It’s hard for most of us to keep up with the issue of global warming, which I don’t see as a “controversy” because virtually all scientists agree that anthropogenic warming is happening and that we’re in trouble. But unless you’re a weather fanatic, there’s simply too much information and discussion out there. Is there a place you can go to see what the consensus is, and how bad things will get?
Never fear. The New York Times has just published a useful piece called “Short answers to hard questions about climate change,” which has succinct answers to 12 FAQs about climate change. The upshot: things are heating up fast (“The heat accumulating in the Earth because of human emissions is roughly equal to the heat that would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs exploding across the planet every day”); there’s virtually no doubt that this is cause by humans; the warming could cause serious trouble within a century; the best thing you can do is reduce your number of plane flights; technology may help but we’re not spending enough to develop it; and the opposition comes from libertarians (viz., Matt Ridley) and economic interests like fossil-fuel companies.
Is there any hope? I have very little. The article claims that the summit meeting now taking place in Paris is a cause for optimism, showing that world leaders are finally taking the problem seriously. But it also notes, correctly, that until individual citizens begin to act on the scientific consensus, realize the trouble we’re in, and begin agitating for change, little change will occur. And I’m not optimistic about that, because this agitation won’t happen until people begin personally suffering from climate change. Abstractions and pictures of shrinking icecaps are not nearly as powerful a motivation as seeing your beachfront home inundated by rising seas or your crops destroyed by drought.
But you should read the piece and get informed.
The problem is that anthropogenic warming is an evidence based claim and most of the world’s population does not take their knowledge from evidence. Especially scientific evidence.
You can’t get people to act on evidence if they have no reverence for evidence.
Public opinion is of course important, but it will be the government and business initiatives (see the example below) that will make the biggest difference in the end.
Morocco poised to become a solar superpower with launch of desert mega-project
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/26/morocco-poised-to-become-a-solar-superpower-with-launch-of-desert-mega-project
“Now the trading city, nicknamed the “door of the desert”, is the centre for another blockbuster – a complex of four linked solar mega-plants that, alongside hydro and wind, will help provide nearly half of Morocco’s electricity from renewables by 2020 with, it is hoped, some spare to export to Europe.”
“anthropogenic warming is an evidence based claim”
Yes it is. However, the predictions about its future consequences aren’t. They are hopelessly inaccurate, diverse guesses that have an emotional appeal, but are of very little use for planning policies – because just like the predictions of what would happen if we don’t do anything are unreliable, so are the predictions of what each concrete intervention would do.
In light of this uncertainty, one should always contrast the cost of “not doing enough” with the cost of doing something that is very expensive and turns out to be ineffective. Because the latter will consume enormous amount of resources that will then not be available for doing something demonstrably useful.
“In light of this uncertainty, one should always contrast the cost of “not doing enough” with the cost of doing something that is very expensive and turns out to be ineffective.”
Replacing dirty fossil fuels with ZERO-emission energy sources is SURE TO BE EFFECTIVE.
That’s true. And with the continuing improvements in solar cell technology, not likely to be very expensive.
Yes it’ll be effective if we ever develop the technology and then we’ll surely convert. Until someone comes up with a workable solution to large-scale energy storage all those renewables will be burning and chopping birds for not much, because as Germany and other countries have found the renewables need to be backed up by ready-to-go fossil powered generating facilities. Back in March Germany had a period of 11 days with little wind and less sunshine requiring existing coal-fired generation to make up the shortfall. And the energy-storage required to keep Germany going for such a long period with NO power generation to speak of is going to have to be enormous, both in size and in cost.
To date the Energiewende has succeeded only in doubling the price of power supplied to german homes (Germany has now with Denmark the most expensive power in Europe) while reducing CO2 emissions not at all. But don’t believe me research it for yourself. You might find it ain’t what you think it is.
Germany and Denmark are at the very beginning of the process of moving to clean energy, so it’s not all that important when the countries are today. Still, to Denmark’s credit, the country generated about 40% of its electricity in 2014 from Wind. In Norway, 95% of the country’s electricity is generated by hydro-power; with planned investments in wind power, they will soon be exporting green energy to other European countries…
The Energiewende is not new. It began officially in 1991 – so twenty four years. As to its success a Bundesregierung Experts commission has this to say:
http://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2015-11/energiewende-monitoring-bericht/komplettansicht
That they haven’t quite got a handle on the technology yet is demonstrated by this report:
http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/energie/article149060336/Sturmtief-Iwan-ueberfordert-deutsches-Stromnetz.html
Interesting that wind parks in North Germany had to be shut off because the grid couldn’t handle the excess power despite grid-balancing emergency measures being employed. But not to worry, the wind park operators get paid anyway.
Just sayin’ this ain’t quite as simple as some would have us believe.
This is interesting, and important but we still need to develop solar.
Maybe if there was a more extensive ‘smart grid’ then excess power from solar sources that are getting sun can be diverted to the regions under clouds. I think to make this work like people expect we will need to have an overabundance of distributed solar energy sources, so to always be able to compensate for regions that are ‘down’.
The answer is…wait for it…leaders now understand the problem. They will need to ensure that sufficient resources are allocated to research into low cost solar energy, distribution, and storage technology. If this can be achieved within 10 years or so, it will undercut the price of oil and coal and the market will take care of the rest (a carbon tax can help). If 20 billion in 10 years is enough to figure out how to get to the moon, the energy problem can be largely solved for a trillion or so. Much better than waiting to see what will happen.
Safe, reliable, low-carbon electric generating technology already exists: nuclear. We’ve known for over 30 years how to build nuclear reactors that are inherently safe from meltdown. Nuclear power can provide the base generating load needed for renewables to work, and at a very low carbon cost. Germany made a big mistake in shutting down its nuclear power plants. They’ve since replaced them with coal-burning plants, causing a sharp rise in carbon emissions.
Unlike coal plants, it’s hard to make a profit running a nuclear plant, so businesses are generally not interested unless they get subsidies, but electricity is obviously a crucial public good and we should have no worries about funding it publicly.
That’s an interesting argument. I do not know much about the issue of nuclear, except that it is expensive and controversial. Done correctly with modern technology it is said to be a reasonable alternative. I hope that’s true as it could eventually be the basis for a solid background infrastructure. On the other hand, if solar power can be made efficient and storage too, we may not need nuclear.
“Replacing dirty fossil fuels with ZERO-emission energy sources is SURE TO BE EFFECTIVE.”
Well it will be cleaner and more sustainable, to be sure. Whether it can realistically be done in a way that would stop the warming or slow it down enough to be useful for this particular purpose – that is a trickier one. Even if it would result in decreased carbon emissions, it could still be 1) not enough to prevent what people want to prevent, or 2) what people are trying to prevent might not happen either way. All these are scenarios that should be included in the utility calculations.
What do you mean “it may not happen either way.”
Carbon dioxide and methane are both greenhouse gasses i.e. they are trapping heat in the atmosphere. If we do nothing about them, we will continue to warm the climate.
As for the “not enough to prevent what we want” argument, well, we want to prevent as much warming as possible, therefore we have to do as much as possible.
“What do you mean “it may not happen either way.””
The “disaster” scenario may not happen either way. It is one of the perfectly plausible scenarios – that the warming will not cause any dramatic changes that we won’t be able to handle when the time comes.
“we want to prevent as much warming as possible, therefore we have to do as much as possible.”
That would make sense if the resources (time and money) at our disposal were infinite. However they are not, so “as much as possible” then better become “as much as we can without causing even greater damage elsewhere by redirecting resources from there to fighting climate change”.
“The “disaster” scenario may not happen either way. It is one of the perfectly plausible scenarios – that the warming will not cause any dramatic changes that we won’t be able to handle when the time comes.”
Rising temperatures are the disaster, because they are driving droughts, fires, and other extreme weather events.
“That would make sense if the resources (time and money) at our disposal were infinite.”
Well, our time to deal with the global warming problem is certainly not infinite — the faster we act to prevent further warming of the climate the better.
“Rising temperatures are the disaster, because they are driving droughts, fires, and other extreme weather events.”
Not really, until those extreme weather events become both strongly more frequent (for that, p-value is not enough – we’ll need a decent effect size, which is nowhere to be seen at the moment) AND unmanageable in a way which makes them much worse than current extreme weather events or those from recent past. If anything, new technologies are making fighting the consequences of extreme weather easier to handle than before.
It is important not to use “disaster” as an emotional category. I believe that raising the level of education and knowledge throughout the world, and especially in the most vulnerable parts of the world, would have a much greater effect on the humanity’s ability to solve future problems, much greater than current combination of scaremongering and predictions lacking serious predictive power.
“Well, our time to deal with the global warming problem is certainly not infinite — the faster we act to prevent further warming of the climate the better.”
…unless we have no clue what our “acting” would result in, in which case the faster we do it provides no guarantee that it will be better. It may just as likely be worse.
“…unless we have no clue what our “acting” would result in, in which case the faster we do it provides no guarantee that it will be better. It may just as likely be worse.”
We know what our actions will result in – the decrease in pumping of heat trapping gasses into the atmosphere.
“We know what our actions will result in – the decrease in pumping of heat trapping gasses into the atmosphere.”
Yes, thank you Captain Obvious. Now could you please tell me who knows 1) how much decrease will each specific action result in, and 2) how much total decrease is optimal to outweigh the disadvantages of not using those resources for something more measurably useful? Without a minimally reliable estimate of those two things (which DOES NOT EXIST, regardless of all the kicking and screaming), your “as much as possible” is meaningless.
“Yes, thank you Captain Obvious. Now could you please tell me who knows 1) how much decrease will each specific action result in”
Don’t want to shock you, Captain Coal, but we can measure how many tons of CO2 emissions our every single action is going to save. That’s not a problem.
“2) how much total decrease is optimal to outweigh the disadvantages of not using those resources for something more measurably useful?”
All of those considerations should be hashed out during the next two weeks at the climate summit in Paris. Where the world leaders will talk about how much resources they are willing to spend to decrease the risk of potential droughts, heat waves, fires, and floods.
I hope they will also discuss the issue of air pollution, which as you know is also directly connected to our addiction to dirty fossil fuels.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/
“Ambient (outdoor air pollution) in both cities and rural areas was estimated to cause 3.7 million premature deaths worldwide in 2012.”
“All of those considerations should be hashed out during the next two weeks at the climate summit in Paris.”
Perfect, we’ll let politicians estimate what no scientist can estimate with any accuracy. Good luck with that…
“Perfect, we’ll let politicians estimate what no scientist can estimate with any accuracy. Good luck with that…”
Politicians will be the ones who will be deciding how much resources they are willing to dedicate to the cause, taking into account all the available knowledge on the issue provided by climate scientists, health/environment experts and relevant research institutions, and weighing it against economic concerns and other priorities they are currently dealing with.
Yes, and any action based on the current knowledge is pure and unadulterated stab in the dark. Again, good luck with that…
“Yes, and any action based on the current knowledge is pure and unadulterated stab in the dark.”
Hogwash. There’s ongoing research on all things related to climate change. And as it happens, even ExxonMobil understands that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere has its cost to society.
“The cost of taking action is only half as much as the cost of inaction. This is not the conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It comes from ExxonMobil, which has pegged the true cost of carbon to society at $60 a ton. Other estimates are even higher. Can we afford to stabilize planetary warming below two degrees C? We can’t afford not to.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meeting-a-global-carbon-limit-is-cheaper-than-avoiding-one/
That people are still willing to offer this “we can’t be sure, nobody can make accurate predictions” argument is reason to lose hope that mankind will do anything. Future consequences are quite predictable, and dire. Rising sea levels alone will be catastrophic, much less the effects on agriculture and water resources. And arguing that since renewable technology is still not good enough we should just not do anything and hope for the best? Seriously? That is a poor course of action.
– The question about uncertainty in projections is not trivial. Nobody is questioning the reality of the greenhouse effect.
– I thought Mahe was supposed to be underwater by now. Al Gore seems to be doing pretty well financially.
– Frankly, I have no idea what to think. Every conference is a ‘last chance’ until the elite jet off to another location and proclaim another ‘last chance’.
– In climate science, what is the rejection criterion? It is convenient that ‘global warming’ has been replaced by ‘climate change’. Every weather event is now a confirmation. Winters lasting until May in Nova Scotia are a confirmation just like the late onset of winter in Chicago. So is the expanding ice sheet in Antarctica.
– Useful list of things caused by global warming: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
“Frankly, I have no idea what to think”
I guess I can understand that. It’s a complex issue. I think the main thing to focus on is the scientific consensus. Other than that, stay away from Faux News (or take it as seriously as The Onion).
Exactly. We have not evolved to be long term thinkers, thus we will probably prove not to be long term survivors. I fear this is happening on every planet where intelligent life evolved, thus no contact from them.
Basically any sufficiently evolved creature is a self destructive asshole in aggregate.
If you need just one reason not to vote for a Republican next year, this is it.
9. Why do people question climate change?
Hint: ideology.
Most of the attacks on climate science are coming from libertarians and other political conservatives who do not like the policies that have been proposed to fight global warming. Instead of negotiating over those policies and trying to make them more subject to free-market principles, they have taken the approach of blocking them by trying to undermine the science.
This ideological position has been propped up by money from fossil-fuel interests, which have paid to create organizations, fund conferences and the like. The scientific arguments made by these groups usually involve cherry-picking data, such as focusing on short-term blips in the temperature record or in sea ice, while ignoring the long-term trends.
The most extreme version of climate denialism is to claim that scientists are engaged in a worldwide hoax to fool the public so that the government can gain greater control over people’s lives. As the arguments have become more strained, many oil and coal companies have begun to distance themselves publicly from climate denialism, but some are still helping to finance the campaigns of politicians who espouse such views.
Yes. I was also a bit annoyed by section 12, that blamed 20 years of political wrangling. The reason there hasn’t been an agreement in that time is down to the US and China. The reason there’s finally some optimism is that they’re finally on board.
In 2001, GWB was facing major protests wherever he went because of the US’s failure to join the rest of the West in action on climate change. The US was seriously hated because of it. Then 9/11 happened, and the attacks on them stopped because of what the US suffered. Because they produce such a major proportion of greenhouse gases, any agreement that doesn’t include the US is meaningless.
The rest of the world accepts that climate change is an issue. In the West it is only in the US that there is so much scepticism.
On the whole you can’t expect establishment Democrats – which is all but a handful in Washington – to do much more than pay lip service to global heating. Republicans are at least honest about their intentions to do nothing…
Perhaps if by any luck there arose a popular mandate…
Ir is probably too late already to do much about it even if they take drastic measures after this latest meet in Paris. We and China should have been doing much more 10 to 20 years ago.
We think the refugee problem in Europe is bad now but it is likely nothing to what will come in the future as climate changes and the water rises.
CNN was showing today, live pictures from Beijing, China and the visibility can be measured in feet or meters the pollution is so bad. I have never seen pollution as bad as Beijing today and I have seen Tokyo and Seoul when it was very bad in those cities. Seoul has a metro population similar to Beijing, about 25 million, and I thought the pollution there in the winter was too great to live there.
“We think the refugee problem in Europe is bad now but it is likely nothing to what will come in the future as climate changes and the water rises.”
Yet another reason for the world leaders (especially the European ones) to take the threat of global warming seriously.
The last thing Europe will need in the future decades is mass migration of people displaced from their homes by drought, rising sea levels and food shortages.
“We think the refugee problem in Europe is bad now but it is likely nothing to what will come in the future as climate changes and the water rises.”
Folks, I seriously think that your model of what would happen is completely mismatched with anything that could realistically happen. You cannot realistically compare this to refugee crisis. Even the most pessimistic scenarios would take many decades to make the living conditions that are currently stable sufficiently bad to drive away significant proportion population – it would likely take more than a generation – and even that wouldn’t happen at the same time and with the same level of severity everywhere. The effect on migration dynamics cannot sensibly be compared with refugee crises which develop on a time scale of a few weeks or months.
Regions such as Bangladesh are very vulnerable to climate change, and it can bring no comfort to anyone that the disruptive changes may not materialize in a couple of years, but a few decades.
https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10153351080366939/
The difference is not between “in a couple of years” vs. “in a few decades”, but between “over a few years (or months)” vs “over a few decades”. The latter is a huge difference, sorry.
Regarding Bangladesh, there are many things I disagree with Bjørn Lomborg, but I agree in one thing – in 2100 an average citizen of Bangladesh will likely have the living standard of today’s citizen of the Netherlands or higher. As such, both their ability to react and the options available will be such that our current worry about their wellbeing in 2100 will look just as misplaced and comical as would Victorians’ concerns for our own wellbeing look now.
“As such, both their ability to react and the options available will be such that our current worry”
I see that you’re betting everything on a techno utopia to come.
What you call “techno utopia” is just about the only thing that served us well in the past, and you have not a shred of evidence that this trend will change any time soon. May I recommend nice talks by this gentleman to see where the world is going (and which people are worse than chimps at guessing): https://www.ted.com/speakers/hans_rosling
“What you call “techno utopia” is just about the only thing that served us well in the past”
But we can’t continue to rely on the 18th century energy technology, as we did in the past, because what it will bring about in Bangladesh in the long term are “cancer villages” and “smog-filled cities” China-style, as well as even more global warming…
I’ve seen one of Hans Rosling’s talks about the consequences of rising human population and found his arguments overly optimistic. That’s not to say they were completely devoid of any merit, but yes, definitely overly optimistic.
Interestingly, the NYT also had a recent story on the notorious London Fogs, including “the Great Killer Fog” of 1952. Unfortunately the reason for the article was that London’s air quality now is backsliding.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/opinion/sunday/the-return-of-londons-fog.html
Also very much worth reading is THE SIXTH EXTINCTION, by Elizabeth Kolbert, this year’s winner of the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. Here is an excerpt:
“Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have burned through enough fossil fuels–coal, oil, and natural gas–to add some 365 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere. Deforestation has contributed another 180 billion tons. Each year we throw up another nine billion tons or so, an amount that has been increasing by as much as six percent annually. As a result of all this, the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere today–a little over 400 part per million–is higher than at any other point in the last 800,000 years. Quite probably it is at a higher than at any point in the last several million years. If current trends continue, CO2 concentrations will top 500 parts per million, roughly double the levels they were in pre-industrial days, by 2050. It is expected that such an increase will produce an eventual average global temperature rise of between 3 and a half and seven degrees Fahrenheit, and this will, in turn, trigger a variety of world-altering events, including the disappearance of most remaining glaciers, the inundation of low-lying island and coast cities, and the melting of the Arctic ice cap. But this is only half the story.”
Just another thought on this most important issue of the day. Recalling how many seem to think it is perfectly okay to take their 21st century knowledge, values and ideas back into history when studying the past — What do you think they will be saying about us on climate and CO2 in another hundred years or more. That’s assuming there are still people around to do the judging.
It is unduly -mistic (pessi- or opti-, depending on your outlook) to fear for the survival of Homo sapiens on that short time scale. Change, and rapid change is inevitable, but extinction for humans is not very likely. Even before the Agricultural Revolution humans were environmentally flexible.
Civilisation on the other hand, is probably less robust.
You know, picking the last sentence out of the comments is kind of a waste of your good time. My saying “assuming there are still people around” was not exactly the main idea I was going for so to say fearing for the survival of humans, is a little bit strange. I will be glad to leave calculating the survival of civilization to you.
I haven’t read the book, but the “sixth” (Holocene) extinction is caused by the rise of the human species, and as such has started long before global warming and on a whole it cannot be claimed to have been caused by global warming in any meaningful way.
You’ll want to read Kolbert. She refers to this era using Paul Crutzen’s relatively recent coinage, Anthopocene. Crutzen (a winner of the Nobel in chemistry) has declared we are no longer in the Holocene.
*that’s Anthropocene
The “Holocene extinction” has been postulated before the term “Anthropocene” came into fashion. That has no bearing on my argument above.
“Is there any hope?”
I think there is, as even some oil companies are becoming more environmentally friendly these days 😉
This solar company will power Middle East oil
http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/20/investing/solar-powers-oil-fields-middle-east/index.html?iid=obnetwork
“Normally, natural gas is used in this type of oil recovery. But natural gas is quite scarce and awfully expensive in many parts of the Middle East. It’s also not good for the environment.
Even though GlassPoint’s solar project will only provide one-third of the steam at Oman’s Amal oilfield, the company estimates it will save 300,000 tons of CO2 emissions each year. That’s the equivalent of removing 63,000 cars from the road.
To put it another way, it’s more carbon savings than all the electric cars sold by the likes of Tesla (TSLA) and Toyota (TM) combined in the U.S. today.”
One thing that I haven’t seen remarked upon is the low level of confidence in the official scientific reports. Don’t get me wrong: I am sure that global warming is taking place, and fairly sure that human activities are making it worse, but the official inter-governmental panel report only says that there is 95% confidence that human activities are the dominant effect. Maybe a 95% confidence level is good enough for some sociology journals or for the more obscure medical journals, but for the hard sciences unless you can show from your statistics that some effect is there with at least 99.9% confidence you simply won’t get published. It’s now over 20 years since the original global warming reports, yet the confidence level is still remarkably low.
95% confidence is perfectly acceptable for many biological fields of study such as ecology and evolutionary biology.
If you were a smoker, would you continue smoking until the confidence in the link with lung cancer reached 99.9%?
Perhaps, if smoking accounted for 90% of my well being like energy does (food, safety, warmth/cooling, transportation, entertainment, etc.).
This is the real problem, giving up abundant cheap energy is not like giving up a bad habit. It’s more like giving up an organ or a limb.
That said, I do think the confidence is more than enough to take prudent action. As rich as we are, we could do a lot without hurting us much. As I’ve mentioned before, if you’re not talking about spending defense budget scale amounts, you’re just not serious. But it’s vitally important to do the right things, not just do things. Like amputating a limb and replacing it with a prosthetic, you really want to know what you’re doing before you launch into it because you could easily do more harm than good (think ethanol as a negative example).
And while we are sure enough that humans are contributing to warming, we are much less sure of the magnitude of the effect we will see, and even less sure of what net effects (on farming, ecosystems, etc.) that will have. It might superficially seem prudent to assume the worst, but you wouldn’t do that with a potential organ transplant, you’d want to really know first because it is so risky. So I say invest in solar now, in a big way, and start slowly raising the price of fossil fuels. But don’t do anything that that will cause a shock or isn’t easily reversible if we discover we are wrong.
“This is the real problem, giving up abundant cheap energy is not like giving up a bad habit.”
Giving up cancer-causing, polluting fuels is pretty much like giving up a bad habit that’s bad for your health.
And like with any such habit, the necessary first step on the road to overcoming it is realizing that you have a problem.
And although giving up smoking or dirty fuels may seem like giving up a limb, your health will in fact benefit from it in the long run.
Gluonspring, that is a very good comment.
How much would it hurt us to switch to say electric cars, LED lighting, cutting your air flights by half, getting out of Iraq, and a few more…
I might have said this before, but if the many dozens of trillions spent on the war in Iraq…., or just half of it, something like 40 trillion.
Say 40 trillion, divided by 300 million (approximate nr of US citizens) equals about 130.000 USD per US citizen. That is enough to buy a Tesla and a good solar installation for every US citizen.
Now that *would* make a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions.
Note, I’m with Matt Ridley in not espousing worst case scenarios, but it is clear we cannot go on like this without serious climatic consequences. It is indeed prudent to take the worst as a possibility into account.
The optimistic view: we might be the only species that could/would be able to stabilise climate, which -let us face it- has never been very stable.
This is much more informative than a piece in a silly newspaper. Lots of links to original IPCC sources. And yes, the confidence intervals of the models are not very high and the models have always run hot.
https://sites.google.com/site/climatesensitivity/home
“the best thing you can do is reduce your number of plane flights”
This may be a controversial thing to say, but the best thing that an individual can do is to have fewer children.
There’s nothing that anyone can currently do to reduce their impact on the environment that won’t be completely undone by contributing to a net increase in the population.
>… the best thing that an individual can do >is to have fewer children.
Not to disagree, but I recently saw this taken to a very annoying and pointless extreme by the owner on a mailing list I subscribed to. And it was totally off topic for the list to boot.
>People are a biological plague Nothing one can >do will help except no one having any children >until the population is way down. Reducing it >by 99 percent would be good. Then things would >go back into balance. We are the problem.
And people wonder why there is an extreme right wing reaction to stuff like this?
Yes, I agree. Another thing that’s almost certainly better than reducing the number of plane flights – which you should do – is to eat much less meat.
Livestock farming is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s cars, trucks, buses, trains, ships, and aircraft combined, and that’s growing at 2.4% per year compared to only 1.2% per year for humans.
But having fewer children and eating much less meat are solutions that people don’t want to hear…
Thanks for pointing that out. I have never been a big red meat eater, so I can say I don’t contribute that much methane. I do fly a small plane though, which burns about 7 gal/hr of aviation fuel. I feel a bit guilty about that, but I am hopeful that technology will come to the rescue. Research into electric aircraft is moving along. A few electric planes are already hitting the market.
There is a conflict here.
I switched to a ‘very-low-carb-&-no-processed-food’ diet 2 years ago. It slightly increased my meat and seafood consumption, but it did wonders for my health (I’ll spare you the details, but if you insist I can give them).
Whether or not there is an evolutionary rationale is not the issue here, what is the issue is the greenhouse effects of animal husbandry. To start, does this calculation take the ‘natural’ herbivores into account, that were displaced by cattle and the like. E. Elephants and Hippo’s are notorious farters. To what extend does the meat industry (well yes, it has indeed become an industry) increase the previous emissions?
The thing is that there has always been a carbon cycle. What we are doing with burning fossil fuels is *adding*, ‘releasing’ CO2 that was locked up over hundreds of millions of years in a few decades.
(The same reason -on a smaller scale- why transforming ‘old growth’ vegetation into ‘biofuel’ vegetation is a counterproductive, extremely bad idea).
this agitation won’t happen until people begin personally suffering from climate change
I’m pretty sure that people are personally suffering from climate change already. It’s just not the right people who are suffering …
Indeed – there is evidence (which I can attempt to dig out for those who wish) that many recent conflicts have a “water war” component, for example.
I’ve developed somewhat of a bad attitude regarding #3 “Is there anything I can do?” If many of my friends, who are well-educated and accept climate change science, and who have much more at stake than I (i.e. they have children, grandchildren, etc. who will live well into the future), refuse to inconvenience themselves with environmentally responsible lifestyle changes, why should I do so?
I have a short commute, fly 1-2 times per year, have a small, energy-efficient home, grow many of my own vegetables and herbs, and will soon have solar panels on my roof that will supply all the electricity for my home (heating/cooling/cooking etc. all electric). I’m really too grumpy at this point to consider eliminating my transoceanic trips (once every 5-6 years), or to remove meat from my diet, or to endanger life and limb by riding my bike to work on busy streets. It’s all just spitting into a gale force wind in any case, because the people around me are not going to change. Bad attitude: I has it.
If all the dozens of trillions of dollars the USA have spent in the war in Iraq (yes, many trillions)… If this would have been spent wiser, e.g. on developing solar energy, we would not only have reduced greenhouse gases, but we would have starved the extremist Muslim movements. (which are -like it nor not- fed by the Whabibis in Saudi Arabia, fed in turn by our petro-dollars)
It is what guys like Elon Musk are trying to achieve, but Musk is only a Billionaire, not a Trillionaire.
I think,and I’m not alone there, that solar is the only realistic ‘sustainable’ source of energy that could feed a modern economy without needing humungous amounts of space.
i mean, Musk has shown with his Tesla 2 that an electric car can beat a Porsche or Ferrari hands down (acceleration, energy use, safety, etc).
Why are we procrastinating? Why haven’t we gone solar yet?
Please note that the batteries in Tesla 2 are charged by connecting it to the main power grid, much of which still depends on power plants that burn fossil fuels. You cannot go fully solar yet because the technology is not there yet – or more precisely, does not scale to the demand.
Last I looked, in regions where coal is the primary method of producing electricity, pure electric cars actually produce >more< net pollution.
Please provide your sources for this claim.
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/52/18490.full.pdf
? I don’t see anything in that article that supports your claim.
“If all the dozens of trillions of dollars the USA have spent in the war in Iraq (yes, many trillions)… If this would have been spent wiser, e.g. on developing solar energy, we would not only have reduced greenhouse gases, but we would have starved the extremist Muslim movements. (which are -like it nor not- fed by the Whabibis in Saudi Arabia, fed in turn by our petro-dollars)”
Very good point.
If a political benefit were needed to tip the balance, this is it: Reduced dependence on Middle-Eastern (and Russian) oil.
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Yes John, a pertinent point.
However,if you have a Tesla-like car, with some serious battery power, it becomes interesting to install solar panels. The problems with solar are the batteries, expensive and to be replaced every 4 to 7 years. Now you wouldn’t do that for just lighting, wifi and washing machine, but if your transport is included (note, most trips are less that 50km)?
Sadly here in South Africa -a country highly suited for solar :)- there is no Tesla (despite Musk originating from here), I’ve only got a solar geyser.
Note, I did not mention CSP (concentrated Solar power), which is a different, albeit interesting, subject, methinks.
Take any reasonable interest rate, calculate the present value of the world 10,000 years from now, and it is just not a good investment to spend what it would take to save the human race from extinction by global warming. You would just about have to assume that our descendents 10,000 years from now had infinite value – which, of course, is absurd. At least, I am pretty sure that is how the Koch brothers look at it.
It’s all well and good to talk of saving the lives of our children and grandchildren, but what does that do for us?? 😛
Many conferences that scientists attended were borderline catastrophic when it comes to the environment.
Granted many students and postdocs have a great time learning, but the vast majority of PIs spend their time in cities at four star restaurants or if in the country hiking; spending as little time as possible at their conference and learning almost nothing but bolstering their egos.
I am particular happy that DOE has restricted the number of conferences. The internet is far better for the environment than an unnecessary round trip airplane ride.
The problem with waiting for individual citizens to act on scientific consensus is that the first people to suffer — the poor of Asia and Africa, for instance — are in no position to have any influence on anyone in power. By the time richer nations get around to militating for change, the poor of others will be largely beyond help — due to failing crops from dryness, or floods or other results of the climate change they did not do much to bring about. So it goes…
Funny no one ever mentions nuclear as a viable 3rd (temporary) option. What’s up with that?
I think what is up with that is that they have no appreciation for how essential energy is to our civilization. Most people suffer under the illusion that fossil fuels are something they use to drive their cars with, and that if we stopped driving we’d be done with climate change. In that sense, burning fossil fuels strikes them as a luxury, a habit we can kick any time we like because we’re just using it for conveniences. It’s not worth taking on risky energy sources just to satisfy marginal needs. If they truly understood how much civilization risks falling over the cliff without energy, though, I they would realize which was the greater risk.
To me it seems a bit silly to consider nuclear power much of a risk in the first place. Even though most of the old reactors are of unsafe design, it’s still one of the safest if not the safest large-scale electrical generation technology in existence. Nuclear power kills almost nobody, even when it goes wrong. And we know how to build much safer reactors now. Coal plants on the other hand kill millions of people every year – and emit far more harmful radiation into the environment than nuclear plants – even when everything is going right.
I agree that civilization needs energy (and we still need fossil fuels for transportation), but the opposition to nuclear power seems unjustified…
And ironically, the opposition to nuclear comes from the liberals. With the conservatives championing every other energy source (but renewable, of course) it’s the perfect recipe for gridlock
Nuclear power is often brought up, and seen as an important source of alternative energy. Unfortunately there are other issues besides safety. We and other countries are still slow to build new power plants, it takes a lot of energy to extract and refine the ore, and it is not considered ‘renewable’. Our long term needs best met by expanding more on renewable resources.
Nuclear power would be if not renewable per se than nearly unlimited if we scaled up the “integral” part of integral fast reactor (IFR) technology. In addition, IFRs can run on existing stocks of nuclear waste and ‘depleted’ uranium, eventually producing highly depleted and much safer waste. (Normal nuclear plants only extract about 0.6% of the energy from the fuel. An IFR can extract 99.5%.) IFRs are inherently safe from meltdown, etc. The technology was developed in the 80s and proven to work. We just need to do the work to scale it up.
That said, nuclear plants tend not to be profitable businesses…
My guess would be that within 10 years nuclear will be unnecessary because solar will become very efficient. However, there might, I suppose, be a need for safe nuclear in certain areas like above the arctic circle.
No one seems to be mentioning the effects of nuclear energy on the environment, which are double. First, it takes a lot of water. Hercules himself would have had trouble supplying the water needed to cool a nuclear power plant, and the effects on the environment of the river used are rather terrible. (We hear a lot about this in France.)
Then there is the problem of what to do with the waste. For the moment, rich countries send it mostly to less rich or even impoverished countries to foul their water and atmosphere. Hardly a viable long-term solution. Nuclear may be the current best, but it is not good.
I’ve heard some speculation about disposing of nuclear waste in a tectonic subduction zone!
“Double” Really? Where did you come up with that? “Takes a lot of water” Depends on the reactor. “Hercules himself..” blah, blah. “Waste”, yes that’s true, but it’s teeny tiny if you use the right reactor. Lastly, suggested temporary.
Hmmm… I found that FAQ very unsatisfying. Where are the references? There was a link in the bit about airplane travel and it took me to another unreferenced article. That article made an absurd claim about the amount of CO2 emitted from airplanes. The max takeoff weight of a 737, for example, is ~75 tons, so it is impossible for each passenger to emit 2-3 tons of CO2 (or that’s a VERY empty plane). Perhaps they are including the energy of the airports, or it is an equivalence adjusted for the altitude of flight or something? Who knows. These are not mere trifling details, however, but the core pieces of information we need to evaluate the sanity of what we are being told. It’s not implausible to me, I just want to see where their numbers come from to check.
It’s worth asking because many people think the way to address environmental problems is to attack luxury of all forms, and the ideology behind this often gets in the way of really addressing the the actual problem which reaches much deeper into our civilization. Even by such estimates as 2-3 tones per person/flight, a round trip flight would only account for about 10% of the average person’s contribution. No doubt manufacturing and heating account for vastly more, but those are harder to make into “sins”. But which is less admirable use of energy, traveling across the country to visit your mother or keeping your house temperature 2 degrees hotter all winter long? The truth is that they are both just preferences. The problem is not with people’s preferences but with the fact that they do not bear the true costs of those preferences, that there is no market for the externalities caused by burning oil. Oil, in short, is too cheap.
A similar phenomena can be seen in the CA water shortage. People get miffed if someone has a fountain running (say at a corporate office or college campus) because that *looks* wasteful, but it is nothing but symbolism. If you want to know where most of the water goes, look at the strawberry fields, the nut orchards, and so on. Somehow in people’s mind the fountain at Stanford is an egregious luxury while a taste for almonds is not. In any case, who should decide whether it is better to use the water for fountains, showers, or almonds? People want to make that a moral choice, and identify some uses as “sins” and others as “virtues”, but they are all just preferences (until you get down to needing water to drink, etc.) Once again, the essence of the problem is that the externality costs of water usage are not bundled into the price of water. In fact, most water is held artificially cheap, which encourages waste at every level.
I recall being in an environmental health course at Hopkins and seeing the projections about climate change. What was too surreal to be able to hold in consciousness by any of us is that some of the devastation is now inevitable, such that life will be very different 300-500 years from now. Not all of it is out of our hands, but the urgent opportunity to act is now. I completely agree with Jerry that the negative effects aren’t personal enough to motivate the needed action.
The most I’ve done is attend climate rallies: two in DC and one in Seattle. But aside from this, I’ve done nothing.
Maybe we need all the Kim Kardashians, Oprahs, and sports stars of the world to start focusing on this. If all our entertainment people protested by refusing to produce movies or participate in games until there was enough political and social action, we could get somewhere.
Like that’s gonna happen. 😉
On a related note, here is an amazing simulation of CO2 emmissions on earth over a period of two years. I find this stunning. I will let the narrative speak for itself.
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Nothing will happen at the Paris conference, just as nothing has happened at any of the other recent climate conferences. Once again, the US has determined in advance that it will not agree to any binding limits on emissions, and will only accept voluntary, “aspirational” agreements have not been followed in the past and cannot be expected to be followed in the future.
Other developed countries say they’re willing to accept binding agreements, but they have not lived up to them, in almost all cases increasing emissions rather than reducing them, especially when proper accounting (i.e. counting outsourced emissions) is done.
All solutions that could actually work, i.e. that would put real pressure on polluting industries, such as a stiff blanket carbon tax, have been ruled out in advance.
Money talks, unfortunately, and wealthy corporations set government policy.
I’m not sure what Obama can do but one thing we know he cannot. That would be to get the U.S. into a Treaty and that is because he knows it will never make it though Congress. Dead on arrival.
I share some of your worries, but, we cannot be sure that there isn’t a new phase unfolding. I remain optimistic that there is a new gestalt. Change is in the air. Perhaps not directly from the Paris talks, but within the next few years.
“Nothing will happen at the Paris conference, just as nothing has happened at any of the other recent climate conferences.”
Well, one thing has already happened:
Paris Climate Change Summit: Bill Gates Launches Multibillion-Dollar Clean Energy Investment Fund
http://www.ibtimes.com/paris-climate-change-summit-bill-gates-launches-multibillion-dollar-clean-energy-2204404
Fantastic!
Then there’s this: New $500 million initiative to boost large scale climate action in developing countries.
Small change in comparison, but still.
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And this!
Hollande pledges €2 billion for green energy projects in Africa
http://www.france24.com/en/20151201-hollande-pledges-2-billion-green-energy-initiatives-africa
Rather than to proclaim “nothing will happen”, lets settle for – let’s wait and see.
In some ecology lectures of a number of years ago I gave some back-of-the-envelope calculations of ocean heating based on atomic-bomb equivalents, similar to those in the NY Times. The students seemed, surprisingly from my viewpoint, unimpressed, perhaps because they thought I was off my rocker.
Each alternative power source destroys component Earth’s ecology. Hydroelectric ruins rivers and does away with life specialized to flowing water. Solar power consumes desert ecosystems and turns them into steril industrialized landscapes. Wind power is an eyesore, noise pollutant, and kills migratory birds. We cut forests and erradicate ecosystems to plant monocultures for biofuels like sugarcane and maize. After all of these alternative sustainable energy sources are exploited to their economic limits, there will still be energy shortages that can only be satisfied by nuclear energy. We must go nuclear from the outset. To hell with Exxon AND the Greenies.
“Wind power is an eyesore, noise pollutant, and kills migratory birds.”
I’m sure the former residents of Fukushima prefecture would have something to say about sore eyes and noisy wind blades.
Until risk management technology advances to adequately prevent long term uninhabitability as an credible outcome, humans should leave the large size radionuclide Legos in the big box they’re not allowed to play with til they’re older.
It takes real brains to build nuclear power plant on shores subject to intensity 9-10 earthquakes and mega-tsunamis (sarcasm). Calling Fukushima and Chernobyl “ecological” disasters is merely angling red herrings. Or does anyone think that, in these two cases, the Japanese and Soviet planners were just innocent victims of the unforeseeable.
Mark my words: when wind and solar farms become big business, and they will, they’ll be coming to a National Park and Seashore near you. And after they come, nuclear power stations will be built anyway. If capitalism doesn’t kill us, it will do its best, if there is a profit, to make life as unpleasant as people will endure.
Bad capitalists want to put solar panels on people’s homes and use desert space for solar power plants. That will really make our lives unimaginably unpleasant!
SMH…
38 nuclear plants already dot the Great Lakes! 🙁
https://allthingsgreatlakes.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/four-nuclear-power-plants-on-the-great-lakes-rank-among-the-nations-worst-for-high-level-safety-violations/
While damage is certainly done by alternatives, it is minor compared with carbon. The area required to collect enough solar energy to replace all of the fossil fuel now used is not very large. A tiny fraction of the Earth’s surface. So, while it would reduce certain landscapes to “industrial landscape” status, there would still be plenty of healthy areas remaining. I think nuclear is also viable and clean and safe.
You are saying, in essence, to hell with the environment.
“Wind power … kills migratory birds.”
Undoubtedly, but in numbers negligible compared with those killed by other causes, of which feral cats and window strikes are the most lethal (estimates for the latter vary significantly). We’d save far more birds by removing windows from our homes. (That would save energy too! 😁)
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I’ve often wondered if eventually the birds would evolve to avoid the wind turbines. Birds genetically pre-disposed to avoid large flayling objects would survive to breed. In my lifetime I’ve noticed that sheep on unfenced roads in the Highlands are now less likely to run in front of a car. I put this down to the lambs that were scared of cars being the ones to survive to breeding age. Anecdotal, I know, but I like it.
I recall an article describing how some simple changes in programming of windmills reduced bat attrition by a significant factor. I think they shut down the blades during high density periods of bat movement.
And new bladeless technologies will have a significant benefit.
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That sounds promising. I hope it becomes practical alternative. I can see how it could generate a lot of buzz.
😆
Brilliant, and they’re cheaper, too!
Wow, great idea. Reminds me of a science fiction short story I read back in the 60s, in which a group known as Unorthodox Engineers race around the galaxy solving how to work alien technology. On one planet they find hundreds of pylons sticking out of the ground and looking like giant harps (IIRC), and all joined to a central point with cables. They eventually work out that they are for generating electricity using wind power to vibrate the strings. Crazy eh! And yet…
Colin Kapp’s “The Subways of Tazoo”.
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Here’s a graphic.
http://www.sibleyguides.com/wp-content/uploads/Bird_mortality_chart.jpg
SOURCE
(Wind turbines undoubtedly account for more now than they did in 2003.)
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Far more …
http://www.carbonbrief.org/media/164188/nature_image.jpg
SOURCE
But windows are still potentially far, far more harmful.
And note the penultimate para. from the article:
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* Sorry, misplaced “Far more”. Lead in should be: “A more recent graphic …”
(Where’s the Wp EDIT function?)
Most appropriate and sobering, thanks!
I believe the species composition varies between dangers–large raptors are in more danger from turbines than they are from cats–but the relative numbers are extremely important.
“Solar power consumes desert ecosystems and turns them into steril industrialized landscapes.”
Oh, it’s such a big issue. NOT!
I have always been bewildered by people who put the quality of life of an occasional desert snake over the lives of millions of people dying from pollution.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/
Is there a place you can go? Why, yes! Yes there is!
http://www.climatecentral.org/
(Warning: these are actual climate scientists, but they ‘splain things real good.)
Also too, if you aren’t afraid it’s all a big gummint conspiracy (like the Center for Disease Control with all those Ebola facts) there are some great infographics here:
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
Meanwhile in Beijing…
Beijing residents told to stay inside as smog levels soar
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/28/beijing-residents-told-to-stay-inside-as-smog-levels-soar
I confess to being pessimistic about this. We’ll need all sorts of techno fixes to find a sustainable replacement for fossil fuels that has similar capacity. My understanding from James Hansen and others is that that capacity is not there. So, economically we can’t power our civilisation in the same way in the future unless something big happens. Hansen et al reckon nuclear could provide the base that renewables add to.
Even if we solve this to mitigate AGW effects, there remains the issue of the carbon we’ve already released which has us on target for a 1.5 to 2 degrees C rise never mind what we add subsequently. Maybe the climate sensitivity to carbon estimates will be wrong, but they all seem to converge on 3 degrees C for doubling of carbon above 280ppm. Some people suggesting carbon extraction from the atmosphere – apparently already been tried and encouraged with a cash prize – nothing to report yet.
Read in the IPCC summaries that a 3 degree rise along with other human mediated pressures on the ecosystem is likely to cause the loss of 17-30% of species. Grim stuff. Sawing off the limb of the tree of life we sit on.
It is the ultimate collective action problem which highlights the flaws in our psychology to deal with long term existential threat. I think Prof Coyne is right in this one.
I truly hope I’m wrong to be so pessimistic. I want to be wrong. Keen that we at least mitigate damage. There are degrees of being screwed, so I am sympathetic to COP21’s aims.
This said, I fear a lot of damage is now baked in. I found Roy Scranton’s latest book “Learning to Die in the Anthropocene” oddly comforting in this regard. It’s a crash course in Stoicism that suggests acceptance of one’s fate can at least help us to live better lives.
Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress was so right to remark:
“Thank goodness these pundits weren’t around when we had to do something really difficult, like suffer millions of casualties and remake our entire economy almost overnight to win World War II.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meeting-a-global-carbon-limit-is-cheaper-than-avoiding-one/
I used to be at about the same place in terms of balancing optimism vs pessimism. I’m leaning more optimistic now because I think the political will is just now beginning to peak and the technical solutions seem achievable. The Scranton book may be good at settling out personal anxiety but it really doesn’t help get the job that must be done done. Sometimes stress and worry are necessary ingredients to solving a problem.
Adrian, I’m less pessimistic, I think you are wrong -which you want to be :).
I agree, wind, hydro, tidal, and the like will not do the job, just too little to sustain a revolution that started with fossils about 200 years ago. And I don’t even want to mention the counterproductive aberration of bio-fuels. But solar potentially can.
Engineers are very much focused on CSP, but the lowly PV is not dead. Although CSP has the potential of delivering terawatts*, your modest panels on your roof are getting more efficient and cheaper by the day. The crux will be in the advances made in storage (say battery) technology. (e.g. in a powerful car battery such as a Tesla provides).
I would not be surprised if in 30 years from now we will not even blink about what we’re -justly- worried about now.
There are also some potential ways to sink carbon, reforestation being but one. I’m sure some engineers have some more sophisticated projects. Sinking carbon has been notoriously absent in this thread (caveat: as far as I’ve read, it is long and I might have missed it).
*[On WaitButWhy I read that the *annual* solar energy delivered to the Earth is many times the amount that all fossil fuel reserves combined can deliver].
Will be genuinely glad to be wrong! 🙂 Let’s hope that’s the case and that a revolution in CSP and efficient electricity storage can deliver on promise. Elon Musk and others are making strides in that direction.
Still doesn’t solve the baked in problems if we do solve the future power issues. A 2 degree warmer world will still present serious difficulties. Although I suppose now that is a moot point and shouldn’t stop us from mitigating.
“It is the ultimate collective action problem which highlights the flaws in our psychology to deal with long term existential threat.”
The ultimate tragedy of the commons, one might say.
Evidence that the political will is moving in the correct direction -“overall, 63 percent of Americans said they support domestic policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/261491-polls-two-thirds-want-us-to-join-international-climate-pact
It seems the NYT has a strong natalist bias. They don’t mention that the best thing you can do is to abstain from procreation. Not only would this reduce climate change but also save those who would otherwise be brought into existence from suffering under climate change.
Do we have any electrochemists “in the house”? I remember seeing in C&E News a few years ago that the limiting factor for solar and other means was batteries for “bad days”. If there are, care to comment on the state of the art there? C&E was calling for funding of *basic research* in electrochemistry for this reason.