Another Year Older and Deeper in Climate Debt

As I write this, Australia is burning up.

Reports indicate that due to weeks of unprecedented 104 degree temperatures and drought, wildfires are burning across Australia, driving those who can’t evacuate into the ocean and creating toxic air in the major urban centers.  These conditions are, without doubt, due to human-caused climate change – except that Australia has a large reserve of climate-denier politicians and their allies who apparently are claiming that “if the Greenies had let us clean up the forests this wouldn’t be happening.”

In looking over the last year, therefore, I am reminded of an old coal-miner union song’s refrain:  “Sixteen tons, and what do you get?/Another day older and deeper in debt/Saint Peter don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t come/I sold my soul to the company store.”  Another year older, and what do I get?  A world that’s deeper in climate crisis than at the start of the year, because we continue to emit not only more carbon than is needed to stop atmospheric CO2 from rising, but more than in 2018 or any year before it.  

In effect, we are creating more and more “climate debt” that will have to be paid, by the Australians, by us, and by our descendants.

Let’s go through the latest dreary numbers.

Possible But Not Clear Hope On The Ground

An enormous shift occurred in societal terms over the last year or two.  For the last nine years or so, efforts in universities, NGOs, individual businesses, and interest groups have created what might be called a “climate change technology movement” in which efforts around sustainability, regenerative economics, solar and wind technology, and the like began, and began to coordinate with each other.  What has happened over the last year has been the embedding of the movement in society, so that schools, politicians, and workers feel comfortable making climate change a major part of the discussion.

What has not happened, as of yet, is the embedding of that movement in the bureaucracy of government, business, and other institutions.  I define a bureaucracy, in one sense, as an organization that operates on its own momentum, driven not by leaders but by the implications of rules and regulations.  In that sense, there is nothing driving considerations of carbon-emission reduction and measurement on a national, much less a global scale.  Nevertheless, there are some grounds for possible hope in this development.

Another possible ground for hope is the surprisingly rapid (to some) development of solar power.  As someone who experienced the power of Moore’s Law in the computer industry at first hand, I always believed that similar technologies in the solar field could lead to reductions in solar cost per watt comparable to computers’ rapid ongoing increases in computational power per dollar.  It now seems to be at the point where, despite the cost of batteries, building and operating an electricity grid based on solar is cheaper than doing so based on coal or oil.  Although we may not yet have reached the day where we are considering replacing operating fossil-fuel systems with their sunk costs and infrastructure designed for fossil fuels only, such a day may be in sight.

But despite this fundamental shift in the culture and the economics, the numbers seem to be telling us that we are not yet clearly making a dent in “business as usual”.  I always look to CO2 measurements (Mauna Loa) as indications of what is happening that cannot be distorted by our hopes, fears, and self-interest – and there the news continues to be grim.

Over the last year, for just about every month except November (2.25 ppm), atmospheric carbon has increased by about 3 ppm since the same month in 2018.  To put this in perspective, this high a rate has only occurred, iirc, in 1998 and in three of the last four years.  In other words, there is no clear sign in the atmosphere that we have begun to deviate from “business as usual”.

If we switched to more suspect numbers, there might be some more local signs of hope:  US emissions, for example, are alleged to be more or less flat over the last few years (although the Trump administration has fueled a slight increase), thereby “decoupling” economic growth from emissions rises – meaning that while the US may not be actually reducing emissions, we at least may not be increasing them.  Some credit for that appears due to energy-efficiency efforts, and some to the solar/wind revolution, while the switch to natural gas may or may not be playing a role – there are strong indications of major methane leaks that may make natural gas just as bad as oil or coal for carbon emissions.

However, we must bear in mind (a) our local and global measurements may not capture all sources; (b) local successes may be partly due to shifting economically to countries with fewer regulations that inevitably emit more than the US or similar operation that it replaced; (c) because of feedbacks and feedback loops, areas not under our control may be emitting more carbon – e.g., the black carbon from wildfires, or carbon/methane from melting permafrost.  Point (c) is especially important:  scientists talk of “tipping points” where atmospheric carbon increases and global warming happen even if we cut our emissions to zero, and so we have to “run harder” (cut emissions more) to stay in the same place (steady increases in emissions), and even harder than that to get anywhere (start achieving smaller increases in emissions).

And therefore, I believe, that is where our one small possible hope in all this gloom lies:  that we may indeed have reached the point where we would have decreased the rate of rise of emissions (if those pesky feedbacks were not occurring).

Final Thoughts

I would, in sad adieu to 2019, like to note the malefactors who continue to drive the climate emergency to new extremes.  I would cite in particular:

1.       President Trump, of course, who has effectively taken a leadership role in driving more emissions of carbon, by letting loose the fossil fuel industry and its enablers on the US government, leading to a bureaucracy that is abetting, by its rules and regulations, both increased emissions and the pollution and food/water problems that make the effects of climate change worse.  Compared to this, trashing the Constitution is minor stuff.

2.       Murdoch and Koch, who are driving these policies into our politics.

3.       Putin, not only for committing to oil as an instrument of Russian policy but also for abetting “Mafia government” across the world that is accompanied by lessened action on climate change, climate-science censorship, and physical repression of activists.

4.       Australia’s Conservatives, who seem to be recreating the denialism of the US Republican party, in a country that is far more economically involved in coal mining and similar emissions-friendly activities than most. 

That’s it.  Maybe next year will be better.  Oh wait, I said that last year.  And the year before.  And …All right, I’ll end in the words of Flanders and Swann:
“Bloody January again!”

CLIMATE CHANGE

I dreamed a dream of golden sands
Where late the sweet birds flew
And at dune’s height a small child’s plastic shovel stood stuck
As if to bid our summer adieu

Over the crest, the lonely beach stretched endlessly
And, amid its wrack, seen only by me
Seethed the dead, the conquering sea.

REFLECTIONS ON AN AMERICAN CELEBRATION

This land is not a land
It’s an idea.

Sometimes we fear that idea,
We spit on it, we trample it.
Then we pick it up, we dust it off, we pat it on the head.
Ideas don’t mind.
People do.

Today we celebrate our land,
Tomorrow we go back to the fear, the spitting, the trampling,
Or even worse, the indifference.

But there’s a problem.

People die; land dies; countries die;
But ideas do not have to die.
But ideas must grow, or they will die.

Greatness is momentary in the flesh,
But in an idea endlessly growing,
It is immortal.

So when we celebrate our land today,
We are only picking our idea up, dusting it off, patting it on the head.
We need to do more.

We need to overcome our fear of our idea,
And right its wrongs,
And help it grow new lofty mansions,
As the seasons roll.

Else tomorrow, we may find that our idea is dead.
And when our idea is dead,
Our country might as well be dead.

For why should anyone care any more about our country or us
Than any others?
We will no longer have an idea
To protect us people somewhat
From the fear, the spitting, the trampling.

This land is not our land.
Because it’s an idea.
People don’t own ideas;
Parents don’t own children.

And so, today,
Ask not what your country can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your idea.

Reading New Thoughts: Green and Bowles/Carlin Rethink Economics

Disclaimer:  I am now retired, and am therefore no longer an expert on anything.  This blog post presents only my opinions, and anything in it should not be relied on.
What I am talking about here is a history of West Africa circa 1200-1850 called “A Fistful of Shells”, by Toby Green, and a white paper by Samuel Bowles and Wendy Carlin analyzing CORE’s “The Economy”, a new multi-sourced introductory Economics textbook.  Both seem to me to provide different and troubling new ways to view economics as a whole; your mileage may vary.

Let’s start with Green.  Imho, his argument runs something like this:  a trade in gold (sub-Saharan Africa providing, North Africa/Europe/Middle East benefiting) sprang up, supplemented and then replaced by a trade in slaves.  These slaves were a natural outgrowth of previous uses of slaves (acquired in warfare, or involving criminals and excess population) both in Africa and Europe/Middle East.  

The initial result was positive economic growth.  The single source of the gold was iirc in Senegambia, and the people there carefully protected themselves and their mining from discovery and takeover, so the rest of West Africa began to be drawn in as middlemen.  Kings with control over some aspect of the trade arose, and were able to siphon off some of the profits to establish and maintain power.  Thus the Mali and Songhay “empires”.  

However, the trade relationship was fundamentally unequal.  Cowrie shells, especially those imported from the Maldives, were used locally as currency (as well as cloth and iron bars), but the fact that cowrie shells were relatively easy to produce made any currency exchange highly unequal – there are records indicating that some kings attempting a pilgrimage to Mecca had to pay in gold along the way, finally running out and then incurring debts that eventually led to the downfall of their kingdoms.  When the need for slaves for the New World surged, it effectively acted as a replacement in the economy for the decreasing demand for gold.  And when export of slaves to the New World ended, it was replaced by slavery within the kings’ domains.  

Moreover, the new slave-based economy had its own subtle traps.  Carried to an extreme, as it soon was, it meant the impoverishment of those outside the kings’ and European traders’ political control, as they moved to isolated and protected communities to escape the slave raiders.  Even within the scope of the new polities, the proportion of those in danger of slavery went up, and hence the economic benefits, such as they were, went to relatively few compared to the situation north of the Sahara. 

Analysis of Green:  Commodity/Currency-Based Economic Inequality

Green’s conclusion is, I think, worth quoting:  “an expansion of trade on the one hand [from Europe and the Middle East] provoked less access to the wealth of capital on the other [for West Africa] … growing capital differentials [were] exacerbated by the trade of currencies that were losing economic value globally – such as cowries and cloths – for those that were either gaining or producing surplus value, such as gold and human beings … When currency imports to [West] Africa were not matched by trade goods, there was inflation of currencies used in Africa … When trade goods were also imported, these competed with local production and reduced extensive exports of African manufactures … This declining export deterred investment … in manufacturing …”  In other words, a strong degree of participation in the global economy fostered from Europe from 1400 onwards did not result in comparable or even major improvements in living standards for most, or even GNP, in West Africa.  We can say of the impoverished societies in East Asia that much of the explanation might be that they were not included in this globalization; clearly, that explanation does not hold for West Africa (and, I suspect, for some sub-Saharan East Africa as well).

This also ties in with an observation I have had in much other recent reading as well:  countries that wind up in an unequal economic relationship in which they become “one-trick ponies” dependent on things such as gold or coffee or bananas typically don’t fare as well in the long run, as the value of these is much more volatile and prone to long strings of bad luck, and often is superseded as tastes or technologies change.  So Argentina with its specialization in beef, Latin and Central America with its colonial focus on gold and silver, Puerto Rico with its history of specializing in whatever the US felt was its proper commodity, West Africa for slaves, El Salvador with switching over to coffee production and then finding it could no longer provide subsistence agriculture for its population, not to mention the great difficulty in the US before about 1815 in breaking out of its unequal “enforced commoditization” relationship with Great Britain.  We view countries like Saudi Arabia with its ability to convert oil into a thriving economy as the norm, whereas they should perhaps be viewed from a global economic point of view as an exception.

I believe that we should perhaps view this kind of almost-zero-benefit unequal relationship as a fundamental feature of capitalism – because in many of the cases cited, the workings of trade and capitalism were proceeding to some extent independent of government action.  We have congratulated ourselves on the rising tide of capitalism floating the boats of all nations willing to participate in global markets on capitalistic terms – if we are talking about countries producing computer chips, perhaps this is so; if oil, pace Venezuela, the picture is very mixed; if coffee, it seems not to be true.  And the danger of capitalism is that, once a country commits to a particular narrowing of its economy, it may become harder rather than easier to recover from having the wrong product to export.  

I find this to be a sobering thought.  It suggests that rather than demanding a country or region fit into the needs of capitalism, sustainable economics will require that capitalism fit the needs of the country: e.g., diversified, sustainable agriculture to be enforced as the cheapest long-run product.  It also suggests that a world economy that is a mix of governmental technocratic command-and-control and capitalism will actually do better in some cases than a capitalism-focused economy.  Certainly Sweden suggests so.

Analysis of Bowles/Cardin:  Economics as a Branch of Sociology

Over the last 10 years, the failures of many economists in the face of the Great Recession have led to calls to fundamentally rethink economics as a discipline and as it is taught.  The recent white paper by Bowles and Cardin represents a comprehensive way that strands of economics that are presently treated as patches to economic models can instead be viewed as the essentials of a different way of looking at economics and teaching it.

Again, it is worth quoting the abstract:  “new problems now challenge the content of our introductory courses:  these include mounting economic disparities [income and wealth inequality], climate change, concerns about the future of work, and financial instability”; to which I would add that these also challenge the effectiveness of present macro- and micro-economics in guiding the analyst and decision-maker.  What I believe the introductory textbook cited does is to place existing but under-used “tools” at the center of economic analysis – specifically, “strategic interaction, [operations of markets in cases of] limited information, principal-agent models, new [real-world] behavioral foundations [that can determine what economic models best fit real-world data], and dynamic processes including instability and path-dependence.”  

By using word-frequency analysis, Bowles/Cardin establish clear differences between this and two previous generations of economics introductory textbooks as a proxy for the economic linguae franca of our world, the two previous generations being Samuelson’s post-WW II textbook and the recent textbooks of Krugman/Wells and Mankiw.  In other words, the new textbook and the new approach to economics really are in some sense fundamentally different.  

I would argue that the differences derive mostly from this:  the tone and organization of the new textbook really treat economics as a branch of sociology.  That is, they start with an analysis of economic group behavior as it shows up in current issues, not with a model of economic processes that then attempts to shoehorn in real-world data by assumptions such as rationality and self-interest.  The result is a stance that asks where government regulation, command-and-control, operation outside the economy, and more unfettered markets are appropriate, rather than a treatment of the first four as patches to assumed (but rarely if ever achieved in the real world!) perfectly competitive “free” markets.

Here’s a (to me, startling) example of the new thinking:  “it is impossible to write enforceable contracts for worker effort in an information-scarce environment,” so “firms will set wages so that there is always a cost of job loss for workers [i.e., a little higher than they might, so that workers clearly have an incentive to work because they care about their relative income when laid off or in another job] … As a result, there is involuntary unemployment at the equilibrium of the labor market.  This is not … a deviation … caused by … wage rigidities, minimum wages, monopsony, or unions … the intersection of demand and supply functions does not exist and is [replaced] by the Nash equilibrium of strategically interacting principals (employers) … and agents (employees).”  We’re not on Wall Street anymore, are we, Toto?

Implications of Both

It seems to me that both Green and Bowles/Cardin share one suggestion about the future of economics:  It is no longer adequate to see capitalism as the answer to everything, to view it as everywhere superior to the alternatives, now and in the future.  Rather, both suggest that we are dealing with a world in which, historically and now, government, capitalism, command/control, and non-economic activity are necessary parts, all of which must be viewed as operating in more and less effective ways than the others in both the short and the long run.
In particular, I view this as a challenge from economics to that peculiar libertarian dream, of combining little or no government with “free” markets.  What Green and Bowles/Cardin are saying is that capitalism alone will lead to bad outcomes, if not to a reinstitution of (poorer) government by the capitalist in his or her own interests.  I view bitcoin/blockchain as a direct confirmation of this:  the ideal of self-regulating contracts, money, and markets simply leads to inefficiencies, greater imbalances between principal and agent, theft by hackers, and Ponzi schemes preying on the limited information of investors.  

But I also gain hope from both of these texts.  If there is a hope of sustainable economies in the future, it begins with placing the cart of capitalism behind the horse of sustainability, and accompanied by the carts of government, our own personal and societal efforts, and WW-II-like command/control of parts of the economy, at least in the short run. 

It may not be the Grand Unified Theory of Economics, to replace what was smashed in 2008.  But at least, for the first time in a long, long time, we might be beginning to say that what economics teaches us reflects fairly well what we see with our own two eyes in the real world – the altruism and its benefits, the self-centeredness and its costs, less obscured by frantic handwaving and theories.

Final note:  in rereading this, I find I have underplayed the role of innovation/technology in the “new economics”.  For those curious about this, I suggest they sample the CORE introductory economics textbook referenced above, available online.

Joe Romm’s “Climate Change - What Everyone Needs to Know”, Second Edition: Maybe the Best CC Book Right Now

Disclaimer:  I am now retired, and am therefore no longer an expert on anything.  This blog post presents only my opinions, and anything in it should not be relied on.
Just a brief note after my previous post.  I have just finished “Climate Change”, and imho it may be the best book for the general reader trying to get up to speed with the latest science and what’s going on with climate change mitigation and adaptation. 

It’s in the format of posing questions and then answering them, which can clarify what you’re really discussing in a section, but can be a little confusing when you’re trying to follow the overall argument.  Not too confusing, tho’.

As can be seen from my previous post, the only really new things in it for me that mattered were around the latest findings on permafrost, methane, and the like.  But Room is surprisingly good on energy efficiency and hydrogen-powered vehicles (a wasted section, since it becomes clear early on in the section that they’re not worth considering in any real depth unless a technological breakthrough occurs).  Moreover, his cautionary notes on biofuels, carbon capture and storage, and nuclear power go beyond the usual discussions.

It’s not light reading; but it’s not tough slogging, either.  I suggest giving it a try.

Putting an Upper Bound on Climate Change: Permafrost

Disclaimer:  I am now retired, and am therefore no longer an expert on anything.  This blog post presents only my opinions, and anything in it should not be relied on.

When trying to figure out the most likely rate of global warming in our “business as usual” society, I always go back to that amusing quote from the movie version of Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring:  “Are you scared?  Not scared enough!”  The reason I remember this is that up to now, all of our scientific models of how climate change will play out over the next 100 years or so have consistently underestimated the rate of warming, not to mention the rate at which weather extremes have become the “new abnormal”.  And the reasons for this underestimation in the scientific community, from what I can tell, are (a) conservatism (even though the modeler may know that an effect will add to global warming, until the effect can be bounded with 95% likelihood in a positive direction it is assumed to have neither positive nor negative effect) and (b) lack of knowledge (for example, for a long time, the effect of increased cloudiness on global warming was not clearly understood).

Over time, these certainties and uncertainties in models have tended to be sorted out into the categories of Donald Rumsfeld’s pernicious classification:  knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns:

1.       The knowns are now, effectively, all those direct effects (e.g., the direct effect of CO2 and methane on global warming) and feedback or “knock-on” effects (e.g., the effect of release of black carbon by wildfires on decreasing Arctic albedo, where global warming from CO2 increase causes increased wildfires, which causes black carbon to fall on snow and ice, decreasing Arctic albedo and hence causing more Arctic warming).

2.       The known unknowns are those effects that we know will play a role, but which are not incorporated in models because we don’t know the extent of the role they will play.  Of these, perhaps the largest ones are (i) melting permafrost and (ii) methane (CH4) releases other than from permafrost melting, including methane clathrates, release of methane locked in land and ocean repositories, and release of methane from human action, including cow emissions and natural-gas processing emissions.

3.       The unknown unknowns are, obviously, effects that we probably can’t anticipate until they happen.  We can, however, take a guess at them by looking at the relationship between CO2 atmospheric emissions and global temperature during the last two major rises in CO2 – 250 million years ago (mya) and 55 mya (the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, also known as “hell and high water”).  If known unknowns turn into knowns, then the difference between what our models tell us will happen and what past experience suggests is probably due to unknown unknowns.
  

If we can turn the known unknowns into knowns, there appears to be a reasonable prospect that the revised models will track with past PETM (and other) experience, which would mean that the unknown unknowns probably don’t have a significant impact on global warming one way or the other.  In fact, the only remaining known unknown upside to be accounted for might be the fact that we are accelerating carbon emissions at a far greater pace than they have ever increased before.  The usual thinking is that this may speed up the process of actual global temperature warming, (e.g., in our case, a doubling of atmospheric carbon since 1850 should lead to a 2-2.8 degree C temperature increase in the next 100 years, and a total 4 degrees C temperature increase over the next 1000 years, rather than a 1200-year gradual doubling leading to an increase of 1.3 degrees C by 100 years from now, but with the same total 4 degrees C increase at the end), although it is possible that our rush to emit carbon will trigger unknown unknowns that will lead to an even greater rise in temperature at the end of each doubling.  In a nutshell:  with permafrost and methane accounted for, we would begin to see a plausible upper bound for the amount of long-term global warming from increased atmospheric CO2 and related greenhouse-gas emissions.

In long-ago posts, I said that research seemed to suggest that increased methane emissions would not deliver a major boost to global warming.  Without going into horrendous detail, I saw the research as suggesting that if even if methane clathrates, sea-floor methane, and permafrost methane suddenly started rising into the atmosphere a very high rates over the next 100 years, it was still unlikely that methane would achieve “saturation” in the atmosphere, which would cause methane to stay in the atmosphere much longer and therefore have a much greater warming effect – perhaps as much as 1 degree F while it lasted.  Nothing in the second edition of Joe Romm’s “Climate Change:  What Everyone Needs to Know” (summarizing findings as of early 2018) suggests that this scientific consensus has changed.

And so, I would argue, getting at the likely effect of melting all the permafrost gives us a reasonable shot at an upper bound for the most likely effects from “business as usual” increases in carbon emissions.  Or, as I like to say, we may finally know how scared is scared enough.

New Findings on Permafrost

Only nine years ago, it wasn’t clear that permafrost melting was happening yet.  Now, it’s not only clear that it’s happening, it seems to be happening faster than anticipated.   So a plausible upper bound for global warming is increasingly seeming more like a “middle bound” – the most likely case – for business-as-usual global warming.

Here’s a back-of-the-envelope SWAG at the effects of full permafrost melt.  According to “Climate Change”, there are 1.5 trillion tons of carbon locked in the world’s permafrost.  Studies cited in CC also suggest that for each 90 tons of permafrost carbon released, atmospheric carbon goes up about 60-80 ppm.  Thus, total melt means about 1000-1333 ppm of added atmospheric carbon.
 
The effect on global warming then depends on how fast it happens and what else is going on.  More specifically, if melt is fast, then most of its effect falls within the first two doublings of atmospheric carbon.  Thus, very loosely, with a 2 degree C direct effect of non-permafrost added atmospheric carbon on temperatures, we are talking about somewhere around a 4 degree C direct effect of total permafrost melt.

But direct effects of carbon are not the only effects.  A significant proportion of the carbon in permafrost will almost certainly be emitted as methane (CH4), not carbon dioxide.  While much of this will eventually turn into CO2 in the atmosphere, the rise in per-decade atmospheric methane during quick permafrost melt can add up to another degree C to warming over centuries-to-millenia time periods, because methane can be up to 86 times as powerful a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.  And the lack of snow cover and increased vegetation associated with the peat bogs likely to be a result of permafrost melt mean a shift in albedo that, to my mind, should significantly up global warming as well.  In sum, aggressive total permafrost melt seems to me at first glance to result in an average 4-6 degrees C of global warming for at least the next 1000 years – and, considering the unknown unknowns, that may be conservative.

It should be pointed out that if we are effective in ending business-as-usual global warming in the near future, much less of the permafrost will ultimately melt.   At another SWAG, we may have locked in melt of 5% of permafrost already (the result of non-permafrost feedbacks adding 0.5 degrees C to the temperature henceforward plus the effects of additional heating from initial permafrost melt).  The rest is still in play.

Glimpses of an Upper Bound

What strikes me about this estimate (4-6 degrees C) is that it seems to fit in more nicely both with the experience of past catastrophic global warming and with recent Hansen papers trying to set an upper bound.  In the PETM, carbon ppm started at about 1000 and apparently went up to about 2000, but the temps seem to have gone up 6 degrees C in the process, 4 degrees more than direct atmospheric carbon effects can explain.  One recently raised suggestion is that elimination of stratocumulus clouds, which should thin out as air temps get warmer, can add 8 degrees C to global warming.   But this is not likely to take effect until well beyond the 1000 ppm level, below which aggressive permafrost melt plays its major role.

In trying to square the PETM with the likely direct effects of atmospheric carbon, Hansen conjectured, iirc, that each doubling of atmospheric carbon would lead, without human interference, to a little more than 2 degrees C of direct effects plus a little less than 2 degrees C of feedback effects, for a total of 4 degrees C.  But the feedback effects he identified only seemed applicable to the first doubling (to 550-odd ppm), and the temps in the PETM seemed too high, imho, for a 2000-ppm atmospheric carbon level.  Some combination of permafrost melt and cloud thinning, with permafrost melt playing its major role before 1000 ppm (at the time of the late Cretaceous global warming 11 million years before, with loss of sea ice and therefore probably loss of permafrost) and cloud thinning after, may therefore explain some of the PETM warming (whether it played a role in the global warming/mass extinction 250 mya, which involved a super-continent with no extreme north or south land, is not clear).

This also squares with another Hansen paper (iirc). In it, he argues that using up most of our present fossil fuel reserves will lead ultimately to 16 degrees C/30 degrees F average warming, or 30 degrees C/54 degrees F average warming in the Arctic and Antarctic.

All of the above statements contain large fudge factors, of course, and can be and are argued over.  However, I do now believe it is much more probable now that something like this upper bound is in store for us, if business as usual continues indefinitely. 

Implications for Armageddon

With all of the above in mind, I like to think of the worst as four stages – horrible, catastrophic, apocalyptic, and decimating, the first three corresponding to doublings of atmospheric carbon, and the last comprising only feedback effects.  Aggressive permafrost melt gives the second and third stages, which have yet to arrive, a similar warming effect over time to our first stage.  And that arbitrary classification leads to a couple of assertions:

1.       Each stage is much worse in its effects than the previous one; and

2.       Each stage becomes harder to prevent or ameliorate than the previous one.  In a sense, each stage adds momentum and size to the downward rolling snowball, because (a) new feedback effects are triggered, like permafrost melt and Arctic/Antarctic ice melt, (b) saturation effects start occurring, like inability of the ocean to store oxygen or saturation of atmospheric methane leading to longer stays in the air, and (c) our ability to mitigate is increasingly hindered by having to undo greater  amounts of now-inappropriate fossil-fuel infrastructure and optimized-for-the-wrong-temperature energy-inefficient dwellings.

      And that is why I disagree with both the optimists and pessimists.  Yes, failure to undo business as usual is rife in the air.  Yes, we may well have effectively crossed the boundary into Stage 2, with horrible effects of climate change already locked in.  Yes, the ultimate end of Stage 4 may well be the decimation of the human race and the rest of the natural world.  But until 100 or 200 years from now, we still have the ability to break utterly the cycle of business as usual, harder though it gets as time goes by.  And therefore every setback in our quest demands not despair but a fiercer effort, more confrontation of the guilty, and greater demands for even more to be done.

It’s like a crooked poker game.  Yes, right now it’s the only game in town, and yes, right now you can’t win or fold, just keep on losing.  But the game will end, and your job is to lose as little as possible, as the stakes go up and up, so that when the game is over you may have lost your heart’s desire but you will not be an indebted slave for life, or killed because you couldn’t pay your debt.  Or most of the effects may fall on your great-great-grandchildren; but they’re still the same shattering effects.  On everybody.

Oh, and one extremely small hopeful note:  it seems to me that to avoid business as usual resurfacing at any time over the next 1000 years, we will have to change fundamentally.  To sustainability.  To a method of living that almost certainly will not destroy the remainder of humanity.  Stage 4 will be as bad as it gets.

And so, hopefully, understanding the effects of permafrost and having a likely upper bound means you are scared enough.  Absolutely, totally scared stiff.  With decimation staring you in the face.  And so, said the psychiatrist in Portnoy’s Complaint, now ve may perhaps to begin, yes?

Reading New Thoughts: The Usefulness of Altruism

Disclaimer:  I am now retired, and am therefore no longer an expert on anything.  This blog post presents only my opinions, and anything in it should not be relied on.

New books by Alice Roberts (“Taming”) and E.O. Wilson (“Genesis”) seem to me to deliver a different, nuanced reason to appreciate that old religious warhorse, altruism.  Both of these draw on recent advances in genetics that I have written about elsewhere; in fact, “Taming” specifically attempts to summarize recent advances in “genetic history” (determining the likely course of events that led to domestication of animals such as the chicken and flora such as the apple tree).  Moreover, both specifically apply their insights to humans, and to humans’ distinctiveness from our close relatives the apes, in areas such as altruism.

What I think that both have in common is that they find that evolutionary strategies that run counter to the apparent evolutionary imperatives of individual survival and reproduction are actually relatively successful strategies for group (and hence species) survival and reproduction.  Thus, in Wilson’s assessment, humans are one of the seventeen or so known species (e.g., bees and mole rats) in which a certain percentage of members of the group set aside (temporarily or permanently) their own reproduction and/or survival needs and act to support the survival, reproduction, and success of their group.  In Roberts’ provocative telling, humans have been domesticating themselves, compared to apes, by dulling the intra- and inter-group aggression that would ordinarily prevent us from coexisting in cities.

Now, both of these books may represent a “bridge too far”:  their conclusions in this regard probably go beyond what we will ultimately see as the true role of altruism in an effective society.  Wilson in particular seems to shoehorn humans awkwardly into the “eusocial” category (defined by a reviewer as including overlap of generations, cooperative brood-care, and non-reproductive “helpers”)  when most or all of his seventeen other species offer more clear-cut examples.  Likewise, Roberts seems to go beyond the evidence in finding parallels between the “immaturation” of the dog and the chicken that apparently bred for a longer nurturing phase so they wouldn’t avoid humans and could take advantage of our agricultural and hunting largess, and our own long period of growing up.  Nevertheless, I do think that they present new insights into the advantages of altruism in our daily lives.

Wilson and Milton

When I look at Wilson’s thoughts in “Genesis”, I am reminded of the last line of Milton’s “On His Blindness”:  “They also serve who stand and wait.”  The point is that most animals are usually part of a group, if only a family group, and that group typically has a leader. But in the species described by Wilson, the “eusocial” members of the group are not passively accepting the commands of their leader (“Thousands at His bidding speed”, says Milton) but actively choosing a semi-permanent role as acting for the good of the rest of the group without waiting for direction, rather than emphasizing their own reproduction, and, in some cases, their own survival.  In other words, “eusociality” is not enforced servitude, but rather a differentiated role within the group contrary to the interest of the “selfish gene” within the individual.

This approach to evolutionary success is not common – after all, we’ve found only seventeen species examples of this.  Nevertheless, according to Wilson, this is apparently a relatively successful strategy:  the reduced individual breeding is more than countered by the increased chance of survival and therefore reproduction of the group.  Moreover, this “division of labor” is sometimes, as in the case of humans, relatively flexible, and therefore reduces the risk of population disaster – that is, in times of population strain the homosexual or celibate can take part in reproduction.

And therefore, far from being a threat to humanity, eusociality argues that the LGBTQ individual or voluntary celibate is a blessing – in moderation, of course.  Not to mention the “nurturers”, “caretakers”, “helpers”, and “defenders” we all see around us.  In evolutionary terms, that their own reproduction (and sometimes, as well, their own survival) is not the central meaning of their lives is a good thing, when balanced with the drive towards individual survival and reproduction of the rest of us.  The eusocial species thrives in the long run, all else being equal, compared to the rest, because when disaster strikes, the eusocial individual’s focus is on somebody in the group surviving, rather than on the safety of oneself or one’s family.

Infantilizing Aggression

One of the key points made by Roberts about the process of “taming” is that in the case of animals (e.g., wolf/dog, chicken/bird, and boar/pig) it was often a matter of self-breeding to minimize both aggression/”fight” and avoidance/”flight” in order to cooperate with humans in activities such as hunting and herding.  In other words, wolves in a pack that were less likely to attack or avoid humans were more likely to share in the benefits of human kills, and therefore had a survival advantage over their wilder counterparts.  These wolves may have tended to have longer stretches of life in which they were “growing up”, i.e., with less aggression and less stress on survival by avoidance.  The end result of this evolutionary process – dogs – therefore show signs of what we might call “permanent immaturity” compared to their wolf relatives, including longer maturation.

Roberts then goes on to note that compared to our close relatives the apes, we likewise have a longer period of immaturity, a “final state” of the evolutionary process involving less aggressiveness and avoidance.  This “infantilization of aggression” allows adults to behave towards each other as dogs to humans:  with lower-aggression relationships, lower avoidance of each other (compare that to cats!), and a greater ability to cooperate and perform services for each other as part of that cooperation.  Of course, as with dogs, the aggression towards prey species remains, and spills over into inter-species interactions – just not as strongly.

Cities – now the habitat of at least half of the human race – represent the extreme case of that tamping down of aggression and avoidance.  On the streets of New York City at rush hour, we are assaulted with the close proximity of thousands of our fellow creatures every day – and yet almost all of the millions in NYC manage to avoid either undue aggression or “getting away from it all” over the course of a long lifetime.

And in situations like this, I argue, altruism is a useful strategy for tamping down residual aggression and avoidance.  Yes, the altruist who “reaches out” across groups in a very crowded situation can be punished for seeming aggressive or overly vulnerable; but since the motivation is to provide disinterested services to the other group, it’s the type of interaction least likely to trigger “fight or flight” from the opposing group.  Whatever we may say of politicians as a group, on the regional and national  level the more altruistic politician does, I think, perform a vital service by this kind of cross-group altruism.

Of Myss And Altruistic Men

But how does this “genetic history” apply today?  I have no good data points, but I have an odd one:  Caroline Myss’ 2001 book, “Sacred Contracts.”  This is a fascinating “New Age” attempt to combine Jungian psychology with eclectic religion and apply it to self-help.  The book is shot through with altruistic archetypes drawn from myth and story, like the Knight and the Nun, applied to the modern world – as well as, of course, self-interested archetypes like the Child and the Queen/King.

What I find notable in this book from the point of view of the practical usefulness of altruism are the extensive case studies of individuals seeking to achieve meaning in fully modern lives, complete with concerns about surviving and thriving in work and businesses.  To a surprising extent, not only women but also men tackle entrepreneurship and choice of career with a primary motive of “doing good for others,” as shown by their choice of altruistic rather than self-interested archetypes to describe themselves. This not only evidences the first level of empathy, as I discussed in my recent series on Tolkien in Daily Kos, but also that altruistic motives are more common than I thought even in the cutthroat competitive worlds of business and lawyering.

This requires a little unpacking, I think.  Back in 1980 when I was at business school, a survey asked us what our primary goal in business was:  power, money, or altruism (e.g., non-profit businesses)?  Interestingly, those seeking power tended to wind up with a bit more money than those seeking money directly, according to the surveyers.  But perhaps 20%, even in a business school, said they were in it for altruistic purposes.  And what Myss shows is that even those in the power and money categories aren’t necessarily seeking to run businesses just to gain power or money, whether for survival or self-gratification; they also may seek to use that power and money in the long run for altruistic as well as selfish purposes.

Now, before you think I have gone all soft and mushy, I freely concede that this is a flawed sample.  Yes, the people in Myss’ book are for the most part predisposed to think of their goals in altruistic terms.  Yes, the book is 20 years out of date, and the world by some measures may seem more self-absorbed than ever.

Nevertheless, I think that the message it conveys is more true than not.  The first two books argue the usefulness of altruism to our species, in the long run.  Myss’ case studies suggest, I think, that in the very short run and in practical terms, altruism, properly balanced, is a positive benefit to us all in our daily lives.