Dot Earth Blog: Certainties, Uncertainties and Choices with Global Warming

Photo Mario Molina, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, uses this image representing a partially completed jigsaw puzzle to convey the state of understanding of human-driven climate changeCredit Mario Molina

Steven E. Koonin, once the Obama administration's undersecretary of energy for science and chief scientist at BP, stirred up a swirl of turbulence in global warming discourse this week after The Wall Street Journal published "Climate Science is Not Settled," his essay calling for more frankness about areas of deep uncertainty in climate science, more research to narrow error ranges and more acknowledgement that society's decisions on energy and climate policy are based on values as much as data. (The Journal seems to keep this headline on file; here's a 2009 essay, "Climate Science Isn't Settled," by the M.I.T. climatologist Richard Lindzen.)

Predictably, the piece by Koonin, who became the founding director of New York University's important Center for Urban Science and Progress in 2012, was quickly hailed by fossil fuel defenders. At the same time, some of Koonin's central points about the state of climate science were sharply challenged by climate scientists and climate campaigners. I was on the run at the time but sent Koonin a couple of questions, which I also posted on Tumblr.

Here they are with his answers (with some email shorthand cleaned up), along with a fresh critique of Koonin's argument by a group of climate science and policy researchers associated with Carnegie Mellon University and a final thought from me:

Your piece makes the important point that, on vital questions, there's enduring deep uncertainty behind the "97 Percent of Climate Scientists Agree" headlines and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report summary language. That was the point of my pieces on the many "shapes" of climate knowledge.

Photo An illustration showing that while the basics of global warming science are clear, the aspects of climate change most relevant to society remain deeply uncertain. The shallower the curve, the more uncertain the answer.Credit Andrew C. Revkin

But I think your piece implies too much that further scientific inquiry can improve the picture. On regional forecasting, extremes (hurricanes), sensitivity to doubled CO2, and other key questions, further science — if anything — has clarified that some of these uncertainties aren't going anywhere.

I agree that regional and extremes are probably hopeless. But I would suppose that equilibrium climate sensitivity [background] and even global mean surface temperature on a decadal scale could be better nailed down by model pruning and better ocean data. An interesting way to test that (which I don't think has ever been done, but don't know for sure) is to assume one of the models is the truth, downscale the sampling of the data to what we might reasonably observe in the real world, and see to what extent that can be used to recover the truth. The results would give some indication of the extent to which more observations would help.

You also imply that you can't have "good" climate policy in the face of deep persistent uncertainty. In other endeavors, society has figured this out and some sustained inquiry is going into how to take a least-regrets policy on the greenhouse buildup. See the World Bank paper on "Investment Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty – Application to Climate Change."

This is indeed implied by the tagline ["We are very far from the knowledge needed to make good climate policy"], which I didn't write or even see until publication. As I hoped to imply in the last few paragraphs of the article, we can get to good climate policies, but they will depend as much (or even more) upon "values" than upon science, given the latter's uncertainties.

Here's the open letter written by nine scientists affiliated with the Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making at Carnegie Mellon (their :

Uncertainty in Climate Science: Not an Excuse for Inaction.

On Sunday, more than three hundred thousand people marched in New York City and around the world to urge governments to support an agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Then, on September 23, the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hosted the 2014 UN Climate Summit. There is hope that this meeting will catalyze leadership support for an agreement that enables a pathway to avoid large impacts from climate change.

While the world waited for these events to unfold, on September 20 the Wall Street Journal published an editorial titled "Climate Science is Not Settled." In this editorial, Steve E. Koonin, Undersecretary for Science in the Department of Energy during President Barack Obama's first term and current director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University, argued that while there is agreement that the climate is changing, there is no scientific agreement about the implications of climate change. Further, he suggests that existing climate models are unable to provide accurate predictions of future climate. Reading the editorial leaves the impression that we don't have enough information to make decisions about climate change and that we should focus our efforts "to make climate projections more useful over time." As scientists and decision-makers working on many fronts of the climate change problem, we believe this is a dangerous message. We are writing this response in order to highlight our concerns and lend our voices to support the 2014 U.N. Climate Summit.

In his editorial Dr. Koonin states in categorical terms that climate is changing, and that burning fossil fuels is the cause. We highlight that when climate scientists say the science is "settled," that is precisely what we mean – no more and no less. When a sitting senator calls climate change science a "hoax," it is no wonder that climate scientists need to stress that the fundamentals are settled. Indeed, the fundamentals of carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect were well understood in the 19th century. Dr. Koonin also acknowledges that the IPCC reports describe the limitations associated with climate models. However, he fails to discuss how, even though the detailed results may vary, all of these climate models indicate our emissions of greenhouse gases will have a substantial effect on the climate system in the coming decades. We do not argue that we have complete certainty about the implications of such warming. We argue we have enough information to warrant action.

Climate skeptics often argue that, during the last fifteen years, global temperatures have been nearly flat and that climate models are unable to predict or explain this pattern. This so-called "climate hiatus" rears its head again in Dr. Koonin's editorial. In fact, these last fifteen years are in no way surprising: 1998 was an extremely hot El Niño year and the early 2000s were at the peak of a strong solar cycle. The remarkable thing is that global temperatures have remained close to the peak values of the late 1990s despite the fact that natural sources of variability would indicate that they should have cooled. A statistical model (based on the work of Judith Lean at the Naval Research Laboratory) that accounts for solar variability, El Niño, volcanic activity, and greenhouse warming indicates that the underlying trend of global warming has accelerated over the past 15 years.

We are further baffled by Dr. Koonin's implication that climate feedbacks are so complicated that there might be some negative feedback that makes the whole thing go away. Yes, the detailed physics of feedbacks are uncertain, but understanding isn't just based on theory or recent history. The geological record is filled with evidence that feedbacks (mostly water vapor, some others) will amplify the intrinsic greenhouse signal, and we are not aware of any evidence to support the notion that a "white knight" negative feedback will make this all go away.

Dr. Koonin is correct that there is still uncertainty about the magnitude of the impacts of climate change and society will have to make decisions under such uncertainty. He seems to suggest, however, that there is enough scientific uncertainty that we can't even claim that the impacts of climate change will cause harm. Further, he seems to imply that we should limit our efforts to "no regrets" alternatives such as "accelerating the development of low-emissions technologies and in cost-effective energy-efficiency measures."

The detailed impacts of climate change remain uncertain. However, every comprehensive assessment of climate change impacts points to serious disruptions ahead. Given that ecosystems and human society have evolved to adapt to the current climate, it can hardly be otherwise. Even the "lower bound" on climate change impacts will cause harm. Moreover, the costs of climate change mitigation are controllable and can be phased in gradually with intelligent policy instruments. Dr. Koonin suggests that "the crucial, unsettled scientific question for policy is, how will the climate change over the next century under both natural and human influences?" We propose that the crucial question for climate policy is what are policy actions we should undertake now in the face of these uncertainties. This will not be the first time we, as a society, have to make difficult decisions under uncertain conditions. And, as the Charney report to the National Academy of Sciences stated 35 years ago, "a wait and see policy may mean waiting until it is too late."

By: Peter Adams^α, Neil Donahue^α, Michael Dworkin^β, W. Michael Griffin^α, Klaus Keller^α,δ, Ines Azevedo^α, Paulina Jaramillo^α, Constantine Samaras^ϕ, and Nathaniel Gilbraith^α.*

 ^αDepartment of Engineering and Public Policy. Carnegie Mellon University, 

^βInstitute for Energy and the Environment. Vermont Law School

^δDepartment of Geosciences. The Pennsylvania State University

^ϕDepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Carnegie Mellon University

*The authors are affiliated with the Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. The views and opinions in this essay are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not represent institutional positions.

I heartily concur with their closing thought, but also with some of Koonin's central points.

Pressing the frontiers of climate science and related research is vital, but it's wishful thinking to expect further science to substantially narrow uncertainties on time scales that matter when it comes to regional or short-term climate forecasting, the range of possible warming from a big buildup of carbon dioxide, the impact of greenhouse forcing on rare extremes and the like.

There's plenty that can be done right now to advance policies attuned to today's understanding of the building human influence on climate — along with climate's big influence on humans — and much of that is work that everyone can agree on.

For more:

Watch Gavin Schmidt's TED talk on climate modeling.

Please click back to David Roberts's excellent post on deep uncertainty at Grist: "In a climate-crazed world, how can we plan for the future?"

Review Stephen H. Schneider's many papers on uncertainty and climate policy.

Explore this 2007 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists discussion of "The uncertainty in climate modeling."

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Dot Earth Blog: U.N. Climate Summit Harvests a Host of Commitments

Photo More than 100 heads of state, including President Obama, participated in a summit on climate change at the United Nations on Sept. 23.Credit UN Photo

Photo United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recruited the actor Leonardo DiCaprio to help build interest in a climate summit on Sept. 23.Credit UN Photo

It's heartening to review the summary of governmental and private climate and energy commitments compiled by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the end of his daylong climate change summit. They range from a substantial new push to reduce and eventually eliminate forest loss to boosted investment in a planned clean-energy corridor in Africa.

The difference between this summit and the meeting the secretary general convened in 2009 is enormous. The goal five years ago was to build momentum to "seal the deal" on a binding climate treaty — a fruitless task given the divisions among the world's nations — while this conclave was centered on a more modest, but more concrete, achievement — "to raise political momentum for a meaningful universal climate agreement [notice there's no mention of the word "binding"] in Paris in 2015 and to galvanize transformative action in all countries to reduce emissions and build resilience to the adverse impacts of climate change."

Here are some significant bullet points from the summary once you get beyond the boilerplate:

Paths to cuts in emissions:

- The New York Declaration on Forests, launched and supported by more than 150 partners, including 28 government, 8 subnational governments, 35 companies, 16 indigenous peoples groups, and 45 NGO and civil society groups, aims to halve the loss of natural forests globally by 2030.

- Twenty-four leading global producers of palm oil as well as commodities traders committed to contribute to the goal of zero net deforestation by 2020 and to work with Governments, private sector partners and indigenous peoples to ensure a sustainable supply chain.

- Some of the world's largest retailers of meat and agricultural products committed to adapt their supply chains to reduce emissions and build resilience to climate change. They will assist 500 million farmers in the process.

Financial moves:

- A coalition of institutional investors, committed to decarbonizing $100 billion by December 2015 and to measure and disclose the carbon footprint of at least $500 billion in investments.

- The insurance industry committed to double its green investments to $84 billion by the end of 2015.

Energy and agriculture:

- Leaders from 19 countries and 32 partners from Government, regional organisations, development institutions and private investors committed to creating an 8,000 kilometre-long African Clean Energy Corridor.

- The Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, comprised of 16 countries and 37 organisations, was launched to enable 500 million farmers worldwide to practice climate-smart agriculture by 2030.

- Leaders of the oil and gas industry, along with national Governments and civil society organisations, made an historic commitment to identify and reduce methane emissions by 2020.

- A second industry-led initiative was launched by leading producers of petroleum who committed to address methane as well as other key climate challenges, followed by regular reporting on ongoing efforts. Industry leaders and Governments also committed to reduce HFCs in refrigeration and food storage.

These are modest moves. Many were already in the works. But this is a long climate and energy march and it's great to see the United Nations helping highlight and sustain such initiatives.

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Dot Earth Blog: On the Path Past 9 Billion, Little Crosstalk Between U.N. Sessions on Population and Global Warming

The United Nations and the streets of Manhattan are going into global warming saturation mode, from Sunday's People's Climate March through the Tuesday climate change summit convened by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and on through an annual green-energy event called Climate Week.

Largely missed in much of this, as always seems the case with climate change discussions, is the role of population growth in contributing both to rising emissions of greenhouse gases and rising vulnerability to climate hazards in poor places with high fertility rates (think sub-Saharan Africa).

That's too bad given that on Monday a separate special session of the General Assembly is scheduled to hold a 20th-anniversary review of actions since the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. As Bob Engelman of the Worldwatch Institute mused at a Wilson Center meeting in Washington last week, there needs to be much more crosstalk.

Obviously, rates of consumption of fossil energy and forests per person matter more than the rise in human numbers. As I've said before, 9 billion vegan monks would have a far different greenhouse-gas imprint than a similar number of people living high on the hog.

But family planning, for instance, should absolutely be seen as a climate resilience strategy in poor regions. This is how I put it in 2010: 

Africa's population is projected to double — from one to two billion — by 2050. That means exposure to [deep, implicit] climate hazards will greatly increase in many places even if climate patterns don't change at all. So family planning, and sanitation and water management, sure sound like vital parts of any push for climate progress.

I'd be happy to shift my view if someone can explain a flaw in my logic.

Read this timely (and aptly titled) piece by two former United Nations Population Division officials, Joe Chamie and Barry Mirkin for more: "Climate Change and World Population: Still Avoiding Each Other."

For the moment, trajectories for fertility rates, particularly in Africa, are showing few signs of modulating, leading to this sobering title on the latest analysis of United Nations population data, published in the current edition of Science: "World population stabilization unlikely this century."

Photo A new analysis of population data finds persistent high fertility in Africa nearly guaranteeing a growing global population through this century.Credit Science

The study uses models to generate not only a range of outcomes for population through 2100, but also probabilities. Robert Kunzig at National Geographic, who's been writing in depth on human population growth for years, has a superb analysis of this paper and other work, led by the Austrian demographer Wolfgang Lutz, pointing to more modest growth.

What everyone cited in his article agrees on is that Africa is a critical region (read about Nigeria, particularly!) and that women's access to secondary education and contraception are the key to shifted trajectories on family size — and so much else, of course. Please read Lutz's piece on "Population policy for sustainable development" for more.

I reached out to one of the authors of the Science paper, Adrian E. Raftery, a professor of statistics and sociology at the University of Washington, for a final thought on the many benefits of action:

The projected rapid population increase in Africa may well exacerbate a range of challenges: environmental, health and social, including climate change. On the other hand, if fertility decline accelerates, Africa stands to gain many benefits. These include a demographic dividend, which happens when a country experiences a rapid reduction in fertility rates. This leads to a period of 30 years or so when there are relative few dependents (children or old people), and many more resources are available for infrastructure, education, environmental protection and so on. This dividend can be reaped even while population is increasing (albeit more slowly).

If African population growth could be kept to the lower end of our projected interval (3.5 billion instead of the median of 4.2 billion, compared with the current 1 billion), the outcomes would likely be much better. That's another 2.5 billion people instead of 3.2 billion by 2100. It doesn't sound that different, but it could change a lot of things. It's feasible with the right policies.

We know the policies that can help to achieve this. The first is to improve access to contraception. 25 percent of women in sub-Saharan Africa who do not want to become pregnant are not using contraception, and this number hasn't changed in 20 years. The second is to improve girls' education. For example, more than 25 percent of girls in Nigeria do not complete primary schooling.The issues are priorities, resources and political will. Population was a major world concern up to the 1990s (with a peak at the Cairo conference in 1994), but since then has fallen off the world's agenda. This now seems to have been premature. Population should come back as a major world priority. There's a need for the world as a whole to support families and governments in high-fertility countries improve access to contraception and education.

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Well: Artificial Sweeteners May Disrupt Body’s Blood Sugar Controls

Photo Researchers say gut bacteria changed in subjects that consumed artificial sweeteners, leading to glucose intolerance.Credit Weizmann Institute of Science

Artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body's ability to regulate blood sugar, causing metabolic changes that can be a precursor to diabetes, researchers are reporting.

That is "the very same condition that we often aim to prevent" by consuming sweeteners instead of sugar, said Dr. Eran Elinav, an immunologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, at a news conference to discuss the findings.

The scientists performed a multitude of experiments, mostly on mice, to back up their assertion that the sweeteners alter the microbiome, the population of bacteria that is in the digestive system.

The different mix of microbes, the researchers contend, changes the metabolism of glucose, causing levels to rise higher after eating and to decline more slowly than they otherwise would.

The findings by Dr. Elinav and his collaborators in Israel, including Eran Segal, a professor of computer science and applied mathematics at Weizmann, are being published Wednesday by the journal Nature.

Cathryn R. Nagler, a professor of pathology at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the research but did write an accompanying commentary in Nature, called the results "very compelling."

She noted that many conditions, including obesity and diabetes, had been linked to changes in the microbiome. "What the study suggests," she said, "is we should step back and reassess our extensive use of artificial sweeteners."

Previous studies on the health effects of artificial sweeteners have come to conflicting and confusing findings. Some found that they were associated with weight loss; others found the exact opposite, that people who drank diet soda actually weighed more.

Some found a correlation between artificial sweeteners and diabetes, but those findings were not entirely convincing: Those who switch to the products may already be overweight and prone to the disease.

While acknowledging that it is too early for broad or definitive conclusions, Dr. Elinav said he had already changed his own behavior.

"I've consumed very large amounts of coffee, and extensively used sweeteners, thinking like many other people that they are at least not harmful to me and perhaps even beneficial," he said. "Given the surprising results that we got in our study, I made a personal preference to stop using them.

"We don't think the body of evidence that we present in humans is sufficient to change the current recommendations," he continued. "But I would hope it would provoke a healthy discussion."

In the initial set of experiments, the scientists added saccharin (the sweetener in the pink packets of Sweet'N Low), sucralose (the yellow packets of Splenda) or aspartame (the blue packets of Equal) to the drinking water of 10-week-old mice. Other mice drank plain water or water supplemented with glucose or with ordinary table sugar. After a week, there was little change in the mice that drank water or sugar water, but the group getting artificial sweeteners developed marked intolerance to glucose.

Glucose intolerance, in which the body is less able to cope with large amounts of sugar, can lead to more serious illnesses like metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes.

When the researchers treated the mice with antibiotics, killing much of the bacteria in the digestive system, the glucose intolerance went away.

At present, the scientists cannot explain how the sweeteners affect the bacteria or why the three different molecules of saccharin, aspartame and sucralose result in similar changes in the glucose metabolism.

To further test their hypothesis that the change in glucose metabolism was caused by a change in bacteria, they performed another series of experiments, this time focusing just on saccharin. They took intestinal bacteria from mice who had drank saccharin-laced water and injected them in mice that had never been exposed any saccharin. Those mice developed the same glucose intolerance. And DNA sequencing showed that saccharin had markedly changed the variety of bacteria in the guts of the mice that consumed it.

Next, the researchers turned to a study they were conducting to track the effects of nutrition and gut bacteria on people's long-term health. For 381 nondiabetic participants in the study, the researchers found a correlation between the reported use of any kind of artificial sweeteners and signs of glucose intolerance. In addition, the gut bacteria of those who used artificial sweeteners were different from those who did not.

Finally, they recruited seven volunteers who normally did not use artificial sweeteners and over six days gave them the maximum amount of saccharin recommended by the United States Food and Drug Administration. In four of the seven, blood-sugar levels were disrupted in the same way as in mice.

Further, when they injected the human participants' bacteria into the intestines of mice, the animals again developed glucose intolerance, suggesting that effect was the same in both mice and humans.

"That experiment is compelling to me," Dr. Nagler said.

Intriguingly — "superstriking and interesting to us," Dr. Segal said — the intestinal bacteria of the people who did experience effects were different from those who did not. This suggests that any effects of artificial sweeteners are not universal. It also suggests probiotics — medicines consisting of live bacteria — could be used to shift gut bacteria to a population that reversed the glucose intolerance.

Dr. Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health who did not take part in the study, called it interesting but far from conclusive and added that given the number of participants, "I think the validity of the human study is questionable."

The researchers said future research would examine aspartame and sucralose in detail as well as other alternative sweeteners like stevia.

Correction: September 20, 2014
An article Thursday about the effect of artificial sweeteners on metabolism misstated the title of a researcher who commented on the study. Dr. Frank Hu is a professor of nutrition and epidemiology, not immunology, at the Harvard School of Public Health.

A version of this article appears in print on 09/18/2014, on page A4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Artificial Sweeteners Alter Metabolism, Study Finds.

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Well: Artificial Sweeteners May Disrupt Body’s Blood Sugar Controls

Photo Sweeteners alter the microbiome, the population of bacteria that is in the digestive system.Credit Weizmann Institute of Science

Artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body's ability to regulate blood sugar, causing metabolic changes that can be a precursor to diabetes, researchers are reporting.

That is "the very same condition that we often aim to prevent" by consuming sweeteners instead of sugar, said Dr. Eran Elinav, an immunologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, at a news conference to discuss the findings.

The scientists performed a multitude of experiments, mostly on mice, to back up their assertion that the sweeteners alter the microbiome, the population of bacteria that is in the digestive system.

The different mix of microbes, the researchers contend, changes the metabolism of glucose, causing levels to rise higher after eating and to decline more slowly than they otherwise would.

The findings by Dr. Elinav and his collaborators in Israel, including Eran Segal, a professor of computer science and applied mathematics at Weizmann, are being published Wednesday by the journal Nature.

Cathryn R. Nagler, a professor of pathology at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the research but did write an accompanying commentary in Nature, called the results "very compelling."

She noted that many conditions, including obesity and diabetes, had been linked to changes in the microbiome. "What the study suggests," she said, "is we should step back and reassess our extensive use of artificial sweeteners."

Previous studies on the health effects of artificial sweeteners have come to conflicting and confusing findings. Some found that they were associated with weight loss; others found the exact opposite, that people who drank diet soda actually weighed more.

Some found a correlation between artificial sweeteners and diabetes, but those findings were not entirely convincing: Those who switch to the products may already be overweight and prone to the disease.

While acknowledging that it is too early for broad or definitive conclusions, Dr. Elinav said he had already changed his own behavior.

"I've consumed very large amounts of coffee, and extensively used sweeteners, thinking like many other people that they are at least not harmful to me and perhaps even beneficial," he said. "Given the surprising results that we got in our study, I made a personal preference to stop using them.

"We don't think the body of evidence that we present in humans is sufficient to change the current recommendations," he continued. "But I would hope it would provoke a healthy discussion."

In the initial set of experiments, the scientists added saccharin (the sweetener in the pink packets of Sweet'N Low), sucralose (the yellow packets of Splenda) or aspartame (the blue packets of Equal) to the drinking water of 10-week-old mice. Other mice drank plain water or water supplemented with glucose or with ordinary table sugar. After a week, there was little change in the mice who drank water or sugar water, but the group getting artificial sweeteners developed marked intolerance to glucose.

Glucose intolerance, in which the body is less able to cope with large amounts of sugar, can lead to more serious illnesses like metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes.

When the researchers treated the mice with antibiotics, killing much of the bacteria in the digestive system, the glucose intolerance went away.

At present, the scientists cannot explain how the sweeteners affect the bacteria or why the three different molecules of saccharin, aspartame and sucralose result in similar changes in the glucose metabolism.

To further test their hypothesis that the change in glucose metabolism was caused by a change in bacteria, they performed another series of experiments, this time focusing just on saccharin. They took intestinal bacteria from mice who had drank saccharin-laced water and injected them in mice that had never been exposed any saccharin. Those mice developed the same glucose intolerance. And DNA sequencing showed that saccharin had markedly changed the variety of bacteria in the guts of the mice that consumed it.

Next, the researchers turned to a study they were conducting to track the effects of nutrition and gut bacteria on people's long-term health. For 381 nondiabetic participants in the study, the researchers found a correlation between the reported use of any kind of artificial sweeteners and signs of glucose intolerance. In addition, the gut bacteria of those who used artificial sweeteners were different from those who did not.

Finally, they recruited seven volunteers who normally did not use artificial sweeteners and over six days gave them the maximum amount of saccharin recommended by the United States Food and Drug Administration. In four of the seven, blood-sugar levels were disrupted in the same way as in mice.

Further, when they injected the human participants' bacteria into the intestines of mice, the animals again developed glucose intolerance, suggesting that effect was the same in both mice and humans.

"That experiment is compelling to me," Dr. Nagler said.

Intriguingly — "superstriking and interesting to us," Dr. Segal said — the intestinal bacteria of the people who did experience effects were different from those who did not. This suggests that any effects of artificial sweeteners are not universal. It also suggests probiotics — medicines consisting of live bacteria — could be used to shift gut bacteria to a population that reversed the glucose intolerance.

Dr. Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health who did not take part in the study, called it interesting but far from conclusive and added that given the number of participants, "I think the validity of the human study is questionable."

The researchers said future research would examine aspartame and sucralose in detail as well as other alternative sweeteners like stevia.

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Dot Earth Blog: Wildlife Agency Seeks Educational Use For Crushed Ivory

As you may have heard, the United States Fish and Wildlife Agency and counterparts elsewhere, including in China and France, have been crushing tons of confiscated elephant ivory in the fight against elephant poaching.

There are debates about whether such efforts are effective. Scarcity can drive the price for illegal ivory higher, while the publicity might discourage consumers from buying ivory products. But the crushing has the support of many environmental groups, including the Wildlife Conservation Society.

So what happens to the rubbly remains?

The Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking your help in putting the resulting material to educational use. From today through Oct. 15, the agency, through an "Ivory Challenge," is accepting proposals for a "compelling, thought provoking, informative and impactful display to increase awareness about our fight against illegal wildlife trade."

I know at least one artist, Asher Jay,* who'll almost assuredly come up with an idea. [Boy, was I wrong! See the postscript below.]

Here's an explanatory video, followed by more on the contest:

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service "Ivory Challenge"

Here's more from the agency:

The outcome of this project will be the creation of an educational tool that will raise awareness of the plight of African elephants and other species threatened by poaching and illegal trade and help motivate people to take action to help save endangered wildlife around the world. Given the scope and gravity of this project, there are certain logistical and tactical guidelines that must be followed:

1) As you develop your ideas, please keep in mind that we want this project to create awareness of the issue and incite change. In other words, the idea should incorporate a kiosk, signage, or some other means to provide information about the initiative and the need to stop illegal wildlife trade.

2) Design submissions should reflect the overall intent of the U.S. Ivory Crush – to render the ivory useless – so the ideal design will not glorify or add value to the crushed ivory. For example, creating beautiful, ornate sculptures of elephants from the crushed ivory is contrary to the objective of this design challenge.

3) Given the black market value of ivory, the ideal design will take into account potential security/theft risks. For example, embedding the ivory in a structure where pieces can be easily chipped out and stolen is problematic unless it is encased in a polymer or otherwise shielded.

4) Designs should be in good taste and suitable for display in areas of broad audience (e.g., museums, zoos, schools, etc.).

Download the Entry Form

Postscript, 10:52 p.m. | Actually, I got in touch with Asher Jay tonight and it turns out she's campaigned against the Fish and Wildlife Service's approach. Here's an excerpt from a petition she's posted at Avaaz.org:

Let us band together and lend a voice to the voiceless, and truly ensure elephants a wild future that is not constantly threatened by the blood ivory trade. Ask yourself this: would you be comfortable with orbiting a design challenge around the remains of human victims from any mass murder or act of genocide? This is simply hypocritical, unethical and a completely counterproductive measure to every effort taken thus far to end the trade in Ivory. Say no to the design challenge, help ensure their future.

Last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service crushed six tons of seized elephant ivory. Now they are asking you to design a way to display the crushed ivory so that it raises awareness of the illegal wildlife trade and reduces demand for illegal ivory. #IvoryCrush. I know the U.S. Fisheries and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has been deliberating this for sometime now, and I simply don't think the Design Challenge idea is a good step forward for FWS, the moratorium, the crush or the trade. It does not sit well with what we are trying to accomplish as a collective, which is to end the slaughter of elephants for their tusks.

If USFWS wants to make a statement that is creative yet not counter productive, then they should not allow for the crush material to take any visual form. Even when mixed into a substrate, the crushed pieces are still large enough to be visible to the naked eye, which will make anything created out of it — no matter how seemingly "educational" or "repellent" or "tragic" — beautiful.

Suggestion: The best artistic proposition I have for this is to take it to Burning Man, and burn the remains at Burning Man 201, on a funerary pyre. Not as a spectacle but as a moment of mourning….

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Dot Earth Blog: Should Fin Whales Be a Source of Wonder or Meat?

Photo A fin whale surfaces near a Canadian whale-watching boat in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.Credit Andrew C. Revkin

Here are two very different views of humans' relationship with the world's second biggest animal, the fin whale. Above is a special moment during a whale-watching excursion in Canadian waters (which I wrote about here). Below is an image of one of more than 100 fin whales slaughtered this year by a business in Iceland that, according to a new report by conservationists, is exporting most of the meat to Japan.

Should fin whales be a source of wonder or meat? I vote for wonder.

Here's the latest:

Iceland has long had an on-again, off-again relationship with the international treaty governing commercial whaling. After a moratorium was enacted in 1986, Iceland withdrew. In 2002, the country rejoined but with a reservation that it claimed provided wiggle room permitting it to kill whales. Read this International Whaling Commission document on Iceland's actions for a neutral view of the details.

Timed with the latest meeting of the commission, in Slovenia, the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency has issued "Slayed in Iceland," a fresh critique of Iceland's whaling operation, which is all done by one business, Hvalur, with strong financial and operational ties to HB Grandi, a large Icelandic international seafood company. That relationship has prompted a coalition of conservation groups to create a consumer campaign to boycott that company's seafood products. The campaign website, Don't Buy from Icelandic Whalers, describes how the seafood company's facilities are used to process the whale meat:

Fin whale meat is transported by truck from the Hvalur whaling station to Akranes, where it is cut, packaged, boxed, and made ready for export in HB Grandi facilities.

Hvalur exported whale products to Japan via Canada in January 2014, and a massive shipment of 2,000 tons of whale products left Iceland on March 20, 2014, destined for Japan. 

A lead author of the new report on Iceland's whaling business, Clare Perry, has an essay in The Ecologist making these main points:

Since 2006, the Icelandic whaling company Hvalur hf has killed more than 500 fin whales, purely to exploit a limited demand for whale meat and blubber in Japan.

Over the past eight years, Hvalur has exported more than 5,000 tonnes of fin whale products from Iceland to Japan, including a record single shipment of 2,071 tonnes in 2014.

These exports are worth an estimated US$50 million and Iceland's escalating whale hunts are clear and wilful abuses of the IWC's moratorium as well as the ban on international commercial trade in whale products imposed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Iceland claims its whaling is sustainable when the best available scientific evidence reveals that its fin whale quota is more than three times greater than the level considered sustainable….

It is time for the Contracting Governments to the IWC and non-member governments worldwide to take strong diplomatic and economic action to bring an end to what is clearly the most flagrant abuse of the moratorium on commercial whaling since its inception.

Without such action, Iceland's commercial whaling and its exports of the products of endangered fin whales to Japan will continue, and Hvalur's domination of the Japanese market will grow.

Other groups, including Whale and Dolphin Conservation and the Animal Welfare Institute, are pressing other countries to crack down on Iceland.

As I laid out in my 2004 news article, arguments about abundance have less and less strength as whale numbers, including populations of fin whales, recover from a century or more of industrial-scale hunting.

The prime issue, to my eye, is ethical. (This is on top of the legal arguments about whether Iceland can have it both ways under the treaty.)

Unless you're a vegan (I'm not), killing animals is an inevitable part of human affairs. But firing harpoons into intelligent, social marine mammals in the wild from a moving vessel is not the same as raising bison on rangeland and slaughtering them in controlled conditions.

Even in countries with long maritime and whaling traditions, we can do better.

Here's a video report on Iceland's whaling operation from the Environmental Investigation Agency:

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Dot Earth Blog: Can Humans Get Used to Having a Two-Way Relationship with Earth’s Climate?

Earlier this summer, I was invited to write an essay on humanity's troubled relationship with the changing atmosphere for a special issue of Audubon Magazine centered on the Audubon Society's comprehensive new report on birds in a changing climate.

The issue is now published online and in print and has a range of excellent features, including "How Climate Change is Sinking Seabirds" by Carl Safina, "Why U.S. Forests Are Fueling Europe" by T. Edward NIckens, "Rethinking How We Think about Climate Change" by Elizabeth Kolbert, and a stunning photo essay on climate change.

In part, my article, "How We Ran Out of Airtime," considers the current human-generated carbon dioxide buildup in relation to a tumultuous period of atmospheric disruption triggered by another life form some 2.4 billion years ago. Here's the opening section:

It should be no surprise, first of all, that humanity is taking its time absorbing and confronting what's going on. Our interactions with climate, for far more than 99 percent of history, ran in one direction: Precipitation or temperatures changed, ice sheets or coastlines or deserts advanced or retreated, and communities thrived, suffered, or adjusted how or where they lived. Only a couple of decades have passed since people outside of a tiny community of scientists began to grasp that the human-climate relationship, in measurable but still subtle ways, now runs in two directions….

We are different from other life-forms that have become planet-scale powerhouses. Take blue-green cyanobacteria, organisms that began flooding the atmosphere with oxygen some 2.4 billion years ago. Some earth scientists call that atmospheric jolt the great Oxygen Catastrophe, because the buildup of oxygen was toxic to most other species at the time. And yes, you could step back and say there's not much of a difference between our carbon binge and that oxygen outburst. Except those mats of photosynthesizing slime weren't looking up at the sky, measuring and marveling at what they'd done. Through science, we are. With awareness comes responsibility, at least in theory. I'm pretty sure cyanobacteria are not self-aware.

Luckily it's still too early to describe the ongoing buildup of human-generated greenhouse gases as the great Carbon Dioxide Catastrophe. Climate scientists say there's still "space" in the climate system for the CO2 from burning roughly another 500 billion tons of carbon before long-lasting shifts in temperature, weather patterns and sea level guarantee a daunting future for our species and many of our companions on this planet.

I argue for moving away from a "solve the problem" approach to global warming to a more realistic long-term framing:

[H]ow do we develop a sustainable, two-way relationship with the atmosphere and climate? How do we limit warming and gird ourselves smartly for the future? First, it would help to conceive of global warming less as a problem to be solved and more as a legacy issue to be consistently addressed. Too often we've heard calls to "seal the deal" (on a binding treaty) and "solve the climate crisis" in ways that imply this is the task of a single president or generation. A more realistic view is that we need a new relationship with energy to go with our evolving new relationship with climate. Addressing both sources of emissions and sources of societal and ecological risk is something to do as routinely, and passionately, as we work on poverty reduction and health care. It took a century to get deep into the fossil era; it will take decades to get out.

Photo Credit Andrew C. Revkin

The closing section centers on a them I've explored before on Dot Earth — the value of a diverse array of approaches to climate-friendly energy progress:

The "super wicked" complexity of the greenhouse challenge, as first described by the young climate analyst Kelly Levin and some colleagues in 2007, guarantees that a mix of approaches—the "silver buckshot" of Bill McKibben, the veteran climate writer and campaigner—is needed. In action as in evolution, diversity is adaptive. McKibben has mostly shaped his 350.org movement around confrontation, for example, attacking big oil companies and pressing university trustees and politicians to pull fossil fuel investments. But the group has also staged "work parties" in which communities gather together to make such environmentally friendly changes as planting trees and erecting solar and wind energy installations. At the same time, innovators like the Caltech chemist Nate Lewis focus on pushing forward photovoltaics and other energy technologies. Entrepreneur Billy Parish of Mosaic is devising new investment models to foster expanded solar panel use. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary-General, has wisely approached the world's interlaced climate and energy challenges along two tracks, pairing climate-smart diplomacy with expanded sustainable energy access for the world's still un-electrified billions.

One of the most exciting signs of a change in thinking came in a powerful essay written for Yale Environment 360 by two former Democratic senators, Tim Wirth and Tom Daschle—long champions of such top-down tools as laws and treaties. They laid out a new approach to climate progress that fits our variegated world:

"We think the time has come for the international community to alter its collective climate strategy, cease the search for the impossible all-encompassing top-down agreement—described unattractively as "burden sharing"—and instead encourage an approach that builds on national self-interest and spurs a race to the top in low-carbon energy solutions. This would change the psychology of the climate change issue from one of burden to opportunity, and change the likely outcome from one of hand-wringing about failure to excitement about tangible action to build a better world."

Their call replaces the unachievable quest of building a binding treaty with an inclusive and sustained search for productive paths on energy and the environment. And as that kind of approach spreads—from international diplomacy to household decisions to career choices made by students—I see solid prospects that we can win this race with ourselves. We can move from awareness to responsibility to meaningful action and pass on a planet to the coming generations that, while unavoidably bearing our footprint, remains something beautiful to behold.

The piece is best read from beginning to end, of course. So please click here and do so, then return to discuss your reactions.

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Sinosphere Blog: Wealthy Chinese Travelers Lining Up to Blast Off

Photo Sheng Tianxing, a tea trader, bought a $100,000 ticket for a trip on a commercially operated flight to go 64 miles above Earth.Credit Qilai Shen for The New York Times

One night in June, Sheng Tianxing made good on his name, which translated literally means "sky travel." With a single click online, he paid $100,000, about a third of his annual income, for a seat on a rocket that will carry him into space.

Come 2016, if all goes as planned, Mr. Sheng, 41, a tea trader from the southeastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, will spend up to six minutes floating 64 miles above the Earth as one of the first civilians aboard a commercially operated flight beyond the planet's atmosphere.

"I've always wanted to go into space," he said recently, recalling that he got hooked on space films and science fiction as a boy growing up in a mountain village. "I've always wondered if Armstrong did actually walk on the moon. I'd like to have a look myself."

A half-century ago, bemoaning his nation's backwardness, Mao Zedong said that China could not launch a potato into space. Now, well-to-do Chinese business people are lining up for one-hour voyages to the cosmos, and tour operators say China is set to become the world's largest market for the incipient space tourism industry.

Already, more than 30 mainland Chinese have purchased or made down payments of 50 percent on tickets for journeys offered by XCOR Aerospace, a company based in Mojave, Calif., that plans to begin operating suborbital flights late next year. The tours went on sale in China in December, two years after the company began selling them elsewhere, and one in 10 of all bookings have been by Chinese citizens, according to Dexo Travel, the Beijing-based sales agent in China for the trips.

The sales reflect late-blooming interest in space travel in China, which celebrated the successful landing of a lunar rover in December, four decades after the United States accomplished the same feat. The notion of traveling amid the stars has captivated a segment of the Chinese public just as it once fascinated Americans who were riveted by Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. But unlike that earlier generation, the Chinese have the option of booking a trip themselves — and many have the money to pay for it.

"There are wealthy people everywhere in the world, but there are not so many wealthy people who also dream of going into space," said Alex Tang, chief executive of XCOR Aerospace's Asia operation. China, he said, had both. In a survey this year of more than 200 Chinese luxury travelers by the Shanghai-based research firm Hurun, about 7 percent said they hoped to visit space within the next three years.

Mr. Tang attributed the Chinese passion for space travel to the recent successes of the nation's space program. "Many want to go to space like Yang Liwei," he said, referring to the astronaut who circled the Earth in 2003 and came home a national hero for bringing China into the ranks of space-faring nations.

Zhang Yong, chief executive of Dexo Travel, described the people booking seats as business executives and entrepreneurs who already have luxury homes and cars and are turning their sights beyond earthly objects. Two-thirds are male, he said. Influenced by books and films like "Gravity," a hit in China, they long for the transcendent experience of gazing upon Earth from space, Mr. Zhang said.

Interest in the spaceflights is high even among those without the means to go. Some would-be space tourists have become minor celebrities long before the first liftoff.

After Tong Jingling, a 40-year-old banker, booked a ticket in April, she started getting invitations from businesses to be their spokeswoman, she said. One company asked her to conduct medical experiments while in space.

Ms. Tong, a graduate of Beihang University, formerly known as the Beijing Institute of Aeronautics, has capitalized on the attention by trying to launch several crowd-funded ventures. One would arrange weddings in space. Another would produce a reality television show in which contestants compete for a ticket for space travel. An investment of 100 renminbi, or $16, gets you a T-shirt that says, wo yao shang taikong (我要上太空), or "I want to go up into space."

The Chinese are coming a bit late to space tourism. The first civilian space tour was in 2001, when the American billionaire Dennis Tito joined a Russian space mission and flew to the International Space Station. He spent $20 million and underwent months of training. Since then, six other civilians have made the same trip.

But companies are now selling suborbital trips to altitudes just beyond the Earth's atmosphere, at prices that put the dream of space travel within the reach of wealthy Chinese. After long delays caused by technical and safety issues, XCOR Aerospace and Virgin Galactic, founded by the British entrepreneur Richard Branson, say they are planning flights next year.

Because Virgin Galactic spacecraft are powered by rocket engines manufactured in the United States that use technology considered to have potential military applications, citizens from 22 countries, including China, are barred from traveling on them, the company has said. Virgin Galactic said it hoped that future United States government rulings would enable it to offer spaceflights to an expanded roster of nations.

XCOR Aerospace's Lynx shuttle uses different engines that do not appear to raise the same concerns. A $95,000 ticket with XCOR buys a flight late next year to an altitude of about 38 miles — what the company calls "the edge of space" — while a $100,000 ticket will take a passenger beyond the atmosphere in 2016. Each flight carries one passenger, who must undergo medical screening and training.

Mr. Zhang said he expects Chinese interest in space tourism to increase further once the first civilian flights are underway. "Many from business circles and celebrities have told me that they'll buy tickets once the test flights succeed or the first tourists return safely," he said.

Several Chinese who have booked seats said they had confidence in the safety of the shuttle technology, though some had not told their families of their plans.

Zhang Xiaoyu, 29, an entrepreneur in Beijing, said he told his parents only that he planned to fly at a "relatively high altitude." He did not tell them how much the ticket cost, either. But Mr. Zhang said traveling to space meant more to him than putting a down payment on an apartment or buying a car in the congested Chinese capital.

"You will be able to look back at the planet where you were born and experience complete solitude," he said. "You wouldn't be able to experience this anywhere else."

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Well: The Problem With Reclining Airplane Seat Design

The Well Column

Tara Parker-Pope on living well.

To recline or not to recline? That is the question now being hotly debated among air travelers after three flights were forced to land after passengers on board began fighting about reclining seats.

But are passengers really the problem? The real issue may be that most airline seats are not designed to fully accommodate the human body in its various shapes and sizes.

"We are fighting each other, but the seats are not designed right," said Kathleen M. Robinette, professor and head of the department of design, housing and merchandising at Oklahoma State University. "The seats don't fit us."

Dr. Robinette would know. She is the lead author of a landmark anthropometric survey conducted by the Air Force with a consortium of 35 organizations and published in 2002. It is widely used by seat makers and other designers.

The survey, called the Civilian American and European Surface Anthropometry Resource project, measured the bodies of 4,431 people in North America, the Netherlands and Italy. The survey collected a voluminous amount of data about its subjects, ranging from height and weight to shoe and bra size. Dr. Robinette and her colleagues made 3D scans of their subjects, allowing for detailed measurements in sitting and standing positions.

For seat designers, the most relevant data came from measurements of people sitting, which included distances from the buttock to the knee, the breadth of the hips and the height of the knees.

The data gave an accurate view of the variations in the human form, Dr. Robinette said, but the measurements have not been used correctly.

Seat designers often make the assumption that nearly everyone will be accommodated if they design a seat for a man in the 95th percentile of measurements, meaning that they are larger than all but 5 percent of other men — and, theoretically, all women. But even in that group, there are big differences.

Take the buttock-to-knee measurement of the largest men in the study: In the North American group, the average measurement was 26.5 inches, but the Dutch men were larger, measuring 27.6 inches. Factor in the fact that nobody on an airplane sits upright with the knees bent at a 90 degree angle, plus variations in calf length and thigh length.

The result is that the measurements don't really account for different body shapes and variations in the way people sit.In addition, choosing the 95th percentile of men as a cutoff means at least 5 percent, as many as 1 in 20 men, on the plane will be using seats that are too small for them. "That's about 10 people on every plane who are dis-accommodated, as well as all the people sitting next to them," Dr. Robinette said.

A big flaw in seat design, however, is that men in the 95th percentile are not necessarily larger than women, particularly in the parts of the body that are resting on the seat.

In terms of hip width, women are bigger than men. In the study, North American women in the 95th percentile had hip breadth measurements of 19.72 inches, compared to 17.15 inches for North American men.

According to SeatGuru.com, which collects data on seat sizes from dozens of airlines, the typical economy class airline seat ranges from 17 to 18 inches across. This means that seats will be snug on many bodies; for about 1 in 4 women, the seat will be too small at the hips, causing them to spill over into the adjacent seat.

Further, the widest part of the body is actually the shoulders, which is why so many of us end up knocking elbows and shoulders with the passengers next to us, or leaning into the window or aisle to avoid pressing against our seat neighbor.

The issue goes beyond passenger comfort. Dr. Robinette notes that travelers who are squeezed together and touching continually are more likely to spread cold viruses or other illnesses to a fellow passenger. People who are confined to tight seats and who can't move comfortably are at risk for painful "hot spots" — precursors to the bed sores that occur in nursing home patients who aren't moved frequently.

Of greater concern is the risk of blood clots, including a potentially deadly condition called deep vein thrombosis.

"When sitting in a way so you can't move, you start to get spots that are compression spots after maybe a half-hour or so," Dr. Robinette said. "Pain and discomfort is your body telling you something is wrong, and on an airplane there is a risk of blood clots. It's a serious problem that we are all discounting."

When it comes to reclining a seat, the most important measure of comfort is seat pitch, which is the distance from any point on one seat to the exact same point on the seat in front or behind it.

According to SeatGuru, seat pitch is a good approximation of how much seat and leg room a passenger can expect. The measurement on short-haul flights averages about 31 inches on most flights, ranging from a tight 28 inches on some airlines to a roomy 38 to 39 inches on a few.

"Seat pitch is what most fliers are concerned about," said Jami Counter, senior director of SeatGuru and TripAdvisor. "When you are talking about 31 inches as the standard, that's pretty tight; 28 inches is incredibly tight. Airlines are feeling really crowded and really cramped."

Officials at Recaro Aircraft Seating, a German seat manufacturer, said that seat design had to take into account safety requirements, weight, passenger comfort and airplane space needs, and have enough flexibility that seats can be used in various aircraft layouts.

Recaro has introduced a new seat with a slimmer back rest, giving the passenger behind the seat more space for knees and shins. The designers also moved the seat pocket above the tray table to allow for more knee room.

Recaro has received orders for more than 200,000 of the seats since introducing the model in late 2010.

"Of course, it is possible to install seats in an aircraft at a more comfortable distance from each other, so that everybody has sufficient knee and leg space," Rene Dankwerth, the vice president of research and development at Recaro, said in a written response. "However, the ticket price would definitely rise."

At 6 feet 6 inches, Chicago economics professor Devin Pope knows the risk of sitting behind someone who chooses to recline the seat. Dr. Pope likened it to a classic economics experiment called the Dictator game, in which a person is given $10 and allowed to keep it all, or share it with another person. Surprisingly, the dictator often chooses to share the money.

"It suggests that people really do care about other people sometimes," said Dr. Pope, associate professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. "I think it suggests why a lot of people don't lean the seat back."

 

A version of this article appears in print on 09/09/2014, on page D1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Taking a Position on Plane Comfort.

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Sinosphere Blog: Wealthy Chinese Travelers Lining Up to Blast Off

Photo Sheng Tianxing, a tea trader, bought a $100,000 ticket for a trip on a commercially operated flight to go 64 miles above Earth.Credit Qilai Shen for The New York Times

One night in June, Sheng Tianxing made good on his name, which translated literally means "sky travel." With a single click online, he paid $100,000, about a third of his annual income, for a seat on a rocket that will carry him into space.

Come 2016, if all goes as planned, Mr. Sheng, 41, a tea trader from the southeastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, will spend up to six minutes floating 64 miles above the Earth as one of the first civilians aboard a commercially operated flight beyond the planet's atmosphere.

"I've always wanted to go into space," he said recently, recalling that he got hooked on space films and science fiction as a boy growing up in a mountain village. "I've always wondered if Armstrong did actually walk on the moon. I'd like to have a look myself."

A half-century ago, bemoaning his nation's backwardness, Mao Zedong said that China could not launch a potato into space. Now, well-to-do Chinese business people are lining up for one-hour voyages to the cosmos, and tour operators say China is set to become the world's largest market for the incipient space tourism industry.

Already, more than 30 mainland Chinese have purchased or made down payments of 50 percent on tickets for journeys offered by XCOR Aerospace, a company based in Mojave, Calif., that plans to begin operating suborbital flights late next year. The tours went on sale in China in December, two years after the company began selling them elsewhere, and one in 10 of all bookings have been by Chinese citizens, according to Dexo Travel, the Beijing-based sales agent in China for the trips.

The sales reflect late-blooming interest in space travel in China, which celebrated the successful landing of a lunar rover in December, four decades after the United States accomplished the same feat. The notion of traveling amid the stars has captivated a segment of the Chinese public just as it once fascinated Americans who were riveted by Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. But unlike that earlier generation, the Chinese have the option of booking a trip themselves — and many have the money to pay for it.

"There are wealthy people everywhere in the world, but there are not so many wealthy people who also dream of going into space," said Alex Tang, chief executive of XCOR Aerospace's Asia operation. China, he said, had both. In a survey this year of more than 200 Chinese luxury travelers by the Shanghai-based research firm Hurun, about 7 percent said they hoped to visit space within the next three years.

Mr. Tang attributed the Chinese passion for space travel to the recent successes of the nation's space program. "Many want to go to space like Yang Liwei," he said, referring to the astronaut who circled the Earth in 2003 and came home a national hero for bringing China into the ranks of space-faring nations.

Zhang Yong, chief executive of Dexo Travel, described the people booking seats as business executives and entrepreneurs who already have luxury homes and cars and are turning their sights beyond earthly objects. Two-thirds are male, he said. Influenced by books and films like "Gravity," a hit in China, they long for the transcendent experience of gazing upon Earth from space, Mr. Zhang said.

Interest in the spaceflights is high even among those without the means to go. Some would-be space tourists have become minor celebrities long before the first liftoff.

After Tong Jingling, a 40-year-old banker, booked a ticket in April, she started getting invitations from businesses to be their spokeswoman, she said. One company asked her to conduct medical experiments while in space.

Ms. Tong, a graduate of Beihang University, formerly known as the Beijing Institute of Aeronautics, has capitalized on the attention by trying to launch several crowd-funded ventures. One would arrange weddings in space. Another would produce a reality television show in which contestants compete for a ticket for space travel. An investment of 100 renminbi, or $16, gets you a T-shirt that says, wo yao shang taikong (我要上太空), or "I want to go up into space."

The Chinese are coming a bit late to space tourism. The first civilian space tour was in 2001, when the American billionaire Dennis Tito joined a Russian space mission and flew to the International Space Station. He spent $20 million and underwent months of training. Since then, six other civilians have made the same trip.

But companies are now selling suborbital trips to altitudes just beyond the Earth's atmosphere, at prices that put the dream of space travel within the reach of wealthy Chinese. After long delays caused by technical and safety issues, XCOR Aerospace and Virgin Galactic, founded by the British entrepreneur Richard Branson, say they are planning flights next year.

Because Virgin Galactic spacecraft are powered by rocket engines manufactured in the United States that use technology considered to have potential military applications, citizens from 22 countries, including China, are barred from traveling on them, the company has said. Virgin Galactic said it hoped that future United States government rulings would enable it to offer spaceflights to an expanded roster of nations.

XCOR Aerospace's Lynx shuttle uses different engines that do not appear to raise the same concerns. A $95,000 ticket with XCOR buys a flight late next year to an altitude of about 38 miles — what the company calls "the edge of space" — while a $100,000 ticket will take a passenger beyond the atmosphere in 2016. Each flight carries one passenger, who must undergo medical screening and training.

Mr. Zhang said he expects Chinese interest in space tourism to increase further once the first civilian flights are underway. "Many from business circles and celebrities have told me that they'll buy tickets once the test flights succeed or the first tourists return safely," he said.

Several Chinese who have booked seats said they had confidence in the safety of the shuttle technology, though some had not told their families of their plans.

Zhang Xiaoyu, 29, an entrepreneur in Beijing, said he told his parents only that he planned to fly at a "relatively high altitude." He did not tell them how much the ticket cost, either. But Mr. Zhang said traveling to space meant more to him than putting a down payment on an apartment or buying a car in the congested Chinese capital.

"You will be able to look back at the planet where you were born and experience complete solitude," he said. "You wouldn't be able to experience this anywhere else."

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Sinosphere Blog: Wealthy Chinese Travelers Lining Up to Blast Off

Photo Sheng Tianxing, a tea trader, bought a $100,000 ticket for a trip on a commercially operated flight to go 64 miles above Earth.Credit Qilai Shen for The New York Times

BEIJING — One night in June, Sheng Tianxing made good on his name, which translated literally means "sky travel." With a single click online, he paid $100,000, about a third of his annual income, for a seat on a rocket that will carry him into space.

Come 2016, if all goes as planned, Mr. Sheng, 41, a tea trader from the southeastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, will spend up to six minutes floating 64 miles above the Earth as one of the first civilians aboard a commercially operated flight beyond the planet's atmosphere.

"I've always wanted to go into space," he said recently, recalling that he got hooked on space films and science fiction as a boy growing up in a mountain village. "I've always wondered if Armstrong did actually walk on the moon. I'd like to have a look myself."

A half-century ago, bemoaning his nation's backwardness, Mao Zedong said that China could not launch a potato into space. Now, well-to-do Chinese business people are lining up for one-hour voyages to the cosmos, and tour operators say China is set to become the world's largest market for the incipient space tourism industry.

Already, more than 30 mainland Chinese have purchased or made down payments of 50 percent on tickets for journeys offered by XCOR Aerospace, a company based in Mojave, Calif., that plans to begin operating suborbital flights late next year. The tours went on sale in China in December, two years after the company began selling them elsewhere, and one in 10 of all bookings have been by Chinese citizens, according to Dexo Travel, the Beijing-based sales agent in China for the trips.

The sales reflect late-blooming interest in space travel in China, which celebrated the successful landing of a lunar rover in December, four decades after the United States accomplished the same feat. The notion of traveling amid the stars has captivated a segment of the Chinese public just as it once fascinated Americans who were riveted by Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. But unlike that earlier generation, the Chinese have the option of booking a trip themselves — and many have the money to pay for it.

"There are wealthy people everywhere in the world, but there are not so many wealthy people who also dream of going into space," said Alex Tang, chief executive of XCOR Aerospace's Asia operation. China, he said, had both. In a survey this year of more than 200 Chinese luxury travelers by the Shanghai-based research firm Hurun, about 7 percent said they hoped to visit space within the next three years.

Mr. Tang attributed the Chinese passion for space travel to the recent successes of the nation's space program. "Many want to go to space like Yang Liwei," he said, referring to the astronaut who circled the Earth in 2003 and came home a national hero for bringing China into the ranks of space-faring nations.

Zhang Yong, chief executive of Dexo Travel, described the people booking seats as business executives and entrepreneurs who already have luxury homes and cars and are turning their sights beyond earthly objects. Two-thirds are male, he said. Influenced by books and films like "Gravity," a hit in China, they long for the transcendent experience of gazing upon Earth from space, Mr. Zhang said.

Interest in the spaceflights is high even among those without the means to go. Some would-be space tourists have become minor celebrities long before the first liftoff.

After Tong Jingling, a 40-year-old banker, booked a ticket in April, she started getting invitations from businesses to be their spokeswoman, she said. One company asked her to conduct medical experiments while in space.

Ms. Tong, a graduate of Beihang University, formerly known as the Beijing Institute of Aeronautics, has capitalized on the attention by trying to launch several crowd-funded ventures. One would arrange weddings in space. Another would produce a reality television show in which contestants compete for a ticket for space travel. An investment of 100 renminbi, or $16, gets you a T-shirt that says, "I want to go up into space" in Chinese.

The Chinese are coming a bit late to space tourism. The first civilian space tour was in 2001, when the American billionaire Dennis Tito joined a Russian space mission and flew to the International Space Station. He spent $20 million and underwent months of training. Since then, six other civilians have made the same trip.

But companies are now selling suborbital trips to altitudes just beyond the Earth's atmosphere, at prices that put the dream of space travel within the reach of wealthy Chinese. After long delays caused by technical and safety issues, XCOR Aerospace and Virgin Galactic, founded by the British entrepreneur Richard Branson, say they are planning flights next year.

Because Virgin Galactic spacecraft are powered by rocket engines manufactured in the United States that use technology considered to have potential military applications, citizens from 22 countries, including China, are barred from traveling on them, the company has said. Virgin Galactic said it hoped that future United States government rulings would enable it to offer spaceflights to an expanded roster of nations.

XCOR Aerospace's Lynx shuttle uses different engines that do not appear to raise the same concerns. A $95,000 ticket with XCOR buys a flight late next year to an altitude of about 38 miles — what the company calls "the edge of space" — while a $100,000 ticket will take a passenger beyond the atmosphere in 2016. Each flight carries one passenger, who must undergo medical screening and training.

Mr. Zhang said he expects Chinese interest in space tourism to increase further once the first civilian flights are underway. "Many from business circles and celebrities have told me that they'll buy tickets once the test flights succeed or the first tourists return safely," he said.

Several Chinese who have booked seats said they had confidence in the safety of the shuttle technology, though some had not told their families of their plans.

Zhang Xiaoyu, 29, an entrepreneur in Beijing, said he told his parents only that he planned to fly at a "relatively high altitude." He did not tell them how much the ticket cost, either. But Mr. Zhang said traveling to space meant more to him than putting a down payment on an apartment or buying a car in the congested Chinese capital.

"You will be able to look back at the planet where you were born and experience complete solitude," he said. "You wouldn't be able to experience this anywhere else."

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Dot Earth Blog: Dynamic Planet: Under the Volcano in Papua New Guinea

Photo A family in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, copes with the ash falling from the nearby volcano. This is one of many photographs taken in the threatened town by the French photographer Eric Lafforgue.Credit

A caldera is the cauldron-like depression formed when a volcanic eruption empties a shallow chamber of magma and the cone collapses. If the volcano is at sea level, the result, after the passage of time, can be a fine harbor.

A fine harbor, and fertile soil from all that ash, attracts people. At the east end of New Britain Island in Papua New Guinea, the result was the port and one-time district capital, Rabaul. The capital shifted after two of the three smaller cones around the caldera, Tavurvur and Vulcan, explosively erupted in 1994. But plenty of people still live in Rabaul, and they live in harm's way.

Amid the news about an eruption in Iceland last week, you may also have heard about the latest explosive eruption of Tavurvur. After seeing an extraordinary Facebook post of a photo of the eruption, shot from the sailing vessel Obelisk, I dug in a bit.

Photo Jesse Smith, the skipper of the circumnavigating sailboat Obelisk, made for safer waters on August 29 as the Tavurvur Volcano erupted near Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. Aboard was the underwater photographer Christopher Hamilton, who took this photograph.Credit Christopher Hamilton

One result, which you can read below, is a remarkable firsthand account from the underwater photographer Christopher Hamilton and his partner, Leah Sindel, who were aboard the boat when the harbor began rumbling. They were sailing in the region photographing World War II shipwrecks and a cave full of skulls. The boat's owner and skipper, pictured above in one of Hamilton's photos (and the Facebook shot), is Jesse Smith.

But first I want to draw your attention to two other views of Rabaul and the eruption.

First, another fine photographer, Eric Lafforgue, was on the ground in Rabaul after the eruption and captured some absolutely stunning pictures of daily life there, reflecting the realities facing millions of people in developing countries who live in places deeply vulnerable to geological hazards. At the top of this post is one of his images. There are many more here.

Second, there's the geological context. On The Conversation, a fast-expanding website in which scientists and scholars fill the gap left as conventional news operations shrink, there's a superb look at the Tavurvur eruption by Robin Wylie, a doctoral student in volcanology at University College London (@rwylie9 on Twitter). Here's just a snippet of his piece, but I encourage you to read the rest:

Don't be concerned if you don't know much about Rabaul. Until recently, not even volcanologists did. The eruptive history of Tavurvur and its volcanic entourage was largely a mystery until the 1970s, when an increase in seismicity beneath the region prompted the first extensive volcanological survey.

It revealed that, over the past 7,000 years, a number of huge, highly explosive eruptions had occurred. These cataclysms hollowed out Rabaul caldera. The largest of them occurred in the late 6th century, and is believed to have generated pyroclastic flows – that of hot gas, ash and rocks blown out of a volcano – reaching at least 50 kilometers from Rabaul. This massive eruption probably had a volcanic explosivity index of six, which is equivalent to that of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. And yet, while the former lives in infamy, relatively few people have even heard of Rabaul.

…While small eruptions are fairly common, experts also believe that a big one may be brewing. Devastating eruptions like the ones which carved out the caldera take place on average every few thousand years. And as the last one struck 1,400 years ago, the clock is well and truly ticking. The rebuilt Rabaul town now has only around 4,000 inhabitants, but tens of thousand more live within touching distance of a large blast. This far-flung island is worth watching.

I'll be helping run a blogging workshop for communicative scientists this fall at Stony Brook University and Wylie (and The Conversation) will be a prime example of what's possible.

Finally, please read Hamilton's note (written with Sindel's help) describing the scene on Aug. 29 when the bay started reverberating and ash and flaming boulders started falling (I inserted links to relevant photographs from their Flickr feed):

I have been on a sailing journey from New Zealand to Indonesia, passing through Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, & Papua New Guinea. My time in these countries has been principally spent diving (mostly on wrecks from the second World War) and exploring.

We arrived in Rabaul on August 26th, and soon met local wreck hunting legend Rod Pearce, who was kind enough to show us around and take us to dive some of the most fascinating war wrecks in the harbor.

At 3.30 am on the morning of the 29th, we felt a light rain, and sleepily closed the hatches above our heads, but were faintly aware of an odd sound, somewhere in the background. Finally one of my sailing companions called out in a puzzled voice, "It's rainy but I am not getting wet." At this point we rose to investigate further, and were sharply jolted awake when we realized that it was ash and small pebbles of pumice raining down on us, not water.

We were at first bemused, thinking that the volcano not far from where we were anchored was sending out a small benign shower. The locals had told us that sometimes dust showers could occur. But soon the hatches above out heads become black with a thick layer of debris, and the volcanic rain seemed to be getting heavier. Shortly after this we were awakened by Rod Pearce, tied up to the dock next to us, who sharply informed us that everyone was getting out — now.

The crew sprang into action, and in two minutes we were making our way out of the harbor. By this point, sizable chunks of pumice and other debris were bombarding us as we coiled the lines and tried to find a path ahead of us.

I ducked down to the chart table to turn on our navigation software, and suddenly heard from above several great cries in unison. I came back up immediately and was greeted with one of the most extraordinary spectacles I have ever seen. The mountain — far from issuing a benign puff of ash — was spewing out a fountain of lava, flinging enormous molten rock fragments miles into the sky. The sound was deafening, and preceding every rumble, the shock waves that were sent out reverberated through your chest. At this point we were beside ourselves with elation, and fumbled through the drawers for a zip-lock bag containing the camera.

Photo The Tavurvur volcano near Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, erupted on Aug. 29.Credit Christopher Hamilton

Dawn soon came upon us, and the spectacle of the eruption was crowned by deep golden light rays filtering down what we could now clearly see to be a colossal pillar of smoke, ash and sulfur billowing above the bay.

As the light grew stronger we were also confronted with the heavy layer of ash and debris covering the sailboat, and the enormous task that lay ahead of us. Our departure date, it was obvious, had been pushed back awhile. We spent all of that day in a harbor along the other side of the bay (upwind of the volcano), scrubbing and hosing and prying and scraping the muddy, crunching mess from the decks and from every conceivable crevice on the boat. All the while we had a perfect view of the eruptions' death throes. Every so often a flash of light like a perfect sphere was perceptible for a split second above the caldera, and a shock wave would ripple up the cloud column.

Photo The photographer Christopher Hamilton captured this image from a sailboat as the Tavurvur Volcano near Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, eruped on Aug. 29.Credit Christopher Hamilton

Seconds later this would be accompanied by a stupendous crash. The lava was less abundant and certainly less visible now in daylight, but the mountain continued to throw out enormous chunks of debris, some of which were flung so far that they landed in the sea at the foot of the volcano with an explosive splash and a mist of steam.

By later afternoon the activity had significantly subsided, and we spent the evening with a cold beer in hand, peering out into the darkness of the bay to catch the final flickers of light above the peak.

There are more images on Flickr, as well as video shot by Hamilton.

Postscript | Capital Weather Gang has yet another vantage point on the eruption — before and after imagery from NASA showing the extent of the ash fall.

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