Climate Change Fall 2018: Postscript to Addendum

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.

Two new factoids:

1.        The CO2 data from Mauna Loa are now showing that CO2 levels (averaged over the last ½ year plus a projection of the next six months) reached 410 ppm in Nov.  This date is a little more than three years since that measure reached 400.

2.       The estimate of carbon emissions – flat for years 2014-2016 – rose by 1.6% in 2017 and is projected to rise by 2.7% in 2018.  Primary increases were from China and India, but the US also rose – only Europe among major contributors decreased.  Although, as I have noted, this measure may well be flawed as an indicator of underlying carbon emissions rise, the very fact that it can now be monitored on a monthly basis suggests that some of the flaws have been worked out.  It is, therefore, less likely to be an underestimate of carbon emissions, and hence the rate of rise is more likely to be correct or a slight overestimate.

Let me reiterate the conclusion in my Oct. addendum more forcefully:  I am told that I have, on average, 8 ½ years more to live.  By the time I am dead, CO2 seems all but certain to reach 430 ppm, and may well be approaching 440 ppm.  By 2050, if things simply continue linearly instead of accelerating the way they have done for the past 60 years, we will be at 500 ppm, nearly doubling CO2 at the start of the Industrial Revolution.  This bakes in a global temperature rise since then of 4 degrees Centigrade, or 7 degrees Fahrenheit in the long run, according to James Hansen and others, with at least 2 degrees C since the IR in the short run, or another 2 degrees F from the way things are right now.  

Another point:  There is a clear line between recent increases in carbon emissions and the administration of President Donald Trump.  The lack of support from that administration is clearly linked not only to US increases (via a strong rise in US oil/shale/natural gas generation) but also to decreased pressure on India and China, both in unilateral relations and in the meetings regarding implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Reading New Thoughts: Two Books On the Nasty Details of Cutting Carbon Emissions

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.

I have finally gotten around to talking about two books I recently read, tomes that have greatly expanded my knowledge of the details and difficulties of reducing carbon emissions drastically.  These books are Peter Kalmus; “Being the Change” and David Owen’s “Where the Water Goes”, and I’d like to discuss the new thoughts I believe they give rise to, very briefly.

Kalmus and the Difficulties of Individual Efforts to Cut Carbon Emissions

“Being the Change” is a bit of an odd duck; it’s the personal musings of a physicist dealing with climate change at the level of cross-planet climates, on his personal efforts to reduce his own greenhouse-gas emissions.  Imho, its major value is that it gives perhaps the best explanation I have read on the science of climate change.  However, as promised, it also discusses Kalmus’ careful dissection of his own and his family’s lifestyle in terms of carbon emissions, and his efforts to reduce these emissions as much as possible.

At the start we find out that Kalmus has been successful in reducing his emissions by 90% over the course of a few years, so that they are only 10% of what they were at the start of the effort.  This is significant because many scientists’ recommendations for what is needed to avoid “worst cases” talk about reductions of 80-90% in a time frame of less than 25 years.  In other words, it seems at first glance that a world of individual efforts, if not hindered as they are now by business interests or outdated government regulations, might take us all the way to a carbon-reduced world.

When we look at the details of Kalmus’ techniques, however, it becomes apparent that a major portion of his techniques are not easily reproducible.  In particular, a significant chunk of savings comes from not flying any more; but he was flying more than most, as a scientist attending conferences, so his techniques extended worldwide are more likely to achieve 50-70% emissions reductions, not 80-90%.  Then we add his growing his own food while using “human manure” as manure; and that is something that is far more difficult to reproduce worldwide, given that perhaps 50% of humanity is now in cities and that scavenging human manure is a very time-consuming activity (not to mention borderline illegal is some jurisdictions).  So we lose another 10-20%, for a net reduction of 30-60%, according to my SWAG (look it up).  

The net of it is, to me, that using many of Kalmus’ techniques universally, if it can be done, is very much worth doing; but also changing business practices and adopting government policies and global efforts is necessary, whether we do our individual efforts or not, to achieve the needed drastic reductions in carbon emissions, over a short or a long time period.  There are two pieces of good news here.  First, Kalmus notes that he could have achieved further significant personal reductions if he’d been able to afford a solar-powered home; and that’s something that governments (and businesses) can indeed take a shot at implementing worldwide.  Second, I heard recently that my old junior high’s grade school was now teaching kids about individual carbon footprints ("pawprints") and what to do about them.  Yes, the recommendations were weak tea; but it’s a good start at spreading individual carbon-emissions reductions efforts across society. 

Owen and the Resistance of Infrastructure, Politics, and Law to Emissions Reductions and Sustainability

Nominally, “Where the Water Goes” is about the Colorado River watershed, how its water is allocated, and changes due to the evolution of the economies of neighboring state plus the pressures due to increasing climate-change water scarcity, increased usage from population growth, and the need for sustainability and carbon-emissions reductions.  What stands out about his account, however, is the weird and unexpected permutations of watershed management involved.  Here are a few:

·         The Colorado originally did not provide enough water for mining, except if it was reserved in large chunks for individuals.  As a result, a Law of the River set of water-use rights has grown up in place of the usual “best fair use”, where the older your claim to a certain amount of the water is, the more others whose use of scarce water you pre-empt. 

·         An elaborate system of aqueducts and reservoirs that feed water to cities from Los Angeles to Denver.

·         Rural economies entirely dependent on tourism from carbon-guzzling RVs and jetskis used on man-made lakes.

·         Agriculture that is better in the desert than in fertile areas – because the weather is more predictably good.

·         A food-production system in which supermarket chains and the like now drive agriculture to the point of demanding that individual farmers deliver produce of very specific types, weight ranges, and quality – or else;

·         A mandated cut in water use can lead to real-world water use increase – because now users must use draw more water in low-water-use periods to avoid the risk of running out of their “claimed amount” in a high-use period.

Owen’s take is that it is possible, if people on all sides of the water-scarcity issue (e.g., environmentalists and business) sit down and work things out, to “muddle through” and preserve this strange world by incremental adaptation in a world of increased water scarcity due to climate change, and that crude efforts at quick fixes risk the catastrophic breakdown of the entire system.  My reaction to this is quite different:  to change a carbon-based energy system like the Colorado River is going to take fundamental rethinking, because not only the “sunk cost” infrastructure of aqueducts, reservoirs, and irrigation-fed agriculture, plus rural-industry and state-city politics reinforces the status quo, but the legal system itself – the legal precedents flowing into real-world practices – metastasizes and elaborates the carbon excesses of the system. 

For this particular system, and probably in a lot of cases, I conjecture that the key actors in bringing about carbon reductions are the farmers and the “tourism” industries.  The farmers are key because they in fact use far more water than the cities for their irrigation, and therefore carbon-reduction/sustainability policies that impact them (such as reductions in pesticides, less meat production, or less nitrogen in fertilizers) on top of water restrictions make their job that much harder.  It is hard to see how anything but money (correctly targeted supports and incentives) plus water-use strategies focused on this can overcome both the supermarket control over farmers and these constraints to achieve major carbon-use reductions.  

Meanwhile, the “tourism industries” are key because, like flying as discussed above, they represent an easier target for major reductions in energy and carbon efficiency than cities.  On the other hand, these rural economies are much more fragile, being dependent on low-cost transport/homes in the RV case, and feeding the carbon-related whims of the rich and semi-rich few, in the jetski case.  In the RV case, as in the farmer case, money for less fossil-fuel-consuming RVs and recreation methods will probably avoid major economic catastrophe.

However, I repeat, what is likely to happen if this sort of rethinking does not permeate throughout infrastructure, politics, and the law, is the very major catastrophe that was supposed to be avoided by incrementalism, only in the medium term rather than in the short term, and therefore with greater negative effects.  The tourism industries will be inevitable victims of faster-than-expected, greater-than-expected water shortages and weather destruction.  The farmers will be victims of greater-than-expected, faster-than-expected water evaporation from heat and weather destruction.  The cities will be the victims of resulting higher food prices and shortages.  

What Owen’s book does is highlight just how tough some of the resistance “built into the system” to carbon-emissions reductions is.  What it does not do is show that therefore incrementalism is preferable.  On the contrary.

Climate Change 2018: That Was The Year That Wasn't

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.

We begin our experience of climate change in 2018 with the legacy of 2017, a year that was in many ways the worst so far.  It began with a new US President committed to reversing the minor gains against carbon emissions that the “lead dog” US had already achieved, and with unprecedented off-season Arctic sea ice melting.  It ended with massive out-of-season climate-change-driven wildfires in California, four hurricanes together packing unprecedented force and causing thousands of deaths (Puerto Rico) and close-to-unprecedented physical damage (in dollars), apparent increases in US carbon emissions after 2 years of declines, and unprecedented Arctic warmth in December.  And those are just the lowlights.

In the year since I retired, I have had the chance to read extensively if capriciously in climate change literature, and I hope to share some of those books’ insights with readers in later posts.  Here, I want to briefly note some of the key initial climate change trends of 2018:

·         Atmospheric CO2 continues its relatively rapid pace of increase

·         Arctic sea ice is at a historic low for this time of year, and global sea ice at an all-time low

·         Solar energy cost gains are counteracted by inadequate country emissions pledges and US backsliding

CO2 Increases:  The Broken Record

The important thing to remember about atmospheric CO2 measurements is that they tell us how we are really doing.  You will see all sorts of encouraging (and discouraging) developments that should affect carbon emissions over the course of the year, especially the ones that claim to measure whether global emissions are up or down.  However, global emission measures are flawed by self-reporting and incomplete data, which may increasingly underestimate the emissions.  Atmospheric CO2, measured since 1959 at Mauna Loa in Hawaii, provides not only a measure of overall emissions but also a reality check as to whether our efforts at curbing human and human-related emissions are bearing fruit.

In February 2018, as it seems I have said many times before – so many times that I sound like a broken record – atmospheric CO2 continues to increase at an unprecedented pace, all things considered.  Initial indications are that 2017 CO2 increased by 2.11 ppm, less that the 3 ppm the previous two years.  However, this is a drop of about 0.9 ppm from 2 El Nino years, while the only comparable El Nino year in the past, 1998, saw a drop of about 2 ppm the next year.  Meanwhile, with February ¾ done, the increase for this month appears to be about 2.4 ppm.

The result is that it is almost certain that atmospheric CO2 is about 408 ppm, up 8-9 ppm since 2015.  While this is less than I feared 1 ½ years ago, it still suggests that we will reach 410 ppm some time around the end of this year and 420 ppm in 2022 – and we have already seen the drastic effects of breaching 400 ppm.

Arctic Sea Ice:  What Does Not Stay in the Arctic

For this, the best I can do is quote Joe Romm and Michael Mann (thinkprogress.org/record-arctic-temperatures-85b0c287a78b/):  “2018 has already set a string of records for lowest Arctic sea ice … [but] what happens in the Arctic doesn’t usually stay in the Arctic”  because this low Arctic sea ice weakens and moves the polar vertex (wintertime circular winds around the North Pole), driving relatively cold air south where it impacts both northern America as far south as Florida and northern Eurasia.  So what we are seeing is both extreme cold from this disruption, and extreme warmth when the disruption is not operating (as now, when I am seeing temperatures almost 40 degrees F above normal near Boston).

This is part of a year-round disruption of once-normal Arctic wind patterns leading to “acceleration” of “slowing down of ocean currents, … weather extremes like droughts, wildfires, floods, and superstorms …  [and] faster melting of the land-based Greenland ice sheet, which in turn drives the speed up in sea level rise that scientists reported last week.” 

Nor should we be complacent about Antarctic ice melting.  As noted, Antarctic land ice melt is the key to huge world sea level rise, and melting of Antarctic sea ice that plugs the glaciers conveying land ice to the sea for melting is therefore a prerequisite for huge world sea level rise.  The fact that global (Arctic plus Antarctic) sea ice has reached a record low in the last few weeks indicates that Antarctic sea ice is also at a low point, and last year’s Antarctic sea ice data backs that up.

Solar Vs. Fossil: One Step Forward, Two Half-Steps Back

There is no doubt in my mind that the major encouraging news of the past year has been the driving down of the cost of solar-power generation and installation, to a point well below that of oil, natural gas, and coal.  Moreover, increasingly, despite the lack of adequate solar-battery technology to guarantee no-blackout solar plus wind, the increased production of solar batteries and their lowered cost does make regional almost-no-blackout solar-plus-wind cost-effective for the majority of power in most world regions.  These technological improvements should continue unabated in 2018, and they are now empowered by NGOs, some governments, and entrepreneurs to a surprising extent.

However, a new UN publication assesses the emissions pledges of governments at or since the 2016 Paris conference, and finds that 2030 fossil-fuel emissions will be up in 2030 compared with 1990 if these pledges are fulfilled, while 2050 fossil-fuel emissions will be up in 2050 compared with 2030.   Combined with projected rising population until about 2050 that leads to rising non-fossil-fuel emissions (e.g., cows with methane, deforestation), this pattern of pledges may lock countries more firmly into efforts that are inadequate for a 2 degrees Centigrade goal.  Therefore, like Alice Through the Looking-Glass, we are failing to run fast enough to stay where we are, and have effectively taken a half-step back.

Another half-step, I believe, comes from the extensive efforts of the Trump administration to undo Obama-era (and previous) regulations, incentives, enforcement, and measurement related to climate change.  Over the past year, for example, enforcement actions have apparently gone down 44 %, solar incentives are rapidly moving from positive to negative, regulations on things like LED lightbulbs and Energy Star labelling are undercut, and satellites key to measurement of things like Arctic sea ice are under threat or under repair from underfunding, while communication of the data suffers from extreme removal of climate change considerations.  No wonder the US appears to have seen a rise in emissions in 2017 compared to a decline in the previous two years.  And this Trump-administration effort continues to grow in scope in 2018.

Conclusion:  That Was the Year That Wasn’t

Way back when (1962-1963), a TV show took a satirical look at the news of the week with the title, “That Was the Week That Was.”  It seems to me, taking a cynical look at 2017 and our efforts to deal with climate change, that that was the Year That Wasn’t – wasn’t in net terms a real break from the “business as usual” of 2010 and before – while at least 2016 saw a major shift in reporting on climate change, some people’s and governments’ attitudes, and at least somewhat of a shift in emissions themselves. 

Will 2018 be another Year That Wasn’t?  Too early to tell.  But we couldn’t afford 2017.  And, to a greater extent, we can’t afford another year like it.

The Climate-Change Dog That Did Bark In The Night: CO2 Continues Its Unprecedented 6-Month Streak

In one of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries, an apparent theft of a racehorse is solved when Holmes notes “the curious incident of the dog in the night” – the point being that the guard dog for the stable did not bark, showing that the only visitor was known and trusted.  In some sense, CO2 is a “guard dog” for oncoming climate change, signaling future global warming when its increases overwhelm the natural Milankovitch and other climate cycles.  It is therefore distressing to note that in the last 6 months, the dog has barked very loudly indeed:  CO2 in the atmosphere has increased at an unprecedented rate. 

And this is occurring in the “nighttime”, i.e., at a time when, by all our measures, CO2 emissions growth should be flat or slowing down.  As noted in previous posts, efforts to cut emissions, notably in the EU and China, plus the surge of the solar industry, have seemed to lend credibility to metrics of carbon emissions from various sources that suggest more or less flat global emissions in 2014 and 2015 despite significant global economic and population growth.

What is going on?  I have already noted the possibility that a major el Nino event, such as occurred in 1998, can cause a temporary surge in CO2 growth.  In 1998, indeed, CO2 growth set a record that was not beaten until last year, but in the two years after 1998, CO2 atmospheric ppm growth fell back sharply to nearly the previous level.  By our measures, the el Nino occurring in the first 5 months or so of 2016 was about equal in magnitude to the one in 1998, so one would expect to see a similar short surge.  However, we are almost 4 months past the end of this el Nino, and there is very little sign of any major decrease in growth rate.  It already appears certain that we cannot dismiss the CO2 surge as a short-term blip.

Recent Developments in CO2 Mauna Loa

In the last few days, I was privileged to watch the video of Prof. John Sterman of MIT, talking about the “what-if” tool he had developed and made available in which climate models drive CO2 emissions growth depending on how aggressive the national targets are for emissions reduction.  He was blunt in saying that even the commitments coming out of the Paris meeting are grossly inadequate, but he did show how much more aggressive targets could indeed keep total growth at 2 degrees C.  In fact, he was so forthright and well-informed that I could finally hope that MIT’s climate-change legacy would not be the government-crippling misinformation of that narcissistic hack Prof. Lindzen.

However, two of his statements – somewhat true in 2015 but clearly not true at this point in 2016 (the lecture, I believe, was given in the spring of 2016) – stick in my head.  First, he said that we are beginning to approach 1.5 degrees C growth in global land temperature.  According to the latest figures cited by Joe Romm, the most likely global land temperature for 2015 will be approximately 1.5 degrees C.  Second, he said that CO2 (average per year) had reached the 400 ppm level – a statement true at this time last year.  As of April-July 2016, however, the average per year has reached between 404 and 405 ppm.

CO2 as measured at the Mauna Loa observatory tends to follow a seasonal cycle, with the peak occurring in April and May, and the trough in September.  In the last few years, at all times of the year, growth year-to-year (measured monthly) averaged slightly more than 2 ppm.  Note that this was true for both 2014 and most of 2015.  Then, around the time that the el Nino arrived, it rose to 3 ppm.  But it didn’t stop there:  In April, a breathtakingly sharp rise of 4.1 ppm took CO2 up to 408 ppm.  And it didn’t stop there:  May and June were likewise near 4 ppm, and the resulting total average rise through August has been almost 3.6 ppm.  September so far continues to be in the 3.3-3.5 range. 

CO2, el Nino, Global Land Temperature:  What Causes What?

Let’s add another factoid.  Over the last 16 or so months, each month’s global land temperature has set a new record.  In fact, July and August (July is typically the hottest month) tied for absolute heat record ever recorded, well ahead of the records set last year.

So here we have three factors:  CO2, el Nino, and variations in global land temperature.  Clearly, in this heat wave “surge”, the land temperature started spiking first, the full force of el Nino arrived second, and the full surge in CO2 arrived third.  On the other hand, we know that atmospheric CO2 is not only a “guard dog”, but also, in James Hansen’s phrase, a “control knob”:  in the long term, for large enough variations in CO2 (which can be 10 ppm in some cases), the global land temperature will eventually follow CO2 by rising or falling in proportion.  Moreover, it seems likely that el Nino’s short-term effect on CO2 must be primarily by raising the land temperature, which does things like expose black carbon on melting ice for release to the atmosphere, or increase the imbalance between carbon-absorbing forest growth and carbon-emitting forest fires by increasing the incidence of forest fires.

But I think we also have to ask whether the effect of increasing CO2 on global temperatures (land plus sea, this time) begins over a shorter time frame than we thought.  The shortest time frame for a CO2 effect suggested by conservative science is perhaps 2000 years, when a spike in CO2 caused Arctic melting indicative of global warming less than a million years ago.  Hansen and others, as well, have identified 360 ppm of atmospheric CO2 as the level at which Arctic sea ice melts out, and we only passed that level about 20 years ago – a paper by a Harvard professor projects that Arctic sea ice will melt out at minimum somewhere between 2032 and 2053.  In other words, we at least have some indication that CO2 can affect global temperature in 50-100 years or so.

And finally, we have scientific work showing that global land temperature increases that melt Arctic sea and land ice affect albedo (e.g., turn white ice into blue water), which in turn increases sea and land heat absorption and hence temperatures, and these changes “ripple down” to the average temperatures of temperate and subtropical zones.  So part of global land temperature increase is caused by – global land temperature increase.  It is for these reasons that many scientists feel that climate models underestimate the net effect of a doubling of CO2, and these scientists estimate that rather than 500 ppm leading to a 2 degree C temperature increase, it will lead to a 4 degree C increase.

I would summarize by saying that while it seems we don’t know enough about the relationship between CO2, el Nino, and global land temperature, it does seem likely that today’s CO2 increase is much more than can be explained by el Nino plus land temperature rise, and that the effects of this CO2 spike will be felt sooner than we think.

Implications

If the “guard dog” of CO2 in the atmosphere is now barking so loudly, why did we not anticipate this?  I still cannot see an adequate explanation that does not include the likelihood that our metrics of our carbon emissions are not capturing an increasing proportion of what we put into the air.  That certainly needs looking into.

At the same time, I believe that we need to recognize the possibility that this is not a “developing nations get hit hard, developed ones get by” or “the rich escape the worst effects” story.  If things are happening faster than we expect and may result in temperature changes higher than we expect, then it is reasonable to assume that the “trickle-up” effects of climate change may become a flood in the next few decades, as rapid ecosystem, food, and water degradation starts affecting the livability of developed nations and their ability to feed their own reasonably-well-off citizens. 

The guard dog barks in the night-time, while we sleep.  We have a visitor that is not usual, and should not be trusted or ignored.  I urge that we start paying attention. 

Climate Science's Climate Change Model

In this series of blog posts, I attempt to give an overall view of the physics/chemistry-based climate science dealing with climate change and today’s global warming.  I do so because I can’t find an overall summary such as the one I’m about to try to create.  My hope is that readers will understand why this science makes me so alarmed and seemingly so pessimistic.  As always, misunderstandings and misstatements are my fault and do not reflect on the science itself.

Let’s begin with sunlight.  The sun’s light is always accompanied by warmth/energy.  Even on barren Mars, without an atmosphere to “contain” that warmth, temperatures at the surface are 100 degrees F below zero, only part of which is due to the planet’s internal heat.  The rest is sunlight striking the surface during daylight and giving off heat that is absorbed and radiated by surface materials.

The actual amount of absorption and heating depends on the “color” of the surface (or, in scientific jargon, the “albedo” of materials).  More specifically, think of the color spectrum you were taught:  white reflects all (except perhaps infrared) radiation, and absorbs no or very little heat.  Black absorbs all (except perhaps ultraviolet) radiation, and therefore absorbs a lot of heat.  On the Earth, water is blue and absorbs a moderate amount of heat; ice and snow are white or off-white and absorb very little heat; and soil and rock tend to be brown and black and absorb lots of heat.  Likewise, land covered by vegetation tends to be light to dark green and absorbs much more heat than the sand that would otherwise predominate on land – and that doesn’t even consider the effects of photosynthesis.

Finally, the atmosphere of Earth takes reflected light and reflects it back to Earth, adding yet more warmth.  The amount reflected depends on the amount of certain elements in the atmosphere.

The warmth of Earth therefore consists of three layers, added over time:

1.       Light striking the surface of the planet, heating it to perhaps -100 degrees F;

2.       The atmosphere that both reflects some light back to the surface and prevents water from evaporating into space – resulting in oceans that absorb more light/heat, raising the temperature to perhaps -30 degrees F; and

3.       Animal and vegetative (plant) matter, both dead and alive, that absorb still more light/heat and raise the global average temperature to 56 degrees F – in a “steady state” climate.

Carbon Dioxide and Other So-Called “Greenhouse Gases”

“Greenhouse” is a misleading term for what these gases do, which is to reflect light from other parts of the spectrum than are handled by oxygen and hydrogen (the main components of the atmosphere).   However, compared to oxygen and hydrogen, these can vary much more over long periods of time.  In the case of carbon, a “steady-state” value is about 250 ppm, but historically carbon has been above 1000 ppm and below 200 ppm at various times.   

Carbon is one of six elements in the periodic table that is constantly cycling between the atmosphere and the surface of the planet.  Life forms are carbon-based, so animals and vegetables (in the sea as well) constantly add carbon that is either buried as part of the animal/vegetable fossil, or released to the air via breathing or burning (in the case of forests).  However, in order for the amount in the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth to roughly balance, carbon must also be absorbed by “weathering”, wind/rain erosion of rocks that exposes new rock with which carbon can combine.  These are usually eventually washed down to the oceans, which equalize with the atmosphere by agitation that propels the carbon into the air.  In essence, then, over the long run this cycling stabilizes carbon in the atmosphere at about 250 ppm.   The “half-life” of carbon in the atmosphere is about 100 years, so if no cycling upwards were going on it would take about 200 years to drain the atmosphere of carbon.

Probably the only other “greenhouse gas” relevant to climate is methane, which is CH4.  Without me going into a long discussion of methane, you should know that it, too, has seen a massive upsurge in emissions over the last 165 years due to human emissions.  However, the half-life of methane is about 9 years, and the amount of emitted methane needed to have an impact on global temperature comparable to carbon is about 4-10 times what is presently being emitted per year, while the amount unlockable in shallow waters or permafrost in any given 9 years, even at our accelerated pace of warming, is probably less than that.  Rather, because methane contains carbon, the long-term worry is the possibility that the methane in permafrost will be converted primarily to carbon, which would add about 0.6C (guesstimate) to hundreds-of-years global warming.

Plate Tectonics and the Milankovitch Cycle

There are two main ways that atmospheric carbon can deviate significantly from the norm, absent human intervention.  One is predictable, cyclic variation over a period of 100,000 to 200,000 years:  the Milankovitch cycle.  The other is underwater volcanism that ejects carbon, typically while moving one of the Earth’s plates.

The Milankovitch cycle results from three changes in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun:

1.        The Earth wobbles around its axis of spin;

2.       The Earth’s orbit at some times of the year takes it closer to the Sun, at others further away;

3.       Like a rubber band, the Earth’s yearly orbit sometimes becomes more like a circle, sometimes more like an ellipse.

Visualize these in your mind.  At about the point where it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere (where most of the land is) and where the other two effects place the Earth farthest from the Sun, an ice age is kick-started.  The temperature descends gradually as ice encroaches downwards from the Arctic Ocean over land, changing the albedo in the areas affected.  Less carbon is exposed, and so less carbon is emitted into the atmosphere.  This continues until the three effects are closest to the Sun, in Northern Hemisphere’s summer, when a pretty rapid rise in temperature and carbon occurs, reaching a steady state that lasts for about 50-100,000 years.

The underwater volcanism effect is much less frequent but can be far more powerful in its effect on atmospheric carbon and global warming.  In the most recent example, about 55 million years ago, continuous underwater eruptions in around the plate then near the South Pole sent it steadily northwards to crash into the Eurasia plates, yielding India plus the Himalayas at the point of impact.  During this period, which is unlikely to have lasted less than 20,000 years, steady output of carbon into the atmosphere kept the atmospheric carbon above 1000 ppm.  The results were high temperatures (about 7 degrees C more than the present time), mass extinctions of land and sea flora and fauna, and very high sea levels – so-called “hell and high water.”  Mass extinctions, high temperatures, and high sea levels have also been confirmed for the previous such atmospheric-carbon rise (about 155 million years ago).

Also noteworthy is what happened after the eruptions came to an end.  Atmospheric carbon decreased back to its “steady-state” level, but only slowly.  In the case of the most recent such episode, atmospheric carbon took 50-54 million years to return to “steady-state”, reaching it only 1-5 million years ago.  The reason is that the oceans were in effect saturated with carbon:  most of any decrease in atmospheric carbon was offset by fresh contributions from the ocean, while “weathering” that returned the carbon to the planet’s interior worked only slowly to end that saturation.

And another factor worthy of note is the composition of the carbon dioxide.  Carbon dioxide put in the air during one of these extraordinary periods is more acid than “normal” CO2.  Therefore, the atmosphere and rain are both more acid than in “steady-state” periods.

Summary

The Earth’s climate can therefore be said to be a process that operates to keep climate relatively stable both in the short (10,000s of years) and long (billions of years) term, but where too large a deviation from atmospheric carbon stability has the opposite effect:  it drives and maintains further deviation to a new “semi-steady state” that lingers for a while even when the main impetus for deviation is gone.  To cite one example:  we are presently in the late stages of the “high-temperature” phase of the Milankovitch cycle; what some scientists call the “Goldilocks” climate (not too hot nor too cold for human purposes).  Absent human-caused carbon emissions, we would have expected to see a slow descent into an Ice Age begin in less than 10,000 years.

The critical factor in creating both Milankovitch and plate-tectonic deviations from a “Goldilocks” steady state is atmospheric carbon.  In the case of the Milankovitch cycle, increased/decreased sunlight is the initial cause of warming/cooling, followed by a feedback loop between sunlight absorption and carbon emissions.  In the case of underwater volcanism, the atmospheric carbon itself is the initial cause of warming, followed by a feedback loop between sunlight absorption and carbon emissions as well as further volcanic carbon injections.

A minor note:  Above a certain point, atmospheric carbon would become so prevalent as to drive global temperatures above the boiling point of water.  The oceans would then evaporate, and from then on global surface temperatures would be such that acid (from the carbon) rain would simply evaporate before it reaches the surface, and no life apparently could survive.  The planet Venus now operates in just such a way.  Luckily, even if all fossil-fuel reserves were used, we cannot presently reach that point of atmospheric carbon.  However, heat from the sun increases at the rate of 1 degree C every billion years, and therefore, at the earliest, it would be possible for Earth to turn into Venus 900 million years from now.

2014 Sets Another Heat Record. Are We Doing Anything About It? Apparently, Not Much

2014, according to Japanese, NOAA, and NASA measurements, was approximately 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than any previous measured year, or about 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer globally than the early 1900s.  6 of its 12 months set monthly heat records.  Scientists are now confident about asserting that this is the warmest it has been in the past 50,000 years, and we are rapidly closing in on clearly being warmer than at any time in the last 5 million years.

As James Hansen has recently noted, the global temperature more or less parallels the increase or decrease in carbon in the atmosphere, with each doubling being associated with a 4 degrees Centigrade (about 7 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in global temperature.  About 2/3-3/4 of this is from the effects of atmospheric carbon dioxide itself, and 1/3-1/4 due to linked increases in black carbon, methane (CH4), and the like.  Thus, since we are about halfway between our 1800s starting point of 250-280ppm of atmospheric carbon and a doubling of that amount, we have essentially “baked in” an increase of about 2.3 degrees Centigrade or 4 degrees Fahrenheit – the level at which, according to some scientists, catastrophic effects start to occur.  What consequences?  Movement of drought-ridden subtropical zones north to encompass much of the US except the Northeast, much of Southern Europe through France and Germany, and places such as the Fertile Crescent, India and Southern China.  Loss of all Arctic sea ice as well as some Greenland and Antarctic ice, for a potential total (including expansion of the ocean through warming) of perhaps 25-80 feet.  Loss of at least 1/3 of presently arable land, to be replaced by Canadian, Argentinian, and Siberian land that is presently mostly tundra and permafrost, and which would likely become fly-ridden, easy-to-burn-via-methane, peat swamps.  Speed of winds in storms on average might increase by 10 mph.

But the “worst consequences” occurring if we go ahead and use more than 17% of present coal reserves, more than 50% of available oil and natural gas, and more than a small fraction of tar sands and oil shale, are far more dire.  A rise in sea level of 216-240 feet.  Possibly, iron blooms periodically releasing unbreathable sulfuric acid, making living near the new sea coasts impossible.  Loss of perhaps 90% of arable land, making it impossible to feed more than about 1 billion people on minimal rations.  Acidification of oceans that means destruction of all ocean-based food sources.  Heat that makes working outside during 6 months of the year a death sentence.  Storms in which the wind speed increases by more like 40 mph, so that the average high wind is a 110-mph hurricane, and somewhere in the world just about every year there is a 200-mph hurricane bearing down on humanity. 

So how are we doing in avoiding “worst consequences”?  Well, there are lots of encouraging superficial signs, including international agreements, preliminary data suggesting that Europe and the USA are decreasing their carbon emissions in constant terms, and so on.  The problem is that such data is partial – for example, the emissions data just tracks carbon emissions via industry-based estimates and for those sources we don’t know about.  There’s really only one holistic indicator, approximate as it is:  the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere measured at the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii.  You can find the data by googling “CO2 Mauna Loa”.

This set of measurements was started by Charles Keeling in 1950, and he picked  a spot high on Mauna Loa because it was out of the way of the kind of things that would contaminate measurements.  Interestingly, it has been joined in the last few years by a new measure based on widely dispersed global sites, which until recently had tracked 10 ppm less than Mauna Loa.  In the latest data, it is now virtually identical at at 400 ppm, suggesting that the original global sites were contaminated more than expected and biased in a downward direction.  At any rate, the new global measurements, like the old, tend to “smooth out” the more jagged spikes and dips in CO2 ppm yearly growth as measured by Mauna Loa.  So Mauna Loa is more volatile, but the two agree in both the amount and trend over periods of perhaps 5 years or so.

What is Mauna Loa saying about the last 3 years?  These years, in which the world economy is mostly flat or down – which should lead to decreased carbon emissions – and various policies have been implemented to reduced emissions, notably in Europe, are also the first years in which the CO2 growth has been above 2 for each year.  In fact, according to the global “smoothed” data, it has been above 2.4 ppm each year.  Not only are we not making progress; things are getting worse.

How can this be?  Speculation is a bit early, but what it suggests is that US efforts are counteracted by attempts to “grow domestic oil production”, and that European efforts are more than counteracted by Chinese increased coal use (despite its rhetoric).  I conclude that we must run faster to fall behind slower, and at an amazing speed just to stay in the same place.  Happy New Year.

James Hansen’s Climate Change Magnum Opus: Unsurpassed Horror and Sad Beauty

I warn you that this description of the latest draft paper by James Hansen and others should horrify you, if you are sane.  After Joe Romm first published its sound bite (30 degrees Fahrenheit increase if most fossil fuels are burned, 50 degrees at higher latitudes), I delayed reading it in detail. Now that I have, I find it builds on his (and others’) 40 years of work in the area and the latest research to provide an up-to-date climate change model whose implications are mostly more alarming than any I have seen elsewhere. 

What follows is my layperson’s attempt to summarize and draw further conclusions. I scant the discussion of new analyses of previous episodes of global warming (and cooling) that allow the development of the new model, focusing instead on the mechanisms and implications of the model.  Please note that, afaik, this is the first model that attempts to fully include the effects of methane and permafrost melting.

It’s About CO2

The first insight in the new model I summarize as follows:

As atmospheric CO2 increases or decreases, global average temperature increases or decreases proportionally, with a lag either way typically of a few decades.

This increase or decrease can be broken down into three parts:

1.       The immediate effect of the CO2 itself -- perhaps 60% of the total effect.

2.       The immediate and “over a few decades” effect of other “greenhouse gases” , or GHGs (here we are talking particularly about the methane in permafrost and methane hydrates on the continental shelves, released by warming, as well as GHGs such as nitrous oxide) – perhaps 20% of the total effect.

3.       The so-called “fast feedback” effects, in which the released CO2 and other factors (e.g., increased albedo) lead to additional warming “over a few decades”.

Two quick notes:  First, Hansen does not do my split; instead, he distinguishes between the effects of CO2 and the effects of other GHGs over the medium term (about 75-25) and then separately distinguishes between the immediate overall “climate sensitivity” and the medium-term or total “climate sensitivity” (again, about 75 % immediately and 100 % in the long term).  Second, the “over a few decades” is my interpretation of how quickly “X times CO2” seems to match global temperature data over more recent sets of data.  Hansen might very well say that this may or may not occur quite this rapidly, but it doesn’t matter to him because even with a thousand-year time frame for the full effect, CO2 will not be recycled out of the atmosphere for “few thousand years”, so we still reach the full “climate sensitivity”.

Just to get the usual objections out of the way, Hansen is not saying that CO2 always leads the way – on the contrary, in Ice Age scenarios in which a certain point in a Milankovitch cycle causes extreme winters in our northern hemisphere, leading to increased glaciation and therefore decreased albedo and CO2 release to the atmosphere, CO2 follows other factors.  Today, however, primarily because of fossil-fuel emissions, CO2 is leading the way.

A sub-finding, still important, is that there is a linear relationship (again, sometimes with a lag of decades) between deep-ocean temperature change and atmospheric temperature change (expressed as “the change in temp at the surface is somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 times the change in temp of the deep ocean” – or, about 67% of the global temperature increase goes into surface temps, 33% into deep ocean temps).  I include this because it seems that the recent “slowdown” in global surface temperature ascent is primarily caused by increased accumulation in the deep ocean.  However, again in a relatively short time frame, we should go back to more rapid average global surface temperature increases, because we’re still increasing atmospheric CO2 rapidly and 2/3 of that will start again going back into surface temps.

The Effect of “CO2 Plus” Is Bigger Than We Thought

In the past, Hansen among others has seen the effect of doubled CO2 as somewhere in the 2-3 degrees Celsius range.  Now, he sees a range of 3-4 degrees C – apparently, primarily because he now takes into account “other GHGs”.  To put it more pointedly, in my own interpretation:

Each doubling of CO2 leads to a global temperature change of 2.25-3 degrees Celsius (4-5.4 degrees F) “over a few decades”, and to a change of 3-4 degrees C (5.4-7.2 degrees F) “over 1 or 2 centuries.”

I mention this not only because the consequences of today’s global warming are more dire than we thought (i.e., the effects of that warming, immediately and over the next century or two), but also because many of us are still hung up over that “stop emissions and hold the increase to 2 degrees C” target that was the main topic at recent global governmental summits.  The atmospheric CO2 level at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution was about 250 parts per million (ppm), and is now at about 400 ppm.  If you do the math, that means we have baked in at least 2.2-3 degrees C of global temperature increase already. After 15 years of inaction, that target now has zero chance of success.

At this point, I want to do a shout-out to those wonderful folks at the Arctic Sea Ice blog and forum.  Hansen specifically notes the data supporting melting of Arctic sea ice, plus collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, at levels slightly below today’s CO2.  He also notes data supporting the idea that Greenland and West Antarctica can go pretty rapidly, “in a few centuries”, iirc – I interpret “in a few centuries” as within 250-450 years from now.

The Percent of Fossil Fuels We Need To Leave In The Ground Forever Is Greater Than We Thought

Before I get to the consequences if we don’t leave a percentage of fossil fuels in the ground, let’s see how the minimum amount of fossil fuels burned before we reach “worst consequences” has changed. Today’s estimate of total recoverable fossil-fuel reserves (coal, oil [primarily tar sands and oil shale], and natural gas) is about the equivalent of 15,000 Gt C (billions of tons of carbon emitted).  Of this, coal is about 7.3-11 Gt C, and the rest is split approximately equivalently between natural gas and tar sands/oil shale. Originally, we thought that burning 10,000 Gt C in the next century would get us to “worst consequences”.  Now, Hansen places the correct amount as somewhere between 5,000 Gt C and 10,000 Gt C.  Reading between the lines, I am placing the range as 6,000-7,000 Gt C, with 5,000 Gt C if we want to be ultra-safe, and I’m estimating coal as 60% of the emittable total, 20% tar sands/oil shale/oil, 20% natural gas.  Note, btw, that according to Hansen fossil-fuel emissions have increased consistently by about 3 % per year since 1950, including last year. At that rate, we’d reach 6,000-7,000 Gt C in about 65-70 years.

Again, note that Hansen breaks the fossil fuels down as coal, traditional oil/gas, and oil shale/tar sands/fracked gas, so I’m guesstimating the equivalents.

So here’s the way it works out:

If we burn all the coal plus a very minor amount of everything else, we reach “worst consequences.”

If we burn all of everything but coal and 33% of the coal, we reach “worst consequences”.

If we burn 17% of the coal, 50% of the natural gas, and all the tar sands/oil shale/oil, we reach “worst consequences”.

So this, imho, is why I agree with Hansen that allowing the Keystone XL pipeline is “game over” for the climate, as in “worst consequences almost inevitable”.  The Keystone XL pipeline is a “gateway drug” for tar sands and oil shale.  The source (Alberta, Canada) has a large part of the known tar sands oil, and presents similar difficulties in abstracting and processing to oil shale.  It’s the furthest along in terms of entering the world market.  If that source succeeds, as the saying goes, once the nose of the camel is in the tent, you may expect the rest of the camel to enter.  In this case, if Alberta succeeds in getting the Keystone XL pipeline, it is probably the case that most of the tar sands and oil shale will be used; if not, probably not.

Right now, Alberta has no real buyers except the US, and the US is not set up to accept the oil, nor Canada to ship it to them in bulk.  The pipeline would effectively create an infrastructure to ship it, primarily to the rest of the world, which presumably would accept it – especially China – creating a market that allows Alberta profitability.  Alternatives are much more costly, are susceptible to pressure from the US, and would probably not be undertaken at all.  Note that increased shipment via truck is more costly, and would probably require major investments in truck structure, to handle the more toxic tar-sands crude, so that it is probably not a large-scale alternative that would make the project a success.  Likewise, trains and tracks to the Canadian ports to ship directly to world markets would probably prove too costly.

Now go back to the model.  It’s pretty darn likely we’ll burn 17% of the coal no matter what, and the majority of the natural gas.  Now add the tar sands and oil shale.  Worst consequences, here we come.

The Worst Is Likelier Than We Thought, Arrives Sooner, Is Almost As Bad As Our Worst Nightmare, And Is More Inescapable Once We Get There Than We Hoped

We’ve already dealt with “likelier than we thought”, and we can guess from the rapidity of response to atmospheric CO2 rise and the increase in the estimated climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 that it arrives sooner than we had projected. But what is this “worst consequences almost as bad as our worst nightmare”, and “worst consequences, once arrived, more inescapable that we hoped”?

For us, the worst consequences are not “snowball Earth”, locked in eternal ice, but “runaway GHG Earth” a la Venus, with the surface and air too hot and too acid to support water or any life at all (water vapor in the atmosphere vaporizes from the heat long before it reaches the surface).  It’s an inescapable condition, since once the atmosphere locks in the heat, the Sun’s heat from outside trapped by the CO2 and other gases in the atmosphere balances escaping heat from the troposphere (top of the atmosphere).  Hansen’s model shows that we are still 100 million to 1 billion years from being able to reach that state, even by burning all fossil fuels in a gigantic funeral pyre. 

The worst consequence, as cited before, is therefore as cited at the very beginning, Joe Romm’s sound bite:  30 degrees F increase globally, 50 degrees in the high latitudes.  Here’s Hansen’s take on what that means:  it will take all areas of the Earth except the mountains above 35 degrees C “wet bulb temperature” during their summers.  That in turn, according to Hansen, would mean the following: 

In the worst-consequence world, humans could survive below the mountains during the day outside only for short periods of time during the summer, and there would be few if any places to grow grains. 

Effectively, most areas of the globe would be Death Valley-like or worse, at least during the summer.

Here I think Hansen, because he properly doesn’t diverge into movement polewards of weather patterns and the effects of high water and possible toxic blooms, underestimates the threat to humanity’s survival.  Recent research suggests that with global warming, tropic climates stretch northwards.  Thus, projections for the US (not to mention Europe below Scandinavia, Australia, southern Africa, and southern Russia) is for extreme drought.  How can this be, when there will be lots of increased water vapor in the air?  Answer: it will be rare in falling, and far more massive and violent when it does.  The heat will bake the ground hard, so that when it does rain, the rain will merely bounce off the ground and run off (with possible erosion), rather than irrigating anything.  Add depletion of aquifers and of ice-pack runoff, and it will be very hard to grow anything (I suppose, mountains partially excepted) below Siberia, northern Canada/Alaska, and Scandinavia. 

However, these have their own problems:  rains too massive (and violent) to support large-scale agriculture – which is why you don’t see farming on Seattle’s Olympic Peninsula.  The only “moderate-rainfall” areas projected as of now, away from the sea and the equator, are a strip in northern Canada, one in northern Argentina, one in Siberia, and possibly one in Manchuria. Most of this land is permafrost right now.  To even start farming there would require waiting until the permafrost melts, and moving in the meantime to “intermediate” farming areas.  Two moves, minimal farmland, and greater challenges from violent weather.  Oh, and if you want to turn to hunting you’ll be lucky if you have an ecosystem that supports top-level meat animals, not to mention the 90% of plant and animal species that will likely be extinct by then. As for the ocean, forget about it as a food source, unless you like jellyfish (according to research done for the UN recently).

In my version of Hansen's worst-consequence world, we would try to survive on less than 10 % of today's farmland, less than 10% of the animal and vegetable species with disrupted ecosystems, and practically zero edible ocean species, in territory that must be developed before it is usable, in dangerous weather, for thousands of years.

Hansen notes that one effective animal evolutionary response to past heat episodes has been hereditary dwarfism.  Or, as I like to think about it, we could all become hobbits.  However, because we are heading towards this excessive heat much faster than in those times, we can’t evolve fast enough; so that’s out.

What about inescapable?  Well, according to Hansen, CO2 levels would not get out of what he calls the “moderately moist greenhouse” area for thousands of years, and would not reach close to where we are now until 10,000-100,000 years hence.  By which time, not only will we be dead, but most of humanity, if not all.

Now, I had feared the Venus scenario, so the worst consequences are not as bad as I thought.  However, the increased estimate for temperatures in the moderately moist greenhouse and the wet bulb temperature consideration makes the next-worst scenario more likely than before to end humanity altogether. 

Snowball Earth:  Sad Beauty of a Sidelight

Having said all this, Hansen at least gives a beautiful analysis of why we don’t wind up a “snowball Earth” (the opposite scenario from a “runaway greenhouse”).  He notes that once the Earth is covered with ice, carbon can’t be recycled to the Earth via “weathering” (absorption from the atmosphere by rocks whose surfaces are abraded by wind and water).  So volcanic emissions and the like put more and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, until the temperature warms up enough and melting of the ice begins.  Apparently, evidence suggests that this may have happened once or twice in the past, when the Sun was delivering less light and hence heat.

Envoi

The usual caveats apply.  Primarily, they fall in the category of “I was reading Hansen out of fear, and so I may be stretching the outer limits of what may happen, just as Hansen may be understating out of scientific conservatism.”  Make up your own mind.

I am reminded of a British Beyond the Fringe comedy skit about WW II, suitably amended:

“Go up in the air, carbon. Don’t come back.”

“Goodbye, sir.  Or perhaps it’s ‘au revoir’?”

“No, carbon.”

And what will it take for humanity to really start listening to Hansen, and to the science?

 

More Fun Global Warming News

I along with many others noted the milestone of CO2 atmospheric concentrations passing 400 ppm last month – but that’s not all the data are telling us.

I recently checked Mauna Loa (and global) CO2 for the first time since Mauna Loa crossed 400 ppm for a day. It appears that in the last week in May, it was above 400 ppm on average for a full week, and on one day it approached 400.5 ppm. For the month of May, Mauna Loa CO2 was nearly 400 ppm (399.77) and was approximately 3 ppm higher than last year. It appears that so far this year Mauna Loa and global CO2 are averaging close to 3 ppm above last year, which would be a figure well above all other years since 1998 (2.93 ML). Btw, last year's was the second largest increase on record (2.65).

My overall conclusion: I don't know if this will affect overall weather the way 1998’s record CO2 increase may have (the year of the global yearly temp record, which has not been surpassed in a major way since, although we're getting pretty darn close). But it does add a potential major temperature booster. It does seem to confirm that CO2 atmospheric concentration continues to increase exponentially rather than linearly. And it does present a bleak prospect for the next few years.

What do I mean?

Still “Business As Usual”

The usual phrase for following the CO2-emissions track we have been on for the last 160 years, and especially the last 35 years, is “business as usual”.  We see a lot of planning and some hopeful examples from nations like Germany and Sweden in trying to get away from this kind of inexorable percentage increase in emissions that results in exponentially increasing CO2 concentrations and leads to temperature increases from now on well above the 2 degrees C (actually, 2.6-2.8 C according to what I know of the latest credible research) that everyone seems to be trying not to surpass.  In fact, “business as usual” has been estimated to result in perhaps 9 degrees F of global average temperature increase and 16 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century. Considering the fact that the models saying this are not nearly adequately factoring in permafrost melt that will lead to major additional CO2 releases to the atmosphere (and a few harder-to-estimate factors such as likely major increases in methane emissions), you should view the temperature figure as one that we will achieve only with extreme luck. Me, I’m guessing more like 12 degrees temperature rise and 20 feet sea level rise (plus 20 feet increase in storm surge).

What the Mauna Loa and global CO2 figures are telling us is that our present efforts are still not having a significant enough effect on “business as usual.”  This suggests, for example, that the US figures showing perhaps a 7% reduction through 2011 or 2012 (figures for 2012 represent a preliminary estimate that has been shown in the past to underestimate actual emissions) probably represent the US multinational companies exporting their emissions to countries like China and India.  They also suggest that the US switch to natural gas has far less effect on CO2 emissions than anticipated, and that announced Chinese efforts to reduce emissions have had a minor (if any) effect on what is now the world’s greatest CO2-emissions ramp-up.

A Call To Face Real Reality

It seems to me that much of the commentary about what to do about this simply does not comprehend the full dimensions of “business as usual” as we have been practicing it for the last few decades, including the ongoing efforts to do something about global warming.  So here’s my initial attempt to summarize the way I see it.

Roughly speaking, political reality breaks down across the globe into three groups:

1.       Climate deniers, or those who would effectively pursue policies that ramp up CO2 emissions further.

2.       Political and economic ameliorators, who would attempt to respond to their understanding of the scientific research while placing first and foremost no or little change in the political and economic strategies that are presently being pursued, especially the ones that involve government regulation.  That is, they seek to achieve what in the past has been change by achieving what is close to a positive-sum game for everyone.  By the way, even carbon taxation right now falls under this heading.

3.       The few (like me, unfortunately) who are calling for major changes now now now.

Responding adequately to this global warming crisis, it seems to me, requires that we face two unpalatable realities:

A.      Neither group 1 nor group 2 will likely avoid the catastrophes that will result from “business as usual.”  I’ll explain why in a minute.

B.      However, things can always get worse.  In other words, if we throw up our hands and say why bother to try if we can’t figure out how to do major changes, then, as in the case of handing matters over to the climate deniers, the catastrophes will be worse, and sooner.

Why do I say we can’t avoid catastrophes via group 2’s strategies?  Let’s think of Japan just after WW II – about as devastated economically as it was possible to be.  And yet, 30 years later, we found ourselves worrying if Japan was going to become the #1 economy in the world.  It’s a story we have seen repeated over and over, and it involves the fact that as long as there is an outside world to take a hand and as long as the economy can piggyback via investment on its core labor and resource assets (I’m including farming here) underlaid by government regulatory “rules of the game”, the body of understanding of how to run a modern economy and government allows springing back to somewhere where you were before catastrophe struck.

But global warming’s effects, it seems to me, for the first time in human history, make this an approach that will break down sooner or later.  In effect, in systems analysis terms, this is simultaneous strain on all key components of the system, increasing exponentially, that you respond to by fixing problems only after the fact and only to handle last year’s strain.  In other words, while you are handling last year’s disaster and spending money to buy levees to handle that unprecedented disaster, another exponentially greater disaster is on the way, on which you are going to have to spend more money than this year’s.  And this is happening on such a widespread scale across the world that all of the multinationals and all of the nations are facing these increasing strains simultaneously – and so their attempts to help each other are more and more limited. 

At a certain point, then, things begin to operate basically in reverse.  Political elites reflecting economic elites react to the rising costs by failing to serve greater and greater segments of the population in order to keep up the economy.  This creates unrest and government breakdowns, which add yet more economic stress.  This also means that governments and political elites will decrease efforts to cut emissions, continuing the emissions rise that counteracts to some extent the effects of the shrinking economy.  And, at a breaking point, there is a major downward economic shift that represents a major decrease in the global economy’s ability to handle the increasing catastrophes.

All this sounds theoretical.  I would suggest that the likely proximate cause of the breaking point will be agriculture – in other words, feeding ourselves.  I am not just talking the developing world here:  I am talking about the developed nations.  A projection of the world in 2050-2090 shows most temperate-zone areas in extreme drought.  Add to that drawdown of aquifers, loss of winter melt-off, and 55-odd feet of increased reach of salt water into today’s deltas and estuaries that comprise 1/3 of global food-growing, and we are talking about losing up to 90% of the world’s present growing areas, much of this occurring somewhere between 2050 and 2100.  For example, California’s growing areas east of San Francisco provide an amazing amount of the world’s food.  Presently proposed fixes to the dams that keep salt water out of this area, even if they ever get them done, are probably only going to be adequate to handle matters until 2050-2060.  And there’s no obvious comparable area to move that production to.

Is there really anything to be done about all this?  Lots.  But it all involves (a) being far more aggressive on emissions reduction (“mitigation”) and (b) spending much more money now to handle oncoming disasters much further into the future (“adaptation”).  (a) is our only hope for avoiding things being even worse than this; (b) is our hope for making things more tolerable in the horrible future world that we have already created for ourselves, and so increasing our chances of doing (a) well. Let’s be clear on this: even good adaptation won’t avoid the consequences of failure to mitigate.  Protection for our food sources will sooner or later have to face the fact that we will have perhaps 10-20% of the food sources we have now.  Whatever else we do, we need to mitigate first and foremost.

There is one known successful model for doing this: it’s called WW II in America.  We accepted drastic changes in the economy, decreases in food supply, and disruptions in life in order to win the war.  That is what the world could do, or what nations could do – except that this is a war of all against ourselves, in which we do not destroy the enemy unless the enemy effectively resists major changes in its economy and its peoples’ lives.

Failing that, I simply assert from long familial knowledge of politics and governments that there is far, far more that could be done about global warming under the covers than is being done now.  Fundamentally, the ameliorators don’t really believe that this is anything new in human history.  So they don’t take the political chances that they could get away with, and they don’t play dirty politics with the deniers. 

And that brings me back to facing reality.  For the ameliorators, for us all, a key part of the answer lies in facing the realities that I have outlined – and especially the part about the less you do, the worse things get, even beyond where they are now.  And so, my own personal response is simply to say, it ain’t so, rather than keep silent – while making it clear who is worse than whom, and why that matters.

How should we react to the continuing exponential rise in CO2 atmospheric concentration? I would suggest that we begin by facing the real reality of its effects and of our failure to deal with those effects.