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How I am Making Music about Climate Change

November 2, 2016 — Leave a comment

People often ask me how I am doing my music about climate change. What are the foundations of you work? What are exactly you talking and writing about? I will try to clarify a little today.

In my music I have to main aspects, the physical aspect and the human/social aspect. The physical aspect is what it is happening or what it will happen physically with the environment. This is what I am using to write the music. Musical notes, chords, changes, rhythmic are my artistic interpretation of the physical aspects.

The second aspect is the human/social factor, or what is happening or will happen with us, humans. How we are reacting to those changes. What it is changing now for us, what it is not changing, etc. This is what the lyrics are about. Books like Tropic of Chaos, give some insights what is happening right now with us, humans and the social aspects of climate change. This book talks about how climate change is acting on humans’ social aspects in Africa, Americas and parts of Europe and Asia. It also gives some historical background and some possible future scenarios (some of them more chaotic than others).

Now, the recordings are on full speed and it won’t take long to release the first song. I hope you enjoy it.

More information about the book:

http://www.christianparenti.com/

One of my major challengers in writing my climate change music: explain that winters won’t disappear any time soon

February 24, 2016 — Leave a comment

In general for the public, the concept of climate change is that the world is warmer than a few years ago thus winters will no longer exist and it will be summer all over the year. This is one of my biggest challengers, how to explain with my music this common misunderstanding of climate change.

First the change of seasons are a combination of different factors, but the main factor is the position of the Earth in relation to the sun. The world is getting warmer and there are different theories about who is the responsible for that (CO2, sunspots, etc.). However this does not mean that it will be only summer all over the globe all the time. Winters won’t disappear any time soon.

I’ve been reading some people comments about the misunderstanding of cold temperatures and climate change. For example when a cold temperature is recorded somewhere and someone says that climate change is not happening because of that specific low temperature. Unfortunately,  things are more complicated than that.  The seasons won’t easily disappear. What it is expected to occur is that in some places winters/summers for example will have more severe temperatures. Droughts and blizzards are more expected. However, in other few places it will be less severe and in others it won’t change.

Glaciers are a great example of those changes. Most of the world’s glaciers are melting and losing mass. However a few of them are gaining mass and some of them are with relatively unchanged mass. In addition snow is still falling on the places that the melting glaciers are located but the warmer temperatures are melting more quickly the snow.

Those are some examples of what I have to consider when writing my music. How I should incorporate those factors. Honestly, that is the fun part!

We are more connected with garbage than we think

January 23, 2016 — 4 Comments

The theory that Earth is a globe with a finite space is not new. We are more connected with garbage than we think. We are leaving a heritage to future generations with culture, technology and also garbage. In some cases we are basically putting our garbage under the rug (landfills). If the rug is the ocean imagine how hard will be in the future when next generations will have to deal with it, cleaning our garbage.

We consider ourselves the superior animal, however in most of the cases we are incapable of take care of our own garbage. Are we pigs? No, pigs don’t dump they garbage elsewhere. They live with their own garbage. Sometimes I don’t get it. How can we consider ourselves superior if we are not able to handle our own garbage? Why people still think that garbage will disappear if left on the streets. Every product we use has to come from a place and has to go somewhere. It does not matter the size or the material. In most of the cases the products, after they are used, go to a landfill or a recycle factory. However there are cases where they are left in the streets or dumped in the wrong place. Is it really hard to put garbage in the correct place? Last year I wrote a post about a recycle day for electronics in my neighbourhood and one of my neighbours dumping his old TV in the back alley. Now, I’ve been taking some pictures to prove my theory: we are not that intelligent and we are leaving our dirty culture to future generations. Every piece (small or big) of garbage that we leave is our direct responsibility.

I am optimistic because there are a few amount of people trying to do the right thing and most important: they are teaching children how to take care of the environment. Children are learning already that what we are doing with the environment is not right.

The journey of music and knowledge

October 2, 2015 — 1 Comment

Since I started my progressive rock project I’ve been receiving great support. Thank you all. It’s been an amazing journey.  In this small post i will try to describe how’s been.

It’s been a pleasure to record the album for two reasons. First finally i have the opportunity to play my favourite musical genre, of course progressive rock. I am using crazy effects, creating different atmospheres with easy and hard parts, expressing myself as an artist, and creating an amazing story. Second, because of the readings I am doing, I’ve been learning so much about the world, climate, climate change and consequences. Oh boy, so many books and papers. So much to learn about how the world is interconnected.

The project is beautiful but it is not easy. There are lot of difficulties. As a musician, the first challenge after the songs are ready is the recording process, and it is not an easy task. Why? Mainly because of money. Recordings demand time and money. To do any recording, even the simplest one (with good quality), some minimal equipments are necessary. Also it is a lot of work. These are the two main reasons why professional musicians (and studio engineers) don’t like to play (work) for free. However, this is another topic lets get back to my process.

I’ve done some sessions before, so I have good equipment to record my bass. Therefore, almost all the recordings can be done in a home studio. In addition, it is cheaper than any professional studio, right? True, but the home studio won’t simply appear in my desk out of nowhere. That was my first hit. Even if I am able to record everything by myself (which mostly i can do anyway but some musicians friends will contribute), I still don’t have the whole equipment necessary to record the whole album. This is slowing the process a bit because I don’t have all the money necessary to buy everything at once. Therefore, I am not only recording the songs by parts but also buying the necessary equipment by parts (used and new).

This is only the first bump. It is certain that I will have more bumps during my journey which is part of the job. So far the songs are (in my rumble opinion) becoming awesome! My plan is to release the first song by December. Lets see if i can keep this deadline.

Dumping Old TVs

July 27, 2015 — 2 Comments

Last weekend something really interesting happened. One of my neighbors decided to dump his old TV in the back alley. Very interesting decision, considering that two weeks ago there was a recycle day for electronics one block from our place (which by the way had an awesome response from the neighborhood as you can see in the picture).

I was asking myself, why did someone just dumped the TV there? Did the person knew about the drop off?  Well, I considered some of these possible reasons:
1-The TV was working until that specific day and then it stopped working, so the person had to buy another one and dumped the old one somewhere.
2- The person didn’t know about the drop off.
3- The TV was working and the person wanted that someone to use it. So the person dumped the TV in the back alley expecting that someone will reuse it.
4- The person didn’t care about recycling and environment.

The first reason seems reasonable, except the fact that there are specific places to throw old TVs. I know, those places sometimes are not obvious as I wrote here, but the majority of electronics appliances have a symbol showing they won’t belong to normal garbage.

 The second reason is very unlikely considering that there were posters informing the drop off inside and outside the building and also posters around our neighborhood. Also there are drop off days in our neighborhood (minimum twice per year), so I think it is possible to store the TV and wait for the next drop off.

The third reason is indeed a great act. I do the same sometimes but not with monsters super heavy old TVs. I do with books, DVDs or clothes. Super heavy TVs are not easy to transport. Besides how someone would know that the TV is working perfectly? Adding a sign? I had a similar experience before. I owned an old heavy TV (few years ago). I put my TV in my storage and I put add an ad in a website offering the TV for free. So a couple of days later a guy came and picked up the TV. Of course I don’t even want to comment the fourth reason.

Later during the day, I was at my apartment and I heard some bangs outside. A homeless guy was trying to open the TV (probably there was something valuable to sell inside the TV ). The guy did his job and of course left the TV there in multiple pieces. After the “service” it was clear that the TV would go to a common garbage landfill. It is not the correct option because those TVs have poisonous metals and frequently those metals will contaminate aquifers.

 

This is how the TV was after the “service”

I started to think whose fault is this? The former TV owner? The homeless guy? The government (of course, blaming the government is kind of default always)? I am not sure, but that is the reason i am writing this post. There are alternative solutions. I gave here some possible reasons to dump an old TV in a common trash and some possible solutions to drop off the TV in the right place.  I know is not easy but I hope to spread more the message make the world a cleaner place.

Where Should My Broken Blender go?

April 26, 2015 — 8 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I tried to use my blender and it did not work. My first thought it was, I need to get a new one. It could be a small problem easy to fix. However, as the majority of the world population, I don’t know how to fix a blender (or any electronic product) so i have to find someone to do that for me. Normally the cost to fix a blender is similar to buy a new one. Ok, I know, I am being cheap and that is not environmental friendly but I am not in that eco-level yet. It is a working in progress.

However, to feel “less guilty” about the situation i thought, is the blender recyclable? Should i throw it in the regular garbage? I am trying to reduce the amount of garbage that i generate and the amount of garbage that I throw in the regular garbage (which goes to the landfills). First, it is obvious that the blender should not go to the regular garbage. Why? Because all those products have a label saying so. Why? These products are made of different materials, and some of them are harmful to the environment. It can pollute water, food and cause diseases in animals and humans.

Second, where should i dispose the blender? In my recyclable bin? No. But where? I searched a bit in the Internet. I found some places where it is possible to dispose some electronic equipments, but unfortunately it was not for kitchen appliances but for computers, remote controls, tv, etc. I searched a little bit more and then I finally discovered that in the city where I live there is a program where in certain locations it is possible to dispose the blender. In the end I did the right thing and my old blender went to the right place. I used one of the neighbourhood programs to collect electronics.

I live in a building with around 20 suites, and it is not hard to find electronics inside our normal garbage can. Why? Do the people know about the recyclable program? Are they lazy ? All these products have a label showing they should not go to regular garbage. Well, I didn’t know about the program until I started to look for the right place to throw my old blender. Surprisingly, here in my city an environmental fee is charged every time an electronic product is sold to support the program.

 

What are the consequences of not dispose this kind of garbage in a proper way? An example (which only scratches the surface) is this documentary about the plastic pollution in the ocean called “Plastic Paradise: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. Most of these products are made of plastic with a combination of poison metals. Most of the plastic that has ever been created since the 19th century is still somewhere on our planet. So if it never goes away, where does it go? And If they are threw into the sea? Thousands of miles away from civilization, Midway Atoll is in one of the most remote places on earth. And yet its become ground zero for The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, accumulating plastics from three distant continents. 

Once I heard an old tale about a huge forest fire. All the animals of the forest were running away from the fire except for a little bird. The bird was diving into a lake close to the forest trying to hold as much water as possible and coming back in the direction of the fire. When he was flying above the fire he flapped its wings to release all the water he was holding, which it was normally a few drops. When an elephant saw the bird he asked: “Are you stupid? You know you will never end that fire”. The bird answered: “I am doing my part, if all the animals do the same we can fight the fire and save whatever we can of our forest”.

Sometimes I think, destroy a little less doesn’t protect anything. There are billions of people in this word. Millions of them are throwing garbage in the wrong place (including some of my neighbours) but I am trying to do my part and I know I am not the only one.

Next step… Where should my old bass strings go?

Would you like to know more and help?

http://plasticbank.org/

http://www.plasticoceanproject.org/

Does ‘Being Green’ Mean ‘Saving Money’? Well, Not always….

March 11, 2015 — 1 Comment

It is not new that plants help the environment, but I’ve been trying to read more news on the internet about helping the environment in general and I must confess that I am bored. If you google any site talking about environment you will find someone talking about climate change and CO2 and another one saying that CO2 is not causing climate change. It is like have your own soccer team or political party, it is not science any more. Look this article talking about green roofs. This article talks about the advantages and disadvantages (including costs and maintenance) of the roofs (which are not cheap by the way). However, there is one last part in the last line where it says something about “cooling the planet”. Damn it! You go to the commentaries and global warming this, CO2 that. Sometimes you can find even more radical ideas as we should not eat meat because the carbon footprint. Ok, yeah, we should also breath less to release less CO2 and we also should hold our farts because of the releasing of methane (another and even more powerful greenhouse gas). So, are we missing the point? Could we please focus on the benefits versus disadvantages of green roofs? Are we saving the planet using a green roof? I doubt it. However it is an interesting idea, and could be applicable considering the costs/maintenance. They need to be adapted to each place and situation  and of course for some places they can’t be economically viable because they probably need more maintenance than traditional roofs. So a balance must exist.

Credit: Arild Vågen – Own work

Another interesting idea is the use of rain gardens to help the runoff problem. Runoff is the portion of rainfall, snowmelt, and/or irrigation water that runs over the soil surface toward the stream rather than infiltrating into the soil. Each soil type has an infiltration rate (the amount of water able to enter the soil in a specified time period) and infiltration capacity (the upper limit of infiltration rate). However in urban areas the infiltration rate could be close to zero because of the impervious areas (roofs, driveways, parking lots, pavements, compacted soils). Consequently the runoff in urban areas is large and it is a major component of flash floods. In addition runoff flows can pick up soil contaminants such as petroleum, pesticides, fertilizers, trace metals, etc.

Credit: http://www.riversides.org

The rain gardens capture the initial flow of storm water and reduce the accumulation of toxins flowing directly into natural waterways. Thus the stormwater soaks into the ground instead of flow directly to storm drains.  In addition, they help to control erosions due the excessive runoff. Similarly to green roofs, rain gardens have to be adapted to place and situation. For example, native plants are recommended (for both) because they are more tolerant of one’s local climate, soil, and water conditions.

A place which has a rain garden and a green roof is more environmental friendly and it is also helping to save the world, right? Well, it is important to remember the costs and maintenance of these products. Be green does not mean cheap or easy. However the advantages of green roof and rain garden such as energy savings, runoff and pollution reduction, temperature control should also be considered. Maybe you won’t save the world but you can save a few bucks and have a better lifestyle. Besides, it is St. Patrick’s day, so green is the official color.

More about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_garden

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_runoff

http://www.riversides.org/rainguide/riversides_hgr.php?cat=2&page=39&subpage=92&subpage2=45

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_roof

http://commons.bcit.ca/greenroof/information-and-resources/backgrounders/

http://www.greenroofs.com/TV.htm

How is Artificial Intelligence Helping the Environment?

February 16, 2015 — 1 Comment

Recently, one of the most intelligent man alive, the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, said in an interview: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”. Should we be afraid of Artificial intelligence (AI) because the machines could take over the human race (similarly to the terminator)? For the environmental science point of view, AI so far has been really helpful. First what is AI? There are different definitions, but one of my favourites is:

[The automation of] activities that we associate with human thinking, activities such as decision-making, problem solving, learning…
(Hellman 1978)

Thus, it is basically the use of machines (e.g. computers) to solve problems and to help complex decisions. There is a branch of AI called machine learning (ML). It is a scientific discipline which studies computational algorithms that can learn from data. One of the applications of the ML algorithms is to use some particular data to perform classification and numerical regression. But how is ML helping the environment?

Satellites (remote sensing) generate thousands of data every day. Images around the globe with different frequencies band (infrared, microwave, visible to the human eye, etc), time and scales. But How useful can be those images? One example is to detect phytoplankton in the ocean. Phytoplankton are important components to sustain the aquatic food web. The importance of them is beyond of being food for krills. Accurate estimates of chlorophyll concentrations (consequently phytoplankton) are essential for estimating primary productivity, biomass, etc.

Image Credit: NASA

Image Credit: NASA

It is possible to use satellites to detect phytoplankton presence in the ocean due the concentration chlorophyll in the surface water. Each frequency channel has a purpose. For example, at certain wavelengths, sand reflects more energy than green vegetation while at other wavelengths it absorbs more (reflects less) energy. However, even using satellites this is not a easy task. Aerosol concentrations could affect the ocean colour viewed from the satellite. Further complications arise when there are also suspended sediments,and/or dissolved organic matter from decayed vegetation in the water. In addition coastal water quality gradually degrades from increased pollution and human activities. To overcome those problems, ML algorithms such as artificial neural networks and support vector machines are used to automatically classify (separating chlorophyll from aerosols, pollution, etc) and detect the presence of phytoplankton in the ocean.

Credit: Nasa

It is also possible to use remote sensing to classify and detect land cover applying the same algorithms to identify and classify different types of vegetation including forests, dead trees in the forest, forest fires, portion of regenerated trees after forest fires, etc. With accurate information is possible to avoid more deforestation, track urbanization, mitigate diseases, understand and control ecosystems, planning, etc.

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These are only small samples of how AI is used in environmental sciences. There are so many contributions that is unfair to give only a few examples about the topic.

More about:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/RemoteSensing/remote.php

Sources:

William Hsieh (2009). Machine Learning Methods in the Environmental Sciences Cambridge DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511627217

Keiner, L., & Yan, X. (1998). A Neural Network Model for Estimating Sea Surface Chlorophyll and Sediments from Thematic Mapper Imagery Remote Sensing of Environment, 66 (2), 153-165 DOI: 10.1016/S0034-4257(98)00054-6

Schiller, H., & Doerffer, R. (2005). Improved determination of coastal water constituent concentrations from MERIS data IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 43 (7), 1585-1591 DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2005.848410

Dash, J., Mathur, A., Foody, G., Curran, P., Chipman, J., & Lillesand, T. (2007). Land cover classification using multi‐temporal MERIS vegetation indices International Journal of Remote Sensing, 28 (6), 1137-1159 DOI: 10.1080/01431160600784259

The Chaos of Weather

January 21, 2015 — 2 Comments

After a long break I am finally back. This is the first post of the “Weather Forecasting” posts. Roughly speaking, to forecast the weather, scientists use computer models to mimic Earth dynamics. These models are mathematical equations of the atmosphere and oceans. However, the Earth dynamics is a big complex system. On top of that some Earth natural systems have a chaotic behavior. But what is chaos? Summarizing the wikipedia definition:

Chaos is when the behavior of dynamical systems are highly sensitive to initial conditions. Thus, small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for such dynamical systems. Therefore, chaotic systems are predictable for a while and then appear to become random. In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.

Around 1960, the meteorologist Edward Lorenz (one of the fathers of chaos theory), was working on a set of differential equations describing convective processes in the atmosphere which were producing encouragingly realistic results. One day, he decided to enter data manually from a point part way through rather than waste time by starting the run over. He found that not long after the run had been restarted from this intermediate point, the forecast diverged and it was completely different. The reason behind, was the output data he used to restart the model. It had been rounded to 3 significant digits, while the computations were done to 6, an error of about 1%. With this unexpected results he discovered that the degree of numerical precision in the initial conditions provided to a numerical weather prediction (NWP) model affects the resulting forecast significantly after only a few days of forecast time (Lorenz 1963).  A good example (also from wikipedia) of chaotic behavior  is the double rod pendulum where the start of the pendulum from a slightly different initial condition would result in a completely different trajectory:

Double-compound-pendulum.gif
“Double-compound-pendulum” by Catslash – Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The Earth weather is one of the Earth natural systems with a chaotic behavior. Consequently, the use of different initial conditions in the atmospheric and oceans equations will lead to different final results. So why does not use the same initial condition always to forecast the weather and have the same results? The source of the errors in the forecasting is a more complex subject and I will explain in a post later. However if the Earth system is so unpredictable how come scientists can use computer models to reconstruct past and future climate? First it is necessary to explain the difference between weather and climate where the difference is a measure of time. Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere “behaves” over relatively long periods of time. Weather is more difficult to predict and has more uncertainties than climate. An elegant demonstration of this difference can be seen in this short video from National Geographic. The astrophysicist and Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson uses a dog walking to clarify the concept.

More additional information of computer models and how they are used to predict climate can be found here: Can we trust climate models?  and Numerical weather prediction.

Weather Forecasting: Is it better to toss a coin?

November 2, 2014 — 2 Comments

Why Is Weather Forecasting Always Wrong?  Have you asked yourself the same question? Have you cursed the weather forecasting when you were expecting a sunny day and then rained? Does this picture looks familiar?

tempoeficaz

Once I was in Toronto when the forecasting for the other day was a blizzard. Basically, lots of snow. When that day finally arrived we had half of the expected snow. I friend of mine said: “It is the government. They say more snow will fall than what is expected to scare the people.” Well at that time my knowledge about weather and atmospheric science was minimal. I did not know what to think. Is my friend right? Is the government really doing this? What is the real reason behind? Are the guys responsible for the weather forecasting incompetents? A few years ago i did a seminar giving a brief explanation of how hard is to predict weather. Unfortunately the slides do not come with detailed information. Thus, to answer some questions about weather forecasting I will do a series (not consecutive) of posts explaining why weather is so hard to predict. In addition I will try to give an overview of  how it is predicted. I will add the posts under the category ¨Weather Forecasting”.

To explain the whole weather forecasting problem it is really hard, almost impossible. For example:

Despite the detailed knowledge about precipitation including the complete hydrological cycle (evaporation, water vapour, convection, condensation, clouds, soil moisture, groundwater and the origin of rivers), predicting precipitation accurately is still one of the most difficult tasks in meteorology (Kuligowski:1998)

I know the paper is old but the problem persists. Even in 2014 precipitation still a major forecasting challenge. Some of the reasons are:

  • The chaotic nature of the atmosphere and the complexity of the processes that are involved in precipitation
  • The difficulties of precipitation measurements including problems with rain gauges, radar and satellites
  • The limited temporal and spatial scales of numerical weather prediction (NWP) models?

My goal is to provide information about the most important parts of the weather forecasting. Of course at the end of the posts, if I am missing something please let me know but I hope my posts will be enough to anyone know that the scientists are doing a really good job and they are really hard work guys and if they are missing is not because conspiracy or incompetence. It is because the problem is really hard.

 

Journal references:

Kuligowski, R., & Barros, A. (1998). Localized Precipitation Forecasts from a Numerical Weather Prediction Model Using Artificial Neural Networks Weather and Forecasting, 13 (4), 1194-1204 DOI: 10.1175/1520-0434(1998)0132.0.CO;2