I wrote a guest column for the B-Green Collaborative that appeared on 10/19/2009: http://www.bgrncol.com/why-we-should-be-very-worried/
I'm curious what people think. If anyone has feedback, you can leave comments there, or here.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Can You Imagine?
Think about someone you love very much, maybe a child, spouse, or very close friend. Imagine what you would feel like if that person was in danger, say of drowning or being hit by a car. If you saw such a situation, you would try to save that person, right? Now imagine you tried to save them, but you were too late. How would you feel? And if your loved one’s death was preceded by immense suffering, wouldn’t that be even worse?
It’s not fun to even imagine those feelings, so why did I ask you to do it? Global warming is real, but it doesn’t seem real to us, even though we can see ample evidence even in these early stages. If it gets out of control, I think that people in the future will suffer enormously from hunger and many other afflictions and that many, possibly most of them will die because of it. It seems to be very difficult for most people to understand this even intellectually, and almost impossible to confront it emotionally. But because we are not confronting it, we are allowing it to happen. And that is why I want everyone to not just think about it, but also to feel it. Maybe then we will get serious about stopping it.
Of course there are all kinds of arguments going on about this subject, and there is still quite a bit of uncertainty with the models and predictions. I was pretty sure the models were too optimistic, because they didn’t take feedback into account, and they couldn’t reproduce the quickness or severity of changes in the past.
So let’s forget about the models and predictions for now, and just consider this. Scientists have been able to measure both the temperature and the CO2 levels of the past, and they correlate extremely well. In other words, when the CO2 level goes up, the temperature goes up, and when the temperature goes up, the CO2 level goes up. It doesn’t matter which comes first, and the more one goes up, the more the other goes up. That has been pretty firmly established. The values have been measured in more than one way, and they show the same thing. Until this year, ice core data was the best way to take these measurements from the distant past, and we had the numbers going back around 800,000 years. But at no time in that period were CO2 levels as high as they are now. Scientists have known this for years, and I don’t know why this didn’t worry more people.
In any case, this year scientists have discovered a way to take measurements going back much further. These new measurements match the ice core measurements during the same time period, so that means they are just as reliable. The new measurements show that the last time the CO2 level in the atmosphere was this high for an extended period of time was about 15 million years ago. At that time, global temperature was 5 to 10 degrees F higher than now, and sea level was 75 to 120 feet higher. See this article from ScienceDaily on the paper whose lead author is Aradhna Tripati.
It takes some time for temperature to catch up with CO2 levels, but unless the world behaves differently now than it has over the last few million years, the temperature should get approximately that high again if CO2 levels remain where they are. Sea level rises even slower, but eventually it should rise that much. This is much, much worse than the models that the IPCC based its estimates on, and governments are supposedly basing their policies on the IPCC estimates. But what would you trust more, estimates from models that don’t take feedback into account, or what actually happened in the past? I trust our ability to measure the past much more than our ability to predict the future.
Do you know how high about sea level you live? If you happen to live more than 120 feet above sea level, you wouldn’t have to worry about rising sea levels, but most people don’t live at elevations that high. All those people will have to migrate to other locations. All those cities, all those ports, even entire countries will be under water. So many lives will be destroyed. It may take a few hundred years, but still, do we want to cause that?
The temperature rise will happen much faster, and the consequences of it going that high are difficult to comprehend. I think the worst of the early consequence will be famine on a scale that has never happened before. Deserts will expand dramatically, and drought conditions will occur where most food is grown today. Probably the only productive food growing areas will be in places like northern Canada and Siberia, but they could never feed the entire world. The soil is poor, for one thing, and severe weather events would probably regularly destroy crops. There will be virtually no fish left because they depend on corals or plankton, which will disappear, and we are overfishing them to extinction anyway. I don’t see any way to avoid mega-famines until the human population is reduced to a size the new climate can support. I also don’t see how the systems we rely on (economic, governmental, and so on) could survive so many disastrous changes, and I would be surprised if civilization survives the stress.
I don’t know when all this will happen, but I’m pretty sure the food shortages will begin to happen in your children’s lifetime (your lifetime if you aren’t too old), and I think famines will be common in your grandchildren’s lifetime, if not sooner. That is why I asked you to imagine what you would feel like if a loved one had to suffer and die. Does the fact that this will happen in the future make it any less real or any less sad? And if you don’t care about the suffering and deaths of so many people, maybe you will care about the mass extinctions that will occur, or that it will take hundreds of thousands of years for biodiversity to recover.
You might think the fact that the consequences will mainly happen in the future means we have time, but you would be wrong. We are not yet feeling the full effects of the emissions released in our grandparents’ time. The situation is not completely hopeless yet, but I am convinced that the only way we can avoid a horrible future for our children and those who will be born later is for every government and every citizen to treat this as seriously as if they are in the middle of a world war. We can’t put this off any longer, because each year we wait the task gets much more difficult, and soon it will be beyond our capability to stop. I fear this point will occur very soon, but unfortunately we won’t know until years later. So I can’t prove it. But do we want to take that chance?
Our leaders will not do what is needed on their own. That is obvious now. Even the most enlightened are still relying on the older science, the faulty models and predictions. They are also hampered by special interests, and perhaps by a lack of understanding. I have only heard of one country so far that has pledged to do what even those optimistic models suggest is necessary. Only one! And remember, even that is not nearly enough if you are relying on the reality of the past instead of predictions of the future.
The United States Congress seems to be trying to fool people into believing they are doing enough, but they are not even close. If you doubt me, read on.
Box 13.7 on page 776 of the 2007 WG3 report from the IPCC indicates that industrialized (Annex I) nations need to reduce emissions 80–95% below 1990 levels by 2050 to keep GHG emissions to 450 ppm. If developing countries were not also reducing their emissions, and so far they have not pledged to do so, then industrialized nations would have to reduce their emissions even more. But the current bills aim to reduce emissions 80% below 2005 levels by 2050. This would be at the low end of the range even if they were using a 1990 baseline, but they are using a 2005 baseline, meaning they aren’t planning to reduce emissions even close to the minimum amount that the over-optimistic models say is needed!
And to make things worse, those models say industrialized nations also need to reduce emissions 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020. If they don’t, then the 80-95% reductions would not be enough. So how much is Congress currently aiming to reduce emissions by 2020? They say 17% (House version) to 20% (Senate version) below 2005 levels. According to William Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Change Project, the House bill would only reduce emissions 3.6% below 1990 levels by 2020 (so that must be equivalent to 17% below 2005 levels). The Senate bill doesn’t reduce emissions much more (4.2% below 1990 levels, if my math is correct). So their near-term reductions are woefully short of what is needed, even if the models were not way too optimistic. And that makes the 2050 targets even further off the mark.
If you can imagine your descendents living (or dying) in this future world, you must wish you could do something about it. So what can we do? Individual people or grassroots groups can’t make the necessary changes on our own, definitely not quickly enough. Only government has the resources and power. Therefore the only answer is to force our governments to do their duty to protect us and our descendants. We need to behave as if the lives of our loved ones were in danger, because they will be in danger. I wish I knew of a magic bullet, but I don’t. All I can say is email, write, call, and visit every government representative you can, and tell them they must do 10 times what they are currently considering, and they must do it 10 times sooner. Tell them they need to act as if the country was under a more dire threat than in WWII, because it is. Tell them you don’t mind paying more for gas and oil for a while in order to prevent your children and grandchildren from starving. And join as many actions as you can, such as the 10/24 actions being organized by http://www.350.org/. Write letters to the editor. Call the talk shows and ask them why they keep ignoring the most serious and urgent issue of our time. Talk to your friends and relatives, educate them. Don’t be afraid, don’t delay. Act like your kid’s life depended on it. And if you have any other ideas, write a comment below so others can see it. We can do this, but only if we take the threat as seriously as it deserves and do it now.
(To see what other blogs are saying about this subject, Visit http://www.blogactionday.org/, and click “Who’s Participating?”)
It’s not fun to even imagine those feelings, so why did I ask you to do it? Global warming is real, but it doesn’t seem real to us, even though we can see ample evidence even in these early stages. If it gets out of control, I think that people in the future will suffer enormously from hunger and many other afflictions and that many, possibly most of them will die because of it. It seems to be very difficult for most people to understand this even intellectually, and almost impossible to confront it emotionally. But because we are not confronting it, we are allowing it to happen. And that is why I want everyone to not just think about it, but also to feel it. Maybe then we will get serious about stopping it.
Of course there are all kinds of arguments going on about this subject, and there is still quite a bit of uncertainty with the models and predictions. I was pretty sure the models were too optimistic, because they didn’t take feedback into account, and they couldn’t reproduce the quickness or severity of changes in the past.
So let’s forget about the models and predictions for now, and just consider this. Scientists have been able to measure both the temperature and the CO2 levels of the past, and they correlate extremely well. In other words, when the CO2 level goes up, the temperature goes up, and when the temperature goes up, the CO2 level goes up. It doesn’t matter which comes first, and the more one goes up, the more the other goes up. That has been pretty firmly established. The values have been measured in more than one way, and they show the same thing. Until this year, ice core data was the best way to take these measurements from the distant past, and we had the numbers going back around 800,000 years. But at no time in that period were CO2 levels as high as they are now. Scientists have known this for years, and I don’t know why this didn’t worry more people.
In any case, this year scientists have discovered a way to take measurements going back much further. These new measurements match the ice core measurements during the same time period, so that means they are just as reliable. The new measurements show that the last time the CO2 level in the atmosphere was this high for an extended period of time was about 15 million years ago. At that time, global temperature was 5 to 10 degrees F higher than now, and sea level was 75 to 120 feet higher. See this article from ScienceDaily on the paper whose lead author is Aradhna Tripati.
It takes some time for temperature to catch up with CO2 levels, but unless the world behaves differently now than it has over the last few million years, the temperature should get approximately that high again if CO2 levels remain where they are. Sea level rises even slower, but eventually it should rise that much. This is much, much worse than the models that the IPCC based its estimates on, and governments are supposedly basing their policies on the IPCC estimates. But what would you trust more, estimates from models that don’t take feedback into account, or what actually happened in the past? I trust our ability to measure the past much more than our ability to predict the future.
Do you know how high about sea level you live? If you happen to live more than 120 feet above sea level, you wouldn’t have to worry about rising sea levels, but most people don’t live at elevations that high. All those people will have to migrate to other locations. All those cities, all those ports, even entire countries will be under water. So many lives will be destroyed. It may take a few hundred years, but still, do we want to cause that?
The temperature rise will happen much faster, and the consequences of it going that high are difficult to comprehend. I think the worst of the early consequence will be famine on a scale that has never happened before. Deserts will expand dramatically, and drought conditions will occur where most food is grown today. Probably the only productive food growing areas will be in places like northern Canada and Siberia, but they could never feed the entire world. The soil is poor, for one thing, and severe weather events would probably regularly destroy crops. There will be virtually no fish left because they depend on corals or plankton, which will disappear, and we are overfishing them to extinction anyway. I don’t see any way to avoid mega-famines until the human population is reduced to a size the new climate can support. I also don’t see how the systems we rely on (economic, governmental, and so on) could survive so many disastrous changes, and I would be surprised if civilization survives the stress.
I don’t know when all this will happen, but I’m pretty sure the food shortages will begin to happen in your children’s lifetime (your lifetime if you aren’t too old), and I think famines will be common in your grandchildren’s lifetime, if not sooner. That is why I asked you to imagine what you would feel like if a loved one had to suffer and die. Does the fact that this will happen in the future make it any less real or any less sad? And if you don’t care about the suffering and deaths of so many people, maybe you will care about the mass extinctions that will occur, or that it will take hundreds of thousands of years for biodiversity to recover.
You might think the fact that the consequences will mainly happen in the future means we have time, but you would be wrong. We are not yet feeling the full effects of the emissions released in our grandparents’ time. The situation is not completely hopeless yet, but I am convinced that the only way we can avoid a horrible future for our children and those who will be born later is for every government and every citizen to treat this as seriously as if they are in the middle of a world war. We can’t put this off any longer, because each year we wait the task gets much more difficult, and soon it will be beyond our capability to stop. I fear this point will occur very soon, but unfortunately we won’t know until years later. So I can’t prove it. But do we want to take that chance?
Our leaders will not do what is needed on their own. That is obvious now. Even the most enlightened are still relying on the older science, the faulty models and predictions. They are also hampered by special interests, and perhaps by a lack of understanding. I have only heard of one country so far that has pledged to do what even those optimistic models suggest is necessary. Only one! And remember, even that is not nearly enough if you are relying on the reality of the past instead of predictions of the future.
The United States Congress seems to be trying to fool people into believing they are doing enough, but they are not even close. If you doubt me, read on.
Box 13.7 on page 776 of the 2007 WG3 report from the IPCC indicates that industrialized (Annex I) nations need to reduce emissions 80–95% below 1990 levels by 2050 to keep GHG emissions to 450 ppm. If developing countries were not also reducing their emissions, and so far they have not pledged to do so, then industrialized nations would have to reduce their emissions even more. But the current bills aim to reduce emissions 80% below 2005 levels by 2050. This would be at the low end of the range even if they were using a 1990 baseline, but they are using a 2005 baseline, meaning they aren’t planning to reduce emissions even close to the minimum amount that the over-optimistic models say is needed!
And to make things worse, those models say industrialized nations also need to reduce emissions 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020. If they don’t, then the 80-95% reductions would not be enough. So how much is Congress currently aiming to reduce emissions by 2020? They say 17% (House version) to 20% (Senate version) below 2005 levels. According to William Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Change Project, the House bill would only reduce emissions 3.6% below 1990 levels by 2020 (so that must be equivalent to 17% below 2005 levels). The Senate bill doesn’t reduce emissions much more (4.2% below 1990 levels, if my math is correct). So their near-term reductions are woefully short of what is needed, even if the models were not way too optimistic. And that makes the 2050 targets even further off the mark.
If you can imagine your descendents living (or dying) in this future world, you must wish you could do something about it. So what can we do? Individual people or grassroots groups can’t make the necessary changes on our own, definitely not quickly enough. Only government has the resources and power. Therefore the only answer is to force our governments to do their duty to protect us and our descendants. We need to behave as if the lives of our loved ones were in danger, because they will be in danger. I wish I knew of a magic bullet, but I don’t. All I can say is email, write, call, and visit every government representative you can, and tell them they must do 10 times what they are currently considering, and they must do it 10 times sooner. Tell them they need to act as if the country was under a more dire threat than in WWII, because it is. Tell them you don’t mind paying more for gas and oil for a while in order to prevent your children and grandchildren from starving. And join as many actions as you can, such as the 10/24 actions being organized by http://www.350.org/. Write letters to the editor. Call the talk shows and ask them why they keep ignoring the most serious and urgent issue of our time. Talk to your friends and relatives, educate them. Don’t be afraid, don’t delay. Act like your kid’s life depended on it. And if you have any other ideas, write a comment below so others can see it. We can do this, but only if we take the threat as seriously as it deserves and do it now.
(To see what other blogs are saying about this subject, Visit http://www.blogactionday.org/, and click “Who’s Participating?”)
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Responsibility
In my last posting I wrote about some of the types of global warming denial I have seen. I think that often these are ways of avoiding unpleasant thoughts or feelings. But they are also ways of avoiding responsibility.
Many of the absolute deniers probably know at some level that if they admitted global warming was real and that humans are causing it, they might feel some responsibility to do something about it. I’m sure most don’t want to believe that the people they have been following have been wrong or that many have been intentionally misleading them. I think most of these people will never change their views, much less take on the responsibility of fighting global warming voluntarily. And unfortunately there are many people in this category.
Even if I thought the chances of global warming having the bad effects that scientists predict was small, as many people in the United States do, I would not want to take the risk unless I had to. We don’t have to take that risk, so why do so many people behave as if they want to? Every person who denies global warming or avoids it or does nothing is acting as if they want to take the risk. Based on the past successes of science, I’d say the chances are not very good that the vast majority of climate scientists are completely wrong. I know that some people are just confused by the misinformation being spread by others, so maybe I shouldn’t judge them too harshly. But their confusion doesn’t make the results any less dangerous to us all. And those who are intentionally misleading people are guilty of the worst crime.
The willfully ignorant often know on some level that it would be better not to ignore the subject. You can get away with ignoring many unpleasant things, but you ignore others at your own peril, and often the peril of others. Many people avoid going to the doctor when something is wrong because they are afraid of what they might find out. But it is almost always easier to deal with a medical problem if you catch it early. Ignoring a major problem like cancer is only going to make treating it more difficult and painful, or impossible if you wait too long, and it will affect not just you but everyone who cares about you or depends on you. I think everyone should learn at least enough to know what needs to be done, and then do what they can to help.
The people who don’t know how bad things could get or how urgent the situation is also need to learn more. Otherwise they will continue to think other problems should have priority. This includes the vast majority of liberals and even many environmentalists. Influential people like talk show hosts, commentators, bloggers, politicians, and other leaders have a special obligation to put important issues into perspective. Global warming is the most important issue for many reasons, but my best argument is that if it goes out of control, none of the other issues will matter any more. If you doubt this, read “Six Degrees” and really think about the implications of what the scientists predict. It’s not just that people living on the coast will have to move inland, it’s also that droughts, encroaching deserts, and melted glaciers will make food and water scarce worldwide, severe weather events will become common, diseases will spread, mass extinctions will occur, wars and conflicts will arise as people fight for resources, and so on. When all these things happen at the same time, I think the economy would inevitably collapse, along with most other systems we rely on and take for granted. Think about every issue that you think is more important than global warming, and ask yourself whether it will be relevant in a world like that. Don’t ignore other issues, of course, just give global warming the importance it deserves.
The head of the IPCC said recently that the minimum we must do is have emissions peak by 2015 and fall rapidly after that to 85% by 2050. Their reports also seem to indicate emissions need to fall 25-40% by 2020. This is projected to make the peak temperature 2.0 – 2.4 degrees C above preindustrial levels. A recent model says we need to reduce emissions 95% by 2020 to keep temperatures to 2.0 degrees C below preindustrial levels. I do not know which is closer to the truth, but my guess would be that it’s somewhere between those two estimates. In order to accomplish either, we have to make massive changes in a very short period of time. That means we have to start now just to have a chance of being successful. How could it be any more urgent?
I hope that the question in your mind now is, “What can I do?” The people most likely to survive cancer are the fighters, the ones who not only get all the information they can from the experts but who take the recommended actions and even do more. We need all the fighters we can get, and we need to fight on many levels.
One obvious level is to try to reduce your personal carbon footprint. Many people are already doing this, but most of us could do more. Still, as important as your personal carbon footprint is, it is not the most important thing you could do right now.
Communication is another important thing you can do, but it is not enough either. Many people have been talking and writing about global warming for years, and look where it has gotten us. The situation is way worse than ever before. Also, there are many people and organizations spreading misinformation and blocking progress any way they can. They are doing a very good job of making vast numbers of people think global warming is a hoax and have stalled meaningful action in this country for decades.
So communication and reducing your own footprint are both necessary, but it will take more to solve this problem quickly enough. The most important thing is to do whatever you can to influence your government, especially at the national level, to take aggressive action without delay. Government action is the most important right now, and it will get you the most bang for the buck.
This is such an important point that I want to explain my reasoning. A friend of mine said that the only solution is for each individual to do their part and that government can’t solve the problem. I would agree if I thought everybody would buy an electric vehicle and a solar panel big enough to supply all their needs, only buy locally grown food and locally made products, never buy any manufactured goods, and never fly, invest only in green companies, and so on. But do you even know one person who does all that? To think everyone will do this voluntarily is a fantasy, not a solution. The system as it exists now makes it almost impossible for people to do enough, even if they want to (and many do not want to). Electric cars and solar panels and wind turbines are still way too expensive for the vast majority of people. But if we changed the system in the right ways, we could make it much easier. We could even make it difficult not to do your part instead of difficult to do your part. If the only vehicle you could buy was electric or other zero-emissions vehicles, and if all of our electricity came from zero-emission sources, then it would require no special effort to dramatically reduce your personal carbon footprint. That is the type of changes to the system we need.
I think it is absolutely essential for government to get heavily involved. That doesn’t mean government can or should do everything. The task is so huge that government and other organizations working with individuals is the only solution. But almost no government is close to doing their part yet, so individuals need to push their governments much harder. Right now that is the most important part of each individual’s responsibility. The Copenhagen talks that will happen this December (2009) will set the stage for what happens all over the world for the next several years. I seriously doubt we can wait for the next such meeting. By then we would already be committed to such high temperatures that runaway global warming would be almost certain.
It might help if I compare this to a problem we faced in the past. Would a grassroots effort or personal responsibility have been the appropriate response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and to Germany declaring war on the U.S.? It’s obvious that would not have worked. Even if everyone planted a victory garden and got their handguns and rifles ready, we would have been no match for the opposing armed forces. People may have tried to organize and do more, but it would not have been enough. For example, let’s say someone had the idea to get a bunch of people together to manufacture tanks. Most of the people who would have wanted to help would not have been able to, because they had a family to support, maybe a farm or business to run. And where would the money have come from? What about the expertise? Winning that war required not just personal responsibility, effort, and sacrifice, it also required heavy participation from the government, including ordering people and corporations to do what was needed. Nobody would seriously have considered a volunteer army. The government drafted people, essentially forcing them to fight. Of course many would have volunteered, but not enough, not quickly enough. And in the corporate realm the government had to be just as heavy-handed. For example, the federal government forced the auto companies to stop manufacturing cars and start building jeeps and tanks and other war machinery.
Another thing WWII required that is missing now is leadership appropriate to the task. That brings up the responsibility of the government. Why isn’t the federal government encouraging people to buy climate bonds to help fund the fight to stop global warming? Why aren’t they pouring money into research and recruiting scientists the way they did to create the atom bomb and all the other weapons and war machinery? Why aren’t we racing to a green energy future the way we raced to the moon? Why isn’t Obama using his great oratorical skills and passion to get people fired up about the greatest threat we have ever faced? The task is too great and the time is to short for anything less than an all-out effort such as this. We must all demand that our leaders do their part. That is part of our personal responsibility.
I have not even brought up the responsibility of corporations, because they don’t feel any responsibility that people don’t make them feel, and they think mainly about the short term. But we can influence corporations via petitions, boycotts, and encouraging the government to create rules and regulations that will force corporations to do what is in their own best long-term interests.
In one sense the climate scientists are the heroes of this story. They are the ones who first discovered the problem and have been getting us a clearer picture with every year. But I don’t think most of them are doing enough either. Some are too narrow in their vision to understand the big picture. They don’t think about the implications of their findings, in terms of the lives of people and other living things. Others think they must stick only to the science and stay completely out of policy or opinions of any kind. I think if any person knows something is threatening us all, it is their duty to speak out loudly and clearly. If nobody else is saying what needs to be said, or if the people propagating misinformation are drowning out the truth, you need to say something. Even most scientists who are willing to talk about the future speak in a way that trivializes the dangers. They use terms like “there may be increased pressures on the food supply” instead of “millions, perhaps billions of people could starve”. They will say that what we are doing is “not sustainable” instead of saying that if we don’t make drastic changes, our children or grandchildren may not live to have children of their own. If you are a scientist, those might mean similar things, but to non-scientists they have very different meanings. And it is the non-scientists you need to reach, both the people in power and the citizens. Be more like James Hansen, be more of a human being and talk to your fellow human beings in clear and unambiguous terms.
During WWII, Americans and people in many other countries made great sacrifices and did not make the excuse of being too busy. Many gave their lives, many suffered immensely. I think if people realized this threat is much worse than any war we have yet experienced, they would be willing to do much more. But it doesn’t feel like the threat is so great, because the worst is too far in the future and the problem is too abstract. I don’t feel threatened the way I would during a world war either, but I know the threat is there, and so I keep trying to do more and to think of ways to be more effective. Still, I feel like I am not doing nearly enough. David commented on my previous post that it is difficult to make a difference because of how rotten our system has become. I agree it is more difficult to make a difference now than it was in the 60s, but on the other hand they didn’t have the internet like we do now. Maybe we can take advantage of this amazing tool to get around the obstacles. I often feel like we need something very dramatic to shock people out of their complacency. If anyone has ideas for something dramatic, or any good ideas for solving this problem, please leave a comment.
Many of the absolute deniers probably know at some level that if they admitted global warming was real and that humans are causing it, they might feel some responsibility to do something about it. I’m sure most don’t want to believe that the people they have been following have been wrong or that many have been intentionally misleading them. I think most of these people will never change their views, much less take on the responsibility of fighting global warming voluntarily. And unfortunately there are many people in this category.
Even if I thought the chances of global warming having the bad effects that scientists predict was small, as many people in the United States do, I would not want to take the risk unless I had to. We don’t have to take that risk, so why do so many people behave as if they want to? Every person who denies global warming or avoids it or does nothing is acting as if they want to take the risk. Based on the past successes of science, I’d say the chances are not very good that the vast majority of climate scientists are completely wrong. I know that some people are just confused by the misinformation being spread by others, so maybe I shouldn’t judge them too harshly. But their confusion doesn’t make the results any less dangerous to us all. And those who are intentionally misleading people are guilty of the worst crime.
The willfully ignorant often know on some level that it would be better not to ignore the subject. You can get away with ignoring many unpleasant things, but you ignore others at your own peril, and often the peril of others. Many people avoid going to the doctor when something is wrong because they are afraid of what they might find out. But it is almost always easier to deal with a medical problem if you catch it early. Ignoring a major problem like cancer is only going to make treating it more difficult and painful, or impossible if you wait too long, and it will affect not just you but everyone who cares about you or depends on you. I think everyone should learn at least enough to know what needs to be done, and then do what they can to help.
The people who don’t know how bad things could get or how urgent the situation is also need to learn more. Otherwise they will continue to think other problems should have priority. This includes the vast majority of liberals and even many environmentalists. Influential people like talk show hosts, commentators, bloggers, politicians, and other leaders have a special obligation to put important issues into perspective. Global warming is the most important issue for many reasons, but my best argument is that if it goes out of control, none of the other issues will matter any more. If you doubt this, read “Six Degrees” and really think about the implications of what the scientists predict. It’s not just that people living on the coast will have to move inland, it’s also that droughts, encroaching deserts, and melted glaciers will make food and water scarce worldwide, severe weather events will become common, diseases will spread, mass extinctions will occur, wars and conflicts will arise as people fight for resources, and so on. When all these things happen at the same time, I think the economy would inevitably collapse, along with most other systems we rely on and take for granted. Think about every issue that you think is more important than global warming, and ask yourself whether it will be relevant in a world like that. Don’t ignore other issues, of course, just give global warming the importance it deserves.
The head of the IPCC said recently that the minimum we must do is have emissions peak by 2015 and fall rapidly after that to 85% by 2050. Their reports also seem to indicate emissions need to fall 25-40% by 2020. This is projected to make the peak temperature 2.0 – 2.4 degrees C above preindustrial levels. A recent model says we need to reduce emissions 95% by 2020 to keep temperatures to 2.0 degrees C below preindustrial levels. I do not know which is closer to the truth, but my guess would be that it’s somewhere between those two estimates. In order to accomplish either, we have to make massive changes in a very short period of time. That means we have to start now just to have a chance of being successful. How could it be any more urgent?
I hope that the question in your mind now is, “What can I do?” The people most likely to survive cancer are the fighters, the ones who not only get all the information they can from the experts but who take the recommended actions and even do more. We need all the fighters we can get, and we need to fight on many levels.
One obvious level is to try to reduce your personal carbon footprint. Many people are already doing this, but most of us could do more. Still, as important as your personal carbon footprint is, it is not the most important thing you could do right now.
Communication is another important thing you can do, but it is not enough either. Many people have been talking and writing about global warming for years, and look where it has gotten us. The situation is way worse than ever before. Also, there are many people and organizations spreading misinformation and blocking progress any way they can. They are doing a very good job of making vast numbers of people think global warming is a hoax and have stalled meaningful action in this country for decades.
So communication and reducing your own footprint are both necessary, but it will take more to solve this problem quickly enough. The most important thing is to do whatever you can to influence your government, especially at the national level, to take aggressive action without delay. Government action is the most important right now, and it will get you the most bang for the buck.
This is such an important point that I want to explain my reasoning. A friend of mine said that the only solution is for each individual to do their part and that government can’t solve the problem. I would agree if I thought everybody would buy an electric vehicle and a solar panel big enough to supply all their needs, only buy locally grown food and locally made products, never buy any manufactured goods, and never fly, invest only in green companies, and so on. But do you even know one person who does all that? To think everyone will do this voluntarily is a fantasy, not a solution. The system as it exists now makes it almost impossible for people to do enough, even if they want to (and many do not want to). Electric cars and solar panels and wind turbines are still way too expensive for the vast majority of people. But if we changed the system in the right ways, we could make it much easier. We could even make it difficult not to do your part instead of difficult to do your part. If the only vehicle you could buy was electric or other zero-emissions vehicles, and if all of our electricity came from zero-emission sources, then it would require no special effort to dramatically reduce your personal carbon footprint. That is the type of changes to the system we need.
I think it is absolutely essential for government to get heavily involved. That doesn’t mean government can or should do everything. The task is so huge that government and other organizations working with individuals is the only solution. But almost no government is close to doing their part yet, so individuals need to push their governments much harder. Right now that is the most important part of each individual’s responsibility. The Copenhagen talks that will happen this December (2009) will set the stage for what happens all over the world for the next several years. I seriously doubt we can wait for the next such meeting. By then we would already be committed to such high temperatures that runaway global warming would be almost certain.
It might help if I compare this to a problem we faced in the past. Would a grassroots effort or personal responsibility have been the appropriate response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and to Germany declaring war on the U.S.? It’s obvious that would not have worked. Even if everyone planted a victory garden and got their handguns and rifles ready, we would have been no match for the opposing armed forces. People may have tried to organize and do more, but it would not have been enough. For example, let’s say someone had the idea to get a bunch of people together to manufacture tanks. Most of the people who would have wanted to help would not have been able to, because they had a family to support, maybe a farm or business to run. And where would the money have come from? What about the expertise? Winning that war required not just personal responsibility, effort, and sacrifice, it also required heavy participation from the government, including ordering people and corporations to do what was needed. Nobody would seriously have considered a volunteer army. The government drafted people, essentially forcing them to fight. Of course many would have volunteered, but not enough, not quickly enough. And in the corporate realm the government had to be just as heavy-handed. For example, the federal government forced the auto companies to stop manufacturing cars and start building jeeps and tanks and other war machinery.
Another thing WWII required that is missing now is leadership appropriate to the task. That brings up the responsibility of the government. Why isn’t the federal government encouraging people to buy climate bonds to help fund the fight to stop global warming? Why aren’t they pouring money into research and recruiting scientists the way they did to create the atom bomb and all the other weapons and war machinery? Why aren’t we racing to a green energy future the way we raced to the moon? Why isn’t Obama using his great oratorical skills and passion to get people fired up about the greatest threat we have ever faced? The task is too great and the time is to short for anything less than an all-out effort such as this. We must all demand that our leaders do their part. That is part of our personal responsibility.
I have not even brought up the responsibility of corporations, because they don’t feel any responsibility that people don’t make them feel, and they think mainly about the short term. But we can influence corporations via petitions, boycotts, and encouraging the government to create rules and regulations that will force corporations to do what is in their own best long-term interests.
In one sense the climate scientists are the heroes of this story. They are the ones who first discovered the problem and have been getting us a clearer picture with every year. But I don’t think most of them are doing enough either. Some are too narrow in their vision to understand the big picture. They don’t think about the implications of their findings, in terms of the lives of people and other living things. Others think they must stick only to the science and stay completely out of policy or opinions of any kind. I think if any person knows something is threatening us all, it is their duty to speak out loudly and clearly. If nobody else is saying what needs to be said, or if the people propagating misinformation are drowning out the truth, you need to say something. Even most scientists who are willing to talk about the future speak in a way that trivializes the dangers. They use terms like “there may be increased pressures on the food supply” instead of “millions, perhaps billions of people could starve”. They will say that what we are doing is “not sustainable” instead of saying that if we don’t make drastic changes, our children or grandchildren may not live to have children of their own. If you are a scientist, those might mean similar things, but to non-scientists they have very different meanings. And it is the non-scientists you need to reach, both the people in power and the citizens. Be more like James Hansen, be more of a human being and talk to your fellow human beings in clear and unambiguous terms.
During WWII, Americans and people in many other countries made great sacrifices and did not make the excuse of being too busy. Many gave their lives, many suffered immensely. I think if people realized this threat is much worse than any war we have yet experienced, they would be willing to do much more. But it doesn’t feel like the threat is so great, because the worst is too far in the future and the problem is too abstract. I don’t feel threatened the way I would during a world war either, but I know the threat is there, and so I keep trying to do more and to think of ways to be more effective. Still, I feel like I am not doing nearly enough. David commented on my previous post that it is difficult to make a difference because of how rotten our system has become. I agree it is more difficult to make a difference now than it was in the 60s, but on the other hand they didn’t have the internet like we do now. Maybe we can take advantage of this amazing tool to get around the obstacles. I often feel like we need something very dramatic to shock people out of their complacency. If anyone has ideas for something dramatic, or any good ideas for solving this problem, please leave a comment.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Denial
This posting is different from others I have made so far. I was trying to focus mainly on the science to convince people this is a very real and very urgent problem. But I often wonder why so few people are taking global warming as seriously as the threat warrants, or even close. I think one reason is that the vast majority of people are in denial, in one way or another, especially in this country. In this posting will list some of the types of denial and avoidance I have noticed in people.
First are the absolute deniers. I think that most of them are conservative and therefore automatically against anything that seems “pro-environment”, which they see as a liberal cause. Others are invested in or funded by the fossil fuel industry so much that they are automatically against anything that might threaten their interests. Some simply believe that God would never let something so bad happen, or at least that is their excuse. The absolute deniers have usually made up their minds, and you can rarely change their minds with mere facts or science. They usually feel no need to provide any proof of their positions. Instead of looking at all the data and drawing their conclusions from it, they cherry-pick the data to support the conclusions they have already made. What they don’t understand is that the question of whether global warming is happening has nothing to do with politics, ideology, or belief. The laws of physics and chemistry do not care what anyone thinks or believes. These people and their children will suffer the consequences as much as everyone else will. But those who have been actively blocking any progress towards fighting the threat will be the most to blame.
Then there are the willfully ignorant. Some simply ignore the issue, perhaps out of laziness or boredom. Others accept that global warming is happening and is caused by human activity, but thinking about it makes them feel so bad (depressed, scared, helpless, hopeless, bored) that they avoid it whenever possible. If you bring up the subject with this type of denier, they will usually change the subject or leave the discussion. Sometimes they will come right out and say they don’t like to talk or think about it. Often the ones who do admit the reality to this extent make an effort to help, by recycling, driving less, and so on. But they miss a lot of opportunities by not being informed or involved in the political process. They usually have no idea how little time we have left or how this problem is unique, simply because they avoid it at all costs. If enough of these people would be willing to feel those uncomfortable emotions, our chances would be much better. If they would just admit to themselves that the lives of their children and grandchildren are at stake, they might do something about it. But it’s difficult to acknowledge anything when you try to ignore everything.
Then there are those who do not deny or ignore the problem, but they don’t have any idea (or won’t admit) how big it is. Many don’t know how bad it could get, and almost none of them have any idea how little time we have to stop it from going out of control. This includes most liberals and I think even most environmentalists. Many people are too busy to deal with it. They think many other things, personal or shared, are more important. The vast majority of liberal talk show hosts and commentators rarely mention global warming or climate change, or when they do it is only in passing. I would ask everyone to question whether any of the things they spend their time on about might be less important than whether most life on earth ends. I’m sure the vast majority could find some time to help in some way if they put the problem in perspective. We need everyone we can get.
I think most liberals and people who care about the environmental fail to grasp how this threat is different from others, how when feedback takes over it will be too late, how we won’t get a second chance, and most of all how none of their other causes will mean a thing if global warming does go out of control. For example, when the entire system has collapsed, it won’t matter whether we once had universal health care. Will it matter that much whether we found a cure for cancer when billions are dying of hunger? I’m not saying we should abandon all other causes. But I am saying we should recognize this cause is the most important one, and give it the amount of attention it deserves.
Some people have concluded that it is hopeless to fight global warming, and they use this as their excuse to ignore it and do nothing. Some of them came to this conclusion years ago, when we still had enough time to make relatively gradual changes. Others, when confronted with what we need to accomplish in a short amount of time will ask, “What if the scientists are wrong?” Others are confident that science will find a solution before it’s too late. But you can’t be sure it is hopeless until feedback actually takes things out of control. If your own life was at stake, wouldn’t you try as long as there was even a small chance? This is much more important than your own life, so we should not give up so easily. And of course the scientists could be wrong about how much time we have, but they are just as likely to be too optimistic as too pessimistic. If you don’t realize or admit this, you are just making excuses. And do you really want to let the future of your own children and many future generations depend on the chance that some miracle invention will be discovered in time? We have not been using the many inventions we already have all these years that we knew about the problem. What makes you think any new invention will be implemented to any greater extent? I think these are all really excuses for avoiding responsibility. In my next posting, I will talk more about responsibility.
First are the absolute deniers. I think that most of them are conservative and therefore automatically against anything that seems “pro-environment”, which they see as a liberal cause. Others are invested in or funded by the fossil fuel industry so much that they are automatically against anything that might threaten their interests. Some simply believe that God would never let something so bad happen, or at least that is their excuse. The absolute deniers have usually made up their minds, and you can rarely change their minds with mere facts or science. They usually feel no need to provide any proof of their positions. Instead of looking at all the data and drawing their conclusions from it, they cherry-pick the data to support the conclusions they have already made. What they don’t understand is that the question of whether global warming is happening has nothing to do with politics, ideology, or belief. The laws of physics and chemistry do not care what anyone thinks or believes. These people and their children will suffer the consequences as much as everyone else will. But those who have been actively blocking any progress towards fighting the threat will be the most to blame.
Then there are the willfully ignorant. Some simply ignore the issue, perhaps out of laziness or boredom. Others accept that global warming is happening and is caused by human activity, but thinking about it makes them feel so bad (depressed, scared, helpless, hopeless, bored) that they avoid it whenever possible. If you bring up the subject with this type of denier, they will usually change the subject or leave the discussion. Sometimes they will come right out and say they don’t like to talk or think about it. Often the ones who do admit the reality to this extent make an effort to help, by recycling, driving less, and so on. But they miss a lot of opportunities by not being informed or involved in the political process. They usually have no idea how little time we have left or how this problem is unique, simply because they avoid it at all costs. If enough of these people would be willing to feel those uncomfortable emotions, our chances would be much better. If they would just admit to themselves that the lives of their children and grandchildren are at stake, they might do something about it. But it’s difficult to acknowledge anything when you try to ignore everything.
Then there are those who do not deny or ignore the problem, but they don’t have any idea (or won’t admit) how big it is. Many don’t know how bad it could get, and almost none of them have any idea how little time we have to stop it from going out of control. This includes most liberals and I think even most environmentalists. Many people are too busy to deal with it. They think many other things, personal or shared, are more important. The vast majority of liberal talk show hosts and commentators rarely mention global warming or climate change, or when they do it is only in passing. I would ask everyone to question whether any of the things they spend their time on about might be less important than whether most life on earth ends. I’m sure the vast majority could find some time to help in some way if they put the problem in perspective. We need everyone we can get.
I think most liberals and people who care about the environmental fail to grasp how this threat is different from others, how when feedback takes over it will be too late, how we won’t get a second chance, and most of all how none of their other causes will mean a thing if global warming does go out of control. For example, when the entire system has collapsed, it won’t matter whether we once had universal health care. Will it matter that much whether we found a cure for cancer when billions are dying of hunger? I’m not saying we should abandon all other causes. But I am saying we should recognize this cause is the most important one, and give it the amount of attention it deserves.
Some people have concluded that it is hopeless to fight global warming, and they use this as their excuse to ignore it and do nothing. Some of them came to this conclusion years ago, when we still had enough time to make relatively gradual changes. Others, when confronted with what we need to accomplish in a short amount of time will ask, “What if the scientists are wrong?” Others are confident that science will find a solution before it’s too late. But you can’t be sure it is hopeless until feedback actually takes things out of control. If your own life was at stake, wouldn’t you try as long as there was even a small chance? This is much more important than your own life, so we should not give up so easily. And of course the scientists could be wrong about how much time we have, but they are just as likely to be too optimistic as too pessimistic. If you don’t realize or admit this, you are just making excuses. And do you really want to let the future of your own children and many future generations depend on the chance that some miracle invention will be discovered in time? We have not been using the many inventions we already have all these years that we knew about the problem. What makes you think any new invention will be implemented to any greater extent? I think these are all really excuses for avoiding responsibility. In my next posting, I will talk more about responsibility.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Climate Momentum
In my very first post to this blog, I described how changing the course of global warming and its effects is like turning a large, heavy, fast moving ship. You have to begin the turn way before you want the ship to be headed in the new direction, and if you wait too long, you won’t make the turn in time. Another way of saying this is that global warming has a lot of momentum. Scientists at Sustainability Institute, Ventana Systems, and MIT developed an online tool where you can see how different emissions reduction scenarios will affect CO2 levels, temperature, and sea level. Move the slider at the bottom of the charts to change the emission reduction scenario. This gives a clear demonstration how strong global warming momentum is.
http://www.bgrncol.com/
I wish the charts went past 2100, because the effects will continue for much longer, and I wish I had more control, such as to be able to duplicate the Waxman-Markey bill. But even only showing this much, it is clear that even if we reduce emissions around 50% by 2020 and 80% by 2050 (much more than the Waxman-Markey bill does in the short term, slightly less in the long term), the temperature will reach 2 degrees above preindustrial levels by 2080 and continue to rise after that. In fact, in order to limit temperature rise to around 2 degrees by 2100, we would have to reduce emissions 95% by 2020! Compare that to the 3.6% reduction by 2020 in the Waxman-Markey bill, and you will get an idea of how divorced from reality Congress is. Even the more realistic governments of Europe are only planning to reduce emissions 20% by 2020.
An even scarier thing this tool shows is that if all countries follow their most recent (March 2009) “publicly stated proposals” for CO2 emissions reductions, temperatures will reach almost 4 degrees above preindustrial levels by 2100, and from the shape of the curve, it looks to me like they will probably rise another couple of degrees after that. So if countries do what they say, we are set to experience the worse scenarios laid out in “Six Degrees”. It is even more depressing to realize that so far countries as a whole have not even done what they promised in the past.
And apparently, the models these charts are based on do not take the various feedbacks into account, because if they did, the temperatures should rise more sharply after reaching about 3 degrees, even if emissions are falling by then.
Even with the best case scenario these charts show, which I don’t think the world will come close to achieving, we are just barely able to keep temperatures to a roughly 2 degree rise. James Hansen said this to Congress in 2008: “The disturbing conclusion, documented in a paper I have written with several of the world’s leading climate experts, is that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) and it may be less. Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year. Stunning corollary: the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation.”
If you want to see the paper he refers to in this quote, go to the links below. The top one is the paper, and the second one is supporting material for the paper.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1126.pdf
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1135.pdf
Many months ago, I had a feeling from everything I had read and the trends I had seen that we probably would not be able to avoid global disasters caused by global warming. Unfortunately it looks like that feeling was correct. But now it even looks extremely likely that feedback will take over, probably leading to the next great extinction. This does not mean we should give up, it means we should fight harder, as if our very lives depended on it. If we do, we still might be able to prevent another great extinction, caused by us this time. If we don’t, I guess our children and grandchildren will get what we deserve.
http://www.bgrncol.com/
I wish the charts went past 2100, because the effects will continue for much longer, and I wish I had more control, such as to be able to duplicate the Waxman-Markey bill. But even only showing this much, it is clear that even if we reduce emissions around 50% by 2020 and 80% by 2050 (much more than the Waxman-Markey bill does in the short term, slightly less in the long term), the temperature will reach 2 degrees above preindustrial levels by 2080 and continue to rise after that. In fact, in order to limit temperature rise to around 2 degrees by 2100, we would have to reduce emissions 95% by 2020! Compare that to the 3.6% reduction by 2020 in the Waxman-Markey bill, and you will get an idea of how divorced from reality Congress is. Even the more realistic governments of Europe are only planning to reduce emissions 20% by 2020.
An even scarier thing this tool shows is that if all countries follow their most recent (March 2009) “publicly stated proposals” for CO2 emissions reductions, temperatures will reach almost 4 degrees above preindustrial levels by 2100, and from the shape of the curve, it looks to me like they will probably rise another couple of degrees after that. So if countries do what they say, we are set to experience the worse scenarios laid out in “Six Degrees”. It is even more depressing to realize that so far countries as a whole have not even done what they promised in the past.
And apparently, the models these charts are based on do not take the various feedbacks into account, because if they did, the temperatures should rise more sharply after reaching about 3 degrees, even if emissions are falling by then.
Even with the best case scenario these charts show, which I don’t think the world will come close to achieving, we are just barely able to keep temperatures to a roughly 2 degree rise. James Hansen said this to Congress in 2008: “The disturbing conclusion, documented in a paper I have written with several of the world’s leading climate experts, is that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) and it may be less. Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year. Stunning corollary: the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation.”
If you want to see the paper he refers to in this quote, go to the links below. The top one is the paper, and the second one is supporting material for the paper.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1126.pdf
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1135.pdf
Many months ago, I had a feeling from everything I had read and the trends I had seen that we probably would not be able to avoid global disasters caused by global warming. Unfortunately it looks like that feeling was correct. But now it even looks extremely likely that feedback will take over, probably leading to the next great extinction. This does not mean we should give up, it means we should fight harder, as if our very lives depended on it. If we do, we still might be able to prevent another great extinction, caused by us this time. If we don’t, I guess our children and grandchildren will get what we deserve.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
The Targets Are Wrong
First, there was an article about the warming of the Arctic “Study finds more evidence rapid Arctic warming isn't natural”. The article says the Arctic would be continuing to slowly cool if it weren’t for human activity.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/environment/story/74861.html
We already knew the warming of the past few decades was man-made, but that is more evidence to support it.
This article, “Not Even Wrong” has some new information that shows the targets the governments are using are not nearly enough to keep warming below 2 degrees C.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/08/31/not-even-wrong/
One nice thing about the above article is that it has footnotes with sources, so you can check them out if you want. I only checked out the summaries of two papers, but I didn’t see anything that would contradict the article.) I said in a recent post that the Waxman Markey bill disregards what the IPCC indicates is the minimum emissions reduction necessary to prevent more than 2 degrees of warming, and I also said the IPCC is usually too cautious in its conclusions, so the situation was probably worse. These newer studies are one more indication that is indeed true. Here are some highlights and my comments:
“In other words, governments’ hopes about the trajectory of temperature change are ill-founded. Most, including the UK’s, are working on the assumption that we can overshoot the desired targets for temperature and atmospheric concentrations of CO2, then watch them settle back later. What this paper shows is that wherever temperatures peak, that is more or less where they will stay. There is no going back.”
This quote references the same study as another article I talked about in my post “What Could Happen?” That study shows CO2 levels will go down so slowly that 40% will still remain 1000 years after we stop emitting greenhouse gases. And temperatures will stay at the peak for about 1000 years too. (And don’t forget they won’t return completely to normal for hundreds of thousands of years.) The quote above makes a good point that governments of the world fail to acknowledge. They all seem to be assuming that CO2 levels will fall as quickly as they are rising, but scientists have known for a long time that is not true. This is one of the ways the global warming problem is so different from conventional pollution and most other problems. It seems to be very difficult for most people to grasp.
The absolute minimum goal should be to minimize chances of global warming going out of control from feedback effects. If that happens, there will ONLY be going forward to hotter and hotter temperatures, and to more death, destruction, and suffering, until some new equilibrium point is reached. Most governments seem to have now agreed on 2 degrees C above preindustrial levels as the point at which the risks of feedback would be unacceptable. In my opinion, the effects from 2 degrees warming are so bad that we should never let it go that high even if feedback was not a danger, especially if those bad effects will last for a thousand years. But if feedback doesn’t take over at that point, we can probably survive, and biodiversity may not be so decimated that the world becomes a completely different place. Horrible things will happen, and we should all be pushing our governments to do everything they can to avoid those horrible things. But preventing feedback from taking over is the minimum goal anybody who places any value on life should demand, and there can be no compromise on this.
Keeping temperature rise to 2 degrees or less is what the next section of the article addresses, talking about a couple of studies that looked at the total emissions we can get by with and still keep warming to 2 degrees. I will focus on the conclusions:
“Writing elsewhere, the two teams gave us an idea of what this means. At current rates of use, we will burn the ration that Allen set aside for the next 500 years in four decades(4). Meinshausen’s carbon budget between now and 2050 will have been exhausted before 2030(5).”
Now, remember, this is talking about current rates of fossil fuel use, meaning the entire world would have to stop the current trends of using more and more every year. So the current reality is even worse than this indicates. But the crucial point is that waiting until 2050 to make significant reductions in emissions, as the U.S. government is planning as of now, is guaranteed to bring us past the 2 degree temperature rise. And this next quote amplifies this message:
“There are some obvious conclusions from these three papers. The trajectory of cuts is more important than the final destination. An 80% cut by 2050, for example, could produce very different outcomes. If most of the cut were made towards the beginning of the period, the total emissions entering the atmosphere would be much smaller than if most of the cut were made at the end of the period. The measure that counts is the peak atmospheric concentration. This must be as low as possible and come as soon as possible, which means making most of the reductions right now.”
This is what I mean when I say global warming is the most urgent problem we face, more urgent than the economy, healthcare, wars, human rights, or any other that I can think of. But I get the impression that the number of people who truly realize this and realize what it means are miniscule. I don’t think a single person in our government really gets it. As the next paragraph in the article said, referring to making big reductions soon, “None of this is currently on the table.” I discuss these things with very intelligent friends of mine, and I don’t think any of them fully grasp this point. I probably don’t fully grasp it, but I grasp it enough to be extremely worried. It is so unreal to think about what it means. It makes me feel like I’m living in a science fiction novel, but it’s really happening.
We have to reach the people in power, and we have to do it very, very quickly. We would truly have an almost impossible task before us even if our leaders knew the real situation and knew what we needed to do. It would be that difficult to make the changes quickly enough. But they don’t know, and we can never make the huge changes that are imperative unless our leaders encourage us, by changing the very system we exist in. How can those of us who understand the threat reach them? That is the question I keep asking, and I can’t find an answer, and neither can anyone I ask this question.
Addendum 9/13/09: The articles above accepted the 2 degree maximum temperature rise as a good target, but James Hansen thinks even that is too high. In his 2008 address to Congress, he stated, “The disturbing conclusion, documented in a paper I have written with several of the world’s leading climate experts, is that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) and it may be less. Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year. Stunning corollary: the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation.” If he is right, then we need to make even bigger reductions sooner than the above article indicates. Unfortunately, Hansen usually is right, and when he has been wrong in the past, his predictions were usually more optimistic than what happened later.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/environment/story/74861.html
We already knew the warming of the past few decades was man-made, but that is more evidence to support it.
This article, “Not Even Wrong” has some new information that shows the targets the governments are using are not nearly enough to keep warming below 2 degrees C.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/08/31/not-even-wrong/
One nice thing about the above article is that it has footnotes with sources, so you can check them out if you want. I only checked out the summaries of two papers, but I didn’t see anything that would contradict the article.) I said in a recent post that the Waxman Markey bill disregards what the IPCC indicates is the minimum emissions reduction necessary to prevent more than 2 degrees of warming, and I also said the IPCC is usually too cautious in its conclusions, so the situation was probably worse. These newer studies are one more indication that is indeed true. Here are some highlights and my comments:
“In other words, governments’ hopes about the trajectory of temperature change are ill-founded. Most, including the UK’s, are working on the assumption that we can overshoot the desired targets for temperature and atmospheric concentrations of CO2, then watch them settle back later. What this paper shows is that wherever temperatures peak, that is more or less where they will stay. There is no going back.”
This quote references the same study as another article I talked about in my post “What Could Happen?” That study shows CO2 levels will go down so slowly that 40% will still remain 1000 years after we stop emitting greenhouse gases. And temperatures will stay at the peak for about 1000 years too. (And don’t forget they won’t return completely to normal for hundreds of thousands of years.) The quote above makes a good point that governments of the world fail to acknowledge. They all seem to be assuming that CO2 levels will fall as quickly as they are rising, but scientists have known for a long time that is not true. This is one of the ways the global warming problem is so different from conventional pollution and most other problems. It seems to be very difficult for most people to grasp.
The absolute minimum goal should be to minimize chances of global warming going out of control from feedback effects. If that happens, there will ONLY be going forward to hotter and hotter temperatures, and to more death, destruction, and suffering, until some new equilibrium point is reached. Most governments seem to have now agreed on 2 degrees C above preindustrial levels as the point at which the risks of feedback would be unacceptable. In my opinion, the effects from 2 degrees warming are so bad that we should never let it go that high even if feedback was not a danger, especially if those bad effects will last for a thousand years. But if feedback doesn’t take over at that point, we can probably survive, and biodiversity may not be so decimated that the world becomes a completely different place. Horrible things will happen, and we should all be pushing our governments to do everything they can to avoid those horrible things. But preventing feedback from taking over is the minimum goal anybody who places any value on life should demand, and there can be no compromise on this.
Keeping temperature rise to 2 degrees or less is what the next section of the article addresses, talking about a couple of studies that looked at the total emissions we can get by with and still keep warming to 2 degrees. I will focus on the conclusions:
“Writing elsewhere, the two teams gave us an idea of what this means. At current rates of use, we will burn the ration that Allen set aside for the next 500 years in four decades(4). Meinshausen’s carbon budget between now and 2050 will have been exhausted before 2030(5).”
Now, remember, this is talking about current rates of fossil fuel use, meaning the entire world would have to stop the current trends of using more and more every year. So the current reality is even worse than this indicates. But the crucial point is that waiting until 2050 to make significant reductions in emissions, as the U.S. government is planning as of now, is guaranteed to bring us past the 2 degree temperature rise. And this next quote amplifies this message:
“There are some obvious conclusions from these three papers. The trajectory of cuts is more important than the final destination. An 80% cut by 2050, for example, could produce very different outcomes. If most of the cut were made towards the beginning of the period, the total emissions entering the atmosphere would be much smaller than if most of the cut were made at the end of the period. The measure that counts is the peak atmospheric concentration. This must be as low as possible and come as soon as possible, which means making most of the reductions right now.”
This is what I mean when I say global warming is the most urgent problem we face, more urgent than the economy, healthcare, wars, human rights, or any other that I can think of. But I get the impression that the number of people who truly realize this and realize what it means are miniscule. I don’t think a single person in our government really gets it. As the next paragraph in the article said, referring to making big reductions soon, “None of this is currently on the table.” I discuss these things with very intelligent friends of mine, and I don’t think any of them fully grasp this point. I probably don’t fully grasp it, but I grasp it enough to be extremely worried. It is so unreal to think about what it means. It makes me feel like I’m living in a science fiction novel, but it’s really happening.
We have to reach the people in power, and we have to do it very, very quickly. We would truly have an almost impossible task before us even if our leaders knew the real situation and knew what we needed to do. It would be that difficult to make the changes quickly enough. But they don’t know, and we can never make the huge changes that are imperative unless our leaders encourage us, by changing the very system we exist in. How can those of us who understand the threat reach them? That is the question I keep asking, and I can’t find an answer, and neither can anyone I ask this question.
Addendum 9/13/09: The articles above accepted the 2 degree maximum temperature rise as a good target, but James Hansen thinks even that is too high. In his 2008 address to Congress, he stated, “The disturbing conclusion, documented in a paper I have written with several of the world’s leading climate experts, is that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) and it may be less. Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year. Stunning corollary: the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation.” If he is right, then we need to make even bigger reductions sooner than the above article indicates. Unfortunately, Hansen usually is right, and when he has been wrong in the past, his predictions were usually more optimistic than what happened later.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Two or Three Degrees - What Could Happen?
Did you know that in the last million years the global temperature has not been more than 1 degree Centigrade hotter than it is now? In an earlier blog I listed some of the things that could happen if the global temperature reached one degree higher, but as my previous post noted, it seems guaranteed to get at least a degree or two hotter than that. What will this mean, what changes can we expect?
Here is a list of predictions if global temperatures go 1 - 2 degrees above 2008 global temperatures, or about 1.7 - 2.7 degrees C above preindustrial levels. These come from the book and DVD “Six Degrees”, by Mark Lynas and National Geographic, respectively. These are all predictions made by scientists, either based on what we know of the past (paleoclimatology) or on models of the future. Things could turn out better or worse than these predictions indicate, but this is the best and most complete list that I’m aware of.
-We will be on the brink of runaway global warming – many think this will be the tipping point, when feedback could take over.
-The tundra in the North will almost totally disappear, and the permafrost boundary will move hundreds of miles north.
-We will lose the vast majority of coral reefs and the millions of species that depend on them.
-The oceans will be too acidic for the formation of shells, imperiling shellfish, plankton, and most other life in the oceans (since the food chain depends on plankton).
-Over a third of all species will be committed to extinction by 2050, and well over a million species will already be extinct by then.
-Coastal cities around the world will experience more floods.
-By 2040 the average summer will be hotter than 2003, when a heat wave killed thousands of people in Europe.
-There will be catastrophic wildfires and water shortages in Europe and the Mediterranean area.
-In China, shifting monsoons will bring widespread drought, food shortages.
-India will see decreases in wheat and rice production and large scale die-offs of forests.
-Poorer countries, especially Africa, will have food shortages. Most of S. America will have corn shortages. World food prices will soar during lean years.
-Some Peruvian glaciers will shrink 40-60% by 2050, while others (including one that supplies Lima’s water) will be completely gone.
-Widespread conflicts seem likely.
-Water supplies in California may decline by a third to three quarters, while water supplies for Oregon and Washington may decline 20 to 70%.
-Flooding, and fires will increase in many parts of the world
-Sea level could rise 5 meters (16.4 feet) by 2100 even if it gets no hotter than this.
-Greenland may have no ice by around 2150, forcing half of humanity to move to higher ground.
-Two feedbacks: The earth’s largest carbon sink, the oceans, will begin absorbing much less of the excess CO2, and phytoplankton will no longer remove billions of tons of CO2 from circulation per year.
And here is what scientists predict for 2 - 3 degrees above current temperature, or 2.7 - 3.7 degrees above preindustrial levels. You have to go back 3 million years to find a time when the world was this hot. The world could get this hot as early as 2050 if we do nothing to stop it.
-The last time the world was this hot, beech trees grew in Antarctica, and Northern Greenland had pines and other conifers. El Nino patterns occurred every year. Sea level was 25 meters (49 feet) higher than now. And yet CO2 levels were only 360 to 400 ppm (we are currently around 386 ppm).
-El Nino could again happen every year. This will cause extreme drought in Indonesia and Australia and more rain for the South American West Coast. The 1912 El Nino caused storms in the North Atlantic, floods in China, drought in the Amazon, crop failures in Australia, famine in North Africa and India (no monsoon). The effect could be even stronger than 1912.
-Australia will be much hotter than now, with more fires and drought and agricultural collapse in the south.
-Snow caps in the Alps will all but disappear.
-Heat waves like those in the summer of 2003 will become the norm for Europe.
-More droughts and fires in parts of every continent.
-The Mediterranean will begin to turn into a desert as the Sahara jumps the sea.
-Monsoons will become more variable, flooding more some years, not raining enough other years, both affecting crops.
-Parts of Africa will get more rains and floods, other parts less water and more droughts. Malaria and dengue fever will move to higher altitudes and latitudes.
-The Indus, which waters the fields of Pakistan, will be dry for months of the year. Other rivers fed by Himalayan glaciers and supplying water to China, India, and other countries will begin to dry out.
-Hurricanes will probably be stronger, with Category 6 storms occurring.
-New Orleans may already be abandoned.
-New York City will face flooding: 100 year floods will happen roughly every 20 years by the 2050s and every 4 years by the 2080s.
-In England, 150 year floods could happen every 7 to 8 years by the 2080s.
-On the East coast, ocean levels could rise a meter, and coastal erosion could average 3 meters per year.
-There will be perennial drought and famine in much of southern Africa. Botswana will be entirely covered by shifting sand dunes by 2070, and no longer able to support human life.
-Yields of rice, wheat, and corn will decline in temperate regions and see crippling declines in tropical regions. More crops will grow closer to the poles, but the IPCC estimates there will be a net deficit with a 2.5 degree further rise.
-The Arctic will have an 80 to 100 percent reduction in sea ice.
-Many scientists predict a 3 degree rise will push us over the tipping point, if 2 degrees hasn’t already done so.
-A feedback loop will turn the Amazon into an arid savannah as early as 2027, which could raise temperatures one degree more, meaning 3 - 4 degrees hotter than now.
-Still another feedback is that vegetation and soils could release CO2 instead of absorbing it, adding an additional 90 - 250 ppm by 2100, which would cause the temperature to rise another 0.6 to 1.5 degrees C.
-Taking the previous two feedbacks together, 3 degrees could lead to 4.5 - 5.5 degrees higher than now, or 5.3 – 6.3 degrees C above preindustrial levels.
-The planet’s basic life support systems may begin to break down.
-Corals will bleach annually and will be nearly gone.
-The climate of 40 to 85% of the earth will shift towards the poles, too quickly for many species to migrate.
-The climate of 10 to 50% of the earth will be gone completely, no longer existing anywhere on earth.
-A third to a half of all species in existence today will be extinct by 2050.
So does this mean we are doomed? I think if the feedbacks occurred, billions of people would probably suffer and die, but I don't know if the human species will die off completely. That depends partly on what we do and partly on how the various feedbacks play out.
Two Degrees - Is It Possible?
The article at the link below talks about Obama trying to get countries at the G8 meeting to commit to reduce GHG emissions.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31823389/ns/world_news-europe/
He was not successful, but a couple of agreements were made:
“The Group of Eight nations — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States — agreed at their summit in this central Italian town to a goal of cutting the world's greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050, and emissions from their countries by 80 percent by then to help get there.”
“The rich and emerging nations also together declared for the first time that average global temperatures should not rise higher than 2 degrees Celsius above those of preindustrial times. But the leaders made no commitments to do anything in the near term, say by 2020, to reach that goal.”
Why is 2 degrees Celsius important?
“That's the point at which the Earth's climate system would fall into perilous instability, according to the United Nations' chief panel on climate change.”
In this posting I will try to answer a question I had when reading the above article: Will cutting the world’s GHG emissions 50% by 2050, yet not doing anything significant before 2020, prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels? My gut said probably not, but I wanted to see if I could get an idea based on the current science.
I first did my own rough analysis of the data, based on charts from the U.S. government’s report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States”, which you can find here:
http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts
I came to the conclusion that if we don’t do much before 2020, the best case scenario is that we will reach 500 to 550 ppm CO2 equivalent before leveling off, some time around 2100, and the temperature will reach around 2.5 to 3 degrees C above preindustrial levels. This assumes no feedback mechanisms kick in before then, although we know that some of them (especially the albedo feedback) have already begun, so it’s probably worse than that. But since this was a very rough estimate that I made by extending lines on graphs, I don’t know how accurate it is.
So let’s see what the IPCC says. A recent article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-s-becker/grading-a-climate-bill-pa_b_240312.html) says, “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggested that industrial economies would have to reduce emissions 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to keep warming to 2 degrees.” It even says that reducing emissions this much only gives us a 50-50 chance of keeping warming to 2 degrees. If that is correct, then doing less than a 25-40% reduction by 2020 would be extremely foolish. And yet the Waxman-Markey bill the House just passed only aims to reduce emissions 3.6% below 1990 levels by 2020. Doing so little by then, as we and the world as a whole are currently planning, seems to guarantee that we will go above 2 degrees warming.
The article doesn't have references for these figures, but I found a web page that explains in detail where these they come from (various places in the 2007 IPCC reports): http://www.holmeshummel.net/2C-Target-Range.htm.
The scary thing is that the IPCC is often too cautious with their predictions, and their data is always a few years out of date. Some of my earlier postings on this blog contain specific examples, but one very relevant example is that by 2007, emissions had risen about half a gigaton (roughly 6%) higher than even the very worst scenario from the 2007 IPCC reports predicted!
And I discovered something else. A quote I found in a document coming from the Bali meetings shows that the 25-40% range for industrialized countries assumes that developing countries will reduce their emissions at the same time: "The ranges would be significantly higher for Annex I Parties if they were the result of analysis assuming that emission reductions were to be undertaken exclusively by Annex I Parties." As you may know, developing nations have so far refused to do anything at all until developed nations make significant reductions. See the third paragraph of this document: http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/cop_13/application/pdf/awg_work_p.pdf.
Now let’s see what an environmental group says. There is a report called “Climate Code Red”, put out by Friends of the Earth Australia in 2008, which you can find here:
http://itsgettinghotinhere.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/climatecodered_1.pdf
On page 5 it lists some global temperature numbers:
Global temperatures have already risen about 0.8 degrees C above preindustrial levels.
Another 0.6 degrees C will occur due to “thermal inertia”, even if no more GHG are released.
The albedo feedback, which is already happening, will add another 0.3 degrees C.
So we are guaranteed to go 1.7 degrees C above preindustrial levels, even if we stopped all emissions immediately. Of course that is impossible, so what is the best we can do? The same report says that another 0.4 degrees C will be added to the system by 2030 if emissions remain the same (as 2007 levels, I assume). If we continue current trends, emissions won’t stay the same, but will rise 60% by then. Since nobody is committing to do anything significant by 2020, that means the world as a whole would have to cut their emissions 60% below the “business as usual” levels in the 10 year period from 2020 to 2030 to keep the rise to 0.4 degrees C. The developing countries are demanding that the developed countries act first, so they probably will do nothing for at least the first 10 years. I don’t think the developed countries will reduce their emissions 60% in 10 years, much less reduce them enough to make up for the developing world. So I’m almost certain that more than 0.4 degrees C will be added to the system by 2030. So that means that temperatures will eventually reach 2.1 degrees C above preindustrial levels even if all the industrialized nations make a superhuman effort to reduce their emissions after 2020. In other words, we are already pretty much committed to pushing the climate into “perlious instability”. And these numbers still only take one of the many feedbacks (Albedo) into account, so it almost surely will be worse than this.
And that’s not all. There is a “global dimming” effect caused by the particles and water vapor that come from the same sources as greenhouse gases. This has been “masking” about half of the warming effects of greenhouse gases. When emissions are reduced, the particles and vapors will leave the atmosphere quickly, while CO2 will not. So as we reduce emissions, the global dimming effect will quickly disappear. This is expected to add at least an additional 1 degree C of warming (0.8 degrees from what exists now plus the minimum future increase of 0.4 degrees). In other words, when you take global dimming into account, the best case scenario is more than 3 degrees C above preindustrial levels, and that still ignores all the known feedbacks except one.
So it looks like we are probably headed for at least 3 degrees above preindustrial levels, or 2.2 degrees above current levels. My next blog will list some of the things that scientists predict might happen if warming reaches 2 degrees C and 3 degrees C above current levels.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Impacts of Global Warming Report
Here’s an article about a report the US government just released on the impacts of global warming on the US.
http://www.truthout.org/061709O#comment-60496
You can find the full report and a summary here:
http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts
I’ve only begun to read the full report, but I’m almost sure it will not convey the real impacts on our lives. For example, it will probably mention that droughts will be more common in the Southwest, and hopefully it will go a step further and say something about reduced food output and water rationing. But will they talk about the worldwide famine that will occur because of the mega-droughts in the US, Australia, and other places, the shifting monsoon patterns, and because the glaciers that supply most of India and China will melt? I would be very surprised. Will they talk about the cannibalism that will occur when there is nothing else left to eat? That is the kind of thing we need to get through to people because otherwise they won’t take action (as we have seen).
In fact, I just searched the full report for “famine”, “starvation”, and “starve”, and there were no matches. There were matches for “food”, though. Here are the examples that had to do with human food:
"In an increasingly interdependent world, U.S. vulnerability to climate change is linked to the fates of other nations. For example, conflicts or mass migrations of people resulting from food scarcity and other resource limits, health impacts, or environmental stresses in other parts of the world could threaten U.S. national security. It is thus difficult to fully evaluate the impacts of climate change on the United States without considering the consequences of climate change elsewhere. However, such analysis is beyond the scope of this report."
"Climate change will increase productivity in certain crops and regions and reduce productivity in others (see for example Midwest and Great Plains regions)."
"However, under higher heat-trapping gas emissions scenarios, the projected climate changes are likely to increasingly challenge U.S. capacity to as efficiently produce food, feed, fuel,and livestock products."
"Climate change will affect society through impacts on the necessities and comforts of life: water, energy, housing, transportation, food, natural ecosystems, and health."
The way they put things is pretty dry and abstract, and it does not convey the extent of the changes. For example, how much will crop yields increase and decrease and which crops? Since the places where the vast majority of our food is produced will turn into desert or endure mega-droughts, I’m fairly certain that total food production will go down quite a bit relatively early and go down drastically later, but they don’t even give the impression that it will go down. This report, like others I’ve seen, also doesn’t say how the changes will actually affect people. There is a big difference between food prices going up a little and mass starvation, but if they only say there will be “impacts” or “changes” it doesn’t mean much, especially to most people. If you notice, the worst thing they say about food in our country is that efficiency will be challenged. They do briefly mention the possibility of food scarcity in other countries and say that might affect our "security". But what about how the cost of food goes up everywhere when it is scarce? And when our ability to produce our own food is severely curtailed, where will we get enough food when there is also a food scarcity in other countries? The obvious answer is we won't, and some of us will go hungry, even starve.
It’s great that the information is not being completely censored any more. But wording global warming impacts in a way that makes them seem pretty harmless is still a form of censorship.
Addendum 9/13/2009: After reading a lot more of the report, I have to admit that in many ways it is an excellent report. I really learned a lot. I still have issues with the way threats are downplayed, but it would probably have a fairly big impact on anyone who read the report. Unfortunately, judging by the climate bill the House passed, most of them didn’t bother to read it. That is disgraceful.
http://www.truthout.org/061709O#comment-60496
You can find the full report and a summary here:
http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts
I’ve only begun to read the full report, but I’m almost sure it will not convey the real impacts on our lives. For example, it will probably mention that droughts will be more common in the Southwest, and hopefully it will go a step further and say something about reduced food output and water rationing. But will they talk about the worldwide famine that will occur because of the mega-droughts in the US, Australia, and other places, the shifting monsoon patterns, and because the glaciers that supply most of India and China will melt? I would be very surprised. Will they talk about the cannibalism that will occur when there is nothing else left to eat? That is the kind of thing we need to get through to people because otherwise they won’t take action (as we have seen).
In fact, I just searched the full report for “famine”, “starvation”, and “starve”, and there were no matches. There were matches for “food”, though. Here are the examples that had to do with human food:
"In an increasingly interdependent world, U.S. vulnerability to climate change is linked to the fates of other nations. For example, conflicts or mass migrations of people resulting from food scarcity and other resource limits, health impacts, or environmental stresses in other parts of the world could threaten U.S. national security. It is thus difficult to fully evaluate the impacts of climate change on the United States without considering the consequences of climate change elsewhere. However, such analysis is beyond the scope of this report."
"Climate change will increase productivity in certain crops and regions and reduce productivity in others (see for example Midwest and Great Plains regions)."
"However, under higher heat-trapping gas emissions scenarios, the projected climate changes are likely to increasingly challenge U.S. capacity to as efficiently produce food, feed, fuel,and livestock products."
"Climate change will affect society through impacts on the necessities and comforts of life: water, energy, housing, transportation, food, natural ecosystems, and health."
The way they put things is pretty dry and abstract, and it does not convey the extent of the changes. For example, how much will crop yields increase and decrease and which crops? Since the places where the vast majority of our food is produced will turn into desert or endure mega-droughts, I’m fairly certain that total food production will go down quite a bit relatively early and go down drastically later, but they don’t even give the impression that it will go down. This report, like others I’ve seen, also doesn’t say how the changes will actually affect people. There is a big difference between food prices going up a little and mass starvation, but if they only say there will be “impacts” or “changes” it doesn’t mean much, especially to most people. If you notice, the worst thing they say about food in our country is that efficiency will be challenged. They do briefly mention the possibility of food scarcity in other countries and say that might affect our "security". But what about how the cost of food goes up everywhere when it is scarce? And when our ability to produce our own food is severely curtailed, where will we get enough food when there is also a food scarcity in other countries? The obvious answer is we won't, and some of us will go hungry, even starve.
It’s great that the information is not being completely censored any more. But wording global warming impacts in a way that makes them seem pretty harmless is still a form of censorship.
Addendum 9/13/2009: After reading a lot more of the report, I have to admit that in many ways it is an excellent report. I really learned a lot. I still have issues with the way threats are downplayed, but it would probably have a fairly big impact on anyone who read the report. Unfortunately, judging by the climate bill the House passed, most of them didn’t bother to read it. That is disgraceful.
Monday, May 25, 2009
China, the US, and Climate Change
Here is an article about behind the scenes meetings between the U.S. and China, aimed at coming to an agreement to partner to solve the global warming problem. One person said they might even come up with something by this fall. The fact that the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, who seemed to be playing "chicken" with each other during the Bush administration are now possibly on the verge of cooperating is a huge change for the better. James Hansen said we needed to start making big changes this year, or it would be too late to prevent a global cataclysm. It looks like there is still a chance we can pull it off if these talks succeed. We will have to see what the agreement is, and what actually gets done, and then only time will tell if it will be enough.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/18/secret-us-china-emissions-talks
Addendum 9/13/2001: Unfortunately, the climate bill the House passed this year has very anemic reduction target of 3.6% by 2020, about a tenth of what the IPCC said is needed. It also has a provision that would remove the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gasses. Apparently the fossil fuel industry didn’t like the idea of the executive branch making larger cuts than the easily-controlled Congress. If this bill passes as is, it would be a disaster. Despite all the science and the pleadings from climate scientists like James Hansen, Congress seems determined to sacrifice our future in exchange for more corporate profits for their corporate donors. So much for an agreement with China. If the administration manages to get a good agreement, it would be meaningless without the authority to reduce greenhouse gases.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/18/secret-us-china-emissions-talks
Addendum 9/13/2001: Unfortunately, the climate bill the House passed this year has very anemic reduction target of 3.6% by 2020, about a tenth of what the IPCC said is needed. It also has a provision that would remove the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gasses. Apparently the fossil fuel industry didn’t like the idea of the executive branch making larger cuts than the easily-controlled Congress. If this bill passes as is, it would be a disaster. Despite all the science and the pleadings from climate scientists like James Hansen, Congress seems determined to sacrifice our future in exchange for more corporate profits for their corporate donors. So much for an agreement with China. If the administration manages to get a good agreement, it would be meaningless without the authority to reduce greenhouse gases.
Friday, May 22, 2009
New Predictions
I saw one "good" piece of news recently. Some think our coal reserves may be much smaller than estimated before, which means the total amount of CO2 we will be able to emit may be smaller than forecast. They were even saying that the IPCC should lower their worst case global warming predictions. The reason this doesn't comfort me much is that if the worst case predictions came true, it would be absolutely horrible, and we have plenty of coal for that to happen. Also, things have turned out much worse than their worst-case predictions so far, so they need to revise them the other direction. It probably won't matter if we have less coal than we thought. We still have way more than enough to trigger feedbacks that will ruin the world for humans and most other species.
Today there was another piece of bad news. If you've read and/or seen "Six Degrees" yet, you know that even 1 or 2 more degrees will be really bad for us, and 6 degrees higher will be almost unimaginable. Now scientists at MIT predict that it will rise another 5 degrees (9 degrees F) by 2100 if current trends continue. If we implement an aggressive worldwide climate change policy, then it will "only" go up a little more than 2 degrees, still very scary. So most likely it will end up somewhere between those two numbers. But there is still much uncertainty, especially in the area of what use humans will do about the situation.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2009-05-20-global-warming_N.htm
Today there was another piece of bad news. If you've read and/or seen "Six Degrees" yet, you know that even 1 or 2 more degrees will be really bad for us, and 6 degrees higher will be almost unimaginable. Now scientists at MIT predict that it will rise another 5 degrees (9 degrees F) by 2100 if current trends continue. If we implement an aggressive worldwide climate change policy, then it will "only" go up a little more than 2 degrees, still very scary. So most likely it will end up somewhere between those two numbers. But there is still much uncertainty, especially in the area of what use humans will do about the situation.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2009-05-20-global-warming_N.htm
Friday, May 1, 2009
CO2 must be slashed more
"If the world is going to limit global warming to just a few degrees, it has to slash carbon dioxide pollution much more than now being discussed, two new science studies say."
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/04/29/emissions-cut-warming.html
This is a good article overall, and pretty alarming. However, the person who wrote it doesn't seem to understand what he's reporting on, based on this quote: "World average temperatures going higher than that may be dangerous, some scientists say." Some scientists? How about the vast majority of climate scientists? MAY be dangerous? What an understatement! Calling it an understatement is an understatement!
It's very difficult for people to put this problem into perspective. The U.N. estimated that 300,000 people are dying every year because of the effects of global warming. That is NOW, with less than one degree C of warming so far. So global warming is already much more than "dangerous". Just one degree more, and there will be many more deaths because of famine and disease and severe weather. To want to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees is like saying it is perfectly acceptable to cause the deaths of millions of people, maybe even billions. And since we don't know when the big feedbacks will begin, it could even lead to the extinction of the human species. I wish people who report on this subject would learn more about it and then really tell it like it is, in a language that non-scientists would understand. And I wish the politicians would understand how many people they are killing RIGHT NOW with their policies and how many more will die in the future because they failed to take action.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/04/29/emissions-cut-warming.html
This is a good article overall, and pretty alarming. However, the person who wrote it doesn't seem to understand what he's reporting on, based on this quote: "World average temperatures going higher than that may be dangerous, some scientists say." Some scientists? How about the vast majority of climate scientists? MAY be dangerous? What an understatement! Calling it an understatement is an understatement!
It's very difficult for people to put this problem into perspective. The U.N. estimated that 300,000 people are dying every year because of the effects of global warming. That is NOW, with less than one degree C of warming so far. So global warming is already much more than "dangerous". Just one degree more, and there will be many more deaths because of famine and disease and severe weather. To want to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees is like saying it is perfectly acceptable to cause the deaths of millions of people, maybe even billions. And since we don't know when the big feedbacks will begin, it could even lead to the extinction of the human species. I wish people who report on this subject would learn more about it and then really tell it like it is, in a language that non-scientists would understand. And I wish the politicians would understand how many people they are killing RIGHT NOW with their policies and how many more will die in the future because they failed to take action.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Worse than Predicted
When I first read the 2007 IPCC reports, as scary as they were, I was confused by how they seemed to downplay a lot of the threats. I knew that because of pressure from certain countries (U.S., China, Saudi Arabia were named in one article) they reduced the certainty level of some of their predictions. But I had been reading about studies that made things seem quite a bit worse than what was in the IPCC summaries. For example, the IPCC report said oceans would not rise much at all by 2100, but I was reading things that made it seem at least possible that they would rise much more by then. I read later that it takes a few years for new information to make it into those reports, so the reason was partly that they were a few years out of date. They also did not take feedback (or things like the lubricating effects of water at the bottom of the ice) into account in their models for melting ice. Not good when the IPCC reports are what governments are supposed to base their policies on. But they didn’t know how to quantify those things, so it’s understandable they didn’t want to include them in their models. The problem is that it made it easier for politicians to think they could delay action.
Periodically, since I started reading global warming and climate change news articles, an article would appear saying that some aspect of the problem was progressing faster than scientists expected. In 2007 I read so many articles like this that I suspected that some sort of feedback was already happening. In early 2008 I read that James Hansen had said the albedo feedback was already happening. Other scientists reported that the oceans might not be absorbing as much CO2 as they used to, another feedback effect. Forest fires were increasing because of global warming, which is another feedback. Most disturbingly, there were reports from Russia and Alaska that melting permafrost was already releasing methane and CO2, and even that some of the methane frozen at the bottom of the shallow ocean near Russia was being released. This was the most dangerous type of feedback that I had heard about, so I was not happy to hear that it might already be happening, even on a relatively small scale.
The article below talks about some of these things. It’s nice to hear someone from the IPCC finally admitting they were so far off. But we can’t wait for the next IPCC report, which comes out in 2014. Keep the pressure on our governments to solve this problem before it is too late.
http://www.truthout.org/021609M#comment-40896
Addendum 2/28/2009: Here is another story about both poles melting faster than expected. "There's some people who fear that this is the first signs of an incipient collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.... If the West Antarctica sheet collapses, then we're looking at a sea level rise of between 1 meter and 1.5 meters (3 feet, 4 inches to nearly 5 feet)."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29386865/
It's not just that things are warming faster than predicted. The IPCC is now saying that the earth won't have to warm up as much as thought in order to cause "serious consequences". For example, "increases in drought, heat waves and floods are projected in many regions and would have adverse impacts, including increased water stress, wildfire frequency and flood risks."
Addendum 3/15/2009: Here is yet another article where IPCC scientists are saying that their latest (2007) report underestimated the global warming threat. That report predicted the oceans would rise 7 to 23 inches by 2100. The new “best estimate” is 3.25 feet or about 1.7 times the old highest estimate, and that is IF we manage to reduce GHG emissions dramatically. The new highest estimate is 190 centimeters, or about 6 feet 3 inches. Even the old estimates would have been “enough to wipe out several small island nations and wreak havoc for tens of millions living in low-lying deltas”. A sea level rise of 1-2 meters would be “an absolute catastrophe” for China. But it would also be devastating to almost every coastal area, and especially for low-lying places like New Orleans, Bangladesh, The Netherlands, and so on:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/03/10/climate-sea-level.html
Addendum 8/21/2009: Here is another article (from 7/24/09) that talks about how global warming is worse than scientists thought, specifically in regards to the poles:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/208164
Almost as scary as the science in the article are most of the comments that I saw posted for it. It is amazing how confused so many people are about the science. Actually, that is not amazing, what is amazing is how passionately they defend their ignorant beliefs. The fossil fuels industry, in collaboration with conservatives, have done an amazing job confusing people.
Periodically, since I started reading global warming and climate change news articles, an article would appear saying that some aspect of the problem was progressing faster than scientists expected. In 2007 I read so many articles like this that I suspected that some sort of feedback was already happening. In early 2008 I read that James Hansen had said the albedo feedback was already happening. Other scientists reported that the oceans might not be absorbing as much CO2 as they used to, another feedback effect. Forest fires were increasing because of global warming, which is another feedback. Most disturbingly, there were reports from Russia and Alaska that melting permafrost was already releasing methane and CO2, and even that some of the methane frozen at the bottom of the shallow ocean near Russia was being released. This was the most dangerous type of feedback that I had heard about, so I was not happy to hear that it might already be happening, even on a relatively small scale.
The article below talks about some of these things. It’s nice to hear someone from the IPCC finally admitting they were so far off. But we can’t wait for the next IPCC report, which comes out in 2014. Keep the pressure on our governments to solve this problem before it is too late.
http://www.truthout.org/021609M#comment-40896
Addendum 2/28/2009: Here is another story about both poles melting faster than expected. "There's some people who fear that this is the first signs of an incipient collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.... If the West Antarctica sheet collapses, then we're looking at a sea level rise of between 1 meter and 1.5 meters (3 feet, 4 inches to nearly 5 feet)."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29386865/
It's not just that things are warming faster than predicted. The IPCC is now saying that the earth won't have to warm up as much as thought in order to cause "serious consequences". For example, "increases in drought, heat waves and floods are projected in many regions and would have adverse impacts, including increased water stress, wildfire frequency and flood risks."
Addendum 3/15/2009: Here is yet another article where IPCC scientists are saying that their latest (2007) report underestimated the global warming threat. That report predicted the oceans would rise 7 to 23 inches by 2100. The new “best estimate” is 3.25 feet or about 1.7 times the old highest estimate, and that is IF we manage to reduce GHG emissions dramatically. The new highest estimate is 190 centimeters, or about 6 feet 3 inches. Even the old estimates would have been “enough to wipe out several small island nations and wreak havoc for tens of millions living in low-lying deltas”. A sea level rise of 1-2 meters would be “an absolute catastrophe” for China. But it would also be devastating to almost every coastal area, and especially for low-lying places like New Orleans, Bangladesh, The Netherlands, and so on:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/03/10/climate-sea-level.html
Addendum 8/21/2009: Here is another article (from 7/24/09) that talks about how global warming is worse than scientists thought, specifically in regards to the poles:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/208164
Almost as scary as the science in the article are most of the comments that I saw posted for it. It is amazing how confused so many people are about the science. Actually, that is not amazing, what is amazing is how passionately they defend their ignorant beliefs. The fossil fuels industry, in collaboration with conservatives, have done an amazing job confusing people.
Extinction in the News
Here are some recent articles on (mass) extinction and global warming. Mass extinction is what we should be trying to avoid at all costs, of course. Even if you only care about humans, our population would at best shrink dramatically (i.e. the vast majority of us would die) in a mass extinction, and at worst we would cease to exist entirely too.
Mass Extinctions May Follow One-Two Punch
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/17/mass-extinction-theory.html
Study Sees Mass Extinctions via Warming
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3897120/
Penguins Showing Strain Under Climate Change
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/13/magellanic-penguins.html
Mass Extinctions May Follow One-Two Punch
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/17/mass-extinction-theory.html
Study Sees Mass Extinctions via Warming
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3897120/
Penguins Showing Strain Under Climate Change
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/13/magellanic-penguins.html
Friday, February 13, 2009
The Best News
I think this is the best news I've heard since I started following news on global warming. "United on climate change: Obama's Chinese revolution"
http://www.truthout.org/020909N
http://www.truthout.org/020909N
Friday, February 6, 2009
More on What Could Happen (and What Is Happening)
In my last post I focused on the perils part of the U.S. would face with a one degree Centigrad rise in global temperature. Steven Chu, the new U.S. Energy Secretary painted a similar picture a couple of days ago:
"I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen," he said. "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California." And, he added, "I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going" either.
Here is the complete article:
http://www.truthout.org/020509EA#comment-38241
I am very glad that Obama appointed someone who is a real scientist and who can comprehend what is happening. I just hope it isn't too late.
I also mentioned that places like Australia would be experiencing droughts at the same time, and in fact they already are experiencing the worst drought in 117 years:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25617864/
Another article I read recently (which I couldn't find just now) said the Australian government acknowledged the drought was due to global warming and that it will only get worse. And China is also experiencing a drought right now that is so bad they declared an emergency. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d99e77fc-f38b-11dd-9c4b-0000779fd2ac.html
Just in: China raised the emergency from level 2 to level 1, their highest level of threat:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-02/06/content_10773460.htm
Korea is in a drought too right now:
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2900712
And the Arctic continues to warm:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29038734/
This is just a hint of what will be happening in the coming years. Chu said California may not be producing crops by the end of this century, but I think it could happen earlier than that. I base this mostly on the fact that scientists continue to be surprised at how the effects of global warming are happening sooner and with more severity than they predict. Let's hope I'm wrong.
Addendum 2/28/09: Speaking of California and droughts, we are in our third year of a pretty bad drought, and even though we've gotten lots of rain and snow over the past couple of weeks, the federal government announced recently that it plans to cut off water from thousands of California farms for at least two weeks, starting tomorrow. The San Joaquin valley alone is expected to lose 1.15 billion dollars in wages, as 40,000 jobs are lost because of the drought. State residents will be asked to cut water use by 20%, and there will be mandatory rationing in some places. Here is the full article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29302902/
I mentioned in an earlier post that California grows most of this country's fruits and vegetables, but the above article has specific examples at the bottom, such as 93% of the broccoli, 98% of the carrots, 86% of the garlic, 94% of the tomatoes, 99% of the almonds and walnuts, 95% of the apricots, 90% of the strawberries, and 100% of the olives. This is just a partial list, and it means prices for all these things will go up.
And remember, this is only a 3 year drought. During each succeeding year of drought, water becomes more scarce. Unless we invent and implement a way to remove massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere right away (an impossible task, really), global warming will continue to get worse for many years, regardless of what else we do. This means we will have more severe and longer lasting droughts over the next few decades. Farmers will suffer great economic hardships and many will go out of business. They and people whose jobs depend on them will be unemployed, and if it goes on long enough, they will have to migrate. But where will they go?
If we would have started cutting our GHG emissions years ago, when we first knew about the problem, we could have avoided this. Now it is becoming a fight for our very existence. Yet most people in power still think in terms of how much reducing GHG will hurt business or how much of the GDP it will cost. That is supremely stupid, because global warming is already going to hurt business and reduce our GDP way more than reducing GHG output would have, and if we delay much longer, there will be no GDP at all. I wish people would put things like this into perspective.
"I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen," he said. "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California." And, he added, "I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going" either.
Here is the complete article:
http://www.truthout.org/020509EA#comment-38241
I am very glad that Obama appointed someone who is a real scientist and who can comprehend what is happening. I just hope it isn't too late.
I also mentioned that places like Australia would be experiencing droughts at the same time, and in fact they already are experiencing the worst drought in 117 years:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25617864/
Another article I read recently (which I couldn't find just now) said the Australian government acknowledged the drought was due to global warming and that it will only get worse. And China is also experiencing a drought right now that is so bad they declared an emergency. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d99e77fc-f38b-11dd-9c4b-0000779fd2ac.html
Just in: China raised the emergency from level 2 to level 1, their highest level of threat:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-02/06/content_10773460.htm
Korea is in a drought too right now:
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2900712
And the Arctic continues to warm:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29038734/
This is just a hint of what will be happening in the coming years. Chu said California may not be producing crops by the end of this century, but I think it could happen earlier than that. I base this mostly on the fact that scientists continue to be surprised at how the effects of global warming are happening sooner and with more severity than they predict. Let's hope I'm wrong.
Addendum 2/28/09: Speaking of California and droughts, we are in our third year of a pretty bad drought, and even though we've gotten lots of rain and snow over the past couple of weeks, the federal government announced recently that it plans to cut off water from thousands of California farms for at least two weeks, starting tomorrow. The San Joaquin valley alone is expected to lose 1.15 billion dollars in wages, as 40,000 jobs are lost because of the drought. State residents will be asked to cut water use by 20%, and there will be mandatory rationing in some places. Here is the full article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29302902/
I mentioned in an earlier post that California grows most of this country's fruits and vegetables, but the above article has specific examples at the bottom, such as 93% of the broccoli, 98% of the carrots, 86% of the garlic, 94% of the tomatoes, 99% of the almonds and walnuts, 95% of the apricots, 90% of the strawberries, and 100% of the olives. This is just a partial list, and it means prices for all these things will go up.
And remember, this is only a 3 year drought. During each succeeding year of drought, water becomes more scarce. Unless we invent and implement a way to remove massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere right away (an impossible task, really), global warming will continue to get worse for many years, regardless of what else we do. This means we will have more severe and longer lasting droughts over the next few decades. Farmers will suffer great economic hardships and many will go out of business. They and people whose jobs depend on them will be unemployed, and if it goes on long enough, they will have to migrate. But where will they go?
If we would have started cutting our GHG emissions years ago, when we first knew about the problem, we could have avoided this. Now it is becoming a fight for our very existence. Yet most people in power still think in terms of how much reducing GHG will hurt business or how much of the GDP it will cost. That is supremely stupid, because global warming is already going to hurt business and reduce our GDP way more than reducing GHG output would have, and if we delay much longer, there will be no GDP at all. I wish people would put things like this into perspective.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
What Could Happen?
The best summary of what global warming could bring that I have seen is in the book “Six Degrees” and the National Geographic DVD of the same name. The author of the book (Mark Lynas) compiled the information from many scientific papers to get an idea of what changes we can expect if the average global temperature increases from 1 degree to 6 degrees Centigrade above the current temperature. I encourage everyone who is even slightly curious about the future to read the book and watch the DVD. The book goes into more detail and has a lot of information that the DVD does not have, but the DVD is more compelling and has some information that didn’t make it into the book.
Even the DVD doesn’t convey what actually living in such a world would be like. Without this knowledge, it is difficult to put the problem into perspective. Knowing that rising sea levels will force millions to relocate is not the same as the experience of losing your home, property, and neighborhood and having to find a new place to live and a way to make a living at the same time that millions of others are doing the same thing. I want to try to convey this kind of thing, even though I know I can only hint at the experience.
I want to focus first on one of the things that scientists think will happen with a one degree C temperature increase, partly because I don’t think we will avoid that much increase at this point, partly because few people understand what such a seemingly small increase could mean. Many scientists think that the Western part of the United States will be like it was during the Medieval Warm Period (around 800-1300 AD), the last time the temperature was that warm. I will focus on this region, because it is where I live, and I have paid special attention to predictions about this area. Scientists can see from tree rings and from trees that died when the water in lakes and river beds rose again that drought was the norm in the West during this period. In fact, the droughts were so severe and long that they call them mega-droughts.
Nowadays when a severe drought goes into its third year in California, we have to start rationing water so that we don’t run out. That means lawns don’t get watered, swimming pools and hot tubs don’t get filled, cars don’t get washed as often, showers are shorter, toilets are not flushed with each use, and so on. Since California has been a state, severe droughts have never lasted more than a few years. Three or four years is the longest I can remember experiencing. But during the Medieval Warm Period, droughts lasted as long as 50 or 60 years with no break. In a three year drought, you can still use more water than comes down from the sky, because the first year or two there is a surplus from the previous year, and the last year you can hope that it will rain and snow more in the coming winter. But when a drought lasts much longer than that, you only get what comes down each year, which is not much during a drought. When that happens for years in a row, California will not be able to grow the crops it is famous for, because there will not even be enough water to support the population, much less crops. People would have to move to other locations where water is more plentiful, and the people who stay would lead a very different life.
The Great Plains, our nation’s “breadbasket” could be even drier than California. During the Medieval Warm Period that part of the United States was a desert. I don’t mean that figuratively – it was literally made of sand dunes, and you can still find sand under the thin topsoil. This area included Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Obviously you can’t grow wheat or corn or soy in a desert. So grain and soy production will go down dramatically, and so will meat production. Every type of food will be scarce and expensive. (Even without global warming, fish are supposed to be extremely scarce in a few years, mainly because of over-fishing, and California grows most of our other vegetables and fruits, so that covers most of what we eat.)
Of course, the United States could import most of our food, but only if there is enough to import, and only if we could afford it. Canada should be able to produce more food at that stage of global warming, so we might buy a lot of our food from there. But Mexico and Central America will be suffering mega-droughts just like our West. (In fact, the Maya civilization ended during the Medieval Warm period, likely because of the long droughts they suffered.) Australia, another major food producer, will also be suffering drought conditions most of the time, as will many parts of Africa. And all over the world, people who depend on mountain glaciers for water will begin to suffer severe water shortages. Those glaciers have already shrunk dramatically, but it will get much worse. That means many other countries, including China and India, will not be able to produce nearly enough food for their own people. The recent food shortages that caused riots in several countries is nothing compared to the shortages we will see then. The dust bowl caused a lot of suffering when it occurred, and anyone who has read “The Grapes of Wrath” has gotten a taste of those times. But that is nothing compared to what will happen with a one degree temperature rise. Back then people moved from the drought-stricken states to California, but if California is in the middle of a mega-drought, people will be moving away from there too. Where will all those people go? And where will their food come from? Will Canada have to build a wall to keep out illegal American immigrants?
It is impossible to adequately describe or imagine what life will really be like then. But we can get some hints by looking at the past. There are some ruins in New Mexico where the most advanced civilization north of Mexico was located, and they either abandoned their buildings and migrated or died out during the mega-droughts of the Medieval Warm Period. On the top of their largest buildings are human bones with human teeth marks on them and signs that they were killed. Maybe people from other tribes killed and ate them, or maybe their own civilization broke up into competing factions. In Egypt there was at least one drought that went on for so long that people resorted to eating their own children. They must have already eaten all the other animals and edible plants at that point. Try to imagine what level of suffering would lead someone to eat their own children. Any sane person would want to avoid such a fate for himself, for his children, and for others. So why are we not doing what we need to do to avoid it? I can only conclude that people still don’t understand the threat of global warming.
We are much more advanced technologically than those older civilizations. But if there is such a severe, worldwide food shortage, at the very least many millions of people will starve to death in the poorer and less advanced countries. I think it will also throw our financial systems into complete chaos. The Pentagon did a study and said that the mass migrations will increase the likelihood of wars and conflict when these types of things begin to happen.
Water shortages caused by droughts and melting glaciers are not the only things that will happen with an increase in global temperatures of only one degree Centigrade. According to “Six Degrees”, here are other things that are predicted:
The Arctic ocean (North-West Passage) will be open (water instead of ice) half of the year.
Permafrost will melt even faster than now, releasing more CO2 and methane.
Tens of thousands of homes in the Bay of Bengal will be flooded.
Hurricanes will occur in the South Atlantic (off South America).
Storm intensity will increase, including cyclones (hurricanes).
England will be growing things like grapes that normally do not grow there.
The lands experiencing severe drought will increase from 3% to 30% of the planet.
Species will go extinct at an even faster rate than now.
Most of the coral will experience bleaching and eventually die.
Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Tokelau, and the Maldives will sink under water.
I think it is now too late to avoid this. I read about a year ago that there is another 0.6 degree C rise already “in the pipeline”, meaning it would occur even if we immediately and completely stopped producing excess green house gases (GHG). Plus the albedo feedback means another 0.3 degree rise is inevitable. And there may be another full degree that will happen as we stop putting particulate matter into the atmosphere when we finally do close down the coal plants. But we can survive this much. We should not give up, because things could get much, much worse than this. We need to reduce GHG emissions as much and as soon as possible and at the same time remove as much CO2 from the atmosphere as possible. Here is an article where scientists are finally speaking up about this subject:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28874983/
The article below, about the same study, sounds even more ominous. They are saying that the effects of global warming, however bad they get, will last about 1000 years after we bring our emissions down:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99888903
"The Long Thaw" by David Archer, a leading climate scientist, says the effects will last much longer than 1000 years after we severely reduce our emissions. The worst effects might last 100 to 1000 years, but CO2 levels won't fully return to preindustrial levels for hundreds of thousands of years.
Even the DVD doesn’t convey what actually living in such a world would be like. Without this knowledge, it is difficult to put the problem into perspective. Knowing that rising sea levels will force millions to relocate is not the same as the experience of losing your home, property, and neighborhood and having to find a new place to live and a way to make a living at the same time that millions of others are doing the same thing. I want to try to convey this kind of thing, even though I know I can only hint at the experience.
I want to focus first on one of the things that scientists think will happen with a one degree C temperature increase, partly because I don’t think we will avoid that much increase at this point, partly because few people understand what such a seemingly small increase could mean. Many scientists think that the Western part of the United States will be like it was during the Medieval Warm Period (around 800-1300 AD), the last time the temperature was that warm. I will focus on this region, because it is where I live, and I have paid special attention to predictions about this area. Scientists can see from tree rings and from trees that died when the water in lakes and river beds rose again that drought was the norm in the West during this period. In fact, the droughts were so severe and long that they call them mega-droughts.
Nowadays when a severe drought goes into its third year in California, we have to start rationing water so that we don’t run out. That means lawns don’t get watered, swimming pools and hot tubs don’t get filled, cars don’t get washed as often, showers are shorter, toilets are not flushed with each use, and so on. Since California has been a state, severe droughts have never lasted more than a few years. Three or four years is the longest I can remember experiencing. But during the Medieval Warm Period, droughts lasted as long as 50 or 60 years with no break. In a three year drought, you can still use more water than comes down from the sky, because the first year or two there is a surplus from the previous year, and the last year you can hope that it will rain and snow more in the coming winter. But when a drought lasts much longer than that, you only get what comes down each year, which is not much during a drought. When that happens for years in a row, California will not be able to grow the crops it is famous for, because there will not even be enough water to support the population, much less crops. People would have to move to other locations where water is more plentiful, and the people who stay would lead a very different life.
The Great Plains, our nation’s “breadbasket” could be even drier than California. During the Medieval Warm Period that part of the United States was a desert. I don’t mean that figuratively – it was literally made of sand dunes, and you can still find sand under the thin topsoil. This area included Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Obviously you can’t grow wheat or corn or soy in a desert. So grain and soy production will go down dramatically, and so will meat production. Every type of food will be scarce and expensive. (Even without global warming, fish are supposed to be extremely scarce in a few years, mainly because of over-fishing, and California grows most of our other vegetables and fruits, so that covers most of what we eat.)
Of course, the United States could import most of our food, but only if there is enough to import, and only if we could afford it. Canada should be able to produce more food at that stage of global warming, so we might buy a lot of our food from there. But Mexico and Central America will be suffering mega-droughts just like our West. (In fact, the Maya civilization ended during the Medieval Warm period, likely because of the long droughts they suffered.) Australia, another major food producer, will also be suffering drought conditions most of the time, as will many parts of Africa. And all over the world, people who depend on mountain glaciers for water will begin to suffer severe water shortages. Those glaciers have already shrunk dramatically, but it will get much worse. That means many other countries, including China and India, will not be able to produce nearly enough food for their own people. The recent food shortages that caused riots in several countries is nothing compared to the shortages we will see then. The dust bowl caused a lot of suffering when it occurred, and anyone who has read “The Grapes of Wrath” has gotten a taste of those times. But that is nothing compared to what will happen with a one degree temperature rise. Back then people moved from the drought-stricken states to California, but if California is in the middle of a mega-drought, people will be moving away from there too. Where will all those people go? And where will their food come from? Will Canada have to build a wall to keep out illegal American immigrants?
It is impossible to adequately describe or imagine what life will really be like then. But we can get some hints by looking at the past. There are some ruins in New Mexico where the most advanced civilization north of Mexico was located, and they either abandoned their buildings and migrated or died out during the mega-droughts of the Medieval Warm Period. On the top of their largest buildings are human bones with human teeth marks on them and signs that they were killed. Maybe people from other tribes killed and ate them, or maybe their own civilization broke up into competing factions. In Egypt there was at least one drought that went on for so long that people resorted to eating their own children. They must have already eaten all the other animals and edible plants at that point. Try to imagine what level of suffering would lead someone to eat their own children. Any sane person would want to avoid such a fate for himself, for his children, and for others. So why are we not doing what we need to do to avoid it? I can only conclude that people still don’t understand the threat of global warming.
We are much more advanced technologically than those older civilizations. But if there is such a severe, worldwide food shortage, at the very least many millions of people will starve to death in the poorer and less advanced countries. I think it will also throw our financial systems into complete chaos. The Pentagon did a study and said that the mass migrations will increase the likelihood of wars and conflict when these types of things begin to happen.
Water shortages caused by droughts and melting glaciers are not the only things that will happen with an increase in global temperatures of only one degree Centigrade. According to “Six Degrees”, here are other things that are predicted:
The Arctic ocean (North-West Passage) will be open (water instead of ice) half of the year.
Permafrost will melt even faster than now, releasing more CO2 and methane.
Tens of thousands of homes in the Bay of Bengal will be flooded.
Hurricanes will occur in the South Atlantic (off South America).
Storm intensity will increase, including cyclones (hurricanes).
England will be growing things like grapes that normally do not grow there.
The lands experiencing severe drought will increase from 3% to 30% of the planet.
Species will go extinct at an even faster rate than now.
Most of the coral will experience bleaching and eventually die.
Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Tokelau, and the Maldives will sink under water.
I think it is now too late to avoid this. I read about a year ago that there is another 0.6 degree C rise already “in the pipeline”, meaning it would occur even if we immediately and completely stopped producing excess green house gases (GHG). Plus the albedo feedback means another 0.3 degree rise is inevitable. And there may be another full degree that will happen as we stop putting particulate matter into the atmosphere when we finally do close down the coal plants. But we can survive this much. We should not give up, because things could get much, much worse than this. We need to reduce GHG emissions as much and as soon as possible and at the same time remove as much CO2 from the atmosphere as possible. Here is an article where scientists are finally speaking up about this subject:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28874983/
The article below, about the same study, sounds even more ominous. They are saying that the effects of global warming, however bad they get, will last about 1000 years after we bring our emissions down:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99888903
"The Long Thaw" by David Archer, a leading climate scientist, says the effects will last much longer than 1000 years after we severely reduce our emissions. The worst effects might last 100 to 1000 years, but CO2 levels won't fully return to preindustrial levels for hundreds of thousands of years.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Why this blog?
I've been sending emails about global warming and climate change to friends for a while now. Some of them suggested I start a blog to reach more people. This blog is meant primarily for people who already think global warming is real, although anyone is welcome to read it. I just don’t want to spend a lot of time trying to prove what the vast majority of climate scientists agree on. The fact that so many climate scientists agree should be sufficient for anyone who respects science and truth to want to find out more, at the very least. I want to start from there.
I think global warming is by far the most important topic for the human race at this time. While most people now realize it is happening, very few realize how bad it could get or how quickly we need to act. You can see this in the polls, where several other issues are always ranked as more important. You can see it in the way politicians talk about the issue, often referring to it, if they refer to it at all as a subset of energy independence (an insignificant subject in comparison). Most of all, you can see it in the inaction and counter-productive action at all levels, but especially the national level in most countries.Most people think global warming is similar to acid rain or the depletion of the ozone layer, or they think that greenhouse gases are just another form of pollution. But this is very different. Its quality is different, but it is also much more serious and much more urgent. It is not easy to explain why the situation is so urgent, and it is not easy to imagine what living in a world where global warming has gotten out of control would be like. I think that is what is needed the most right now, so that is where I will start. I will focus on the urgency in this post, which will also convey something about the unique quality of global warming, and begin to cover what could happen in the next.
By the way, if you are wondering why I’m using the term global warming instead of climate change, it is because climate change itself is not necessarily a threat. The climate changes all the time, and as long as the changes stay within a certain range, that is not a problem. It is the increase in global average temperature that will cause devastating climate changes. Climate science is the more general topic, but global warming is the problem.When you are steering a large ship, you can't wait until the last minute to turn. You have to begin the turn quite a while before you want to be headed in the new direction, and the turn will be wide and gradual. The faster the ship is moving, and the bigger it is, the more this is true. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is like a gigantic ship that has been accelerating for many decades. Only recently have we begun to notice the effects of the excess carbon dioxide (CO2) we have been putting into the atmosphere for so long. Once the level of CO2 stops rising and begins to fall, it will take hundreds of thousands of years for it to get completely back to pre-industrial levels naturally. Temperatures would also fall slowly. According to several models, it could take anywhere from 1,000 to more than 10,000 years for the temperature to get half way back to the preindustrial average, and to fully return to the preindustrial temperature range would take hundreds of thousands of years. (See “The Long Thaw”, by David Archer if you want to learn more about this.)It also takes quite a while for the effects of the CO2 we are releasing to be fully felt. I've read that it takes 50 to 100 years before most of the effects of CO2 emissions are felt. That is one reason we have to reduce our greenhouse gas output long before we see any major effects. But we will only be able to gradually reduce our output, probably over several decades at best. That means things are guaranteed to continue to get worse for many decades, unless we begin to actively remove massive amounts from the atmosphere (and we don’t know how to do that).There is an even more compelling reason why we must change our ways quickly: feedback. In the past, feedback has caused climate changes as huge as the difference between the current climate and that of an ice age in as little as 5 to 20 years. Just imagine living through a change like that. This out of control feedback is what we need to avoid at all costs. Once it starts, we won't be able to stop it, and we will have to adapt to the new climate. But there is a chance we won't be able to adjust, and the human species (along with most other species) will die out completely. Our planet has experienced several mass extinctions before, some of which probably were caused by the release of greenhouse gases, at least as one major factor. Regardless of the causes, the climate changed too quickly for most life to adapt, and anyone who values life wouldn’t want that to happen again, much less be the cause of it. And nobody would want to live (or die) through it.When you combine the very slow response time with the very fast feedback, you can understand why I am so worried. We have to reverse course many years before we reach the “tipping point” where that uncontrollable feedback starts, or else it will be too late. Instead, we are still increasing emissions at an alarming rate. From what I’ve read, I think we are very close to the point where it will be too late to stop runaway feedback. Unfortunately, we won’t know for sure until it is way too late to stop it. And the consequences are so bad that we should minimize the chances of this occurring as much as we possibly can. But we are doing the opposite.
One other very important point that most people do not really understand is that we will not get a second chance. If we mess this up, we mess it up essentially for good – for many times longer than human civilization has existed. Why would any sane person want to take chances with that?When might this point of no return come? Although many scientists say time is running out, nobody knows exactly how long we have. This uncertainty leads some to a false sense of security. They think that since we don't know for sure, that means it's not as bad as scientists say. But they ignore the fact that uncertainty always goes both ways. In other words, it is as likely that we have already run out of time as it is that we can take our time. And the pattern I keep seeing is that new data often proves things are worse than the scientific consensus. Since the stakes are so high, shouldn't we play it on the safe side and act as if we knew we had very little time? We know that it won’t destroy the world if we bring the level of CO2 in the atmosphere down, even all the way to preindustrial levels. It has been lower than it is now for all of human existence and for hundreds of millions of years before that. So we have nothing to lose by fighting global warming, and everything to lose by promoting it. There is simply no question what we should do, if we value life.But what if it is already too late? Does that mean we should give up since we are doomed anyway? No, because anything we can do to slow the change down will give us and other species more time to adapt. But also, we don’t know, so it makes no sense to give up now. We should do all we can while we still can. At this point we should act as if it is very late but not too late, because even if there was only a small chance we could save the world, we should try. Wouldn’t you try to save your baby as long as there was even the slightest chance you could? And isn’t that what we are talking about on a personal level? Your children, or the children you know will be stuck with whatever world we leave them. So what are you going to do?
I think global warming is by far the most important topic for the human race at this time. While most people now realize it is happening, very few realize how bad it could get or how quickly we need to act. You can see this in the polls, where several other issues are always ranked as more important. You can see it in the way politicians talk about the issue, often referring to it, if they refer to it at all as a subset of energy independence (an insignificant subject in comparison). Most of all, you can see it in the inaction and counter-productive action at all levels, but especially the national level in most countries.Most people think global warming is similar to acid rain or the depletion of the ozone layer, or they think that greenhouse gases are just another form of pollution. But this is very different. Its quality is different, but it is also much more serious and much more urgent. It is not easy to explain why the situation is so urgent, and it is not easy to imagine what living in a world where global warming has gotten out of control would be like. I think that is what is needed the most right now, so that is where I will start. I will focus on the urgency in this post, which will also convey something about the unique quality of global warming, and begin to cover what could happen in the next.
By the way, if you are wondering why I’m using the term global warming instead of climate change, it is because climate change itself is not necessarily a threat. The climate changes all the time, and as long as the changes stay within a certain range, that is not a problem. It is the increase in global average temperature that will cause devastating climate changes. Climate science is the more general topic, but global warming is the problem.When you are steering a large ship, you can't wait until the last minute to turn. You have to begin the turn quite a while before you want to be headed in the new direction, and the turn will be wide and gradual. The faster the ship is moving, and the bigger it is, the more this is true. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is like a gigantic ship that has been accelerating for many decades. Only recently have we begun to notice the effects of the excess carbon dioxide (CO2) we have been putting into the atmosphere for so long. Once the level of CO2 stops rising and begins to fall, it will take hundreds of thousands of years for it to get completely back to pre-industrial levels naturally. Temperatures would also fall slowly. According to several models, it could take anywhere from 1,000 to more than 10,000 years for the temperature to get half way back to the preindustrial average, and to fully return to the preindustrial temperature range would take hundreds of thousands of years. (See “The Long Thaw”, by David Archer if you want to learn more about this.)It also takes quite a while for the effects of the CO2 we are releasing to be fully felt. I've read that it takes 50 to 100 years before most of the effects of CO2 emissions are felt. That is one reason we have to reduce our greenhouse gas output long before we see any major effects. But we will only be able to gradually reduce our output, probably over several decades at best. That means things are guaranteed to continue to get worse for many decades, unless we begin to actively remove massive amounts from the atmosphere (and we don’t know how to do that).There is an even more compelling reason why we must change our ways quickly: feedback. In the past, feedback has caused climate changes as huge as the difference between the current climate and that of an ice age in as little as 5 to 20 years. Just imagine living through a change like that. This out of control feedback is what we need to avoid at all costs. Once it starts, we won't be able to stop it, and we will have to adapt to the new climate. But there is a chance we won't be able to adjust, and the human species (along with most other species) will die out completely. Our planet has experienced several mass extinctions before, some of which probably were caused by the release of greenhouse gases, at least as one major factor. Regardless of the causes, the climate changed too quickly for most life to adapt, and anyone who values life wouldn’t want that to happen again, much less be the cause of it. And nobody would want to live (or die) through it.When you combine the very slow response time with the very fast feedback, you can understand why I am so worried. We have to reverse course many years before we reach the “tipping point” where that uncontrollable feedback starts, or else it will be too late. Instead, we are still increasing emissions at an alarming rate. From what I’ve read, I think we are very close to the point where it will be too late to stop runaway feedback. Unfortunately, we won’t know for sure until it is way too late to stop it. And the consequences are so bad that we should minimize the chances of this occurring as much as we possibly can. But we are doing the opposite.
One other very important point that most people do not really understand is that we will not get a second chance. If we mess this up, we mess it up essentially for good – for many times longer than human civilization has existed. Why would any sane person want to take chances with that?When might this point of no return come? Although many scientists say time is running out, nobody knows exactly how long we have. This uncertainty leads some to a false sense of security. They think that since we don't know for sure, that means it's not as bad as scientists say. But they ignore the fact that uncertainty always goes both ways. In other words, it is as likely that we have already run out of time as it is that we can take our time. And the pattern I keep seeing is that new data often proves things are worse than the scientific consensus. Since the stakes are so high, shouldn't we play it on the safe side and act as if we knew we had very little time? We know that it won’t destroy the world if we bring the level of CO2 in the atmosphere down, even all the way to preindustrial levels. It has been lower than it is now for all of human existence and for hundreds of millions of years before that. So we have nothing to lose by fighting global warming, and everything to lose by promoting it. There is simply no question what we should do, if we value life.But what if it is already too late? Does that mean we should give up since we are doomed anyway? No, because anything we can do to slow the change down will give us and other species more time to adapt. But also, we don’t know, so it makes no sense to give up now. We should do all we can while we still can. At this point we should act as if it is very late but not too late, because even if there was only a small chance we could save the world, we should try. Wouldn’t you try to save your baby as long as there was even the slightest chance you could? And isn’t that what we are talking about on a personal level? Your children, or the children you know will be stuck with whatever world we leave them. So what are you going to do?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)