Climate Progress

The short answer is, “Not today — not even close.”

The long answer is the subject of this post (and my book and this entire blog).

Certainly regular readers know that the nation and the world currently lack the political will to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at 450 ppm or even 550 ppm.

The political impossibility is also obvious from anyone familiar with Princeton’s “stabilization wedges” — and if you aren’t, you should be (technical paper here, less technical one here). The wedges are a valuable conceptual tool for showing the immense scale needed for the solution (although they have analytical flaws).

Of course, if solving the climate problem were politically possible today, I would have found something more useful to do with my time (as, I expect, would you). But 450 ppm or lower is certainly achievable from an economic and technological perspective. Indeed, that is the point of the wedges discussion (since they rely on existing technology) and the Conclusion to Hell and High Water.

The purpose of my last post on the adaptation trap was to make clear that 800 to 1000 ppm, which is where we are headed, is a catastrophe that is far beyond human imagining, that makes a mockery of the word “adaptation,” that has a “cost” far beyond that considered by any traditional economic cost-benefit analysis. It is both a rationally impossible and morally impossible choice. So, I think is 550 ppm, assuming we could stop there, which as I argued, we probably can’t thanks to the carbon cycle feedbacks like the melting tundra.

What needs to be done?

STABILIZING BELOW 450 PPM

[Note: I am going to do this entire post in billions of tons of carbon (GtC) even though I just wrote a long post explaining why carbon dioxide is better. That's because the wedges were formulated in GtC and are much more intuitive that way.]

As Princeton’s Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala (S&P) explain:

A wedge represents an activity that reduces emissions to the atmosphere that starts at zero today and increases linearly until it accounts for 1 GtC/year of reduced carbon emissions in 50 years. It thus represents a cumulative total of 25 GtC of reduced emissions over 50 years.

They wrote their Science paper when we were at 7 GtC and rising slowly — an ancient time you may remember as 2003, before Bush was reelected, before anybody ever heard of Reverend Wright or Paris Hilton or the need to stabilize below 450 ppm. An innocent time, really, but I digress.

So they said that 7 wedges would keep emissions flat for 50 years and then, assuming we invested in a lot of R&D, we could start cutting global emissions rapidly after 2050, and stabilize at 500 ppm. And everybody would live happily ever after driving fuel cell cars, watching YouTube, and popping the occasional Xanax.

Problem 1: The world is at 8 GtC annual emissions.

Just to stabilize emissions at current levels thus requires adopting at least 8 wedges.

Problem 2: S&P assume “Our BAU [business as usual] simply continues the 1.5% annual carbon emissions growth of the past 30 years.” Oops! Since 2000, we’ve been rising at 3% per year (thank you, China). That means instead of BAU doubling to 16 GtC in 50 years, we would, absent the wedges, double in 25 years. That would mean each wedge needs to occur in half the time, assuming our current China-driven pace is the new norm (which is impossible to know, but I personally doubt it is).

Problem 3: A wedge is a mind-bogglingly large amount of “activity.” For instance, a post last year on the Keystone report explained that one nuclear wedge would require adding globally:

• an average of 14 plants each year for the next 50 years, while building an average of 7.4 plants a year to replace those that will be retired;
• Plus 10 Yucca Mountains to store the waste.

If you believe 3% growth is the new norm, then double that — 43 nukes a year for 25 years — for one wedge.

One wedge of coal with carbon capture and storage means storing the emissions from 800 large coal plants (4/5ths of all coal plants in 2000) — a flow of CO2 into the ground equal to the current flow of oil out of the ground. That’s right — you have to re-create the equivalent of the planet’s entire oil delivery infrastructure.

So one wedge from nuclear and one from CCS would be a stunning global achievement. Those who want to rule them out need 2 more wedges.

Here are other typical wedges (these are examples, not endorsements):

• If we built two million large (one megawatt) wind turbines, or 2000 GW. “Last year’s global wind power installations reached a record 20,000 MW, equivalent to 20 large-size 1 GW conventional power plants.” So we’re at half the rate needed for 1 wedge of wind (or mayber a quarter).
• If the fuel economy of the 2 billion or so cars in the world in 2050 got 60 mpg, that would be one wedge.
• For the conservation/peak oil folks, if the 2 billion cars in 2050 travel 5000 miles a year, rather than 10,000.
• If we grew biofuels requiring one-sixth of the world cropland.
• For S&P, ending all deforestation and doubling the current rate of tree planting is one wedge. In fact, if we don’t sharply reduce deforestation, we probably need to add another two wegdes (S&P used optimistic numbers for deforestation).

Problem 4: Stabiling emissions at current levels for 50 years and then declining sharply would probably not stabilize us below 600 ppm (even assuming that 1.5% annual growth was BAU, and not 3%).

For 450 ppm, we need to average 5 GtC this century. So we must be back down below 4 GtC globally by mid-century (and then head to zero by century’s end). Thus we need a minimum of 12 wedges if we started last year, which we didn’t. We probably won’t start putting serious measures into place before 2010 at the earliest, when we’ll be at 9 GtC. So that is 2 more wedges.

[Yes, I know, know, why in God's name did we elect and reelect two oil men who would spend their entire time in office not merely blocking all domestic action, but all international action, too. That is one for the history books, I'm afraid. What is especially depressing is that China's torrid love affair with coal plants only began after 2000, after it was clear the U.S. wouldn't take any action.... As Richard the III might have put it, a time machine, a time machine, my Kingdom for a time machine....]

Problem 5: The baseline of the wedges is unknown even to the the original authors, S&P. This is related to Problem 2.

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Despite a Court-issued directive to develop a plan for regulating greenhouse gas emissions, Johnson goes back to square one, writes Robert Sussman. Read more from the Center for American Progress here.

Even for a do-nothing Administration, Johnson is a standout!

Earlier this week Alexandra Kougentakis, Fellows Assistant at the Center for American Progress, attended one of the American Meteorological Society’s seminars discussing the latest in climate science (which are great resources for policymakers, as they tend to take place on Capitol Hill). She has kindly reported on the event below:

One of the favorite, though well-debunked, claims of the global warming skeptics is that the recent warming is due to the recent up tick in solar activity. The current solar cycle has indeed seen higher-than-average sunspots, but what most strengthens skeptics’ argument is the lack of knowledge about what this means. In that light, the American Meteorological Society’s recent seminar, “Solar Radiation, Cosmic Rays and Greenhouse Gases: What’s Driving Global Warming?” was especially illuminating

The core of the skeptics’ argument is to take legitimate scientific fact and distort it to serve a false premise. Solar activity is among the external factors listed by the IPCC whose variation could be a source of radiative forcing, which is the net change in solar ray penetration between the two atmospheric layers closest to the earth. In other words, solar activity is potentially a cause of climate change. The historic correlation between solar activity and climatic shifts seen in the paleoclimate record provides evidence to this effect. Since the 17th century, the record of 11-year cycles of solar irradiance, or brightness, charted through the analysis of tree rings and ice cores makes clear that solar irradiance has increased. A correlation has been observed between solar activity and climate shifts, at least up until the mid-20th century, when the connection became sharply weaker.

One of the strongest arguments against attempts to link solar activity to current warming has to do with inconsistencies in the solar signal.

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Lofty Pledge to Cut Emissions Comes With Caveat in Norway - New York Times. Norway has been stunning speculators with its pledges to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, and then by 2030. This article reports on the disappointment that much of Norway’s promise relies more on offsets than policies that make actual reductions. Similar realities and hurdles are likely to proliferate as we get more serious about global warming policy, and this is a challenge policy-makers must overcome.

New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian Fears - Wall Street Journal. This article is sort of Jared Diamond’s book Collapse in brief in that it’s an exploration of how modern societies are handling economic, industrial and population growth as it merges with dwindling natural resources. Two questions emerge - Can we handle the management challenge, and can the earth handle us?

Even with stricter CAFE standards than our own, China Facing Renewed Fuel Shortages - AP. “China’s leaders are facing renewed pressure over shortfalls in diesel and gasoline, with lines growing at filling stations in major cities Monday as the gap widens between international crude oil values and centrally controlled fuel prices.”

Sharp to invest $729 million in new solar cell plant - Reuters. A Japanese company has recently announced how much capital funds it will be putting into its upcoming solar cell manufacturing plant. I think the real story is simply that this is another example of how international businesses are committing to building a green energy base, while American companies are not. Sharp intends to compete with a large German solar cell production company, both to act as exporters of the solar cell technology. We need to pay more attention to this market before we lose the potential to have an edge in it.

– Kari M.

In Part 1, we saw that

1. Adaptation as primary strategy for dealing with climate change is widely oversold.
2. This is especially true as atmospheric Co2 concentrations approach 800 to 1000 ppm, a likely outcome if we listen to either the delayers or deniers.
3. And a leader adaptation advocate and apparent delayer-1000, Roger Pielke, Jr., “labels adaptation what is in fact mitigation, and his idea of mitigation is apparently research into adaptation.”

Let me elaborate on these points. The day before the dubious pro-adaptation L.A. Times piece, one of Pielke’s fellow Prometheus bloggers, Jonathan Gilligan, pointed out

… if our political system stinks at managing floods, coastal storm risks, and fresh-water resources in the absence of anthropogenic climate change, why would it manage better if climate change does turn out to significantly increase the mean severity and/or variance of the distribution?

I made a similar point last year on the second anniversary of hurricane Katrina, a catastrophe that “showed the limitations of adaptation as a response to climate change“:

… a classic adaptation strategy to deal with rising sea levels is levees. Yet even though we knew that New Orleans would be flooded if the levees were overtopped and breached, even though New Orleans has been sinking for decades, we refused to spend the money to “adapt” New Orleans to the threat. We didn’t make the levees able to withstand a category 4 or 5 hurricane (Katrina was weaker at landfall than that, but the storm surge was that of a category 4).

… even now, after witnessing the devastation of the city, we still refuse to spend the money needed to strengthen the levees to withstand a category 5 hurricane. We refuse to spend money on adaptation to preserve one of our greatest cities, ensuring its destruction, probably sometime this century.

If we won’t adapt to the realities of having one city below sea level in hurricane alley, what are the chances we are going to adapt to the realities of having all our great Gulf and Atlantic Coast cities at risk for the same fate as New Orleans — since on our current path, climate change will ultimately put many cities, like Miami, below sea level?

For some, of course, adaptation is a complete ruse:

The fact is, the Denyers don’t believe climate change is happening, so they don’t believe in spending money on adaptation. The Center for American Progress has written an important paper on hurricane preparedness, which is a good starting point for those who are serious about adaptation.

But don’t be taken in by heartfelt expressions of faith in human adaptability. If Katrina shows us anything, it is that preventing disaster would be considerably less expensive — and more humane — than forcing future generations to adapt to an unending stream of disasters [which is to say a permanently altered climate].

The nation and the world will obviously have to spend serious money adapting to global warming for two reasons. First, we’ve delayed action to reduce emissions for so long. Second, delayers like Pielke (and President Bush, Bjørn Lomborg, and Newt Gingrich) still have the upper hand in the debate (as the L.A.T article and this Revkin NYT piece make clear), because the 1) technology trap is so appealing, 2) action requires a lot of effort, and 3) procrastination is always attractive option when someone is whispering in your ear that it is actually the best option.

Note: The cleverest delayers, like Pielke, never oppose action completely, they just never tell you specifically what their targets and actions would be. So they get to take the high road and argue out of both sides of their mouths, effectively arguing — “We need both mitigation and adaptation, but even though I don’t think the problem requires urgent action like the advocates, take my word that I support just enough mitigation to avoid the part of climate change that can’t be adapted to.”

Unfortunately, the part of climate change that can’t be adapted to is coming much faster than we feared. If we can keep total warming from preindustrial levels to 2°C or lower, than genuine adaptation is possible. The more we go above 2°C, the more adaptation will be replaced by suffering.

LIVING/SUFFERING IN A 1000 PPM WORLD

I listed only three catastrophes that would probably occur at 800 to 1000 ppm because I think those are the most serious and most inevitable. But they are hardly the only ones. A major 2005 study of the impacts of about 800 ppm on the United States found in the second half of this century (from 2071 to 2095) a vast swath of the country would see average summer temperature rise by a blistering 9°F.

Houston and Washington, DC would experience temperatures exceeding 98°F for some 60 days a year. Oklahoma would see temperatures above 110°F some 60 to 80 days a year. Much of Arizona would be subjected to temperatures of 105°F or more for 98 days out of the year–14 full weeks. We won’t call these heat waves anymore. As the lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh, of Purdue University said to me, “We will call them normal summers.”

Climate scientists don’t spend a lot of time studying 800 to 1000 ppm, in part because they can’t believe humanity would be so self-destructive as to ignore their increasingly dire warnings and fail to stabilize at well below 550 ppm. The IPCC notes that if equilibrium CO2-equivalent concentrations hit 1000 ppm, the “best estimate” for temperature increase is 5.5°C (10°F), which means that over much of the inland United States, temperatures would be about 15°F higher.

This increase would be the end of life as we know it on this planet. Interestingly, 5.5°C is just about the temperature difference between now and the end of the last ice age, the difference between a livable climate for human civilization that is well suited to agriculture and massive glaciers from the North Pole down to Indiana.

Is it 100% certain that 1000 ppm would result in

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RealClimate has a good introductory post on air capture, which they explain as:

The idea would be to let people emit the carbon dioxide at the source but then capture it directly from the atmosphere at a separate facility.

This is going to be a relatively expensive and complicated strategy for decades — and, of course, you need a place to put the carbon dioxide. That said, a lot of work is going on to see if one can do air capture driven by heat.

Why does that matter? The world has a LOT of zero carbon waste heat not currently being used for anything. Indeed, U.S. thermal power plants alone throw away in waste heat as much energy as Japan uses for every purpose! That’s more than 20 quads. And that doesn’t even count the heat thrown away in industrial processes. Now the smartest thing to do with that heat for the next few decades is obviously either generate electricity with it or use it for heating buildings or industrial processes.

But we should surely do a fair amount of research on air capture, since, by not later than the 2020s, we’re going to get desperate for emissions reductions, and by the 2030s, we’re going to be very desperate and willing to pursue expensive options we that aren’t yet politically realistic.

Indeed, it seems rather likely to me that something like air capture will be needed by the second half of this century. Assuming we actually seriously try to keep emissions below 450 ppm (currently, a doubtful proposition), we’ll probably need to go back to below 400 by 2100 and 350 by 2150, in my optimistic spin on Hansen’s latest paper.

In summary, air capture is not a near-term or medium-term solution, but possibly a long-term strategy.

Late last week, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) held the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) board meeting previewed in Killing the Electric Car Again Part 1 and Part 2. CARB appears to have put on a partially choreographed show.

Agency staff played the role of “bad cop.” Before the meeting they proposed cutting ZEVs by 90%, setting the scene for the Board appointees to play “good cop” and change the cuts to 70%. This allowed CARB to spin it as a tripling in the numbers in their press release:

The Air Resources Board today voted to triple the amount of zero emissions vehicles that staff had proposed for automakers to produce from 2012 through 2014, while directing staff to look at overhauling the program to account for climate
change benefits.

If FCVs with 300-mile range are used, then the cut is actually 79%; only 0.08% of new vehicles would have to be ZEVs.

Some of the board members insisted on playing the role of “bumble cop”, as they seemed to have little understanding of exactly what they were voting on. Even board members who had initially stated they thought the numbers should be increased, not decreased, seemed suddenly to forget those remarks and docilely follow the lead of board member Dr. Daniel Sperling, who near the end flashed up a slide filled with a table of numbers (presumably prepared in advance), and suggested that the board go with only 2,500 (1,785 if 300-mile range) FCVs a year. The board followed 7-0.

During the meeting, over fifty speakers took 3-minute slots explaining to the board why CARB should not retreat on its 8,333 per year mandate for 2012-14 (approximately 0.4% of California vehicle sales). The other dozen or so speakers primarily represented automakers and other interests requesting changes peculiar to their particular situations (issues such as the transition from intermediate to high volume manufacturer status, hydrogen internal combustion engines, and so on).

Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey testified at the CARB meeting on the wastefulness of diverting resources to hydrogen fuel-cell programs and the need to get plug-in cars on the road soon in order to reduce U.S. dependence on oil and to increase national security. Former Secretary of State George Shultz and former Deputy Under Secretary of Education Peter R. Greer, both of whom served under President Ronald Reagan, wrote to Gov. Schwarzenegger imploring him to help get more electric vehicles on the market.

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I was recently forwarded a link to a photographer’s work online, titled Industrial Scars. Intrigued by its name, I was expecting images of the Industrial Revolution or old building structures. To my surprise, the artist, Henry Fair, has a small collection that beautifully portrays the damage our petroleum and coal consumption is doing to the environment.

And yes, I meant ‘beautifully portrays the damage.’ At first, I felt guilty and torn for being drawn to the images. I didn’t know what message Fair means to send and couldn’t tell if he is concerned or ignorant of the damage. Until I read his statement, which I’ve excerpted from the webpage below:

I see our culture as being addicted to petroleum and the unsustainable consumption of other natural resources, which seems to portend a future of scarcity. My vision is of a different possibility, arrived at through careful husbandry of resources and adjustment of our desires and consumption patterns toward a future of health and plenty.

…At first, I photographed “ugly” things; which is, in essence, throwing the issue in people’s faces. Over time, I began to photograph all these things with an eye to making them both beautiful and frightening simultaneously, a seemingly irreconcilable mission, but actually quite achievable given the subject matter.

I’d like to be able to post a photograph here, but I’m certain there would be legal issues with that. So, I’ll simply encourage you to take a look at the photos at the site (and once in the portfolio, chose to read the captions - one of the choices on the bottom toolbar) and to reflect on them.

– Kari Manlove

The wheels may be falling off the media’s climate discussion, if a new L.A.Times piece is any evidence. The piece, “Global warming: Just deal with it, some scientists say,” which is really an article about not dealing with it.

The L.A. Times, with the help of the delayer-1000 du jour, Roger Pielke, Jr., has brought to prominence (and fallen for) what I call the “adaptation trap”:

The adaptation trap is the belief that 1) “it would be easier and cheaper to adapt than fight climate change” [as the Times puts it in the sub-head] and/or 2) “adaptation” to climate change is possible in any meaningful sense of the word absent an intense mitigation effort starting now to keep carbon dioxide concentrations below 450 ppm.

Sorry for the long definition, but as we’ll see, the second part is especially critical in what has now becaome an important emerging policy debate, which is cleverly devoid of specifics. (Indeed, on his blog, Pielke says he was misquoted and denies he believes the first part, which actually makes the L.A.T. piece even lamer, as Grist’s Dave Roberts shows). And being misquoted doesn’t mean Pielke isn’t very wrong anyway — as we’ll see at the end, Pielke is so confused about adaptation and mitigation that he takes the prize for the most backward analogy in the history of the climate debate and unintentionally proves just how wrong he is.

You see, as I’ve been arguing, the real question for the world is not whether we can stabilize below 450 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide if we try hard enough and fast enough — of course we can, and at a very low cost according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which self-described “nonskeptical heretics” like Pielke claim to believe in.

The real question for humanity is whether we can avoid 800 to 1000 ppm or more. That is what the delayers and nonskeptical heretics simply don’t understand. At 800 to 1000 ppm, the world faces faces multiple catastrophes, including:

1. Sea level rise of 80 feet to 250 feet at a rate of 6 inches a decade (or more).
2. Desertification of one third the planet and drought over half the planet, plus the loss of all inland glaciers.
3. More than 70% of all species going extinct, plus extreme ocean acidification.

[I will explore these and other impacts in more detail in Part 2.]

This Hell and High Water could be “adapted” to by billions and billions of people only in the sense that the citizens of New Orleans “adapted” to Hurricane Katrina or that people in Darfur have “adapted” to their military conflict. Such “adaptation” is better called “suffering” as former AAAS President John Holdren describes it in talks.

What will it take to avoid 800 to 1000 ppm? Remember the IPCC bombshell from last year:

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Tomorrow, a handful of cities across the country will be participating in Earth Hour - a campaign to turn out the lights for an hour.

The event is to take place March 29th at 8 pm (your time). The objective is to raise awareness, use a bit less energy, and show the difference that could be made by simply turning out the lights. (And if you’re not sure what to do with the lights out, they’ve got ideas on their website.)

Like other critical mass events, if enough people particicpate, their statement could be huge. Worldwide, it probably will be - the event started in Sydney and spread to an internatinoal scale in one year. City-specific, it will be interesting to see how dramatic the difference is.

Loads of energy will be saved, even in just that hour. To sign up to participate, and make the change that much bigger, head over to their webpage. Over 245,000 have agreed to turn their lights out, and counting.

Next year, they should do this on March 21 — then it would be 3-2-1-Lights Out.

– Kari Manlove