The adaptation trap 2: The not-so-honest-broker
In Part 1, we saw that
- Adaptation as primary strategy for dealing with climate change is widely oversold.
- 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.
- 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
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 un 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
- Sea level rise of 80 feet to 250 feet at a rate of 6 inches a decade;
- Desertification of one third the planet and drought over half the planet, plus the loss of all inland glaciers; and
- More than 70% of all species going extinct, plus extreme ocean acidification?
Of course not. Such certainty is not possible for a climate transition that is completely unprecedented in the history of the human species. I can state with very high confidence that the possibility all of those outcomes will occur is higher than the world seeing even a single “science and engineering-based technological breakthrough” (let alone several as delayers like Pielke seem to be counting on) in the next quarter century or so significant enough to somehow avert such catastrophes far more cheaply than simply acting now with existing technology to avoid 450 ppm.
Importantly, even a 3% chance of a warming this great is enough to render useless all traditional cost-benefit analyses that argue for delay or only modest action, as Harvard economist Martin Weitzman has shown. Yet, absent immediate and strong action, the chances of such warming and such effects are not small, they are large — greater than 50%. These impacts seem especially likely in an 800 to 1000 ppm world given that the climate appears to be changing much faster than the IPCC had projected.
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets already appear to be shrinking “100 years ahead of schedule” as Penn State climatologist Richard Alley put it in March 2006. Indeed, a number of peer-reviewed articles have appeared in the scientific literature in the past 18 months supporting the real possibility of a 6-inch-a-decade sea level rise.
As for desertification, “The unexpectedly rapid expansion of the tropical belt constitutes yet another signal that climate change is occurring sooner than expected,” noted one climate researcher in December. As a recent study led by NOAA noted, “A poleward expansion of the tropics is likely to bring even drier conditions to” the U.S. Southwest, Mexico, Australia and parts of Africa and South America.”
In 2007, the IPCC warned that as global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5°C [relative to 1980 to 1999], model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe. That is a temperature rise over pre-industrial levels significantly exceeding 4.0°C. So a 5.5°C rise would likely put extinctions beyond the high end of that range.
And these horrific impacts are certainly not the worst-case scenario. As NASA’s James Hansen explained in a 2004 Scientific American article:
Imagine sea level rise of nearly 20 inches a decade lasting centuries. Now imagine what future generations will think of us if we let it happen.
A year ago Science (subs. req’d) published research that “predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest” — levels of aridity comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl would stretch from Kansas to California. And they were only looking at a 720 ppm case! The Dust Bowl was a sustained decrease in soil moisture of about 15% (”which is calculated by subtracting evaporation from precipitation”).
Even the one-third desertification of the planet by 2100 scenario by the Hadley Center is only based on 850 ppm (in 2100). Princeton has done an analysis on “Century-scale change in water availability: CO2-quadrupling experiment,” which is to say 1100 ppm. The grim result: Most of the South and Southwest ultimately sees a 20% to 50% (!) decline in soil moisture.
You may be interested in how fast we can hit 1000 ppm. Well, the Hadley Center has one of the few models that incorporates many of the major carbon cycle feedbacks. In a 2003 Geophysical Research Letters (subs. req’d) paper, “Strong carbon cycle feedbacks in a climate model with interactive CO2 and sulphate aerosols,” the Hadley Center finds that the world would hit 1000 ppm in 2100 even in a scenario that, absent those feedbacks, we would only have hit 700 ppm in 2100. I would note that the Hadley Center, though more inclusive of carbon cycle feedbacks than most other models, still does not model any feedbacks from the melting of the tundra even though it is probably the most serious of those amplifying feedbacks.
Clearly, 800 to 1000 ppm would be ruinous to this country, creating unimaginable suffering and misery for billions and billions of people for centuries to come. No one who believes in science and cares about humanity can possibly believe that adaptation is a more rational or moral policy than focusing 99% of our climate efforts on staying far, far below 800 ppm.
ROGER PIELKE, JR — NOT AN HONEST BROKER
The pro-adaptation LAT article that began this discussion ends with some mind-boggling comments by Pielke:
Pielke says that even if his critics are right, it is becoming clear that the world lacks the political will to enact global emissions cuts….
“I would characterize us as realists,” Pielke said. “Realists on what is politically possible.”
Is he being serious — or is this an early April Fool’s joke on us all, especially the next fifty generations? This line of “reasoning” is stunning. Pielke claims to be an “honest broker” — heck, he even wrote a book on that subject. He has written:
Pielke is now arguing — assuming that those misquoting mavens at the LAT haven’t screwed up again — that even if he is wrong [which, as we’ve seen, he is] — he is really right because the world is politically incapable of making the necessary emissions cuts.
That is NOT how an “honest broker” operates. How in God’s name — or Einstein’s name, if you prefer — can an “honest broker” in a major science policy debate be someone who just tells policymakers what is politically possible now? What is the point? Isn’t that what politicians are for?
What could possibly reduce “the scope of choice available to decision makers” more than scientists or policy analysts who eliminate all of the choices that are not politically possible now? Pielke is, by his own definition, not an honest broker. He is a bizarre form of issue advocate whose issue is adapation delay.
I could not agree more that stabilizing below 450 ppm requires many actions that are not politically possible now. Indeed, I have blogged and spoken on that point many times. Of course, one reason [– no, Roger, not the only reason –] such actions are not politically possible now is that reasonable-sounding delayers like Pielke keep telling policymakers: “Don’t worry. We can adapt. And we need technology breakthroughs anyway. And even if I’m wrong, you policymakers aren’t up to the task anyway.”
Under Pielke’s definition, I am an honest broker, since my primary goal is to “expand (or at least clarify) scope of choice available to decision makers.” Like many scientists and policy analysts, in the 1990s, I thought we had three basic choices: Stay below 450 ppm to avoid catastrophic outcomes with high confidence; overshoot beyond, say, 700 ppm, and destroy life as we know it; and muddle through at around 550 ppm, and hope that was tolerable.
But after talking to dozens of the top climate scientists and reviewing the literature for my book — and now with countless observations showing how dire the situation is — I and much of the climate community have come to realize the third option doesn’t really exist for two reason. First, the impacts at 550 would probably be catastrophic. Second, the carbon cycle amplifying feedbacks would make stabilizing at 550 ppm exceedingly difficult. In particular, the top 11 feet of the tundra would probably not survive 550 ppm (a point I will be blogging about again soon) and two other key carbon sinks — land-based vegetation and the oceans — already appear to be saturating.
So our choice is really to stay below 450 ppm or risk self-destruction. That’s why climate scientists are so damn desperate these days. That’s why a non-alarmist guy like Rajendra Pachauri — specifically chosen as IPCC chair in 2002 after the Bush administration waged a successful campaign to have him replace the outspoken Dr. Robert Watson — said in November: “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” That’s why more than 200 scientists took the remarkable step of issuing a plea at the United Nations climate change conference in Bali. Global greenhouse gas emissions, they declared, “must peak and decline in the next 10 to 15 years, so there is no time to lose.” The AP headline on the statement was “Scientists Beg for Climate Action.”
That is the position of the true “scientific realists.” If the scientific realists (and others) convince the political realists it should be their position, too, then humanity has a chance. If the political realists remain stuck in the past, listening to advice from issue advocates like Pielke, then we do not.
March 30th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Now, would one of those 40-70% of species going extinct be beef and dairy cows? That would sure suck, huh. I guess we could keep them air conditioned, but how much would they cost per pound after that? Oh, wait, the heat also kills anything they eat, so we’d have to enclose and air condition vast croplands. I think we may be heading for a Logan’s Run future, after all.
March 30th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Those sea stand rise projections and in the data from LGM until now are averages. Think of more of an upsidedown U shaped curve for the rate. The maximum rate is far higher than the average.
March 30th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
David:
Yes, certainly the West Antarctic Ice Sheet might collapse over a decade or two — and that is 15 to 20 feet.
March 30th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Joe said:
“the West Antarctic Ice Sheet might collapse over a decade or two — and that is 15 to 20 feet”
That would be consistent with the dream I had in the late 80s which vividly portrayed part of the M5 motorway in Somerset, England, under water (and people using horses and carts on the part above sea level) - which could happen with a sea level rise of 5 to 6 metres.
And, alas, my dreams have a habit of coming true.
March 30th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
So why does the skeptical view continue to gain traction? This surveyreports that the more informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming. Perhaps the alarmist methods of persuasion - ad hominem attack, fear mongering and unsubstatiated hyperbole - are the root of the problem.
March 30th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
It would be a huge mistake to leap to the conclusion that study indicates skepticism is gaining traction. La Nina has provided a brief respite. Recess is going to end.
Which Presidential candidate carries a banner for AGW skepticism?
March 31st, 2008 at 12:04 am
The study indicates that the more informed people are about global warming, the less concerned they are about it.
March 31st, 2008 at 1:05 am
Paul K.
Not exactly what the study says, first of all. But you have a tendency to see what you want, as opposed to what is. Nevertheless, polls, “the skeptical perspective gaining traction” and other such nonsense is quite irrelevant. For one thing, within the scientific community, skepticism is losing traction. Only the very rare iconoclast like Pielke or the climatologists on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry are holding out.
Look, Paul, at the end of the day, science isn’t a popularity contest anyway. It’s made up of observation, data, testing hypotheses and doing it all again and again, as you close in on truth and reality. We’ve reached a pretty mature understanding of the science of AGW by now, and it’s just plain disingenuous to pretend we haven’t. If you’d read and understood the work of folks like Hansen and the IPCC, then you know that. If you don’t have the scientific background to understand it, then educate yourself before sullying the world with uniformed views.
So tell me, Paul, when the yahoos who are “voting” or polling or whatever it is they’re doing, are standing in a parched desert begging for water, will they be guilty of hyperbole? If your children curse your bones for being a delayer, will they be conducting ad hominem attacks?
As for fear mongering, there’s really no need to be afraid if we take action. No one is selling fear, they’re selling the need to act. Another 5 years of delay, then we’ll be selling fear. It’s all that’l be left to offer future generations.
But if you find it scary, is that a reason not to talk about it? If you’re a passenger in a car heading into a brick wall, are you a “fear monger” for screaming “brakes?”
Jeez man. You’re so totally clueless it would be amusing, except it’s folks mouthing pap like you do that is keeping the people and press from understanding exactly how dire the situation is.
Again, either educate yourself to the science or quit spewing out uninformed opinion.
March 31st, 2008 at 1:28 am
john,
Thank you. You have perfectly illustrated why alarmists are so poor at persuasion.
March 31st, 2008 at 5:34 am
Reference the Scientific American article “Impact from the
Deep”, in the October 2006 issue on pages 65 to 71. The
article says: If the warming trend from whatever cause
continues for 100 years we will go extinct. The cause of
the extinction of Homo Sapiens will be hydrogen sulfide
bubbling out of the hot oceans.
We have to stop the warming or die. THIS HAS
HAPPENED BEFORE. There was a similar minor
extinction 54 Million years ago. The cause of global
warming was not intelligent creatures burning coal, but it
was global warming none the less. The End Permian
extinction 251 million years ago had the same cause, global
warming. The cause of the global warming for the End
Permian extinction event was super volcanoes covering
Siberia. The Siberian volcanoes were no ordinary
volcanoes. They built Siberia, a huge land mass. Global
warming is global warming. The End Permian extinction
was the worst extinction event ever. Adaptation means
death and extinction. It took evolution longer than the
usual 20 million years to recover species diversity to the
normal level after the End Permian mass extinction.
Not going extinct requires that we get control of the
climate. “Who did it, us or Nature” doesn’t matter. It
doesn’t make sense to quibble over the cause. We have
only one lever we can get our hands on immediately to stop
the global warming. That lever is the carbon dioxide we are
putting into our atmosphere.
Adaptation is 99.99% death and extinction. When people
say: “We will adapt”, what they are really saying is: “We
will willingly die and go extinct.”
We have to say NO to George W. Bush and the
corporations he represents, no matter what action he
threatens, because to allow him to continue another day on
his destructive path brings us just one day closer to our
own demise.
It is OUR DEMISE as a species that is at issue here.
March 31st, 2008 at 6:37 am
Joe,
It’s interesting that the 3% probability is significantly higher than Cheney’s “1% Doctrine”.
If Cheney’s willing to turn the world upside down based on 1%, why not 3%? If I may answer: because his/their motives are all ideologically driven with scant basis in reality. (as you’ve pointed out time and again Joe, the science is really beside the point for these people.)
Therefore I think we must argue somehow on their terms - it’s at it’s base, emotional. The emotions, through years of fear manipulation all engender notions of “security”. While many might consider me an “alarmist” I’m not really for manipulating based on fear. However “security” is the operative term and our side as been negligent in not pushing it - I believe.
I think the argument should be: AGW is the #1 national security threat facing us today and to deny it is to surrender our enviable standard of living to one of misery for our children and grandchildren.
I also think it’s important to point out in the argument that the basic science underpinning our understanding of AGW was basically all funded by the U.S. Military - in the interest of national security. (of course the lunatics have no problem finding a communist mole under every inconvenient fact.)
And so while the lunatics will never believe, no matter the evidence - the folks leaning right-wing but are really security nuts above all else, could be peeled off. And we need to peel off as many public officials as we can. They need to be peeled off and become the spokes people.
Al Gore did a great service with “An Inconvenient Truth” but it’s my opinion that he’s awoken all the Americans he’s bound to - and his exposure on 60 Minutes or else where now does more harm than good. We need bona fide conservatives out there making the case. A case based on national security.
March 31st, 2008 at 6:59 am
Want to add/underline one more thought:
Better to have retired military Generals on 60 Minutes and the Today Show etc… telling the American people about the threats of global warming than Al Gore or us!
We’ll never convince the likes of Bush or Cheney or the 28% of Americans that still support their “dead end” policies/ideology (the ditto heads) - but that leaves a nice fat 72% there for the taking. There is no reason we shouldn’t be able to get them.
March 31st, 2008 at 9:24 am
Hmmm. There’s a certain desperation permeating your rantings these days, Paul. Calling Joe and other scientists names such as alarmists, then accusing them of ad hominem attacks, for example?
And now, science itself equals alarmism? Welcome to the 13th Century. Perhaps a little medieval torture — or hey, how about water-boarding — will get these pesky scientists to quit reporting the facts about the world as it is. Let’s get that Earth back in the center of the universe, facts be damned.
As for persuasion, when a mind is firmly shuttered, there’s very little hope of changing it, regardless of one’s skill.
A friend of mine has a plackard in his kitchen. It says, “Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is already made up.”
Just so, my close-minded friend. Just so.
March 31st, 2008 at 9:27 am
I have no idea what political scientists from the Bush School of Management think constitutes knowledge of global warming. Rush often educates listeners on global warming, and I would imagine his listeners consider themselves knowledgeable on the subject.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:41 am
John,
You are so driven to argument that you are completely missing the point. Nothing that you want will be accomplished unless people like - you who are concerned about AGW - and people like me - who think it vital for reasons other than AGW to end our use of fossil fuels - can find common ground. I fully support the transition to a renewable energy economy. I’ll bet you do too. At some point the methods of persuasion employed by you and other AGWers becomes counterproductive to the goal. I think Joe has very some good policy proposals that get lost in his zeal for climate catastrophe. Look at all the posts and comments here trying to come up with the proper derogatory term for those that disagree. What a waste of time.
BTW I call Joe an alarmist because he indeed “sounding the alarm” and goes way beyond the IPCC in his dire projections. He has his reasons which he has explained.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:48 am
JCH -
I know several ditto heads and all they have to say about global warming is “solar variations”.
If Rush educates his listeners on global warming with the accuracy he educates on political discourse - there’s nothing positive to come of it.
March 31st, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Paul K — Try reading the following pdf file presentation:
http://apollo-gaia.org/Presentation5.pdf
March 31st, 2008 at 3:02 pm
David B. Benson,
Interesting paper. The role of feedbacks is one of the unanswered questions in climate science. One must, as does the paper, assume runaway positive feedbacks to get to the catastrophe described. I liked calling for a Manhattan Project style commitment. This is a much better analogy than the WWII one, which conjures up factionalism, violence and a need for an evil enemy. A cooperative effort is necessary to replace fossil fuel.
March 31st, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Manhattan project is the wrong scale. WWII is the right scale. I’m doing a post on this.
March 31st, 2008 at 4:18 pm
How about Marshall Plan scale. The war analogy just makes my skin crawl. Plus, given the history of the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty, what is the hope of a War on CO2?
March 31st, 2008 at 5:15 pm
I’ve thought a bit on the Apollo / Manhattan Project / WWII analogies. Paul’s comment on the ineffectiveness of the War on Drugs, etc is valid. And we can’t wage war on climate or deploy troops to deal with weather anomalies. (To bad. If we could, the fight would have overwhelming defense contractor support)
The Marshall Plan brings to mind a benevolent power sending help to poor unfortunates.
But we’re the unfortunates, having reached no solution to export like sacks of USAID grain. That puts us in a very weak position, morally and otherwise, in coming climate negotiations.
I would only invoke the involvement on a WWII scale. This would be in contrast to a war where the public is told to make no sacrifice, go about our business and pretend everything is normal.
March 31st, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Paul K.
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. We’ve wasted two decades trying to avoid “doom and gloom.” I’m of the opinion that people do the right thing when they’re given the right information.
And while I agree there are other reasons to switch to a non-carbon energy economy, none demand the rapid and comprehensive action that climate change does, and so if we rely on them, we’ll get too little, too late.
I do have a question for you, though. If you in fact support a transition to renewables, why do you quibble endlessly about the science (about which you appear to know very little). Why not simply ally with the climate folks and thus hasten the end which you claim to support?
March 31st, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Paul K wrote “One must, as does the paper, assume runaway positive feedbacks to get to the catastrophe described.” No. One looks at the science and the data on (and in) the ground. One then determines that ‘runaway’ positive feedbacks in fact exist. No assumptions required.
March 31st, 2008 at 5:51 pm
john -
Re: survey discussed with Paul K
Here is the link to the article by the TAMU political scientists:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/ doi/ pdf/ 10.1111/ j.1539-6924.2008.01010.x?cookieSet=1
It explains their ‘measurement’ (several yrs ago) of how well informed the subjects were on GW:
We measure a respondent’s level of information by asking each respondent to report “how informed do you consider yourself to be” about global warming and climate change, which produces an 11- point scale.
Does that seems like a valid method? Just ask the subjects? It might be what the survey designers would do if they didn’t know what to ask themselves.
I say that as a reformed, sometime Prometheus reader. And based on some other silly things political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. has claimed.
March 31st, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Thanks David B. for the pdf - makes the threshold more visual!!
March 31st, 2008 at 6:36 pm
A bit more on melting rates. Taking
http://www.britannica.com/ eb/ article-65644/ ice-in-lakes-and-rivers#534086.hook
as an approximation for melting ice sheets (by running time backwards), the time derivative shows that the melt starts slowly and proceeds ever faster until the ice is gone. [This analysis assumes ice of only moderate thickness, so is not completely correct for thick ice sheets].
April 1st, 2008 at 2:29 am
john,
I knew nothing of the science before stumbling across this blog last July. Since then, I’ve spent many hours home studying climatology for social science majors. I have never disputed that CO2 is a greenhouse gas or that the 20th century was warmer than the 19th and that the late century warming was sharper that the warming earlier in the century. The IPCC is the accepted authority. There is a lot of baloney on the web and it took some time to sort through it. Joe was good at answering my questions and directing me to appropriate literature. On my first visit here, a commenter named IANVS steered me to an excellent general science blog called SciGuy that has occasional posts about climatology. The Texas state climatologist regularly joins in these threads. He has been probably the biggest influence. I came in already thinking about the need to replace fossil fuel, but had no idea how to go about it. I take just a little bit of umbrage at quibble. Most of my comments aren’t about the science. The first several here aren’t. I do not agree with Joe’s catastrophic interpretation. I try to base my science questions on information from NASA NOAA DOE and other universally accepted sources lest Joe swat them away as unworthy.
In answer to your question, I am in fact organizing such an alliance. The National Fossil Fuel Replacement Association doesn’t care why you want to replace fossil fuel, only that you do.
April 1st, 2008 at 11:24 am
I do not agree with Joe’s catastrophic interpretation. I try to base my science questions on information from NASA NOAA DOE and other universally accepted sources lest Joe swat them away as unworthy.
Different personality types take their own learning path. We should let PaulK take his & not impute malmotive.
Nonethess, a drastic loss of ecosystem services would put human society in a state with which it is not familiar. As we see how well society comes together, discusses things, then redirections, we should have deep concern over our ability to change course. I sure do. Esp. with the lack of leadership on this planet today.
But as to the planet itself, it will survive this mass extinction event too. I, personally, feel that in the grand scheme of things another two or three mass extinction events (after the one Homo sapiens caused) will occur too. ‘Eh’, says the multiverse.
Best,
D
April 1st, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Paul K — Sign me up.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:38 pm
“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.”
This is nonsense.
Given the limits to fossil fuel resources, we couldnt even get close to 800ppm anytime soon if we tried with all our might. CO2 increases are not accelerating and are not greater than 2ppm/yr.
800ppm requires us to emit about 20-30 times what we emitted in the 20th century in the 21st. This despite the fact that all economies are getting more efficient in use of energy and despite the fact that population is due to top out and *decline* after 2050.
As Co2 increases, the sink capacities improve, balancing higher emissions with more robust fixing of CO2, so we are more likely to be at 580ppm in a ‘do nothing’ scenario as any number higher.
But ‘do nothing’ really means - we will eventually move off of oil either due to AGW inspired post-fossil-fuel planning, or the ‘non-planning’ of higher oil prices driving scarcity-based alternatives. In short, by 2050 we will be driving plug-in hybrids fueled as much by nuclear energy and wind as by oil …
We need more realistic scenarios in between 800ppm “we are all gonna die!” and 450ppm “end all industrial activity now!” Neither will happen.
I bet on 2ppm/yr rise now until 2050, or about 480ppm in 2050. Then it levels off a bit as we work ourselves beyond the fossil fuel age, hitting 520ppm by 2100.
This level from a climate sensitivity perspective is equal to the rise from 280 to 380ppm thus far, and so will hit us about as hard as what we got already - ie about 0.6C rise in temps and no more than a foot of sea level rise.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:48 pm
“So why does the skeptical view continue to gain traction?”
Because anyone not 100% wedded to the ‘orthodox’ view and the extreme “act now” contingent is a ’skeptic’. Those who want action now are doing themselves a disservice by attacking and dismissing the skeptics’, many of whom are scientists and/or actually understand and believe quite well the global warming concept, just dont agree in all the shibboleths the sky-is-falling crowd spreads.
Al Gore has been particularly destructive in his false claims that the ’science is settled’. First, he is not a scientist so shouldnt presume. Second, the science is *never* settled, on anything. And in this arena the models that are used to claim “this will happen” are far from proven, indeed cannot be proven unless we wait another few decades. In particular, good climate scientists acknowledge that there are unknowns in water vapor feedback and in cloud cover. Well, what about this:
http://www.uah.edu/News/newsread.php?newsID=875
This is climate science. Yet these climate scientists get a conclusion that disagrees with orthodoxy and are given a label to smear them.
Far more productive to say this is a part of the science and discuss the facts, then to engage in ideological tribalism.
Call it ’skepticism’ instead of what it is, more science, and - presto - you have pressed good climate scientists who doubt that climate sensitivity is as great as Hansen estimates as the ‘enemy’. Pity.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:04 pm
“So why does the skeptical view continue to gain traction?”
Another error - every extreme weather event was cast as caused by global warming. Nice journalistic hype, but … the flipside is that temperatures have cooled and are now colder than 10 years ago.
So if a hot 2005 ‘proves’ global warming, does a cold 2007 ‘disprove’ global warming?
Hype gets disproven, and that leads to cynicism.
“Yes, certainly the West Antarctic Ice Sheet might collapse over a decade or two — and that is 15 to 20 feet.”
It *might* happen. And yet Antarctic temperatures are stable and total ice mass is stable/increasing. Its not really at risk. But when it doesnt happen (it most certainly is a highly unlikely event), will that ‘disprove’ the so-called alarmists? There is a risk to credibility in over-stating risks.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:12 pm
“Note: The cleverest delayers, like Pielke, never oppose action completely, they just never tell you specifically what their targets and actions would be. ”
Now as an excercise, apply that mindset and approach to those who oppose nuclear power. Same technique.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:18 pm
“I think the argument should be: AGW is the #1 national security threat facing us today and to deny it is to surrender our enviable standard of living to one of misery for our children and grandchildren.”
That’s as silly as labelling terrorism an environmental threat because of all the bad air from the falling towers.
AGW first is a risk to regional climates and eco-systems simply because they are more sensitive to such things. Man can always bundle up or put on the A/C and even build a sea wall. no big deal. The threat to man is actually further down the line compared to the threat to other life. I suspect that higher CO2 will fertilize as much as harm crop production so the claims that famine will happen is a stretch. And now the latest study on the hurricane - global-warming link was a bit inconclusive.
Our national security is not threatened by climate change.
See my previous point - There is a risk to credibility in over-stating risks.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Patrick M,
“science is *never* settled”: this is a false dichotomy. Yes, there are challenges to Relativity, even today, but even the believers in the challenges don’t see relativity changing except at the margins. Climate science is similar. We are unlikely to find that what we have known for 30-110 years is suddenly all wrong. We may find subtle adjustments to it, even important subtle adjustments, but it is not a house of cards that will fall the moment someone challenges one small piece of it.
The news item you cite is a perfect example of the above. While the effect may be real, it is unlikely that the magnitude of the effect on climate cited is as large as stated (even if that is what the calculations show) because it would not match observations. There could well be something going on there, but if the effect is as stated, it most likely means that there are other effects not yet understood. Otherwise the paleo record short-term climate sensitivity would not match the climate models so well. There are indeed lots of positive feedbacks not included in the climate models. Some may be more significant than realized. I also saw no smear.
“Now as an excercise, apply that mindset and approach to those who oppose nuclear power. Same technique.”: Note that Joe just posted a call for 700 GW of new nuclear (which is a repeat of what is in his book Hell and High Water). That seems like a pretty good example of telling you “specifically what their targets and actions would be.”
“and even build a sea wall”: I think this misses the point. Mitigating AGW is going to be cheaper than adapting (e.g. building sea walls). Also, there are plenty of places too poor to build sea walls. The mass displacement of poor people affected by drought or rising sea levels is a real issue, and it is also a security threat to rich countries like the US.
As far loss of credibility to over-stating risks, I agree. I believe that accuracy is important. However, there is a pernicious tendency to believe that we must have certainty before acting. We should act upon the risk itself. Right now the current situation could be compared to playing Russian Roulette while arguing about how many chambers are loaded. The proper question is why we are playing such a risky game.