Climate Change May Be Past the Point of No Return

The problem is that the people making the political decisions are predominantly very wealthy, very old men. By and large (with a few notable exceptions, but too few to sway the decision-making process) they just don't care what happens in ten or twenty years, because they don't expect to be alive by then.

They assume that the oil supply will last that long (and if the price goes up, they can still afford to pay) and they assume that climate change will be gradual enough that they can endure it (again, they are rich enough to turn the heat or the A/C up, or even to move if necessary).

And they just don't care what happens to the environment or the quality of life beyond their own (short) expected lifespan.

 

Haven't read the thread but couldn't resist commenting...

Bush can now say "See I was right!! Nothing we do will make a difference to Global Warming. So why bother."


:blink: :blink: :blink:

 

Global Warming is here? Is coming?

I suggest to Disney to move Disney World to my state of Wisconsin. Or at least make another park that won't be underwater.

Ok, just thought I would add a bit of humor. This thread needed some.

Balance is needed in this subject. Emotion typically runs wild. Ultimately, depending on the research, we need a media that won't just throw out both sides of the issue just to satisfy our "need to know". Global warming is either happening or it isn't. But I bet the media will not help us arrive at a consensus. And that is the true problem because we will always have people who believe in one side or the other. The large media will make sure of that. But without consensus we will not arrive at an action plan if we, in fact, do have a global warming situation.

Ok, we now return you back to regular programming.

Cheers

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(maggieddd @ Jan 29 2006, 12:17 PM) [snapback]199885[/snapback]</div>

Actually I visited the place and it was a statement on display......

But I guess being there and seeing it for myself does not count. In your book it must not be true unless you see it on TV or the New York Times.

 

I don't think any of this is all that hard to understand.

First, we've got receipts. For most of the carbon we've emitted. Based on statistics of trade. And we know the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere based on the concentration of C02. From those two facts, we know, beyond a doubt that, at the present time, Mother Nature is acting as a net carbon sink. The increase in carbon in the atmosphere is less than the amount we inject each year. So, from the get-go, accept no nonsense about the rise in C02 in the modern era being driven by natural forces. Nature must be a carbon sink, because the increment to the carbon in the atmosphere is less than our annual output. At least as of now. (There are other, more subtle tests that show that the increased C02 is in fact from fossil fuels, based on isoptope mix, but that's just confirmation.)

Second, the "bomb carbon" shows that carbon we inject into the atmosphere stays there a long time. The C14 generated in the flurry of above-ground nuclear testing circa 1962 has been tracked ever since. About 20 percent of that spike of C14 generated circa 1962 is still in the atmosphere today. The rest can be tracked largely to absorption in ocean surface waters and to a much lesser extent in the rest of the biosphere (including people). Although the "bomb carbon" represents a much shorter, sharper disequibrium situation than overall C02 atmospheric increase (basically, atmospheric C14 doubled in a year), and so decays relatively more rapidly, it shows that excess C02 pumped into the atmosphere stays around a long, long time.

Third -- and I don't think there's a lot of serious debate about this -- if you put enough C02 into the atmosphere, it'll heat the planet up. Maybe somebody would dispute that, but some people will dispute pretty much anything.

And right now, based either on a rough calculation of fossil fuel use since the industrial revolution, or based on clean ice cores, there's about one-third more carbon in the atmosphere than there was in the period prior to the industrial revolution.

Of course people will dispute that last statement, but, at least to my own satisfaction, I've dismissed the counterarguments. We know, from direct measurement of the atmosphere, that atmospheric carbon has increased substantially in the modern era (say 1960 forward). Smoothly and unambiguously upward. Calculation from statistics of trade and evidence from clean ice cores suggests that C02 trend directly observed from 1960 forward is the tail end of a relatively smooth upward trend that started with the industrial revolution. There are naysayers to that -- people who somehow think that C02 levels moved rapidly up and rapidly down in the past, but (somehow) are very stable in the present. I think Occam's Razor is enough to downplay that alternative. We can either believe that the evidence from clean ice cores is consistent with modern direct measurement and with the statistics of trade (total fossil fuel use), and that there has been a steady stable trend and past behavior is consistent with present behavior, or we can believe that some X factor moved C02 levels rapidly up and down in the past (despite the fact that a rapid reduction in C02 is contrary to the bomb carbon evidence), but said X factor has mysteriously disappeared now that we can measure atmospheric C02 directly in the modern era. I find that presence of natural forces that play hide-n-seek to be implausible, so I believe the weight of evidence suggesting stable C02 in the recent millenia prior to the industrial revolution, and that atmospheric carbon is currently about one-third above the prior level.

To recap what I believe to be pretty clear facts:

We are the source of the increased atmospheric carbon in the present era. Nature remains a net carbon sink at present.

The carbon we emit now has a long "half-life". Some say the term "half-life" is not appropriate because it doesn't follow an exponential decay, but the point's the same no matter what term you use. People who model the climate disagree on exactly how long the carbon effectively stays around, but they all the ones with any standing say it's pretty long. And the bomb carbon provides direct empirical support for that.

We've increased the carbon in the atmosphere by about a third relative to pre-industrial-revolution period.

Then we get to the hard part. Whether a continuation of that trend is enough to (e.g.) result in massive population dieoffs within 200 years due to loss of arable land, ... one can reasonably have some doubts. But you have to make decisions based on the best information available at the time the decision has to be made .

Which gets back to the bomb carbon and the longevity of excess atmospheric C02 (above the pre-industrial-revolution baseline). Based on at least some of the plausible models, the time to start making decisions is now. If we wait until the evidence is crystal clear(er), it will be too late.

That seems to escape a lot of people so I'll restate it. Mainstream climate models that predict very poor outcomes (for humans) two centuries out, based on continuation of current trends, also show that you need to start curbing C02 production long before the worst outcomes appear, if you want to avoid those outcomes. The models themselves tell you that you have no choice but to make the decision to reduce GHG emissions under conditions of substantial uncertainty, if you wish to avoid the bad outcomes.

To restate that yet again, it is logically inconsistent to hold this position: "These climate models may be right, and when we're sure global warming is real and harmful, then we will act on it accordingly." That's not logically consistent, because the models show that you need to act well before you can see the clearest evidence of change and harm.

So, to say that the predictions from climate models are uncertain is not to say that they convey no information. Its just to say that you have to make your decisions under some uncertainty.

So, I look at immediate action to curb GHG as a simple matter of insurance. You have a large number of credible scientific bodies and credible governmental agencies across the world saying that this is a significant problem. And you have some others saying it isn't. And you have the usual quacks and charlatans and paid mouthpieces doing their thing.

So, on the hand, you have multiple, independent, credible individuals and organizations saying that may be a huge problem, for example, massive reductions in cropland available to support the population. Not just a few, but plenty. Serious, sober, reasonably quantitative predictions of the likely outcomes look really, really horrific. And of course you have others who say no.

On the other hand, we have high levels of waste and excess now. Think of all the dummies still using 20th century incandescent lights. Most have not even thought about it. Yet we in the US can't even move in a concerted fashion to hasten the adoption of CFLs.

So, to me, its absolutely a no-brainer to start plucking the low-hanging fruit of energy efficiency as fast as we possibly can. Will American popular media bitch about it? Sure. Tough luck. I mean, yes, we must deeply pity those poor people who (gasp) don't care for the color of the light given off by CFLs. Their sensitivities must be given all due weight against the probability of avoidable massive future population dieback. And then make the collective decision to blow them off and get into CFLs as quickly as possible. I don't think Americans are as much of a bunch of pampered wimps as the popular media make us out to be. At least I hope not.

Where's the US in leading the world into this new era, the way we did with the threat from CFCs? Where's our tiny little carbon tax? Where's an excise tax on incandescent bulbs? Where's our Manhattan Project on affordable solar cells? On removing and sequestering atmospheric carbon? Where's our cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions so we can reduce emissions as cheaply as possible, modeled on the existing S02 cap-and-trade? Tax incentives for telecommuting. You name it.

Instead, what we get in the media is a bunch of whining. Oh, it's not real, oh it's real but there's nothing we can do, oh it would be too hard to make changes, oh we're doomed anyway, oh carbon cap-and-trade is not effective as implemented elsewhere. Oh, some people don't like the color of the light from CFLs. Pity our descendants, we don't value them enough to impose a bit of hardship on ourselves.

 

Well said, Chogan.