental studies. Traditional methods of disseminating information about climate change are important for continued scientific progress but can be inaccessible and rarely communicate the important emotional and cultural dimensions of environmental issues. The arts, on the other hand, excel at addressing emotions and culture but can benefit from grounding in scientific findings. In this workshop, participants will explore ways to combine communication methods traditionally used separately in the arts or sciences through the use of data sonification, visualization, and storytelling techniques, and will have the opportunity to create their own data-driven artistic works about climate change.

How Minnesota-Based Organizations are Working to Reduce Emissions

Facilitator: Laura Triplett, Gustavus geology department . Members of the Minnesota Sustainable Growth Coalition will share how they are are setting science-based greenhouse gas reduction targets and working to reduce emissions throughout their operations and supply chains. This panel discussion will include representative from Best Buy, Aveda, University of Minnesota, Environmental Initiative, and Xcel Energy.

An Indigenous Perspective on Climate Change: How Healing and De-Constructing Consumption in Your Life Will Save Unci Maka (Mother Earth)

Facilitator: Canté Sütá-Francis Bettelyoun, Oglala Lak?óta-O?héthi ?akówi?, co-founder Buffalo Stard People Healing Circles; Director, Native American Medicine Gardens, University of Minnesota. How did Indigenous cultures change from co-existing and thriving with Unci Maka (Mother Earth) to contributing to climate change? The movement to heal Unci Maka has begun a realization that we need to heal ourselves first. Climate change is just one of many symptoms of the unhealthiness of the human species. The goal of this discussion is to lead to positive actions.

Horse Nation of the Ocheti Sacowin

Facilitator: James Star Comes Out, artist, presenter and horse regalia-making consultant. Following the workshop, James Star Comes Out will give a presentation on the Horse Nation of the Ocheti Sakowin. After his talk, James will demonstrate the traditional horse dressing and surrounding ceremony of the Ocheti Sakowin. In order to save the planet and reverse climate change we have to understand ourselves as part of the natural world. Just as others are studying plants and their communication with us, our culture includes all our relatives in understanding our existence on this planet. Our co-existence with our relatives; the plants, animals, microbes, water and all, teaches us how to exist on this planet in a healthy and intelligent way. The Horse Nation of the Ocheti Sakowin is an important part of this teaching and existence. They have the wisdom, we just need to listen. Mitakuye Oyasin.

Second Day - Session Three

Fourth Lecture by Sheila Watt-Cloutier

“Everything is Connected: Environment, Economy, Foreign Policy, Sustainability, Human Rights and Leadership in the 21st Century”

Abstract - How do climate changes transforming the Arctic effect all aspects of the lives of the people living in the region? And why do the changes being wrought in the Arctic matter to all of us? Arctic activist and author Sheila Watt-Cloutier will address these questions in her Nobel Conference presentation. “The future of Inuit is the future of the rest of the world—our home is a barometer for what is happening to our entire planet,” she writes in her memoir, The Right to be Cold.

Bio - A member of the indigenous Inuit of Arctic Canada, Watt-Cloutier began her career working for social institutions that served Inuit communities. This led to a lifetime of activism and advocacy for the rights of Inuit people, and the realization that the survival of Inuit people and culture is inexorably linked to the survival of their Arctic environment, especially its cold climate. In 2005, Watt-Cloutier presented a landmark petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), arguing that global warming impedes human rights by threatening an entire culture, the Inuit culture. Her petition is widely recognized as pivotal to reframing climate change as a human rights issue.

Watt-Cloutier was awarded the Right Livelihood award, often called the “alternative Nobel.” At the heart of her work is her belief in the necessity of shared goals among members of a global society.

Notes - Change as a human rights issue. Winner of Sophie prize, known as the alternative Nobel Prize. In 1995 she was elected to the Canadian branch of the ICC. In 2002 she was the National Chair of the ICC, and in 2005 delivered a landmark petition to the Inter American Commission on native rights. 

This conference today is held on historic Dakota Land. And she thanked those people for maintaining the land so well.

Sheila travelled by dog sled until the age of 10. It is odd to her that the arctic is used to market products (e.g. Coke) when those industries are helping the arctic to melt. The arctic is over-romanticized. She strives to teach the world that there are remarkable lives at the top of the world. Their culture depends upon the cold. When climate changes it creates an imbalance. 

To her native community ice and snow is all about transportation and mobility. It becomes an issue of safety and security when the cold is reduced because you can’t sled nor hunt seals on water. 

They have always had their own education, health, legal systems and prepared the young for encountering life. Stresses then began to come about. There are now dependencies on substances, issues surrounding re-establishing their sense of identity, health issues and social challenges. They are one of the most adaptable people in the world. Social, health and judicially challenges they are facing are not from yesterday. They are new. Sustainable ceilings of buildings collapsed, there was a mass slaying of dogs which were not reported, and increased suicides are a result of rapid changes and result in institutional dependencies. Today things are not so predictable.

Maintaining the Arctic’s environment is their right, but that is now being challenged. All of their issues are interconnected. Switching away from their normal food leads to diabetes, childhood obesity and heart disease deepened their reliance on government help. Life skills taught on land are not as well understood as when they were once taught on the ice.

You are learning perseverance, to be courageous, how not to be impulsive. Impulsivity contributes to suicide. Learning through the land helps you to not be impulsive. How to be focused and meticulous and develop sound judgement and wisdom. 

It is the stressors of this first wave of changes they are trying to cope with that are often not well understood. It was the depletion of ozone decades ago that first led to skin conditions and cataracts that impact their hunters. Toxins have been found in cord blood that impacts the health of mothers and babies. Countering those contaminants was not an easy fight, but it put a human face on that part of the map. 

Her petition to the UN on human rights during the Bush administration was challenging. Along with 62 signatories they generated a petition to the UN commission linking climate change with human rights. The commission chose not to go forward with the petition. But it changed the discourse on the issue, labeling it not just economical or political or scientific, but one of human dimensions and human rights. Our collective attention, building human rights protections into legislation is fundamental. Decision makers need to be better informed and aware of what is happening to these arctic communities. 

Asked by NY Times to write an op-ed piece, but the editorial board chose not to run the piece this week. This traditional knowledge of her community can no longer be relied upon as change is too fast. As one place melts, now another is sinking in another part of the globe. Home owners in New Orleans, farmers in Australia, floods in Oklahoma; we are connected by climate change. It’s not just environmental but health, affecting individuals and families. The Inuit have benefited the least, but are impacted the most. 

Stop bringing harm to our way of life, but the world has responded that it is too expensive to do so. We can no longer separate the arctic from the economies around the world. A human rights approach takes the path of principle, showing that fundamental change is not just sound policy, but humane and imperative. 

We have to reconnect and feel our way through this crisis and connect with nature and those who want to solve the problems. I think we can solve the economic crisis if we do this thoughtfully. 

We need to imagine doing this differently. Imagine that we could make a new world with new, innovative ideas. 

Fifth Lecture by Dr. Gabriele Hegerl

"Models and Observations in Climate Change: Understanding the Past, Predicting the Future"

Abstract - How are climate models developed, and how do they help scientists to project the future climate? Why are there so many different climate models? Can extreme weather events such as inundating floods and wildfires be attributed to climate change? These are among the questions that will be explored by Gabriele Hegerl, a statistical climatologist at the University of Edinburgh.

Bio - Since 2013, Hegerl has led the European Advanced Grant “Transition into the Anthropocene,” working with state-of-the-art climate models to understand the nature and drivers of climate variability. She has received multiple international awards and recognitions for her work in climatology, climate variability, climate extremes, and climate changes in the past millennium.

A Fellow of the Royal Society, Hegerl published some of the first studies showing that it is possible to detect the influence of humans on surface temperatures, and to separate human and natural influences. She has been a contributor to the last three Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including the 2007 Panel, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work. Hegerl has also been a strong advocate for the role of women in science, focusing on the importance of balancing work and family life.

Dr. Hegerl serves on international collaborations in climate change, and worked on 2009 IPCC report, and lead author on the 5th assessment report. In 2017 she was elected a fellow of the royal society. 

Notes - Models and Observations in Climate Change. Climate change is not a belief system. We use instruments and go back to written climate records back to the 1850s. Seamen have measured the temperature of sea surface for ages, like wooden buckets pulling up water, though there is lots of measurement bias in that. On land data is collected in thousands of little weather instrument boxes and the data is aggregated over a long time. The white spaces on the global maps she shows are places where we don’t have measurement, but we would like to know better those temperatures. In the Antarctic they started taking measurements in the 1950s. Red on the map means it is warming, blue is cooling (we only see blue on Greenland). Average temps are warming all the way from 1850 to 2018. 

The stable period in warming during the 90s was likely due to aerosols reflecting sunlight. Once we reduced those the warming started again. Volcanic eruptions also reflect light. The eruption of Mount Tamora in 1815 led to a year without a summer in 1816 and harvests failed leading to famine.

Also need to talk about changes in the sun. Sunspot intervals of 11 yr cycles. How much did the sun change beyond that 11 yer cycle? Did it get brighter or darker over time? The sun drives weather patterns. Climate varies on all timescales in both models and observations. 

What causes what? We need a model to test causality. Some say it is preposterous. The weather models we use today are based on a similar model structure. So it’s not impossible, but it is very difficult to model accurately. 

Which factors do we need to explain the observations? Can combinations of other factors do it? Data is now averaged over 10 years to be less noisy.

Modes include the influence of volcanoes, role of sun, greenhouse gases, compared to reconstructed temperature to model climate change since 1400. Volcanoes are a big player in dips down in temperature, such as occurred in 1460 and 1816. 

We know that hurricanes are difficult to predict in both their path and strength. But there is more moisture in the air to rain down and flood or build up hurricanes. Just so global predictions are difficult. But the models are pretty good because they indicate what we have experienced, such as predicting that greater heat cause more fires. When forecast heat thresholds are met in models, in Australia as the result of heat flying foxes die and fall out of trees. 

During the dust bowl it was a warming period. We had a strong drought and there was a change in land use. People plowed the earth to farm but the drought killed the crops and the soil was exposed leading to dust storms. This is known in the records. 

If we don’t reduce greenhouse gases we could have 4oC increase by the end of this century. This is unchartered territory. Heat waves are very dangerous. Limiting warming to 1.5o requires deep changes. Hard decisions include nuclear, carbon capture and carbon storage.

To achieve 1.5o C we have to quickly reverse our emissions from continuously going up to going down in a steady decline. But we don’t want to push economies over the brink because that can bring about political change, such as the changes experienced in Germany in the 1930s. Should we employ more nuclear? Should we develop more carbon capture? Today’s climate change is driven by the sum of past emissions, not just the emissions produced each year. It doesn’t zero out at the end of the year. So merely reducing emissions does not go far enough. You have to reduce the existing emissions already in the atmosphere.

Vote and use your voice. Global problems need a global solution

Recognize that many developing countries are affected earlier than us, such as the climate-caused mass migration.

Panel Discussion

Watt-Cloutier:  Systems everywhere are based on siloed systems. That is not the way to understand the whole. So listen to those who live holistically, people who on the ground. Scientists were leery about working with hunters and fisher people, but they were pleasantly surprised how helpful it was. Learn together in partnership. 

Hegerl: Modelers would like to predict, but there is a gap. We start with where we are and go forward. We get better at knowing the weather, but are still not confident for all predictions. We worry that climate change directs weather patterns.

Hulme: We fear climate change is making weather less predictable, but modelers are aiming for greater predictability. Maybe it’s more variability rather than less predictability. Some people think that more variability will break up current weather patterns. Maybe some centers can predict patterns as much as one year out, but it is just on the cusp. 

Liverman: When she mentioned people moving out of poverty over the past 25 years by consuming more she should have given more of a historical context. Wants to know if melting of sea ice in the NorthWest passage will reintroduce a repopulation of the arctic and open up more trade and resource exploration.

Watt-Cloutier: We have been signaling that the arctic will open up to benefit the global markets. The Inuit became trappers in 30 s and 40s when the fur market opened up. They play the role that the economics open for them with each change. They say the NorthWest passage is theirs, but America says it is theirs. There is a greater number of gas and mineral explorations since the ice started melting. But what are the benefits? Is it going to be long lasting and sustainable? Will it be with a small footprint, or will the gaining of jobs happen all it want in a manner that is not sustainable? There are other ways that the arctic can rise, such as mineral exploration but it comes at a cost. They hold the land sacred. So how can they dig up the ground that they have for so long held sacred? It’s a question that doesn’t seem to work. Is any change a culture match or not? Negotiations made recently with Baffin Island and conservation economists of Canada. Conservation economists should be paid to work and protect the land.

Keith: Climate policy. There’s an exciting amount of work to do, making the decisions, but remarkable little has changed. We do not know exactly on a small scale how much the climate will change. Would we be better off knowing exactly who the losers and winners were going to be?

Keith: The answer is to vote. Decision makers need a good fraction of support from voters to commit a significant percentage of the GDP. There is a lot of talk, but maybe that just distracts us. All change comes with political fights. But will it come with a behavior change? Without a political change the people will lose. Better yet, be politically active rather than just vote.

Alley: everyone wants to be on the leading edge. When you invent you move forward, so there is a role for individuals. 

Hulme: Find ways of investing and increasing the trust that you and your neighbors have, whether its national or international, when we disagree we have to find ways to navigate through it. 

Second Day - Session Four

Sixth Lecture by Dr. David Keith

“How Might Solar Geoengineering Fit into Sound Climate Policy”

Abstract - How can we use climate engineering to respond to changes in climate? Can geoengineering--capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide, for instance--be used to ameliorate the dangerous effects of climate change? Climate engineer David Keith will take up these questions.

Bio - A newspaper headline about Keith reads “Is David Keith’s climate solution genius or madness?” His work to engineer a solution to climate change led Keith to found Carbon Engineering, a company that is developing technology to capture carbon dioxide from ambient air to make carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuels. The company has developed an industrially scalable “Direct Air Capture” technology, which can remove CO? directly from the atmosphere at an affordable price. The technology does this in a closed loop where the only major inputs are water and energy, and the output is a stream of pure, compressed CO?.

Keith works at the interface between climate science, energy technology, and public policy. Accordingly, he is a professor of applied physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and applied sciences, and also a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He has published more than 170 scientific papers as well as 25 opinion pieces. Keith has received numerous awards and honors for his work, including being named one of Time Magazine's “Heroes of the Environment” in 2009.

Notes - Founded Carbon Engineering in Canada

Lead author of IPCC report on carbon storage “A Case for Carbon Engineering”

How does geoengineering fit into climate policy? He’s not sure how it fits the politics. The best solution is to create energy with no carbon emissions, or to decarbonize by sequestering. Inherently, it is hard to do either. And it is slow to accomplish. Difficult to pull CO? from air and it’s a bit overhyped. 

The context of pushing back on climate change is long and different from other environmental movements for clean air and water. 

Here is a timeline from identification of environmental risk to regulation

Example 1: photochemical smog

1952 mechanisms discovered... The Clean air act passed in 1970. 1961 first regulation, then 1963 the first federal clean air act, then 1967 Formation of California Air Board.

Example 2: DDT

1962: Silent Spring

1971: EPA issued notices of intent to cancel refs protecting DDT, but in 1965 there was another book, then 1964 a policy statement requiring removal of them.

Example 3: Statospheric ozone

In 1973 Lovelock detected

In 1974 Molina & Rowland predicted destruction of ozone layer

Legislation to remove chlorofluorocarbons came soon after.

Climate Change was first noticed in 1953. Why has it taken so long to respond? What’s so different about this case? In part it’s the cost of lowering emissions but other factors as well. At first policy makers were skeptical about how low solar costs would be to resolve it. But now there is a 2 Gigawatt solar plant in India. But this doesn’t magically decarbonize the world even though the contributions of solar have been unexpected and fantastic.

There are global new investment in clean energy, but they are not high enough yet. Over the last decade investment in it has topped out at $300B/year. We need a longer timeframe and larger investment to lower climate risks over time. 

Part of the issue is that climate risk is proportional to the cumulative use of fossil fuels, not just the amount put out each year. Stopping emissions, cutting them to 0, doesn’t make the problem worse, but it doesn’t solve the problem. You need carbon removal from the existing environment, not just sequestering new carbon produced.

With carbon removal from the atmosphere, you remove the long term cause of climate change. You can inject into the ground or bury in ocean. Creating more solar or carbon free technology may involve the classic trap of moral hazard when new technologies are applied, but with carbon removal there is less hazard and it is potentially cheaper. 

Carbon removal is going to be slow. There is no magic get out of jail free card. Carbon removal as a way to keep us from 1.5o C change in a short timeframe is a bit of a fantasy. Yes, it is easier to cut emissions, but that doesn’t remove carbon. 

Solar geoengineering would cool us down, and maybe lower climate risk. Deliberately altering earth’s reflectivity might lower emission risks if combined with cuts in emissions. It would buy us time. What are we talking about? Sulfates or other stratospheric aerosols, marine clouds, cirrus clouds, space based tech. Of these methods stratospheric injection lasts for a couple years, but takes a few years to be felt. Marine and cirrus cloud generation has scale of about half a day but it is fast. That would also include some capability for weather control on a small scale. 

Can solar geoengineering reduce climate risks? It depends on the method, on the spatial distribution, on the magnitude. There must be a well-specified scenario for deployment. Distrust generic answers that seem too sure of their outcome.

Hazards include how it is applied. Moderate spatially uniform solar geoengineering combined with emissions cuts uniformly distributed around the globe could cut climate change risks. 

There are two main questions on geoengineering:

Question 1: How much would this scenario reduce important human and environmental climate risks? How equitable? Are there regions that see increased risks?

Question 2: Is it feasible to engineer uniform radiative forcing? What are the side effects?

Evidence is strong that the answer for Question 1 is that it would…

• Reduce hazards
• Reduce regional changes in water availability
• Reduce regional increases in extreme precipitation
• Reduce TROPOS cyclone intensity
• Reduce sea level rise
• Reduce carbon concentration and ocean acidification
• Reduce global average temperatures

The HiFLOR climate model says it would have a reasonable result. 

• Cyclones would be reduced
• Air temperature goes down
• Maximum annual temperature goes down
• Precipitation events goes down. 

If considered, there should be a big debate about solar engineering is should there be a research program, and he says we need to bring this issue out into the open. 

Seventh Lecture by Dr. Mike Hulme

“Beyond Climate Solutionism”

Abstract - How do we imagine climate futures? And how do we frame the interventions or adjustments that climate change is going to require of us? Climatologist and geographer Mike Hulme doesn’t speak of “solutions” to climate change. “Rather than framing climate as an interconnected global physical system or as a statistical artifact of weather measurements,” he argues, “climate needs to be understood equally as an idea that takes shape in cultures and can therefore be changed by cultures.”

Bio - For Hulme, climate change is not only a phenomenon happening on the surface of the earth. It is also a global cultural experience, eliciting artistic, musical, novelistic, and spiritual responses alongside economic and political ones. Hulme’s interest in geography, and specifically in the interface between living human societies and their climate ecosystems, separates his work from that of other climate scientists. His research and writing explore how shifting weather patterns affect regional human social arrangements, structures, and identities.

Hulme is presently a professor of human geography and Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. Previously, as founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, he was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Notes - Climate needs to be understood in cultural terms and therefore can be changed by cultures. Religion, literature and art exist in a world encountering climate shifts. How we address those shifts is a cultural issue.

Western societies were not morally prepared to win over fascism in WW2, and what we did during that war changed our cultures. This is described in the book “The year of Our Lord 1943” by Alan Jacobs. Climate change is not a problem to be solved like mathematics or wicked problems. Wise governance of the climate emerges best when rooted in larger and thicker stories about human identity, purpose, duty and responsibility. It’s like solving democracy or solving the anthropogenic. It is about how we decide to be human. Some solutions simplify complex relationships but are insufficient. What are the collective preferences when it comes to solving climate change? The ethical challenges of climate change are better suited in a larger story than mere siloed technological solutions.

The modernist instinct sees Climate Change like a state in the non-human world, and in doing so considers it in the wrong way. Metrics are not enough. I am opposed to climate deadlining (e.g. targets and dates) as the only way of looking at this. “Emblematic numbers and the production of political thresholds, targets and thrifts will not smooth out or settle down the political disputes over climate change.” (see Kachin and Ruser)

Tim Lewens writes, “there is no chance that science will ever tell us all that we need to know if we are to understand our world, to live well and to make wise decisions.”

Engineering and technology look for magic bullets. Carbon engineering, nuclear fusion, geoengineering or climate restoration. But future problems and challenges are not met through these, and future generations will have to deal with them.

Social sciences inquire into the dynamics of behavior, norms and behaviors, creating social theories addressing climate change. 

Technical solutions will always fail. Wicked problems have no definitive formulation ... they are insolvable in the sense that solutions to one aspect of the problem reveal or create other, even more complex, problems which in turn demand further solutions. 

Humanities have evolved ways of reflecting on the human experience of the world with the creative arts inspired by the human imagination. We can only construct worlds that make sense to us. 

Margaret Atwood (Handmaid’s Tale) describes an “Everything Change”, not an isolated Climate Change. We need to consider a moral ecology, in which a well ordered physical climate is deeply contingent upon a well-ordered social world. As many additional societies have long recognized, material, social spiritual and ethical worlds are deeply inter-dependent.

Science has no moral authority to instruct our moral society. So what can? There are five ideologies that can guide action. They are similar in that they extend far beyond mere science or having faith in technology.

They are:

1. Ecomodernism “humans need to use all their growing social, economic and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate and protect the natural world, as in, “An EcoModernist Manifesto”. For example, the Green New Deal.
2. Human rights and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs - see https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs). The SDG has climate change action as goal #13.
3. Ecological civilization. The Dark Mountain Project (see https://dark-mountain.net/about/), “..a cultural movement of people who have stopped believing in the conventional narratives about the future and who wanted to start unweaving some of the myths that underpin our civilization and are leading us and the Earth to destruction”
4. Post-capitalism. “The real enemy is the capitalist system... the real allies in this fight are the millions of working people around the world who have no vested interest in a system that prioritizes profit over the world’s climate.” Like the “extinction rebellion” described in Naomi Klein’s book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate. 
5. The integrity of Creation. “The present ecological crisis is one small sign of the ethical, cultural and spiritual crisis of modernity” drawing upon Catholicism and the pope’s efforts. Includes a change of humanity (otherwise we would be dealing merely with symptoms) and do so through spirituality. 

Which solutions arise from which approaches, do matter. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said, “Listen to the science, listen to the scientists.” Yet there is vacuity in a science-only approach. 

Metaphors encourage us to think relationally about our place in the world and through time. Go beyond metrics. Metaphors are resources for moral reasoning. For example, the metaphor of the trickster, which introduces the virtues of humility and modesty into human storytelling.

Tyranny of Metrics by HZMuller, who writes, “metrics may make a troubling situation more salient, without making it more soluable”

At the root of Climate Change are questions: 

• How should humans live?
• What duties to unborn & non human others should people have?
• How should societies navigate disagreement?
• What political institutions are trusted?

Panel Discussion

Liverman: Do we need an international convention for geoengineering? Or is it up to each country? 

Keith: Think about the internet and how that is administered. 

Hegerl: Likes metrics but sympathizes with ideological approach compatible with this one planet we live on. 

Hulme: Metrics swamp moral reasoning. Gas from a tailpipe has a different moral reasoning than if it came from a primitive cooking stove in a developing country. 

Avery: if you have to reach a moral understanding first you lose time.

Hulme: if you don’t have any sense of why we are trying to achieve and end, you have a moral dilemma.

Keith: Of course: Science does not produce an answer, it only clarifies options. Don’t pretend that we are not going to want to make progress.

Liverman: When they wrote the IPCC report they included ethics discussions. Biggest struggle was question of universal approaches versus varied approaches. She bounces back and forth between the 5 approaches. Many individuals try to hold several of those ideas at the same time, not 1 or 2 or 3.

Hulme: That’s my point. Many people are motivated through moral and ethical forms, intelligence and passion who do not want a scientific solution without moral consideration. They need more than science.

Watt-Cloutier: When it came time for politicians to squash down assessments by local people on their climate challenges, people wanted their points considered as strongly as the science. 

Ghosh: Engineering should be called the science of unintended consequences. Throw sulfuric acid into space... why could go wrong?

Liverman: It’s about offering people choices. Most scientists are viewing it that way. 

 Alley: I’ve never met someone who wants to live under a statrospheric haze, but I’ve also never met someone who wants to die under a clear sky.

Keith: It’s a bit like striving to reduce driving fatalities. Some solutions are social (reduce drinking, higher age before you can drive, more commercials on safety), some are engineering (airbags, automotive body engineering) and together we made progress in saving lives. Hazards are there. You can’t eliminate them completely. Think about the ethics of saying that people can’t be trusted with making life and death decisions, it has to be made for them. Think of HIV cocktails. It’s our job to tel them what to do.

Hegerl: If adding sulfur aerosols were the only thing we did, it would be catastrophic. It can’t be a single solution.

Keith: Lets get some evidence on the table. People will put their money into solutions if they know about them. It is in their own self interest. This may not happen politically, but people vote their own self interest in general. When people get money back after investing, it also gives them incentives to cut emissions.

End of Presentations