What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
If absolutely, rock-solid research came out that concluded that climate change was not anthropogenic, would we still be talking about reversing it? That is, say it's all due to solar cycles or cosmic smog or whatever. And assume that we'd still be under the specter of all the same nasty repercussions - would we be talking about reversing it or coping with it?
And if it turns out that the global conversation would shift towards adjustment strategies - then isn't that what we should be talking about now?
Because as a practical matter - reversing a 200 year old problem in the making is probably about as difficult as reversing a natural phenomenon.
Of course another angle is forget the origin of the problem altogether and focus on costs. If it's going to cost 90 trillion to undo it all or 40 trillion to adjust - what should we do? Keep in mind that at this scale, money roughly translates to human lives (foreign aid, healthcare, education, etc).
Most of the effects that climate scientists predict will happen as a result of increased global mean temperature are highly negative; from the extinction of many species to the loss of coastal habitats (for humans).
In a non-political world we would compare the costs of climate engineering practices against the costs of taking the resulting losses from failure to act.
I hope you like thick sweaters and/or handheld fans, because the Country Like Everybody's Dad isn't made of money, and close the front door, because it isn't paying to heat and/or cool the whole world, plus the inside of your house, too.
We change the climate in local regions all the time. Dams, coastal walls, etc all change the world to suit our needs. I see no reason the global climate is different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
This caused the death of millions when Genghis Kahn's men needed to immigrate somewhere due to climate change. We'll probably kill a similar percentage of various cities in the next big climate change.
The climate never has been constant and there is no "the official correct climate".
Trying to force people is likely to result in war which is likely to, overall, kill more people than letting it do its thing. We're running out of stuff to economically burn anyway. Its not like we're only 0.0001% burned up or even 10% burned up. Soon enough, talking about rationing something we no longer have access to burn will be quite pointless. Voluntarily saving some for later is likely to have a pretty decent economic impact. Social engineering by modification of tax law is likely to save more centimeters of ocean than any strictly environmental or behavioral regs.
Then again I think that maybe it's a time for an "official climate" because it's the decentralized decision making that's screwing as over wrt/ anthropogenic climate change. Someone has to make those regulations and enforce them.
Climate changing slower than humans give birth or starve, plus lack of petroleum age mobility, will result in this bias.
In other words, the climate change that everyone is frantically trying to reverse would probably be better for the biosphere, and for humanity in general. For specific humans with well-established property interests on or near the oceanic coasts, the current climate trends will be disastrous.
If every organism on the planet had a vote, Earth would overwhelmingly be in favor of more anthropogenic CO2 emission. Of course, only the humans understand the potential downsides, such as temperature-triggered methane clathrate decomposition that may have already been a contributing factor for two planetary extinction events, including the Permian-Triassic (the worst).
~Obviously, the solution is to ignore the CO2, dig up all the methane hydrates, and turn them into useful plastics before the temperate rise causes them to melt.~
It does that at every scale.
I think the answer is an absolutely unequivocal "reversing it". Regardless of the underlying cause, I don't think that anyone would argue that the potential effects of global warming are anything less than catastrophic. In that light, it only makes sense to talk about adjusting to climate change when you've decided that preventing it in the first place is an entirely impossible task.
Many more people die now from cold weather than from warm weather. So maybe a little rise in temperature is a good thing. And historic evidence shows that warmer climate meant more productive crops in the middle ages and in the roman empire.
Maybe I am wrong, but I would need more solid evidence of the catastrophic consequences of climate change before sentencing millions of people to death because we choose to spend money fighting climate change instead of fighting malaria or improving access to clean water.
This is based on a calculus of the yearly increase in thickness averaged over one half of the land area of the planet, if all the carbon we're emitting by burning fossil fuel were turned into biomass by photosynthesis.
This yearly increase is one hundredth of an inch, and illustrates the "very favorable rate of exchange between carbon in the atmosphere and carbon in the soil".
It really depends which bit you want to reverse. The climate has changed for billions of years in all sorts of ways. The main thing people seem to worry about is temperature and there are artificial ways it could be lowered - SO2 and the like. Though I doubt anyone wants to go there.
I'm quite optimistic on renewables taking over eg.
"Solar has won. Even if coal were free to burn, power stations couldn't compete" - The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/07/solar-h...
Yes, but not at the current and predicted rate. Many of the ecosystems we depend on for food will not be able to adapt quickly enough and thus collapse.
The fact that something has been happening "for billions of years" is not a reason to ignore it.
If you read the WSJ, Facebook, etc, you'll frequently see comments like the following which had nothing to do with climate change and was about the Rosetta probe.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/rosetta-probe-directly-discov...
"Lets hope that with our last election that the US can get back to real science instead of voodoo climate change superstitions whose purpose is to enrich Democrats and ecowhaacos and to make poor people's energy costs go up."
The comment was upvoted a dozen times. I took the couple questions that I answered and started my own FAQ: http://thespanishsite.com/faq/climate
It's frustrating too, because despite owning the issue, the left doesn't seem interested in the economic factors that this article highlights are necessary to take into account. The anti-corporate contingent of the left finds it distasteful.
Sorry, no. Much the costs of burning fossil fuels are externalized and with climate change this is taken to the extreme.
This is what cap-and-trade was supposed to be about, but it seems that for the modern right "market solution" is whatever preserves the status quo.
you either figure out a equivalent or better cost way - or we have to deal with war or climate engineering. I would prefer we get something that works before we get into "the kill my neighbor to preserve what I have" mentality.
(given the voting, nope not going to respond further on this issue - no point in "debate" if silencing is the response)
Now, this article implies that we need to leave some coal and oil in the groud, even if it's economic to mine and use it up. My main concern is I don't think that markets can handle this task. Markets are great at exploiting all available resources; but how do you constrain them not to do that? You cannot set any price on a resource that you do not want to use at all. In a way though, yes, it's about externalities.
That is, the American left denies ISIS. The refuse to accept such a group exists.
Sure, some people make the claim, but it's all theory (and some Youtube videos), and there are alternative explanations.
In such a case, would you say the problem begins with the American right making it "their" issue?
Agreed, and I extend your remarks with its a sign of pessimism and mistrust of government. Its well earned.
In an ideal world if our leaders were angelic statespeople, I might trust them not to screw things up even worse or as a smokescreen for political corruption. I don't live in a country like that and I can sympathize with OPs quotation. His description is, unfortunately, the most likely outcome.
In all honesty, if we can't fix it ourselves, we're doomed, because the government always causes more problems than it solves, makes things overall worse rather than better, for my entire life. And I'm no young kid and I can't stand the political party OP's quote likely comes from. I might hate what they stand for but I'm objective enough to see common ground when they are, in very small part, correct.
Maybe this species is too dumb to survive after all.
2. If people would like to convince more people that it's actually a problem, consider that people have a tendency to recognize when what is touted as a Worthy Cause is actually being used as an excuse to obtain power or distribute political favors. Consider more public critiques of the efficacy of policy proposals -- this will also help you actually achieve your climate goals -- and have a lot more sympathy to the middle class who would suffer a lot more under an $8/gallon gas regime than a typical employed HNer would. Acknowledge the harm that high energy costs (including gas costs) would do to the economy, and consider ways to mitigate that harm by generally improving the business climate, regulatory regimes and tax regimes -- instead of writing it off or, worse, claiming that green energy is a magical job-creation mechanism (tip: spending more time effort and money to obtain the same amount of energy does not actually help the economy). Hold fewer events like the recent Peoples' Climate March in NYC (transparently a leftist platform using climate change as an excuse to protest capitalism writ large), and whatever you do do NOT use propaganda that features the statue of liberty mostly underwater (an accurate rendition of full 100% ice-melt from 33-degree warming but unrealistic as a near-term possibility and probably not the best image to lead with). Drop the caricatures which insult middle America as uncultured fatsoes driving around in SUVs, accurate or otherwise. Question what other ways in which political-party sentiment infiltrates climate-change talk.
[1]The real holes in climate science: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100120/full/463284a.html
http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-forecast-for-2...
Efforts to predict the near-term climate are taking off, but their record so far has been patchy.
Apparently nobody takes Feynman seriously in his unequivocal statement that if the theory does not agree with experiment, the theory is wrong.
True in the US. Not true in countries where the political system is not to such an extent corrupted, poisoned and perverted by Big Money.
Meanwhile satellite imagery has shown that the Earth has greened very significantly. It's depressing to note that the advantages of this have rarely been heralded.
One has the distinct impression that were some Newton of climatology to publish a paper showing beyond reasonable argument that we do not need to worry be worried at all by the CO2 increase, climatologists and much of the Left (as it happens) would be struck down with misery rather than joy.
> Let’s face it, businesses won’t make sacrifices and pay more for clean energy based on altruism alone. Instead, we need solutions that appeal to their profit motives.
This is what I keep trying to explain to my environmentalist friends, but there's a strong motivation in that circle to pretend the economic factor doesn't exist and it's as simple as saying "screw you" to oil companies. It doesn't get a good reaction.
Maybe because worldwide scientific activities would grind to a halt if we suddenly went back to three masted schooners and bullock carts.
Your right, environmentalists don't seem to understand economics or human nature. People will not sacrifice so we really need to tech our way out of this.
I think, regarding the economics, there are quite a few environmental scientists who are very cognisant of economics and how that interacts, such as Tim Jackson at the University of Surrey, UK. However, where they do know anything about it, they tend to recognise that economics is not helping the environment at all, so perhaps they should work in areas where they are likely to make a difference instead.
There is a fundamental mis-match between the environment and economics. In economics, eternal exponential growth is mandatory. In the environment, eternal exponential growth is impossible.
I have seen nothing but environmentalists who understand economics being vilified. I hope this attitude changes.
Economics does not require "eternal exponential growth is mandatory", although some popular schools of economics do. Economics is just a very good way to actually judge cost.
I call them belief systems, because when you look at it, it can hardly be called science: examples of mutualy exclusive theories are coexisting and sides quite often forge the data using advanced obsfucation: tweak some parameters here, adjust them there, carefully pick base data and voila - you've just proven whatever the hell you believe is "the only true way"
Or look at the middle east, where a lot of oil companies are already nationalized, and see how much they are worrying about CO2 emissions.
We'll probably just continue existing policy, which actually is fairly environmentally sound.
If you eliminate the middle class, they can't buy SUVs and take jet aircraft on vacations. Check.
If you eliminate industrial sites, they can emit greenhouse gasses. Check. Public policy for decades. See above, temporarily we've outsourced our middle class purchasing to Chinese factory production, but once we get rid of the middle class and return the USA to our agrarian roots, the factories in China will also close.
If you concentrate all capital and property ownership into a Very small, optimistically well educated group or individuals or corporations, they will have better chance of enlightened self interest than if the general population is permitted private property. Check, thats been public policy for decades.
Impoverish young people to discourage children, permanently lowering environmental load. Check. Public policy for decades.
I could go on about health care and homelessness and the highest prison population on the planet, but it all aligns quite well.
Honestly, we're already doing so much for the environment I don't know what more we can do without "extreme" measures.
It's like trying to write new commercial Unix-like operating system, and expect profit, when the companies can already use Linux which is already there and into which the investment has been made.
The problem is that we really need to leave that coal and oil in the ground, and not touch it (at least for a couple hundred years), and there is no way markets alone can do that. Even price regulations like carbon tax may not accomplish that goal.
I've been following and investing in energy companies for a couple decades, and that has to be the worst or funniest summary I've ever heard of their production side. I'm sure you mean well, but... if you know where I can just scoop economically viable quantities of coal and crude off the ground, give us a stock tip, will ya?