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March 28th, 2016:

Zero Waste in San Francisco and New York: A Tale of Two Cities

Mar 28th, 2016
by Editor.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/zero-waste-in-san-francis_b_9556380.html?section=india

One of the goals of a sustainable city is to effectively manage material flows into and out of the city. Garbage, or what environmental engineers call solid waste, presents some of the most difficult challenges to urban sustainability.

San Francisco may well be on the way to achieving their goal of “zero waste,” or to divert all of its garbage away from landfills. Currently, San Francisco diverts 80% of its waste away from landfills. According to New York Times reporter Matt Richtel: “San Francisco also has a world-class reputation for its composting processes, which turns food waste into fine, coffee-like grounds that is sent to farms as fertilizer.” And he observes that San Francisco is the “Silicon Valley of recycling.”

The city and county of San Francisco’s SF Environment department has set a goal of zero waste by 2020. That formerly future-sounding date is just four years away.

According to the department, about half of the waste now placed in non-recycle bins could be recycled, which would drive the waste diversion rate to 90%. According to the department’s website:

To achieve 100 percent zero waste, SF Environment will continue to advocate for state legislation and partner with producers to develop a producer responsibility system, where producers design better products and take responsibility for the entire life-cycle of a product, including take-back and recycling.

The city’s zero waste policy includes three goals: 1. prevent waste; 2. recycle and compost; and 3. safely handle toxics. San Francisco’s unique political and social culture must be seen as a major factor contributing to this program’s success. People in that city behave as if reducing waste and recycling are important social behaviors. In contrast, New York City’s waste diversion rate is 16%. The goal is to get to zero waste by 2030. It’s a little difficult to see how that goal will be achieved. The city’s target for FY 2016 is 19%, but according to the NYC Mayor’s Management report, the actual diversion rate is anywhere from 1.2- 2.9% below target.

Any casual look at New York City’s public recycling bins will provide a sense of the difficult road New York must travel to reach anything approaching zero waste. Paper bins are filled with bottles and the bottle bins are filled with a wide variety of unsorted waste. Northern Californians may be thoughtful about waste disposal, but New Yorkers can’t be bothered. It is not clear that New York is capable of a cultural shift deep enough to achieve the diversion rates already reached in San Francisco.

Each city is different, and New York’s pace, diversity, and size make comparisons to San Francisco difficult. Still, large-scale behavior changes can be achieved with leadership, strategy and creativity. New York City has eliminated indoor smoking in public places. New Yorkers have learned how to comply with alternate side of the street parking rules and some are even learning how to stop jaywalking. So it is possible that waste disposal behaviors could change. But it will take leadership and the sustained attention of the mayor and the media. It’s unlikely to happen because garbage has little appeal as a political issue. Climate change holds conferences in Paris and attracts attention at Davos.
Garbage gets a little less glamor.

In any case, behavior change alone is not sufficient. The recycled waste must actually be reused—a problem with the weak market for some recycled substances. The technology of waste sorting and the energy efficiency and cost-effectiveness of recycling also need improvement. A city’s system of recycling and waste management is as important as an individual’s waste disposal behavior. The technology and market will come to New York City, but probably not by 2030.

Zero waste is an element of the concept of a circular economy. In a circular economy, all waste from consumption becomes an input into new production. Inevitably there is some leakage in the tightest circular production process. But the goal is to move from a linear model of production-consumption-waste to one more closely resembling a circular model. I don’t think of zero waste as an achievable operational goal, but rather as a model and an aspiration. It is a way to think about resource use and waste management, rather than an absolute target.

It requires a paradigm shift or a new way of thinking about consumption and garbage. Instead of mindlessly tossing something you have consumed into a waste bin, you sort it or consider how it might be re-used. In the case of production processes, it includes the concept of producer responsibility. The producer includes in the price of a good an incentive to bring the good back to the place of purchase or to the manufacturer. The manufacturer, in turn, designs the good to be mined for resources or to be reconfigured for additional use. Of course moving the good or material through the production process requires energy and so the closed system works best when it is powered by renewable energy.

These ideas of closed systems of production and consumption are central to the concept of the sustainable city. As the mechanization of agriculture reduces rural employment and as the Internet communicates the appeal and seductiveness of urban lifestyles, more and more of the world’s population is moving to cities. This creates opportunities for more efficient production, distribution and consumption of goods and services and leads to the possibility of systems that approach the goal of zero waste.

While New York City may aspire to zero waste by 2030, at the same time the city was announcing that goal in 2015, it was also proposing a long-term deal with an upstate New York landfill to take the city’s garbage for the next several decades. According to Cole Rosengren of City Limits:

A new plan to send Brooklyn’s garbage upstate would solidify the city’s waste export strategy for decades, but also shows how impractical the system has become. Under a newly proposed 20-year contract with IESI—a major industry player owned by Canadian company Progressive Waste Solutions—much of Brooklyn’s residential garbage would be shipped to the company’s Seneca Meadows landfill at a projected cost of $3.3 billion…New York has struggled to deal with its garbage in a sustainable way since the Fresh Kills landfill closed on Staten Island in 2001. According to Department of Sanitation (DSNY) data, it cost $99 to dispose of a ton of garbage in 2000 versus $145 in 2014 when adjusted for inflation.

It is clear to most experts that a system of recycling facilities, waste-to-energy plants and changed public behavior would be a more cost effective and environmentally beneficial waste management system for New York City.

Unfortunately, New York can barely site marine waste transfer facilities and has been unable to build waste-to-energy plants or other elements of a more advanced waste management system. New Yorkers simply won’t accept construction of those facilities in their neighborhoods. In any case, as New York’s land prices rise, it becomes increasingly uneconomical to locate those facilities within the city.

The gap between San Francisco’s accomplishment of 80% landfill diversion and New York’s 16% is huge. New York was ahead of its time in building its water and mass transit system, but is far behind the times in dealing with its garbage.

When compared to San Francisco, the two waste management systems are truly a tale of two very different cities.

New survey finds a growing climate consensus among meteorologists

Mar 28th, 2016
by Editor.
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96% of AMS members realize climate change is happening, and most understand humans are responsible

There have been multiple scientific studies that all concur: scientists know that climate change is happening and it is largely caused by humans. I recently wrote about this here, where I reviewed the studies. It turns out that the more scientists know about climate change, the more they are convinced that humans are warming the planet. In fact, the consensus is extraordinarily strong. But it isn’t just that the vast majority of scientists agree; it’s that the best scientist agree. We find that the contrarian scientists tend to be less accomplished, have had their research found to be incorrect time after time, and they produce less science.

But very recently, a study from the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication was completed that adds to our knowledge on the consensus. Lead author Ed Maibach and his colleagues are very well-respected surveyors and scientists who study this topic. The study didn’t focus on what we think of as climate scientists – rather they polled meteorologists.

There were actually two surveys that were merged. In one, the authors identified 1038 professionals currently working in broadcast meteorology from the American Meteorological Society (AMS). In a concurrent study, the authors obtained a list of members from the AMS who were not broadcast meteorologists. The two groups were asked a series of questions on whether climate change is occurring, the degree to which respondents felt humans were responsible, what could be done to minimize climate change, among others. The authors also asked about the educational background of the respondents.

Not all members of the AMS are meteorologists. Additionally, someone working in meteorology is not necessarily a climate scientist. Similarly, a climate scientist is not necessarily a meteorologist. Sometimes these populations overlap but in many cases they do not.

One thing that tends to differentiate practicing meteorologists from climate scientists is that meteorologists tend to observe short-term weather more, while climate scientists tend to look at long-term trends. While this difference may sound trivially obvious, it’s an important distinction to keep in mind because it suggests meteorologists may be more likely to see differences in observed weather patterns. Climate scientists would be less likely to be swayed by changes in weather patterns.

So what did the survey find? First, nearly every meteorologist (96%) agrees that climate change is happening, and the vast majority are confident in their opinion. Only 1% felt that climate change isn’t happening (3% did not know). Next, a large majority feel that climate change is being caused by humans. For instance, 29% believe that the change is largely or entirely human caused; 38% think most of the change is from humans; 14% answered that humans and natural factors are about equally responsible. Only 5% felt that climate change is mainly natural.

Another important finding is that most meteorologists feel that some of the change can be averted, based on how we react. Small minorities felt that a large amount of change can be averted or that climate change cannot be averted.

These views have changed over the years. For instance, almost 20% of meteorologists say their opinion on climate has changed over the past five years. Of that group, the vast majority are more convinced that the climate is changing and they cite a variety of reasons including new research, seeing first-hand evidence, the consensus amongst climate scientists, or from interactions with climate scientists. A final important result is that only 37% of the AMS respondents consider themselves climate experts.

Speaking more broadly about the meteorology community beyond the AMS, that population tends to be more skeptical that the Earth’s climate is changing. I tend to believe that the skepticism is partly because meteorologists in general focus on short-term events and also because a great many non-experts are counted as meteorologists (including people who do not have degrees in any science, let alone a meteorological science). Despite this, meteorologists’ views are important not only because they are a consistent scientific presence in many households, but also because the collective weather observation record from the meteorological community is a resource that is unmatched.

With this new study, the meteorological consensus is seen to be nearly as strong as that in the climate science community. I asked author Ed Maibach for a summary and he told me:

It is not surprising that more meteorologists are now more convinced that human-caused climate change is happening. That is how science works. As the scientific evidence becomes more irrefutable, which is the case with harmful, human-caused climate change, more scientists of all types will become convinced.

Arctic sea ice extent breaks record low for winter

Mar 28th, 2016
by Editor.
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With the ice cover down to 14.52m sq km, scientists now believe the Arctic is locked onto a course of continually shrinking sea ice

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/28/arctic-sea-ice-record-low-winter

A record expanse of Arctic sea never froze over this winter and remained open water as a season of freakishly high temperatures produced deep – and likely irreversible – changes on the far north.

Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre said on Monday that the sea ice cover attained an average maximum extent of 14.52m sq km (5.607m sq miles) on 24 March, the lowest winter maximum since records began in 1979.

The low beats a record set only last year of 14.54m sq km (5.612m sq miles), reached on 25 February 2015.

“I’ve never seen such a warm, crazy winter in the Arctic,” said NSIDC director Mark Serreze. “The heat was relentless.”

It was the third straight month of record lows in the sea ice cover, after extreme temperatures in January and February stunned scientists.

The winter months of utter darkness and extreme cold are typically the time of maximum growth in the ice cap, until it begins its seasonal decline in spring.

With the ice cover down to 14.54m sq km, scientists now believe the Arctic is locked onto a course of continually shrinking sea ice – and that is before the 2016 melt season gets underway.

“If we are starting out very low that gives a jump on the melt season,” said Rick Thoman, the climate science manager for the National Weather Service’s Alaska region.

“For the last few years, we have had extremely low ice cover in the summer. That means a lot more solar energy absorbed by the darker open water. That heat tends to carry over from year to year.”

After this winter’s record ice lows, scientists now expect more than ever that the Arctic will be entirely ice-free in the summer months within 20 or 25 years.

“Sometime in the 2030s or 2040s time frame, at least for a few days, you won’t have ice out there in the dead of summer,” said Dr John Walsh, chief scientist of the International Arctic Research Centre.

Those changes are already evident on the ground. In 1975, there were only a few days a year when ships could move from Barrow to Prudhoe Bay off the north coast of Alaska.
Now that window lasts months.

The Arctic will always have ice in the winter months, Walsh said. But it will be thinner and more fragile than the multi-year ice, and less reliable for indigenous peoples who rely on the ice as winter transport routes or hunting platforms.

“It’s not just about how many hundreds of thousands of square kilometres covered by the ice. It’s about the quality of that ice,” Thoman said.

The extent of ice cover is a critical indicator of the changes taking place in the Arctic – but the shrinking of the polar ice carries sweeping consequences for lower latitudes as well.

The bright white snow-covered ice reflects about 85% of sunlight back into the atmosphere, compared to the dark surfaces of the open water which absorb most of the heat energy.

“Basically the polar regions are the refrigerator for the Earth,” said Dr Donald Perovich, a researcher at Dartmouth University. “They are extremely important for being able to keep the Arctic colder, and in turn help keep the rest of the planet colder.”

Since 1980, however, the summer sea ice cover over the Arctic has gone into a drastic decline, from 7.8m sq km to 4.4m sq km in 2012, before rebounding slightly. “It would be as if the entire United States east of the Mississippi melted away plus the states from Minnesota down to Louisiana, past North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. It’s huge,” Perovich said.

This winter scientists said the Arctic freeze stalled early on, across the polar seas. The sea ice extent was exceptionally low both in the Barents and the Bering seas – which in past years has been one of the most prolific producers of ice. And it was thinner, especially in the Beaufort sea north of Alaska, scientists said.

There were a number of causes, in addition to the record high temperatures and carry-over effects of earlier ice loss.

The El Niño weather system produced more warming, and the Arctic saw influxes of exceptionally warm water from the Pacific as well as the Atlantic side.

In any event, Walsh said it was becoming increasingly clear the Arctic would never return to its previous frozen state, even if there are small gains in ice cover in a single year.

“The balance is shifting to the point where we are not going back to the old regime of the 1980s and 1990s,” he said. “Every year has had less ice cover than any summer since 2007. That is nine years in a row that you would call unprecedented. When that happens you have to start thinking that something is going on that is not letting the system go back to where it used to be.”