Global Warming

[Primula Baggins]

Griff, I read your post, too, as I always do. I am maybe just too cynical, or too old, to believe that an entire society is going to deprive itself of pleasures it values (such as bombing around in SUVs, flying in planes anywhere and any time they choose, and buying everything they want and throwing it away when it gets dusty) for some vague future benefit to their vague future children and grandchildren. We aren't wired that way. There have to be real incentives, related to our self-interest right now, before we'll consider anything so radical.

(Incidentally, that seems to me the opposite to the clichéd liberal position, where we all sing "Kum Ba Yah" and Do What's Right because we looooove humanity.)

Of course, I don't see or know of any "natural" market force that is going to produce conservation in this society (ETA: in the absence of scarcity). So we can follow our natural market forces into oblivion and disaster, or we can apply "artificial" incentives such as government programs and emissions laws and save our own rear ends.

In the absence of any convincing evidence that there is no global warming, or that it is not dangerous, I think we had best do the latter.


Edited to fix one point

[yovargas]

(Also loves and reads Griffy posts. Suspects that if she perhaps feels ignored it is because her posts are usually too reasonable to argue with. )

[Griffon64]

I am maybe just too cynical, or too old, to believe that an entire society is going to deprive itself of pleasures it values (such as bombing around in SUVs, flying in planes anywhere and any time they choose, and buying everything they want and throwing it away when it gets dusty) for some vague future benefit to their vague future children and grandchildren. We aren't wired that way. There have to be real incentives, related to our self-interest right now, before we'll consider anything so radical.

I am young and cynical, and I would be extremely surprised if people give up their pleasures for future generations. But what motivators is there for the present? What incentives can we give people to stop that rubbish now that will be feasible? How wise would it be to say, strain the coffers by giving people high incentives in tax refunds, etc, for simply behaving like they should? And is it even possible to pass a law in this country without "the people" having the opportunity to vote it down?

We'll have to turn to the good ol' mass media, perhaps. Fear is the motivator ( and those ads where some car saves the life of some Bambi-eyed kid makes me puke ) but I think an equally good measure can be changing the values of people. It was the media hyping up big SUVs as a "lifestyle choice" that makes you cool who helped whip up this mess. They can start patting down the hype and replacing it by hyping green cars.

I'm living in the Central Valley, and I breathe the smog created by the nation's transport trucks snorting through here on their way north, or back down south, every day. ( Ikea has a huge distribution center just below the Grapevine, for crying out loud ) I'd love for the whole bunch to go elsewhere. Why can't transport trucks become hybrid or clean fuel burning vehicles, like public buses are becoming? They follow fairly fixed routes, so the refueling logistics become easier. Is the technology underpowered? That would be a problem. Is it more expensive? Hell, the consumer can help foot that bill. People buy those things because they are ridiculously cheap for what went into them, because the environment is forced to bear the cost.

I'm all for emissions laws. A few weeks back some kid wrote to the local paper complaining about a light at an intersection not syncing properly, and had a long and precocious write-up of how this causes cars to idle longer and emit more smog-causing badness. I still have to write my letter ( smaller city local papers letter columns are FUN. The issues are much more personal Despite my tongue in cheek statement above I don't ever participate, but I enjoy sitting back and watching the fur fly ) to this kid asking him if his mother's car is part of that queue as she takes him to the school three blocks away, his extra-curricular activities, the store clean across town he HAS to go to today and probably again tomorrow too, etc etc. This town is as flat as a pancake and it has bike lanes everywhere. There's no excuse for a kid to be ferried around to places within reasonable biking distance.

I also feel that people should be encouraged to bike or walk to work, if it is practical. I would bike to work except there's nowhere ( and I looked! ) to lock up my bike. We have a company gym so I can rinse off if needed. In summer I get more sweaty driving a car than riding a bike anyway, with my whole back stuck to the seat ( I don't run the aircon all the time and especially not on short trips. And I get stuck to the seat even when it does run! 100F is 100F ).

Anyway, enough yodeling, I have to get my pontificating butt to the shower, and then to work

*hugs yov*

[Maria]

Maria,
Rule #1 - If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to quit digging.

I think people aren't going to quit polluting until we run out of fossil fuels. It's best to have a contingency plan in place for damage control.

[Primula Baggins]

Reducing sunlight to counteract greenhouse gases is like taking a patient with a high fever because of a raging infection and putting him in a bathtub full of ice. It makes no sense to me to treat the symptoms rather than the disease. I think that at least some of the people floating these ideas right now (including the Bush administration) are doing it to increase our complacency about the status quo—"Oh, good, something can be done about this later that doesn't involve any sacrifice on my part."

[Inanna]

Prim, I agree with you... though I do feel that the Scientists mean well, I am worried about meddling even more into a system whose workings we still do not understand.

[Jnyusa]

also, I don't really like the practice of posting links anyway.

We cross-posted earlier, so belated apologies for posting nothing but links. However, there has to be a starting point for any discussion. For example, does Lord M. know what the carbon cycle is? Should that be the starting point? What data does he find problematic? What counter-arguments does he find convincing?

I don't think anyone here has the time to write a dissertation summarizing 50 years of research into something as complicated as climate change.

To the topic, I think there are two approaches to this issue that get thrown together because there is so much overlap between them, and this makes the issue sound more rhetorical than it really is.

The first approach comes from the natural scientists - the atmospheric chemists and geologists and such. They are measuring things of interest to them, noting changes, and attempting to find causal explanations. Iirc, research into the topic that is now known as global climate change began with government-funded studies of the 1960s into the effect of supersonic transport emissions on stratospheric ozone. The government was also interested at that time in the potential for weather manipulation as a weapon. No one was asking, at that point, whether deforestation in the Amazon would increase the severity of hurricanes in the Caribbean. Research evolved as it did, into the relationship between other human activities and global climate, because of the evidence coming in from other fields.

The second approach comes from the social scientists, who are looking at human activity and human problems and asking what their long-range effects will be on culture, economy, etc. The studies of rainfall distribution that I mentioned earlier came from agroforesters deciphering an economic problem, not meteorologists deciphering a weather phenomenon. When I was working in Nicaragua it was of great interest to me to hear from locals what was happening to their water sources, even though I have no training whatsoever in meteorology or geology or whatever field it is that studies the fluid mechanics of aquifers. Water is an economic resource, and so is timber and so is the living tree, so I had to walk to the edge of my discipline and read the journals that covered those issues where the boundaries meet, and then go and explain to funding organizations that the locals who complain about disappearing water are not just superstitious or uninformed about the science of water or exaggerating in their accounts. And then get those organizations to include environmental remediation in their development projects.

What happened is that the conclusions of these various disciplines started to meet in the middle. The causes that atmospheric scientists were positing were social science's observable events. The effects that the social sciences were positing were chemists' observable events. But it takes time for disciplines to dovetail and begin comparing their models and results. When it does come together it comes together with a big thwak, and a new discipline may be created and the public may start to be aware of it and to debate it, especially if there are political implications as there are with this issue. I would put the 'thwak' of global climate change in the mid-1980s, even though the pieces of the puzzle all existed in various disciplines long before that.

When the disciplines dovetail, you also get models that conflict with one another, and if this issue is politicized the contradictions get exploited by self-interested parties.

For example, one of the things that regulates the temperature of earth's atmosphere is its albedo - reflectivity based on darkness or lightness of the surface. Albedo is measured (I think) by cosmologists, and maybe by meteorologists too. Anyway, the models that look at the albedo from outer space suggest that forest cover heats the earth, because forest canopy is darker than the surrounding area. So you get industry funded papers that point to the albedo and argue that deforestation can't contribute to global warming because removing forest cover increases the albedo and this cools the earth. (This is the sort of argument that allows morons like Ronald Reagan to say that trees cause air pollution.)

Everyone who lives on the surface of the earth knows that it's cooler in a forest than in a city or on a plain. Trees have a cooling effect, not a heating effect. This is an observable event, and measurable. Urban areas are, on average, ten degrees hotter than their surrounding suburbs. The effect of this differential on property values, electric bills, health costs, etc. is also measurable. Dozens of meta-studies (summarizing hundreds of individual studies) have been published at this point confirming these effects from tree cover. Cites do have the lowest albedo, so one would expect them to be hotter than suburbs based on this measure, but trees cool pastureland as well as cities, so they are doing something else that trumps their effect on the albedo. They are sequestering carbon dioxide, they're transpiring water vapor, and if the forest expanse is vast their transpiration creates a microclimate of cloud cover that has higher albedo than the surrounding area. Large forests also form pockets of low barometric pressure that influence weather patterns in surrounding areas, hence the likely relationship betwen Amazonian deforestation and weather patterns in other Caribbean countries.

You have to start with the observable event and adjust the models accordingly, not argue from the model that what you observe to be happening can't possibly be happening.

My 'rhetorical' position, if you will, coming from a social science perspective, is that human activity puts ~ 6 billion tons of carbon matter into the air every year and only half of it gets sequestered. We are steadily reducing the sequestration capability of the earth by eliminating wetlands, killing boreal forests with pollution, and logging tropical rainforests - the three ecosystems with the highest sequestration value. Deforestation can be demonstrated to cause seasonal changes in rainfall that are detrimental to agriculture ... even to such details as the difference in beef and milk yields between cattle given tree cover and cattle denied tree cover; it can be demonstrated to cause capillary water sources to disappear and river levels to drop significantly - another hit on agricultural productivity; it can be demonstrated to cause erosion, mudslides, increased storm damage and a host of other ecological/economic effects.

This human activity is happening. If it has not yet caused globalized changes in productivity via climate change, it soon will. It does not interest me that atmospheric chemists may be arguing about the difference between satellite measures and surface measures, or the difference between ice core measures from one place and those from another, or whether the secular trend would have risen with or without human activity and by how much. I observe a causal mechanism at work and I deduce that its effects will be globalized if extrapolated into the future, like the busywork of earthworms who create a grain of dirt at a time but over the centuries build tons of topsoil that change the potential of the whole planet. The fact that the majority of atmospheric scientists are coming at this issue from the opposite direction but drawing the same conclusions reinforces my opinion. Yes, it makes me disregard those who wish to quibble over the exact slope of the secular trend, and when I see that most of them are funded by self-interested industries, then I disregard them altogether.

The purpose of the debate, in my opinion, is to make casual observers think that there is a debate. That, I believe, is what Ang means when he says that its only purpose is to plant a seed of doubt and postpone action.

There is no debate whether human activity changes climate. It can, it does, and it will. The only legitimate questions have to do with costs and benefits, not with facticity. What percentage of the measured 1 degree C. change we've seen so far might be attributed to human activity alone is not relevant to questions of regulation or to treaties like the Montreal or Kyoto Protocols. We involve ourselves in regulation and remediation not because some atmsopheric chemist has proven that the earth would be half a degree cooler if there had been no industrial revolution 250 years ago but because we can extrapolate into the future the negative effects of human activity that we observe today.

Jn

[yovargas]

Prim, I agree with you... though I do feel that the Scientists mean well, I am worried about meddling even more into a system whose workings we still do not understand.

But isn't that the point? Aren't the environmentalists saying that we do understand and that we do know what is causing it and we do know how to stop it?

[axordil]

yovargas--
There is a difference between changing a variable one knows is involved and adding a new one. Both have risks, but adding a new variable is usually riskier in the long run, because you run head on into unintended consequences. As The Simpsons put it: "The gorillas die off in the winter." One hopes.

[vison]

One thing frightens me more than global warming and that is "scientists who know how to stop it".

No, they don't.

One sure thing that can be done is to reduce emissions. But any talk of "doing something" by shading the earth with a big umbrella ---- I'm not ridiculing the idea as being "silly", I'm terrified someone is going to do it.

We simply do not know enough about this to meddle more than we have done.

Every now and again I think of 12 September 2001. I think of a president who said, "My fellow Americans, we are at war. Today we begin the battle to reduce our dependency on foreign oil - on any non-renewable resource. We seek a self-sufficient, energy efficient America. And the Saudis can go screw themselves."

Then I think, jeez, I gotta stop doing LSD for breakfast . . .

[Inanna]

I don't think so... the environmentalists are saying that this *should* help. And as you will dig deeper you will find camps, assumptions, results not yet significant and what not.

Consider how bad we still are at predicting weather, after the amount of money, research and time that has gone into it. I find that a kind of proof that we don't know.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Jn, it's so good to have you back.

[Angbasdil]

Faramond,

I find it ironic that in one post you complain about my close-minded and prejudicial mindset toward global warming, and in the next post admit to having a close-minded and prejudicial mindset toward me. It's clear that you,ve made your mind up about who I am and what I'm about, and that any productive discussion between us is impossible unless I first manage to convince you that I'm not who you think I am. And I really have no desire to do that.

As I said in my first post, this thread shouldn't be about me and what I think. I'm just a moron with an internet connection. What the hell do I know about global warming? Nor am I really concerned with what you think. AFAIK, you're as much of moron as I am. What his thread should be about is what people who actually know something think.

When I first started looking at this issue, one of the first things I figured out was that climatology is really really complicated. And I am absolutely unqualified to draw any scientific conclusions on the subject. But there are people who have devoted decades to studying the issue, and they understand it better than I do.

Another thing that should be pointed out is that if you're looking for unanimity, you're not gonna find it. Science just doesn't work that way. Nor are you gonna find absolute certainty with no conflicting or contary evidence. Science doesn't work that way either. There will always be some doubt, some contrary evidence, some level of doubt. But when a scientist decides that the evidence one way outweighs the evidence the other way to the extent that there is enough certainty to take a position, he calls the evidence "conclusive" and moves forward as if it were true. And when enough scientists agree, the rest of us need to move forward with them.

On the issue of global warming, such a consensus has been reached. The scientific community, as a whole, has stopped debating whether the problem exists and have moved on to trying to actually solving the damn problem. And I've decided to do the same. Yesterday, when I said I'd look at whatever evidence you had, I meant it. But I've since decided that I need to be done with this discussion. Maybe that means that I've now become the close-minded overzealous liberal boogeyman that you thought I was all along. I can live with that. But I simply have nothing further to add to that aspect of the discussion. I'll leave thatt to those who are more reasonable and patient than I. I'd rather talk about solutions.

Speaking of reasonable and patient people, Prim would like to see those links of yours. Yeah, I won't bother to read them, but Primmy's practically aquiver with anticipation for them.

PS. to Griffy:
I really like what you've said in this thread, and I want to respond. Like I said, I want to move on to ideas about solutions. I'll post something about that once I've gathered my thoughts.

[Túrin Turambar]

Random note - thanks for the help, but I'm still reading everyone's links. If I have any outstanding questions I'll post them when I'm finished.

[Túrin Turambar]

Alright, I’ve assessed some of the skeptics’ claims.

This article was posted at TORC. Anyone have an opinion? As a side note, the people running the site are in the pay of Exxon-Mobil, but I’d like something more substantial than that before I dismiss their claims.

This has all led me to wonder about the causes of climate change. Throughout most of its history, the earth has been much warmer than it is now. For millions of years there were forests around the South Pole. What causes such massive variations in global temperature? I’m starting to suspect that humans have caused more climate change through deforestation than pollution.

Finally, what I really need is a clear indication that the earth is now warming significantly faster than usual.

Still working through Jny’s links atm.

[axordil]

Just a note--either the vertical graph on that site is not linear in scale at the bottom, or it's just truncated because of lack of data (my guess). The Precambrian is longer than the rest of the periods put together.

Once you get to the very long time scales you mention, L_M, the eccentricity of the orbit and the fluctuating angle of the earth's axis of rotation become major factors. These vary over many millions of years, and obviously can change the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth, and how it is distributed seasonally. Tectonic activity is also a factor: as the plates drift, ocean currents (such as the deep ocean conveyor, or which the Gulf Stream is one small part) can be redirected or even blocked over time.

In terms of effects on the biosphere, and on humanity, the extremity of climate between the polar and tropical zones is perhaps even more important than overall temperature. Again, here the angle of the axis AND the distribution of heat via the ocean are important.

[Primula Baggins]

Another factor is that the sun itself fluctuates in energy output by as much as 0.5%.

"Usual" is hard to define, L_M. Warming faster than is usual over what time scale?

Another factor: major vulcanism and large meteor impacts. These can affect climate for thousands of years.

All this, the natural causes of warming and cooling and their causes in the past, is interesting, but I still don't see how it lets us off the hook to do anything about the warming we most definitely have right now. Even if the manmade warming is being exacerbated by natural processes (I don't know), when Bangladesh and the Gulf Coast and southern Florida disappear under water and when the Gulf Stream shuts down, does it matter if it's all our fault or only half our fault? Why shouldn't we try to prevent it, or at least slow it down so people have time to plan and adapt?

(I know—it will be expensive. But we as a society spend an awful lot of money on health care to save individual human lives. Aren't humans' lives and well-being in the mass also worth saving?)

[Angbasdil]

Lord M,
You started this thread in order to discuss whether global warming is real. But there is a discussion developing in this thread concerning what should be done about it. We might be better off discussing that in another thread, since it's not quite the same topic. OTOH, there's a lot of overlap between the two, so maybe we should keep it all in one thread.

Since you started this thread, I thought I'd ask you before I post my thoughts on the subject. Do you want us to discuss possible solutions to global warming here, or in another thread?

[Túrin Turambar]

"Usual" is hard to define, L_M. Warming faster than is usual over what time scale?

In absolute terms.

Lord M,
You started this thread in order to discuss whether global warming is real. But there is a discussion developing in this thread concerning what should be done about it. We might be better off discussing that in another thread, since it's not quite the same topic. OTOH, there's a lot of overlap between the two, so maybe we should keep it all in one thread.

I’m in favour of leaving it here – the solution will directly reflect the cause.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm in favor of leaving it here, too, and given my reputation of being too quick to split threads, that is saying something.

Today on NPR's Talk of the Nation, they had a guest named Jonah Goldberg, an LA Times columnish and editor of the National Review, who's position is basically that we can't afford to fight global warming. I don't agree with him, and I think his understanding of the relevant science is even less then mine is, but he does make some interesting points political and economic points. Here is his LA Times column on the issue:

Global cooling costs too much
What would you prefer -- increase temperatures by less than a degree, or give up all the world's wealth?
February 8, 2007


PUBLIC POLICY is all about trade-offs. Economists understand this better than politicians because voters want to have their cake and eat it too, and politicians think whatever is popular must also be true.

Economists understand that if we put a chicken in every pot, it might cost us an aircraft carrier or a hospital. We can build a hospital, but it might come at the expense of a little patch of forest. We can protect a wetland, but that will make a new school more expensive.

You get it already. But let me just add that in the great scheme of trade-offs in the history of humanity, never has there been a better one than trading a tiny amount of global warming for a massive amount of global prosperity. The Earth got about 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer in the 20th century while it increased its GDP by 1,800%, by one estimate. How much of that 0.7 degrees can be laid at the feet of that 1,800% is unknowable, but let's stipulate that all of the warming was the result of our prosperity and that this warming is in fact indisputably bad (which is hardly obvious). That's still an amazing bargain. Life spans in the United States nearly doubled (from 44 to 77 years). Literacy, medicine, leisure and even, in many respects, the environment have improved mightily over the course of the 20th century, at least in the prosperous West.

Given the option of getting another 1,800% richer in exchange for another 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer, I'd take the heat in a heartbeat. Of course, warming might get more expensive for us. (And we might do a lot better than 1,800% too.) There are tipping points in every sphere of life, and what cost us little in the 20th century could cost us enormously in the 21st — at least that's what we're told. And boy, are we told. Al Gore has a new incarnation as the host of an apocalyptic infomercial on the subject, complete with fancy renderings of New York City underwater.

Skeptics like me are heckled for calling attention to the fear-mongering that suffuses global warming activism. But the simple fact is that the activists need to hype the threat, and not just because that's what the media demand of them. Their proposed remedies cost so much money — bidding starts at 1% of global GDP a year and rises quickly — they have to ratchet up the fear factor just to get the conversation started.

Even so, the costs are just too high for too little payoff. Even if the Kyoto Protocol were put into effect tomorrow — a total impossibility — we'd barely affect global warming. Jerry Mahlman of the National Center for Atmospheric Research speculated in Science magazine that "it might take another 30 Kyotos over the next century" to beat back global warming.

Thirty Kyotos! That's going to be tough considering that China alone plans on building an additional 2,200 coal plants by 2030. Oh, but because China (like India) is exempt from Kyoto as a developing country, the West will just have to reduce its own emissions even more.

A more persuasive cost-benefit analysis hinges not on prophecies of environmental doom but on geopolitics. We buy too much oil from places we shouldn't, which makes us dependent on nasty regimes and makes those regimes nastier. Environmentalists like to claim the "energy independence" issue, but it's not a neat fit. We could be energy independent soon enough with coal and nuclear power. But coal contributes to global warming, and nuclear power is icky. So, instead, we're going to massively subsidize the government-brewed moonshine called ethanol. Here again, the benefits barely outweigh the costs. Ethanol requires almost as much energy to make as it provides, and the costs to the environment and the economy may be staggering.

Frankly, I don't think the trade-off is worth it — yet. The history of capitalism and technology tells us that what starts out expensive and arduous becomes cheap and easy over time. Lewis and Clark took months to do what a truck carrying Tickle-Me Elmos does every week. Technology 10 years from now could solve global warming at a fraction of today's costs. What technologies? I don't know. Maybe fusion. Maybe hydrogen. Maybe we'll harness the perpetual motion of Sen. Joe Biden's mouth.

The fact is we can't afford to fix global warming right now — in part because poor countries want to get rich too. And rich countries, where the global warming debate is settled, are finding even the first of 30 Kyotos too fiscally onerous. There are no solutions in the realm of the politically possible. So why throw trillions of dollars into "remedies" that even their proponents concede won't solve the problem?