Stern Review

[Paul Belford]

The publication today of the Stern Review into the economic impact of climate change prompts me to ask the forum what (if anything) the archaeological profession is doing to minimise its impact on global warming.

If you are in the office, do you recycle, have energy-saving lightbulbs and so-on? Or if you are in the field do you (or your employers) make an effort to encourage lift-sharing or the use of public transport?

What is the carbon footprint of an archaeological excavation?

[historic building]

We are making efforts to use less paper and to try and deal with planning applications online - whether that is actually less carbon intensive I have no idea. The average size of a planning application seems to just increase and they now use massive amounts of paper.

[beamo]

All documents printed double-sided as default.
Print management system means that all printing must be assigned to a specific project (and therefore charged to that project).
All lights are motion sensitive.
Printers automatically turn off at 7.00 pm and on at 7.30 am (but can be manually over-ridden)
Wormery for the composting of all putrescibles.
Recycling of everything possible.

Next issue to address is how to stop the mens urinals from automatically flushing every 20 minutes, even at night and weekends.


Beamo

[Curator Kid]

As staff, we do our best with the usual green bins in the office, and there are members of staff who (off their own backs) look after things like mobile 'phone recycling, but for a County authority, I think this place is surprisingly poor. Corporately, "we" get rid of perfectly good office furniture, have a bizarre non-adjustable office heating system, have nowhere near enough pool cars (which have only recently been reintroduced after being removed about four years ago), no apparent policy on recycling computer hardware (apart from printer cartridges) and no real incentives or network for car-sharing. We're obviously not an archaeological organisation, so perhaps not such a good example for answering Paul's original question. However everyone out there pays their taxes to organisations like this - if other Councils are similarly bad, we should all be concerned.

Having said that, this place does have a great line in recycling outdated and ineffective rotten old management initiatives.

[m300572]

What is the carbon footprint of an archaeological excavation?

Apart from the obvious question about the size of the excavation..... the number of diggers, where they live, how they travel (is commuting by tube into London from twenty miles out for ten diggers more environmentally friendly than driving ten miles to a rural excavation with a van full of diggers) how much machining is needed on site, how many contect sheets you use, digital as opposed to conventional photography (I spoke to a professional photographer recently who reckoned that digital photography had saved his company tens of thousands per year and must use less resources per photo in terms of film and chemical s for processing but how does this compare with the environmental costs of computer processing and storage.

Are portaloos more environmentally friendly than conventional?

How much organic content is there in the spoil - if its dumped and this decays then old carbon is released into the atmosphere.

Ehgad! The permutations are endless - the more I consider the more there are.......

[Paul Belford]

Carbon footprint of an archaeological excavation. I have made a rough calculation based on a variety of ‘carbon footprint calculators’ which are on the internet. However most of these are aimed at the home rather than business.

Anyway here are my figures. I have assumed an evaluation taking two weeks, including one week of machining with a JCB 3CX, at a distance 30 miles from base, requiring 5 people and therefore two cars to transport staff to and fro. Site huts are hooked up to a diesel generator. JCB consumes 320 litres of fuel, car travel and other uses add up to just under 206 litres. This equates to a total of 1,370kg of carbon emissions for petrol and diesel.

In the office this takes a week to do the post-excavation work, consuming 210kg of carbon on office light, heat and power. It would also use approximately 100kg of carbon in resources such as paper and other consumables.

So the grand total would be 1689kg, or 1.689 tonnes of CO2.

This does not include all the carbon used in manufacturing the vehicles, plant and machinery in the first place, or in making computers, printers, ink cartridges etc., nor in supplying films to and from processing, production of archive materials etc. etc. Nor does it look into the organic content of the spoil and some of the other factors mentioned by m300572. So this might be an under-estimate.

The average personal carbon footprint for an individual for a whole year is usually reckoned to be between 10 and 12 tonnes of CO2.

Anyway, some food for thought.

[Unitof1]

I like Sir Sterns use of the delimiting clause in the report “A warming of 5°C on a global scale would be far outside the experience of human civilisation and comparable to the difference between temperatures during the last ice age and today.” (I am not sure what we were up to in that period) And its juxtaposition with a later statement “the last interglacial period, around 125,000 years ago when Greenland temperatures reached around 4 - 5°C above the present, melting of ice in the Arctic contributed several metres to sea level rise.” (does floating ice raise the water level when it melts?)

Sir Stern only seems to have atmospheric carbon dioxide data going back to 1850. He seems to have got a lot of mileage out of it.

[1man1desk]

Floating ice will make little difference to sea level - but I think you will find there is plenty of land-based ice in the Arctic as well.

1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[Unitof1]

Can Sir Stern find enough in the Arctic 125000 years ago for a few metres(being so far outside the experience of human civilisation)?

Here's a counter intuitive affect of arctic melting

http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/index.php/...ar_puzzle/

The Stern report does not seem to say what the original brief was-there does not seem to be an introduction of any use. What about the title -The Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change. Whats a Review Report? Two for the price of one economics

A conclusion is that "strong reductions in carbon emissions are required to reduce the risks of climate change. They are likely to provide benefits well in excess of the costs.
Indeed the costs of not acting strongly (actors required) are likely to be very high." -

- He takes proof that climate changes (using knowledge about the Arctic in the Ipswichian) but finds we (the strong) can stop it changing and in so doing save money (presumably for a rainy day) which is fantastic news. Where would we be if he had found by review report that it would not be cost effective to stop climate changing (frittering money away on priceless archaeological things).

So do we forget preservation in situ and get it out now using a 2% sample. Does archaeology need its own review reports on the effects of climate change on archaeology?

[deepdigger]

I can think of some sites where the amount of "Greenhouse Gas" emitted by some could burn a hole in the Ozone layer on its own!!

deep