One straw revolution

My daughter Alice sent me this book the other week, here is a quote from Masanobu Fukuoka’s The One-Straw Revolution, the great bible of “do nothing” farming:

“The more people do, the more society develops, the more problems arise. The increasing isolation of nature, the exhuastion of resources, the uneasiness and disintegration of the human spirit, all have been brought about by humanity’s trying to accomplish something. Originally there was no reason to progress, and nothing that had to be done. We have come to the point at which there is no other way than to bring about a ‘movement’ not to bring anything about.”

Therefore to save the world, just do nothing

Go Burnley!

diagram 5 from paper

A practical Guide to a Radical transition: A Framework for a Sustainable Learning Community

Abstract
It is more than a decade ago that I first explored the notion of a ‘learning community’ (Clarke 2000). Whilst the overall goal remains the same, there are now important new ecological insights that can be added to our earlier understanding, which heighten the urgency for a more radical consideration of learning community to ensure that practice is both educationally sound, and ecologically sustainable within such a community.
This paper serves as reference to some of this new thinking. To provide a context, it will refer to the earlier work, and indicate the limitations and breakthroughs of the earlier work which, with the benefit of retrospect, have become apparent.
The paper is structured around four themes that I continue to draw upon as the basis of my own learning – themes of practicalities, guidance, radicalism, and transition. The paper concludes with the first formulation of a framework for sustainable learning community based upon these and earlier observations and insights.




Sustainable Learning Community
‘I think there are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended. Today, many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying, and exhausting itself – while something else, still indistinct, were rising from the rubble.’ Vaclav Havel, Czech President, Speech in Philadelphia, July 4 1994
Let us begin with what this is not. A ‘sustainable learning community’ is not an intentional community, a form of community that spans the likes of school academies, eco-villages, housing corporations, gated communities, retirement villages and communes. These places tend to attract like-minded people and are segregated through self-interest and isolationism. What I am interested in is something simply more authentic, something that is a sensible response to an increasingly artificial, disconnected, alienating landscape for living in which we seem to have found ourselves. It is a place which values more than profit, it is concerned with life, all forms of life, and how an appreciation of this puts one in a different state of mind, understanding and action.

I will use ‘sustainable learning community’ as the term which captures a set of capabilities (Sen 1999), one where we depend upon each other to generate understanding, engagement and participation and through which we can respond to social, environmental and economic collapse (Putnam 2000, Orr 1994, Soros 2008). I describe the concept of sustainable learning community as an emerging network. It is an interdependent construct of human activity. Sustainable learning community functions as the manifestation of a set of capabilities within and between a diverse set of communities of connection, communities of place, communities of interest, and communities of action. Learning plays a significant part in framing our definitions of community and the capabilities that sustain learning communities, sometimes impeding, sometimes enabling and focusing the development of these capabilities.

Historically the school was at the inter-connect of these capabilities. However, increasingly the school is a part-player, the setting of a sustainable learning community is always within the wider social context and as such, learning takes its place at the centre, but not necessarily learning within the institution of the school. This does not mean that the school ceases to exist, but it does mean that the concept of ‘school’ is to change from being seen as a singular concept. It is both a location, and an idea, to be established on a wider scale under this new frame – a sustainable, learning community.

Practicalities
Earlier work (Clarke 2000) arose from a growing disquiet over the direction of the school effectiveness and improvement movement and represented an attempt, a flawed attempt as it turned out, to design a way forward through the concept of a ‘learning community.’ I argued for a shift from the mechanical interpretation of the process of education, to a living systems interpretation of the process of education that was grounded in lived-experience that drew more from the ecological than the managed world-view (see figure 1) (Binney and Williams 1995).
Figure one: From a managed to an emergent paradigm (adapted from Clarke 2000)
Paradigm of managed change Paradigm of change as emergent phenomena
First order dominated – making what already exists more effective and efficient Second order dominated – confronting organizational issues and challenging orthodoxy
Delivery focused Reflective and process focused
Visionary Innovative, seeking novelty
Change as simplification of self Change as complexification of self
Isolated and individually accountable Collaborative and collectively responsible
Individualistic outcomes Interdependent outcomes
The core practices of the learning community emphasise education as a practice of freedom (Sen 1999), through a focus on participatory voice, choice, connectivity and action. The kernel of these observations is found in the aim to generate community – something beyond self, and as such, to generate systemic practices that transcend self.
With this transition in mind, a set of community-oriented actions were formulated. The basis of these was that we cannot make complete sense of the future, but we can bring together our various ideas and ambitions for the future and generate possibilities which both prepare our thinking and make us more open to take advantage of unexpected chance and opportunity.
Listening to local agendas: this implies under-management rather than over-management –it raises concerns over how to create the conditions where ideas can be voiced freely, where people can meet regularly to reflect and reconstruct their thoughts with others, and where people could bring new ideas and interests to share and expand upon with colleagues.
The recent work of Scharmer (2007) captures the essence of listening to local agendas through its focus on co-initiating, co-sensing, co-presencing, co-creating, co-evolving and generating root principles. His work is concerned with trusting the expediency of the learners, constantly ensuring that they are in a position where they are capable of making choices to inform their next learning steps.
Designing in systems to tackle difference: A difference between a planned (managed) system and a learning (living) system is the level to which the system will tolerate innovation and realignment as a result of new knowledge. This raises concerns over how a learning community encourages people to develop the capability to use difference constructively and creatively. It uses this capability to deepen awareness and responsiveness of the participants engagement with change, and to inform choices that are made.
Seeking patterns: There seem to be at least two different types of pattern which are important for the learning community: the first, are the patterns of behaviour, routine, decision making, organization that clearly illustrate the community ethnography, how it ‘does things’ (Massey 1998). These explicit, visible patterns of the organization are observed as it about its daily activity; for example the routines and procedures that are followed. The second patterns are the more hidden implicit patterns. These are often taken as ‘given’ aspects of the community and are cultural, ethos-driven dimensions – and can be explored primarily through the formulation and support of relationships. In order to connect with these second sets of patterns there is a need to consider ways of bringing people together to look at learning as process and practice. One way we have explored how to do this is in our work in IQEA has been through the use of shared enquiries that adopt working protocols. The intention is to generate a shared method of enquiry (which focuses on operational process) which can serve as a focusing device to expose and illuminate more implicit forms of working activity (operational practice), and enhance awareness of the influence that implicit knowledge has upon the day-to-day life of the community.
Emergent approach to strategy: Any period that results in change, can, retrospectively, be measured in terms of the willingness of the community to move with, or resist the new conditions, as Charles Handy (1995) says, ‘life makes sense in retrospect.’ If more people within the community are engaged in activity that encourages communication, provides support for personal learning, and enhances the opportunity to connect and co-construct their observations of their learning in the workplace, a generative version of strategy begins to emerge.
Recognising the configuration: When do you intervene, and when do you not intervene? Over time, there is a shift of power within a learning community that moves away from power exercised through structure towards power that is generated through relationships. This is why the ‘learning’ dimension of community is so significant, as the capability of a sustainable learning community is demonstrated through its ability to create working relationships that encourage collaborative experimentation into unknown areas of knowledge. It is by default, a collective activity and a transitional activity.
Guidance
It was during the exploration of these ideas with schools through my association with IQEA, that the contrast between the theory and practice of ‘learning communities’ became apparent. Our work focused attention upon practitioner enquiry into pedagogy and practice, creating new management approaches to facilitate learning, and changing structure within schools to improve quality of provision. This work also extends to the use of inter-school protocols for exchange of ideas, practice and shared enquiry. Whilst many schools embrace the principle of this approach, it has become clear that the managerial structure within and between schools often impedes rather than enhances practice-based efforts to change the learning ethos. This is because managerial narrative permeates every aspect of institutional activity, from staff structure, decision making, and curriculum design and practice, to community outreach and inter-institutional liaison.
As an organising device, managerialism has been the instrument of choice for school improvement (Thrupp and Wilmott 2003). It functions within a paradigm of predictability and accountability, and its approach is risk-averse being maintenance rather than developmentally orientated. Furthermore, the managerial approach is inherently individualistic, designed to optimize functionality at the individual level amongst all members of the school. This fundamental aspect of managerialism is epistemologically at odds with an ecological approach – it fails to transcend the self. Its ‘way of knowing’ does not recognize the value of interconnectivity and interdependence as an essential criteria of community. For example, where managerialsm assumes conformity and shared vision, the same would not be either an expectation or a desired state within an ecological context – Why have a monoculture when you can enjoy bio-diversity? A commitment to relationship in the form of dialogue (Bohm 1996), a practice of choice and freedom (Sen 1999) is a commitment to the possibility for change that can arise from any point of contact within a system brings with it an implicit knowledge that the transition is a collective, not an individual endeavour. Relationship and community are therefore critically significant elements in the formulation of any effort to generate a sustainable learning community.
Paradoxically, whilst school leaders continue to express concern and unease that managerialism is vehicle of choice for those who are required to introduce and ‘manage’ change, it remains deeply embedded as the mainstream practice. Whilst it has been argued elsewhere that this restlessness amongst school leaders is at this stage intuitive, rather than rational (Atkinson and Claxton 2000, Clarke 2001) there clearly remains an unease amongst lead professionals, that somewhere in the drive for higher performance there is a disconnect between beliefs, values and assumptions of how we might wish to live and work in a learning community, and how we are currently living and working in our schools as they attempt to make any transition. This contrast between ambition and reality is developed further in the work of Fallon and Barnett (2009) who describe the condition as ‘Pseudo Community,’ a state where the community reality fails to match the community ambition.
I guess for some this is a jump too far, and that we are perpetually destined to fit in with the prevailing socio-cultural context. But take a moment to reflect again upon Havel’s quote at the start of this paper and ask what if we are in such a transitional period, what does this imply for the idea of ‘business as usual’ and is that an acceptable state to be in if we are trying to educate the next generation towards a better future? ‘I think there are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended. Today, many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying, and exhausting itself – while something else, still indistinct, were rising from the rubble.’ (Havel 1994) Somehow, we need to explore how to step over the problem of pseudo-community without falling into the trap of determinism in another form. My suggestion is that we get some way there through a dialogue, a dialogue on the nature of a core process which engages with future possibility, is more at ease with uncertainty, with the unfolding of learning and more willing to utilize critical and participatory processes of change.
In effect, we need some form of guidance which can extend outwards from the dominant managerial frame, and provide some insights and examples of other ways in which the learning community might function, under different paradigmatic frames, attending to different socio-cultural and educational ambitions.
In his discussion of ontological and epistemological grounding in what he and others describe as ‘Prescencing’, Scharmer (2007) (see also Senge et al 2004) captures the essence of these observations diagrammatically (see table one). I want to allude to two specific issues of note here; first, that systems theory and systems thinking (Senge 1990) has opened a debate on the phenomenon of emergence, and ‘second, the acceptance of the idea of embeddedness, where all systems and knowledge are situated in context’ (Scarmer 2007) provides us with a way of sense making – through creating connection and interdependence which in turn serve to emphasise and reinforce the importance of community. I found these two observations extremely helpful in that they clarify the significance of the ontological and epistemological frames – ways of doing and ways of knowing about the learning community.
Table one: Ontological and epistemological grounding of systems theory (Scharmer 2007 p.107)

In my recent work (Clarke 2009b) I have identified that the collusion and corrosion of practice as service (after Sennett 1998, McIntosh 2001), where people persist in living with a disconnect between what they value and what they actually do, and how this corrodes their concern, love and commitment to others in their care is storing up tensions and stresses within individuals and within school communities who are pushed towards a culture of isolationism, individualism and self-interest. This discord, effectively comes down to an unequal and unstable relationship of power, within, between schools and the accountable authorities. Schools increasingly operate through a fragmented hierarchy, where the institutional structure is more convoluted, but no more equitable in its power relationships. Delegation, distributed leadership and what Harrison (1994) calls ‘concentration without centralisation’ sees control being exercised through setting individual goals for each worker within the school, each person is free to pursue the achievement of these goals in whatever way they wish but this freedom is qualified. The achievement of the goals often exceed the capabilities of the individual, the resources and facilities required rarely match the expectation (Sennett 1998), but the management response is to push harder for the results, hence the disconnect. Scharmer’s (2007) work serves to inform and illuminate the basis of these observations still further through the identification of what he calls ‘blindspots’ in leadership and management. It is through shared enquiry into the construct and intention of management structures that many of these blindspots are revealed. A consistent message arising from this work is the mismatch between intention and outcome, yet our organizational practice, framed within managerialism, continues to persist in an approach where rhetoric and reality clearly do not connect. This is as true in learning communities as it is in any other form of institution where the dominant frame of accountability is managerial in design. There are some very real emotional effects that arise from these organizational realities. First of all it is recognized that it is personally stressful to manage the discord (Sennett 1998, Clarke 2001), second, as Fallon and Barnett (2009) indicate, it institutionalizes insincerity and a culture which lacks integrity. Any transition has to take account of this phenomenon.
Peter Senge and his colleagues (2004) have looked at how to overcome this complex issue in terms of organizational learning. They explore what they call ‘deep structure’ issues, where people generate the capability within their institutions to confront and challenge existing beliefs, values and assumptions. These beliefs, values and assumptions provide the bedrock upon which the ‘surface structure’ (ibid) of rules, procedures and processes become real, and which often impede the learning potential of the community. The combination of the deep structures and surface structures go a long way to define the activity of a society, an organisation, a community, a classroom, and a family – as they are the powerful ties that bind.
In our case, having a well conceived theoretical framework that illuminates the uses of power within a community such as a school may assist in our thinking about how to operationalise a transition towards a learning community, and might help us to interpret the reality of the school in a new way. It remains the case that there is a dearth of material available for schools to do this. We still mediate the meaning of learning community through the prevailing dominant narrative of the managerial design (DuFour 2004, Roberts and Pruit 2003, Stoll and Seashore 2007, Watkins 2005). It seems appropriate therefore that the development of capability to create sustainable learning communities is supported with theory that is framed and informed from developmental work that draws from analysis and interpretation of the ecological knowledge base, if any transitional thinking is to occur.
Paqette and Fallon (in press) discuss these ‘framing’ issues in detail in their recent work. Defining four paradigmatic frames, (managerial, existential, dialectical, and living system) they describe the most likely learning community epistemology that will emerge when located within specific socio-cultural and educational paradigms (see figure 2).
These paradigmatic frames are not rigidly determined; earlier research (Bertrand and Valois 1980) indicated that very few schools and school systems operate within the assumptions and values of only one paradigm. Instead, schools migrate between different paradigmatic frames, often pursuing interests and then rather awkwardly reconciling the incongruous nature of very different value driven consequences (ibid). Nevertheless, they found that teachers and administrators in most learning communities orientate in favour of a single socio-cultural paradigm and a single educational paradigm, and that the latter flows from the former.
Figure 2: Paradigmatic theory frames (adapted from Paquette and Fallon in press)
Managerial paradigm Existentialism paradigm Dialectic paradigm Living systems paradigm
Socio-cultural frame Positivist and economic efficiency assumptions about knowledge and the nature of society A person centered way of understanding self and society Communist and socialist assumptions about knowledge and the nature of society The sustainability of life systems and non-hierarchical complementarity of individuals and communities as ways of being and relating in a society
Educational paradigm frame Characterized by a view of education as an efficient transmission of predetermined knowledge designed to promote rational learning and knowing and maintain a socio-economic order Characterized by a view of education based on empowerment of a creative, confident, and free individual who shapes his/her learning process Characterized by a view of education as a dialectical form of knowing to promote the common good through a process of collectivism and mutual assistance leading to a classless society Characterized by a view of education based on a mode of knowing in which learners develop their capacity to create new alternatives by producing knowledge that promotes a vision of society based on non-hierarchical and democratic decision making and a complementarity of differences
Fallon and Barnett’s (2009) work opens up a way of conceptualizing these multiple possibilities for discussion about the current and future direction that a learning community might take. In a time of economic and ecological turbulence, it is useful to examine the possible implications, opportunities and limitations which existing, and potentially new, operational frames can provide. These frames enable more informed and strategically suitable responses to be developed by participants, and they also provide a way of coping, as Schein (2004) observes, if nothing else, understanding helps us to cope with change.
Any framework has to make it possible to ask the question: Which developmental direction would be most appropriate, given what we know of our changing circumstances? The clear message from our observations is that, as schools grapple with the wish to create a learning community, they may be locked into a paradigmatic frame that impedes their chance of moving forward, which is accountable to a wider systemic approach that adheres to a different set of guiding rules and principles, beliefs and values than those they may be forming in response to any new ambition or understanding of their own changing context.
As we have observed, circumstances beyond their own making can place teachers and headteachers, students and parents on a collision course where their collective ambition is impeded by organizational structure. The different paradigmatic world-views can interfere with each other, but the fact remains that they function from different interpretive frames – they represent different epistemologies. As a result, in a period of stability the power of the dominant narrative prevails, and school communities find that they are not making the change to a learning community because this managerial narrative impedes the transition, it is locked to the central, rather than any form of locally conceived accountability framework.
However, as we have recently experienced from the dramatic changes in the world of banking, we do not live in a stable, predictable and managed world (Soros 2008). In effect, the door is open for new and alternative model systems to be explored and designed.
So to conclude on this part of the discussion, the last decade has developed the concept of the learning community in the form of greater understanding of the change process and enabled practitioners to enhance their clarity of focus upon learning with renewed vigour. It also enhanced the possibilities and ‘freedoms’ for individuals to pursue change in their own ways through greater distributive forms of leadership (Harris 2008), but this introduced new forms of decentralized hierarchy and failed to bring with it an adequate redistribution of power. As such, the learning community initiative has become plagued with managerialist goals which have imposed a particularly incremental form of learning in schools. For school leaders, this provided the context for initially reinforcing (Jackson 2007), but ultimately self-defeating processes of change (Clarke 2009a). At this time, it is more likely that we hear of schools using learning community instrumentation to reinforce and strengthen existing ways of operating under the illusion of self-agency but within the accountability culture, than it is to emancipate and empower the learner within the community.
At its simplest, I think we can say that the managerial paradigm has defined a deficit model of education, where schools, students and professionals all adhere to a thought world where success is defined by knowing, and that the ‘knowing’ is something that is more often than not defined by somebody else, somewhere else. In Michael Fielding’s work this impediment is an issue of democratic representation (Fielding 2001), Terry Wrigley argues that this impedes working class access to the curriculum (Wrigley 2001, 2005), in Tony Kelly’s work it manifests itself as a critically important matter of freedom (Kelly 2009).
From whatever critical position we adopt, it is clear. The resulting ‘catch up’ of those charged with providing the educational service within this knowledge framework is perpetual; no matter how well intentioned and well designed those pursuing learning community design from within the existing paradigm will never resolve the problem of ownership and power, because the ownership of the knowledge is beyond the self, or the resources of the organisation of the school to control (Thrupp and Willmott 2003).
These observations first serve to compound and vindicate small successes, and then they doubly disempower those who are struggling to deal with existing demands, because any success in moving towards a learning community inside the existing paradigm serves to reinforce even more the existing order of things. Second, the entire system that serves to manage and improve education is now premised on an illusion of ownership, choice and power that is generated by their pursuit of learning community within the managerial frame. So we have inspections, national curricula, state mandates, off-the-shelf solutions which schools previously had to adhere to, now being superseded by an illusion of choice and freedom to design schools and curriculum according to local interest and needs. However, they have to be accountable not to their own criteria of success, but to a level of evidence of alignment with the centrally managed direction of flow. It is initially reinforcing, and locally affirming. People see success, they are reported as improving, they receive adulation, they then buy into the idea that it is the only game in town, and once they do this the likelihood of introducing any alternative design is impeded, significantly.
What we see in educational reform is therefore a repeating pattern, as Seymour Sarason (1993) reported, ‘a predictable failure’ that lies deep in the managed system, a prevailing misconception about the meaning of educational, and socio-cultural change.
It is this situation that I maintain is no longer sustainable. Managerialism has distracted people too much from the important focus and time needed to nurture deep relationship. There are too many externally pressing challenges for business as usual to prevail.
Despite the failings and frustrations, I have remained closely aligned to the central tenet of the theoretical framework. That is, that we need to make a profound shift in our developmental narrative and take it from the mechanical to the living system. In so doing, we embed deep into the functionality of any new design, the fundamental truth that we are a part of nature, not apart from nature, we are living beings pursuing our lives within a living system. This recognition, and realization, has prompted a renewed focus upon the capabilities associated with generating relationships as the central agenda of a guide to radical redesign and transition, and it is to this that I will now turn my attention.
Radical Transition
My earlier observations generate questions concerning transition. How will school move its function from schooling to a new form of sustainable pedagogy? In so doing, how will it create the capabilities to connect to new ways of organising which are necessary if such a transition is to be realized? This concern focuses attention on the ways that we might act, establish and maintain relationships, given the need to touch both deep and surface structure change.
Whatever emerges as an educational institution in an ecological paradigm, learning will continue to play a central role, but the interconnect between learning and other capabilities needs to move us from the problems of the over-managed, institutionally-bound learning community of old. We need to first consider, and then develop these capabilities and use their development as part of the metric of change to illustrate and measure our success.

When we think about the future relationship between the community and school, it seems to me that community is what will be developed, and what develops it will be learning. It is only through thinking about community as a forum for development of interdependencies that we have any real possibility of making progress on the socio-cultural transition towards an educational agenda for a more sustainable form of life on the planet. If we are to enhance our capability to learn new ways of living which have a reduced footprint on the environment of the planet I think we have to consider how we re-define our relationship with a dominant community based institution – the school. This takes us beyond the current idea of building schools for the future and building learning communities, into an exploration of a renaissance of community for the future.

I have suggested that schools might pursue, and be genuinely committed to the notion of a learning community, but that the prevailing systemic design, managerial in structure, impedes the likelihood of those schools ever realising that goal. The fact that schools might be exploring different dimensions of learning community, such as extended participation of the student body in decision-making and management, greater levels of community involvement, more emergent forms of curriculum design, greater forms of inter-institutional enquiry are in themselves steps towards transition. But until they are conceptually shifted onto a paradigmatic frame which takes interdependency, community and co-construction as serious systemic concepts, they will continue to function as Pseudo Community. All of these dimensions indicate a progression from earlier managerial models, and substantiate Fallon and Barnett’s (2009) observation of schools migrating between one paradigmatic frame to another. But the substantive challenge, of moving into a different operational frame as the modus-operandi, remains ambition rather than reality until the conceptual shift occurs to the interdependent modelling. In effect, I am sugesting we need to re-colonise and radicalise the idea of sustainable learning community.

I suggest that the development of sustainable learning community is not to be defined as new buildings and priorities imposed through government reforms, nor as recycled ideas of the old model of school, but as a set of relationships, conceived as interdependencies which may be practiced face to face, or through the new opportunities open to us through technology. These interdependencies come in the form of individual engagement, through connection with ideas and shared interests, and through collective action in the pursuit of new freedoms. As Sen (1991) argues, ‘Greater freedom enhances the ability of people to help themselves and also to influence the world, and these matters are central to the process of development’ (p.18). As such, we combine educational change with a new economic model (Brown 2002), where development of sustainable learning community is the ground for future living.

What might this look like?
Sen (1999) describes the qualities of collective action which widen the opportunity for individuals to generate forms of wealth as ‘capabilities.’ It is a combination of these capabilities in the form of dependencies of what I call connection, place, interest and action that I wish to explore when we move forward in our consideration of a framework for a sustainable learning community. We look for ways to create connection between the broader definition of wealth, the learning community, the living systems paradigm of sustainability and new pedagogy in the form of learning.













Figure three: Capabilities of an interdependent sustainable learning community


An Education for Sustainability Framework
The Education for Sustainability Framework provides schools with a unifying overview and foundation for sustainable living. The framework uses the ideas explored in this paper and from other theoretical ideas elsewhere (Capra 2002, Orr 1994, Whitefield 2004, Kelly 2009, Wenger 1998) to underpin practice and adopts a systematic, coherent and practical approach to the sustainability issue to inform school decision-making.
The Framework has developed as a result of practical feedback from fieldwork, development programmes, working closely with school networks and with teacher practitioners for many years. It brings together this experience, along with the very best of contemporary knowledge of emergent management practices (Scharmer 2007). The use of the framework will facilitate a successful engagement of participants in
a strategic process that serves as a guide on your journey towards a more sustainable organizational future.
It is therefore designed to help schools to act strategically to achieve their goals and at the same time begin to migrate their overall practice towards a more radical stance in the form of sustainable learning community.
We have learnt, in our work with learning communities over the past two decades, that the process of change is both dynamic and unpredictable, it is a creative process which engages people and has to both inspire and motivate them in their personal and collective efforts if it is to succeed. Whilst we learn along the way that every person’s involvement and contribution is uniquely important, we also learn that we have to continually attend to our overall direction of travel.
As such, we might need to generate a level of awareness within a learning community of a number of elements which are of significance in the overall conceptualization of an ecoliterate community.
The first consideration is for the whole:
System
Understanding the learning community and its relationship to the planet is a vital element in our appreciation and transition to a new form of working as a sustainable learning community. It is a continually renewing and revealing engagement. Our learning in this process is focused upon the deepening of this connectivity and interconnection between self, community and environment. As we grow in our awareness of this, we begin to see the possibilities of such change as new forms of organistion, economy and ecology.
A starting question: What do we mean by sustainable success?
Understanding of possibilities allows us to define success within this system. What is the learning communities vision for success, filtered through the principles of a sustainable society?
Strategy
Not all ideas that we establish through our conversations will integrate with the sustainable principles or with the learning communities goals. Through a process of dialogue (Bohm 1996), and emergent modeling we journey from our current world views to identify the areas of focus we might need to attend to in order to successfully achieve a sustainable form of learning community. This involves letting go of some of the existing organizational actions and structures and letting new ones come along. The main concern here is for the relationships we generate and the continuous attention to the ways in which freedom, choice and participation are nurtured.
Action
With a clear strategy, we can undertake coordinated actions, making connections between different but complementary initiatives that move use closer to a collective goal.
Wouldn’t it be nice!
However, the assumption of collective consensus is to be challenged throughout the process. We know, from experience, that more often than not, what we plan is not we end up with. It is a characteristic of human action in social settings that the dynamics will mean that there is a desire for consensus and an orchestration towards this being interpreted as how things change. Instead of working inside this illusion of change as managed practice, it is much better to generate structures, conditions and skills which are conducive to greater capability to recognize and respond – in our case within our communities of action, interest, place and connection.
This alignment is a starting point for development. Everything we do may be focused on the end game, pedagogy, curriculum, management approaches, liaison with community, resources purchasing, planning activities, but they are all guided by our attention and focus upon to the community capabilities.
We are able to extend these ideas further however. Living systems theorists often comment on the layers within layers of systems (Capra 2002). So too, can our consideration of forms of community - connection, place, action and interest, be extended to examine ways in which these capabilities are developed in the form of specific skills.
Figure four: Ecoliteracy skills


Networking skills: is the awareness of and ability to see one’s actions as part of a network and contributing to the entirety of a dynamic system. Networks enable people to establish multiple pathways to seek relevant connections and interdependencies to support, guide and inform areas of work. All people functioning within an ecologicaly literate community are going to be conscious of, and capable of using the relationships inside a network to further their own and each others’ activity. This echoes Castells (1996) assertion that in the Network Society, institutions become bargaining agencies rather than sites of power. The power resides in networked relationships and the cultural connections through which people and institutions communicate. Castells says that the city is less a place and more ‘a process by which centers of production and consumption of advanced services are connected…’ part of our transitional thinking is therefore focused on the connection capability, how the relationships are nurtured and maintained over time, in effect, how we sustain sustainability.
Connecting skills: is the awareness and ability to function at a micro-level but at the same time understand the dynamic influence that small scale actions have upon the whole activity of the system. This insight is well documented in the recent work of researchers exploring the ways in which viral networks operate – where a set of ideas rapidly gain systemic influence through numerous small scale connections and relationships being sympathetic to similar issues of resonance to their personal situations.
Renewing skill: the awareness and ability to conserve, revise, and reapply resources, ideas, partnerships in such a way as they continually support and reinforce each other.
Emerging skill: the awareness and ability to facilitate learning that is both personal and collective and ensure that this interplay is creative and unfolding all of the time. This has implications for how we might plan, design, manage and maintain initiatives.
Systematising skill: the awareness and ability to enable communities to regulate, self-organise, sustain and function within a dynamic system. This includes the ability to see the system as a whole and to appreciate the dynamic interplay of elements within that whole.


Tools for ecoliteracy
These are my first attempt at a version of the metrics that serve as the basis of a new formulation of a learning community to meet the needs of an ecologically framed paradigm of reform. It serves as the basis through which I am currently considering the community of action within a sustainable learning community (Clarke forthcoming). 

As we see, the interconnect between broadly defined forms of capital (environmental, social, intellectual, financial, etc) framed through a set of interconnected communities of enquiry, focused around learning (communities of place, action, connectedness and interest), and operationalised through an ecoliterate skill set is a starting framework for debate and enquiry into the transition from a managerial to an ecological paradigm.

















Figure five: A cycle of interdependent capabilities

We do not know, at the start of this journey, what the sequence of actions will look like, nor do we know the overall shape of what we will create together. However, each decision we make on the journey is guided by a clear understanding of the definition of success –a sustainable learning community. As we systematically apply the conceptual principles of our sustainable learning community to our day-to-day practice we enhance our awareness of the practicalities required to create a sustainable learning community.



Grateful thanks to Tony Kelly, Jane Reed, Chris May, Ian Smith and many colleagues who respond to the ongoing posts at my blog www.sustainableretreat.blogspot.com
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Clarke, P. (2008) Education and Sustainability. Professional Development Today. Vol 11 no 1.
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Clarke, P. (2009b) Community renaissance. To appear in Coates, M. (in press) Educational Futures. London. Continuum
DuFour, R. (2004) Whatever it takes: How professional learning communities respond when kids don’t learn. Bloomington.NES
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sahara growing plan - from Treehugger site

Can you imagine being able to produce enough water in the Sahara to grow crops there? Can you imagine harnessing sufficient quantities of solar power to supply electricity to cities in Africa and cities in Europe? Can you imagine producing a sustainable bio-fuel that doesn’t impact on world food supplies? Charlie Paton, Michael Pawlyn and Bill Watts can and what’s more they can imagine all these happening in the same place at the same time.

This week this trio of visionaries launched the Sahara Forest Project: their proposal to combine two innovative technologies, Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) and Seawater Greenhouses, to produce renewable energy, water and food in an area of desert known to be one of the hottest places on earth.

Multitasking renewable solutions
It has often been said that there will be no one solution to solving the climate crisis and all those issues that surround it, such as energy sources, food prices and water supply. We need a portfolio of technologies to help us to combat these advancing problems. The Sahara Forest Project is one of the first projects we’ve seen that proposes not only to combine technologies to optimise performance and production, but also aims to tackle all of the serious challenges mentioned above. It is a bold and ambitious plan that, if realised, could have a powerful positive impact not only for the Sahara region, but also for Europe and the rest of the world.

Positive Collaboration
The most exciting aspect of the Sahara Forest Project is not specifically the use of these technologies. We’ve read about Seawater Greenhouses and Concentrated Solar Power and how they’re being used to great effect. It is the fact that they are being used together in the same place, to support each other and optimize their operating capacities to produce energy and water and by proxy vegetation.

This sense of collaboration is echoed in the team of people behind the proposal: an inventor - Charlie Paton, creator of the Seawater Greenhouse; an architect - Michael Pawlyn of Exploration Architecture, previously of Grimshaw and the lead architect on the iconic Eden Project; an engineer - Bill Watts of Max Fordham & Partners, an engineering firm that focuses on energy efficient systems for the built environment. These three men have brought their considerable expertise together to create a truly innovative proposal.


Illustration of greenhouses having a similar effect on the climate as a region of forest, yet providing a net input of water vapour from the sea.

What does a Seawater Greenhouse do?
The Seawater Greenhouse was designed to address the problem of irrigating crops in arid coastal regions by evaporating seawater and condensing it into fresh water. This helps to reverse the trend of desertification created by normal industrial greenhouses, which can use up to five times more water to irrigate crops than the respective region's average annual rainfall. The system works by mimicking the natural hydrological cycle where seawater heated by the sun, evaporates, cools down to form clouds and returns to the earth as rain, fog or dew.

What does Concentrated Solar Power do?
CSP is currently seen as one of the most exciting and powerful ways of harnessing the sun’s energy to create power. Like the Seawater Greenhouse, CSP works well in hot arid areas where the sun is at its most powerful. The sun’s rays, collected through reflecting mirrors, are used to heat water which then produces steam to power turbines. Examples currently working are Nevada Solar 1 near Las Vegas, and the solar tower in Barstow California. It has been proposed that the energy created by CSP in the Sahara could be transported to Europe with minimal loss via high voltage DC power lines.


Sketch showing long 'hedge' of Seawater Greenhouses oriented towards the wind. Photo of Solar Power Tower in Barstow, California

How will the Sahara Forest Project work?
These CSP / Seawater Greenhouse technologies will work together at a location some distance from the north coast of Africa, hopefully at a point below sea level which will reduce or potentially eliminate the costs of pumping seawater. The scheme has been designed as a ‘hedge’ of greenhouses providing a windbreak and shelter for the outdoor planting. CSP arrays will be placed at intervals along the greenhouse 'hedge'. The greenhouses produce five time more fresh water than needed for the plants inside. This surplus will be used to irrigate the planted orchards and the Jatrophra crop, which can be turned into bio-fuel for transportation and other needs.

Commercial Synergies
The Sahara Forest Project team tell us that the innovative interaction between the two technologies helps each to function more efficiently:

1.CSP systems need water for cleaning the mirrors and for the generation of steam to drive the turbines which the greenhouses can provide.

2.The Greenhouse evaporators make very efficient dust traps (as do plants that are growing outside) which benefits the CSP since the mirrors stay cleaner and therefore operate more
efficiently.

3. In solar thermal power plants, only about 25% of the collected solar energy is converted into electricity. If combined with sea water another 50% of the collected energy, normally released as heat, can be used for desalination. This way, up to 85% of the collected solar energy can be used.

In conclusion the Sahara Forest Project works on many levels. By combining the benefits of Concentrated Solar Power and Seawater Greenhouses the design team has vastly scaled up the positive outputs of renewable energy, food production and fresh water supply. Furthermore they tell us that “the scheme would also have the restorative effect of returning areas of desert to forested land and sequestering substantial quantities of atmospheric carbon in new plant growth and reactivated soils.” Surely this is a perfect example of the potential power of human and technological collaboration.

a fast revolution

One of the things that is starting to be very obvious is the speed with which change is coming that is ecologically focused. We only have to look back a few years to see that the world views whch dominated were paying very little attention to the planetary needs. Whilst we have a long way to go, it seems to me that suddenly there is a much more connected and integrated consciousness that is beginning to govern the designs and developments of where we go next. The transition of things such as school curriculum are not yet there, but there is an optimistic sign that schools, in their new design and their new build will herald a while new set of thoughts on how to make connections and develop a much more ecoliterate community. The whole idea of a process oriented, literate and interconnected school campus and community resources is slowly coming together.

have a look at this site its really good

http://www.bigpicture.tv

in god we trust

quote of the day

Our educational culture suffers in many ways from nature deficit disorder – kids that have been removed from the natural world. I teach a generation of young people who often have minds shaped by television, shopping malls, freeways and suburban sprawl.
David Orr

incredible edible last week on the BBC

Standing at Todmorden's quiet Fielden Wharf just off the road to Rochdale, you wouldn't believe this could be the heart of a revolution in the way we get food onto our plates - but that's exactly what it is. The idea is simple: to get as many people as possible to grow food for themselves and others right here in this Pennine market town. For such a radical move, it actually sounds quite old-fashioned really but Pam Warhurst, one of the people behind what's called 'Incredible Edible Todmorden' says this 'back to basics' approach to food is vital: "We're saying that if a kid can see that a carrot doesn't grow at the supermarket then that'll make our day! If you only buy your carrots from the supermarket, they're immaculate, clean and cold. Who'd ever know they come from the mucky ground? Kids don't know that...We're concerned that we've become detached from looking after ourselves and our families and feeding them."

Mary spots some 'guerilla gardening'

With the aim of reconnecting families to the food they eat, Incredible Edible Todmorden's supporters are encouraging everyone to get down and dirty and grow their own - getting them back to their roots, perhaps? Whether it's vegetables or herbs, rhubarb or raspberries, there are signs across the town that this new-but-old idea is being wholeheartedly embraced. In fact, every spare bit of land in Todmorden is being eyed-up as possible mini-allotments - even the big stainless steel flower pots at Fielden Wharf. Mary Clear, another of Incredible Edible Todmorden's growing band of supporters, explains that nowhere is ignored: "Fielden Wharf is a lovely pull-in for canal boats and we've got what we call our 'washing machines' - great big steel containers that used to be full of petunias and begonias. But now, we've got blackcurrants, raspberries, peas, beans, swiss chard, lettuces and globe artichokes. We keep a salad crop in here all year so, rather than the boaters getting out and going to a supermarket and buying a bag of salad, they can just cut it from here. The win-win magic of this is that we need water so in exchange we ask all the boaters to put buckets of water on our planters. It just works fantastically...We know people talk about it: 'Cor, go to Todmorden and you don't have to buy salad, you can just pick it.'"
Just round the corner from Fielden Wharf, Mary points out another location where various crops are now peeking out from among the flowers: "Here's a little piece of car park, a little bit of Council garden and what have we got? We've got thyme, dill, fennel, celery, sage, apple, rhubarb, swiss chard, gooseberries, mint...and beautiful leeks. We've got all this and it's not hurting anybody." Mary calls this 'guerilla gardening', but doesn't want anyone to get the wrong impression from that description: "It's about an unloved, neglected, dirty place. Someone can come along and pick up the drink cans, broken glass and think, 'How can I make this a greener, cleaner, safer space?' It might sound sexy and deviant, but it's a really good thing. All sorts of people have been doing it, lots of people in the town going out and planting things."

Flowers, herbs and veg together in Tod

But with all this still on a relatively small scale, is it really possible that Todmorden could eventually become self-sufficient in vegetables - as Incredible Edible's stalwarts are aiming for? Pam Warhurst says these small areas of land dotted around the town - 'Propaganda Gardens' as they're known - are symbolic of a much bigger plan: "We've done a calculation. Somebody came to us and said that for 15,000 individuals you need 250 acres of vegetable growing. We've got 41,000 acres around Todmorden - a lot of it vertical, but a lot of it not! What we need to do is use our brains. We need some of it in existing valley bottoms; some of it in polytunnels on the hillside; some of it in people's back gardens. We need some farmers to give their land over. All these things are quite possible because that's what makes a community buzz...People say there's not enough land, well, there's plenty of land. You just need to have the will to do it and to show people by these propaganda gardens that you can grow stuff in the South Pennines. This is April [pointing at the blooming vegetable patch by the car park] so imagine what it's going to be like in June, July or August. We just challenge people who say they can't do it. You can!"
And while Pam says Incredible Edible is proving 'totally phenomenal' in Todmorden so far, she says this has to be just the start: "The bottom line is that it mustn't stop in Todmorden...What we're doing with all this 'propaganda gardening' is shifting our culture into people being interested in what they can eat that's local. 'Local' is defined as 20 to 30 miles. What we like to say is that you should grow what you can in your own town, then move to the fringe of the town and then move beyond that. Stop at 30 miles. Everyone can feed themselves within 30 miles. We might have to rethink avocados and various things we can't grow here, but the vast majority of what we eat in this country can be grown locally. There are huge opportunities within the parks in Leeds and other major cities. There are huge opportunities for these cities to reconnect with those farmers who farm right up to the city edge." And with places like Manchester and Birmingham showing an interest in what's going on in Todmorden, Pam says: "Suddenly, Pandora's Box will be open and the possibilities are endless."

Pam: Passionate about Incredible Edible

With everything from rhubarb to leeks growing on street corners and in small, previously-ignored plots of land across Todmorden, Incredible Edible has so far attracted 'hundreds and hundreds of supporters', according to Pam. Whether it can really translate into a 21st century version of the famous World War Two 'Dig For Victory' campaign - which turned flower beds and gardens across the nation into allotments - remains to be seen. But in these times of recession and fears over global warming, Pam Warhurst says what's going on in Todmorden has to be taken seriously: "There's no Plan 'B' and we need to look after ourselves. And then, can you imagine, instead of flying beans from Kenya wouldn't it be great if Kenyans could eat their own beans? The time's come to put a bit of common sense back."
And Mary Clear believes it's just a matter of time before everyone in Todmorden and beyond will want to grow their own. She says that, if nothing else, it reminds people that we're all in this together: "It doesn't matter what culture you're from, it doesn't matter what age you are, there's something about being outside and growing and eating that touches everybody...It's a brilliant way to bring people together!"

Thanks Chris M!! Well spotted!The Relative Merits of Plastic Bottles and Concrete Slabs

The Relative Merits of Plastic Bottles and Concrete Slabs

Chris Turner


287835581_576077b773_280.jpgThe other day, I found myself preaching to the choir out in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I was the keynote speaker at the annual fundraiser for the Ecology Action Centre, a longstanding and highly regarded environmental organization with deep roots in the region. The event drew a good-sized crowd, and the usual suspects – hardcore environmentalists, activists, academics, the odd self-interested local politician – formed the bulk of it. I’m sure you could find a similar crowd in any good-sized North American city, which is why the two most significant memes I encountered at this talk strike me as having broad significance to the sustainability movement in general.

Let’s start with the first meme, which sported what I think of as an outdated shade of green. I was returning from the washroom to the auditorium shortly before my talk, and a young woman milling near the entrance pointed at the Dasani water bottle I was clutching in my hand and said something like, You’re not really bringing that to an environmental lecture, are you? I shrugged and explained it was all they had at the event’s temporary bar, and I needed something to keep my throat wet through all that talking. At which point it dawned on her that I was the speaker that evening, and she got sort of embarrassed and mildly apologetic.

I partially conceded her point – I’d have chosen a reusable glass of tap water if it’d been available, after all – and she sort of conceded mine, though I could tell she’d have held her ideological ground if I’d been anything less than the evening’s main act. What I mean is, I think from her point of view she was letting me get away with it. Dasani bottles still had no business at events like these, but if anyone could be forgiven, maybe the speaker could.

The topic came up again after my presentation, during the Q&A. A different young woman, the same pointed question, asked this time in front of the whole audience: How could you possibly deliver an hour-long presentation on sustainability with a plastic water bottle resting there on the podium next to your notes? She was angrier than my first anti-plastic interrogator; I could tell she was a little apprehensive to rain on my positive-solutions parade, but clearly the Dasani-logoed bottle so completely equated in her mind to the very essence of the problem that it couldn’t pass without comment.

I’ll come to my response in a minute. But first let me tell you the other significant meme I encountered at this event – the one coloured bright green.

The book-signing line after my lecture was a pretty standard cross-section of the sort of people who not only attend talks like mine but approach the speaker afterward to hand over a business card or brochure. There were green-energy advocates, Kyoto petitioners, local-food organizers, semi-coherent defenders and demonizers of nuclear power. And one gentleman who slid me a business card identifying himself as Robert Niven, president of Carbon Sense Solutions. He mentioned a mutual friend and said I should try to make time see what his young company was doing with concrete before I headed home.

A couple days later, I drove out to an industrial park near the airport to see what he was talking about. I found Robert in a small office building on the fringe of a vast field of concrete apparatus – great stacks of drainage pipe, piles of industrial-sized brick, mammoth slabs used to build bridges and overpasses. Carbon Sense Solutions had only recently emerged from a lab at McGill University in Montreal, and it was now nested on the premises of a company called the Shaw Group – your standard regional concrete manufacturing giant.

Robert noted by way of introduction that cement and concrete production constitute the planet’s third largest source of carbon dioxide emissions after energy production and transportation, and then he explained at length what he intended to do about that. I realized within minutes that although I trod upon concrete every day of my life, I’d never once thought about where it came from or how it was made. Turns out that the production of cement (one of the constituent ingredients in concrete) involves cooking limestone in a kiln at nearly 1000 degrees, a process called “calcination” hat requires an enormous amount of energy to carry out and releases vast stores of carbon dioxide from the limestone itself in the process. As much as two-thirds of the emissions created by concrete production are generated by calcination, with the rest contributed by the kiln’s fuel.

The concrete industry, Robert explained, had been focused on the latter problem for years, greatly increasing the efficiency of its energy use – mainly for baseline economic reasons. Much less thought, however, had been paid to the emissions created by calcination. Which is where Carbon Sense comes in.

To produce concrete, cement is mixed with water and gravel and then cured; in large industrial facilities, the curing agent is traditionally steam. Robert’s company is working on a new industrial process by which the waste emissions of the cement production process would be injected back into the concrete as the curing agent – essentially reconstituting the limestone and re-capturing the carbon dioxide (amounting to a total emissions reduction by as much as 50 percent compared to the current industry norm).

This was still in test phase, but Robert didn’t need to spell out for me how enormous the potential was. I live a life practically encased in concrete. We all do. To turn modernity’s most ubiquitous building material into a sequestration project that could quickly and easily span the globe? And to do so through a straightforward, technically simple retrofit of existing plants? I left in a state of quiet awe – not something I ever expected to happen to me at a concrete factory.

Which brings me back to the plastic-bottle meme I’d encountered at my talk, and the distance between that question and the Carbon Sense approach to solving the climate problem. When I was asked about the water bottle at the lecture, I answered mostly in general terms. The scope of the climate crisis, I said, was so huge that it can only be solved by a society-wide shift, a total shift. Either everything changes – and does so within a generation, give or take – or as far as the biosphere’s concerned it’ll be as if nothing has. The only question, then, is how best to create that universal change.

My response was to suggest that such a broad shift in human behaviour in such a short time would by necessity make for strange bedfellows and imperfect optics. Some of the people (maybe even the most important ones) creating that change will have different priorities and different fundamental values from those of old-school environmentalism. To cite an example, I talked about how Wal-Mart’s sustainability push might ultimately be more significant than anything going on down at the local organic co-op. After my visit to the concrete factory, I had a better case in point.

My use of a plastic water bottle to keep hydrated during my lecture was personal, symbolic, highly visible and statistically meaningless; Carbon Sense’s attempt to turn the world’s concrete factories into carbon sinks is universal, practical, invisible and statistically huge.

The water bottle was a gesture, a sort of purity ritual, a thing built to the same scale as a protest placard. The underlying assumption is that if enough of us foreswear plastic, the planet will in time return to the same balance it maintained before we ever started cracking oil molecules to build polymer chains and wrap them around practically everything we use on a daily basis.

The carbon-sequestering concrete initiative is less righteous but more fundamental in its impact. It recognizes that whatever comes of this shift to sustainability, it is not a return to any previous norm, pre-industrial or otherwise. And it recognizes, moreover, that the scope of the problem is the size of the biosphere itself, and by necessity it must include not just the meetings of the tuned in and turned on but also the concrete poured to erect the buildings those meetings are held in.

That’s all the concrete we pour, by the way, from here to Timbuktu, from the organic co-op to the new exurban Wal-Mart. Much as we’d also like to see the end of exurban big-box development altogether, it’s likely – strange bedfellows again – that more than a few will be built before we’re all aboard the new paradigm, and so at the very least we can reduce the carbon footprint of their building materials in the meantime. And the larger point remains that we’ll make that larger shift not just because we make public gestures against plastic bottles but also – mainly – because some whipsmart engineers figure out how to turn concrete into a carbon sink.

Sunspots or not!

The missing sunspots: Is this the big chill?

Scientists are baffled by what they’re seeing on the Sun’s surface – nothing at all. And this lack of activity could have a major impact on global warming. David Whitehouse investigates


The disappearance of sunspots happens every few years, but this time it's gone on far longer than anyone expected - and there is no sign of the Sun waking up reports the Independent.

Could the Sun play a greater role in recent climate change than has been believed? Climatologists had dismissed the idea and some solar scientists have been reticent about it because of its connections with those who those who deny climate change. But now the speculation has grown louder because of what is happening to our Sun. No living scientist has seen it behave this way. There are no sunspots.

The disappearance of sunspots happens every few years, but this time it’s gone on far longer than anyone expected – and there is no sign of the Sun waking up. “This is the lowest we’ve ever seen. We thought we’d be out of it by now, but we’re not,” says Marc Hairston of the University of Texas. And it’s not just the sunspots that are causing concern. There is also the so-called solar wind – streams of particles the Sun pours out – that is at its weakest since records began. In addition, the Sun’s magnetic axis is tilted to an unusual degree. “This is the quietest Sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” says NASA solar scientist David Hathaway. But this is not just a scientific curiosity. It could affect everyone on Earth and force what for many is the unthinkable: a reappraisal of the science behind recent global warming.

Our Sun is the primary force of the Earth’s climate system, driving atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. It lies behind every aspect of the Earth’s climate and is, of course, a key component of the greenhouse effect. But there is another factor to be considered. When the Sun has gone quiet like this before, it coincided with the earth cooling slightly and there is speculation that a similar thing could happen now. If so, it could alter all our predictions of climate change, and show that our understanding of climate change might not be anywhere near as good as we thought.

Sunspots are dark, cooler patches on the Sun’s surface that come and go in a roughly 11-year cycle, first noticed in 1843. They have gone away before. They were absent in the 17th century – a period called the “Maunder Minimum” after the scientist who spotted it. Crucially, it has been observed that the periods when the Sun’s activity is high and low are related to warm and cool climatic periods. The weak Sun in the 17th century coincided with the so-called Little Ice Age. The Sun took a dip between 1790 and 1830 and the earth also cooled a little. It was weak during the cold Iron Age, and active during the warm Bronze Age. Recent research suggests that in the past 12,000 years there have been 27 grand minima and 19 grand maxima.

Throughout the 20th century the Sun was unusually active, peaking in the 1950s and the late 1980s. Dean Pensell of NASA, says that, “since the Space Age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high. Five of the ten most intense solar cycles on record have occurred in the last 50 years.” The Sun became increasingly active at the same time that the Earth warmed. But according to the scientific consensus, the Sun has had only a minor recent effect on climate change.

Many scientists believe that the Sun was the major player on the Earth’s climate until the past few decades, when the greenhouse effect from increasing levels of carbon dioxide overwhelmed it.

Computer models suggest that of the 0.5C increase in global average temperatures over the past 30 years, only 10-20 per cent of the temperature variations observed were down to the Sun, although some said it was 50 per cent.

But around the turn of the century things started to change. Within a few years of the Sun’s activity starting to decline, the rise in the Earth’s temperature began to slow and has now been constant since the turn of the century. This was at the same time that the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide carried on rising. So, is the Sun’s quietness responsible for the tail-off in global warming and if not, what is?

There are some clues as to what’s going on. Although at solar maxima there are more sunspots on the Sun’s surface, their dimming effect is more than offset by the appearance of bright patches on the Sun’s disc called faculae – Italian for “little torches”. Overall, during an 11-year solar cycle the Sun’s output changes by only 0.1 per cent, an amount considered by many to be too small a variation to change much on earth. But there is another way of looking it. While this 0.1 per cent variation is small as a percentage, in terms of absolute energy levels it is enormous, amounting to a highly significant 1.3 Watts of energy per square metre at the Earth. This means that during the solar cycle’s rising phase from solar minima to maxima, the Sun’s increasing brightness has the same climate-forcing effect as that from increasing atmospheric greenhouse gasses. There is recent research suggesting that solar variability can have a very strong regional climatic influence on Earth – in fact stronger than any man-made greenhouse effect across vast swathes of the Earth. And that could rewrite the rules.

No one knows what will happen or how it will effect our understanding of climate change on Earth. If the Earth cools under a quiet Sun, then it may be an indication that the increase in the Sun’s activity since the Little Ice Age has been the dominant factor in global temperature rises. That would also mean that we have overestimated the sensitivity of the Earth’s atmosphere to an increase of carbon dioxide from the pre-industrial three parts per 10,000 by volume to today’s four parts per 10,000. Or the sun could compete with global warming, holding it back for a while. For now, all scientists can do, along with the rest of us, is to watch and wait.

Dr David Whitehouse is author of ‘The Sun: A Biography’ (John Wiley)

The Sun explained...

Core The energy of the Sun comes from nuclear fusion reactions that occur deep inside the core

Radiative zone The area that surrounds the core. Energy travels through it by radiation

Convective zone This zone extends from the radiative zone to the Sun’s surface. It consists of “boiling” convection cells

Photosphere The top layer of the Sun. It is this that we see when we look at the Sun in natural light

Filament A strand of solar plasma held up by the Sun’s magnetic field that can be seen against its surface

Chromosphere A layer of the Sun’s atmosphere above the photosphere, around 2000km deep

More news... ice melt in Antarctic

Hundreds of miles of ice drop from Antarctic shelf

By David Rising, Associated Press

Wednesday, 29 April 2009


New satellite images from the European Space Agency show massive amounts of ice are breaking away from a shelf on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, researchers said today.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, but began retreating in the 1990s. Researchers believe it was held in place by an ice bridge linking Charcot Island to the Antarctic mainland.
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But the 127-square-mile (330-square-kilometer) bridge lost two large chunks last year and then shattered completely on 5 April.

"As a consequence of the collapse, the rifts, which had already featured along the northern ice front, widened and new cracks formed as the ice adjusted," the European Space Agency said in a statement today on its Web site.

The first icebergs started to break away on Friday, and since then some 270 square miles (700 square kilometers) of ice have dropped into the sea, according to the satellite data.

"There is little doubt that these changes are the result of atmospheric warming," said David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey.

"The retreat of Wilkins Ice Shelf is the latest and the largest of its kind," he said, adding that "eight separate ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula have shown signs of retreat over the last few decades."

The Wilkins shelf, which is the size of Jamaica, lost 14 percent of its mass last year, according to scientists who are looking at whether global warming is the cause of its breakup.

Average temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula have risen by 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 Celsius) over the past 50 years — higher than the average global rise, according to studies.

Over the next several weeks, scientists estimate the Wilkins shelf will lose some 1,300 square miles (3,370 square kilometers) — a piece larger than the state of Rhode Island, or two-thirds the size of Luxembourg.

One researcher said, however, that it was unclear how the situation would evolve.

"We are not sure if a new stable ice front will now form between Latady Island, Petrie Ice Rises and Dorsey Island," said Angelika Humbert of Germany's Muenster University Institute of Geophysics.

But even more ice could break off "if the connection to Latady Island is lost," she said, "though we have no indication that this will happen in the near future."

In the meantime, researchers said the quality and frequency of the ESA satellite images have allowed them to analyze the Wilkins shelf breakup far more effectively than any previous event.

"For the first time, I think, we can really begin to see the processes that have brought about the demise of the ice shelf," Vaughan said.

carbon emissions reaching critical point

"Only 99 months remain before we reach the point of no return," Prince Charles
The world will overshoot its long-term target on greenhouse gas emissions within two decades. A study has found that the average global temperature will rise above the threshold that could cause dangerous climate change during that time.

Scientists have calculated that the world has already produced about a third of the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that could be emitted between 2000 and 2050 and still keep within a 2C rise in global average temperatures.

At the current rate at which CO2 is emitted globally – which is increasing by 3 per cent a year – countries will have exceeded their total limit of 1,000 billion tons within 20 years, which would be about 20 years earlier than planned under international obligations. "If we continue burning fossil fuels as we do, we will have exhausted the carbon budget in merely 20 years, and global warming will go well beyond 2C," said Malte Meinshausen of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who led the study, published in Nature.

"Substantial reductions in global emissions have to begin soon – before 2020. If we wait longer, the required phase-out of carbon emissions will involve tremendous economic costs and technological challenges. We should not forget that a 2C global mean warming would take us far beyond the variations that Earth has experienced since we humans have been around."

It is the first time scientists have calculated accurately the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that can be released into the atmosphere between 2000 and 2050 and still have a reasonable chance of avoiding temperature rises higher than 2C above pre-industrial levels – widely viewed as a "safe" threshold.

The scientists found the total amount of greenhouse gases that could be released over this time would be equivalent to 1,000 billion tons of CO2. This is equivalent to using up about 25 per cent of known reserves of oil, gas and coal, said Bill Hare, a co-author of the study.

The study concluded that the world must agree on a cut in carbon dioxide emissions of more than 50 per cent by 2050 if the probability of exceeding a 2C rise in average temperatures is to be limited to a risk of 1 in 4.

"With every year of delay [in agreeing on further cuts], we consume a larger part of our emissions budget, losing room to manoeuvre and increasing the probabilities of dangerous consequences," said Reto Knutti of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, a member of the research team.

Myles Allen of Oxford University said the total emissions of CO2 that have accumulated in the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century are the really important figure for future climate change.

"Mother Nature doesn't care about dates. To avoid dangerous climate change we will have to limit the total amount of carbon we inject into the atmosphere, not just the emission rate in any given year," Dr Allen said.