Fixing Global Warming
Environment Thursday, January 8, 2004. Post by apsmith
The individual chapters that make up this book have been
thoughtfully selected to cover essentially the full spectrum of
options available, and all address the same global problem on
a 50 to 100-year timescale. But the discussion is not entirely
coherent: for example energy units vary across the chapters -
total energy (for a year, or available from a given
resource), can be seen here in terawatt-hours, terawatt-years, or
exajoules, in some cases referring to thermal, in other cases
electric power requirements. At least the book has consistently
abandoned the imperial ‘btu’, still used elsewhere for example in tables
from the US Energy Information
Administration, and there’s
no reference to equivalent barrels of oil or cubic feet of
natural gas.
More significantly, each chapter brings the biases of the authors
to bear, which actually turns this book into an interesting debate,
with each option seen trying to put its best foot forward, backed
by real data.
The opening and closing chapters are not so much about energy,
but about CO2 – specifically (in the first chapter) the severity of
the climate change problem and projections from current trends under
a variety of economic/energy model scenarios. And (in the last chapter)
the range of “mitigation” approaches available, other than reduction of
fossil fuel use (which the middle of the book is all about). This
really is a very serious problem for this century. The last chapter
points out, however, that we may actually have some technical/engineering
tools to handle it.
In fact, we have already been inadvertently reducing the warming effects
through emission of sulfate aerosols – (from p. 428):
anthropogenic sulfate aerosols in the troposphere currently
influence the global radiation budget by around 1 W/m^2 – enough to
counter much of the effect of current anthropogenic CO2. [... on side
effects ...] one of the many interesting valuation problems posed by
geoengineering: How much is a blue sky worth?
But the middle chapters are the key to the puzzle, because whatever we
can do about the CO2 effects, we also only have finite resources of
fossil fuels available. Much of humanity suffers from lack of access
to low-cost energy already. Is there hope?
The first part of the problem, discussed in chapter 2 and repeated
with variations in some of the subsequent chapters on detailed energy
solutions, is understanding just exactly how much energy the world
will need, and under various scenarios, how much CO2 that can be
expected to produce. The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has one set of future
scenarios; the World Energy Council
has another from IIASA
(International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis); various
others are also cited.
The basic parameters that go into the scenarios are captured in
the so-called “Kaya identity”; the rate at which carbon is released
is the product of the following terms:
- population (N)
- per capita gross domestic product (GDP/N)
- primary energy intensity (E’/GDP) – E’ is rate of energy use
- Carbon intensity (C/E)
For 1990, N was 5.3 billion, GDP/N was $4100 (1990 US$) per person per year,
E’/GDP was 0.49 watt year per $US(1990), and C/E was 0.56 kg carbon per
watt year, leading to a total of 6 billion tons of carbon released.
Population growth is a factor, but the largest plausible changes in
population expected this century make little difference to the
total; we have two far more urgent problems reflected in these
numbers:
- there is too much poverty in the world; if it is addressed in
this century, worldwide per capita GDP will rise a factor of 3 to 5
or more. - even the current level of carbon release is destabilizing
our climate – total C release needs to be a factor of 2 or
more less than now, to avoid much worse climate changes in
the next 50 to 100 years.
In other words, the range of values for factor 1 don’t make much
difference. Factor 2 will, most scenarios expect, increase greatly
this century. The overall product
has to drop; that means the focus has to be
on factors 3 and 4: reducing
primary energy intensity (conservation and economic shifts), and
reducing carbon intensity (reduction in fossil fuel use).
The third chapter is the only one that really goes into depth on
the economic issues; this, by Robert Lempert and Michael
Schlesinger (of RAND and the University of Illinois respectively),
discusses the basic economic tradeoffs between the possible
initial strategies “do a little”, and aggressive emissions controls.
They find optimal an adaptive policy strategy that
includes both taxes (carbon taxes
or general energy taxes to promote efficiency) and “technology incentives”.
The technology incentives are targeted to bring
down the costs of emissions reductions – these would include
supporting R&D, training people, standardization and certification,
funding demonstrations and infrastructure, disseminating information,
market liberalization, and tax credits and subsidies
to encourage adoption and suitable economies of scale.
Under the adaptative scheme, tax rates and technology incentives are
adjusted in light of climate damage expectations, economic growth,
and technology adoption targets; incentives would expire after a period
of time for technologies not making sufficient progress.
If the authors of the various chapters disagree on anything, they
clearly disagree on the degree to which we can expect improvements in the
third factor: energy intensity. Clearly, there have been tremendous
improvements in energy intensity in the past century, and before.
But how much further can it go? Most experts (according to Watts, chapter 2)
see continued improvements between 0.8 and 1.4% per year; some argue
(in particular Hassol, Strachan, and Dowlatabadi in chapter 4)
that the numbers could be considerably higher; however in practice
efficiency improvements often go to increased capability
rather than reduced energy use – for example, average house size
has increased significantly in the US, and new houses are loaded
with many more devices and appliances.
Including efficiency/intensity improvements then,
the first three factors in the Kaya identity determine a target total
energy requirement for the world. Given
the need for significant reduction in CO2 output (and the fact
that fossil fuels will eventually run out), that leaves a target
number for non-fossil energy that the various alternatives
must meet over the next 100 years. In every scenario this means a dramatic
increase in non-fossil energy production, so no matter what else
happens, we clearly need these technologies.
First a note on forms of energy. Actually useful energy (work) usually
is applied to our devices in a mechanical or electrical form; some
industrial processes depend on energy in a chemical form as well.
The one major exception is heating, which requires just low
quality thermal energy (although heating can be done with greater than
one-to-one conversion through use of heat pumps). Wind and
hydro plants use mechanical energy; solar photovoltaics generate
electrical energy from light which is itself electromagnetic.
Interconversion between mechanical and electrical energy through
motors and generators is very efficient (90% or more), so they can
be viewed as pretty much interchangeable forms. But going from heat
to electrical or mechanical energy involves considerable losses;
typical steam turbine generators run at about 33% conversion
efficiency – i.e. only 1/3 of the thermal energy gets converted
to electricity. This factor of 3 between thermal and electrical energy
is used quite routinely in the literature; in fact hydroelectric production
is typically multiplied by a factor of 3 to give a thermal energy equivalent.
The rough rule of thumb then is that an equivalent electrical energy
requirement is 1/3 of the thermal requirement.
Interconversion between electrical and chemical energy is intermediate
in efficiency – for rechargeable batteries typically about 70-80% (round
trip), for fuel cells it can range from 40% to 90% or so. Burning chemicals
typically generates just thermal energy, although in a vehicle internal
combustion engine or in a gas turbine generator the combustion gases
produce mechanical energy directly with (for combined cycle gas
turbines) efficiencies of 50% or more. Generally we want to minimize
the number of these interconversions between primary energy supply
and the final use; for example, burning coal to produce electricity
to electrolyze hydrogen to be used in fuel cells to produce electricity
to power a vehicle is not likely to be a good use of the primary coal energy.
The actual world energy requirement numbers that come out,
finally, both in terms of energy capacity, and capital investment,
are enormous. Current (2003) total production of thermal energy worldwide
is about 14,000 GW (14 terawatts). With the factor of three rule
of thumb, that’s equivalent to just under 5000 GW electric. That’s
14 TW for a year, every year right now – in energy quantities
(multiplying by the number of hours or seconds in a year) that comes to about
120,000 TWh (thermal) which is equivalent to 450 x10^18 joules,
or 450 exajoules (EJ) of thermal energy. With the 1/3 rule of thumb,
that translates to 40,000 TWh or 150 EJ of electrical energy, every
year. Actual world electricity consumption is about 1/3 of that again,
or 13,000 TWh per year, right now (the remaining energy consumption is
primarily transportation and home and industrial direct use of fossil
fuels).
The picture for 2050, then, is an increase in total energy use
of between 33% and 140%; 19 to 33 TW (thermal) total. Criswell’s
scenario (chapter 9; more below) sees a need for up to 60 TW (thermal)
by 2050, to address world poverty in an adequate fashion. 60 TW (thermal)
was seen as a likely requirement by 2100, under the high growth
IIASA scenarios. The main point here is non-fossil fuels have to comprise
at least 9 to 10 TW (thermal) of supply by 2050, under any of the
scenarios. That’s well over half of current energy usage. So
the question for the remainder of the book: what (if any) of
the nuclear or renewable options available can actually meet this
enormous requirement, in a sustainable fashion and at a cost that
won’t cripple global growth?
9 to 30 TW (thermal), translates to 26,000 – 87,000 TWh/yr
or 95 – 320 EJ/yr (electric) of non-fossil energy
by 2050. Chapter 5 (Short and Keegan) summarizes the potential from various
renewable sources in a table on p. 145: current global renewable use
is about 8,000 TWh (electric)/yr – mostly from biomass burning in developing
countries, the remainder from hydro power. Long-term
“technical potential” for pure solar power is over 280,000 TWh/yr (electric),
for biomass over 140,000 TWh/yr, for hydro and wind perhaps
14,000 TWh/yr each, and for geothermal and ocean energy perhaps 2000 TWh/yr.
The potential they see economically exploitable by 2025 is primarily
in biomass (8-15,000 TWh/yr) and hydro (4-6000 TWh/yr); solar and wind could
contribute 1000 to 2000 TWh/yr each. In other words, these
renewable sources may be barely sufficient to meet the 2050 demand,
but biomass and hydro would continue to be the primary contributions.
For solar and wind we have a serious problem, discussed in chapters 5 and 6
- the intermittency issue. A utility can’t rely on the
power to be there, and so has to build in (and order ahead of time)
sufficient capacity to meet peak needs without taking them into account.
Similar issues apply with transmission of power; solar and wind generators
would have to pay the capital costs of power lines without being able
to make full 24×7 use of them. This currently limits these to well under
20% of supply in most utility systems. The main way to mitigate all this
is with power storage: pumped hydro or compressed air are traditional
methods, but are very location dependent, among other failings.
Other proposed storage methods (flywheels, batteries, electrolysis
and fuel cells with hydrogen storage) are relatively costly. Something
like 5 TWh of overnight storage would be needed for a system with just
3000 TWh/yr (electric) of solar/wind; at current prices of $100/kWh or
more, that amounts to at least $500 billion worth of batteries, which
would need replacing every 5 years or so.
Intermittency can also be mitigated by spreading the load
across many different supply locations; doing so would require
much longer-distance power transmission – a worldwide
superconducting grid for example. But capital costs for that also
could easily be multiple trillions of dollars, without significant
cost improvements.
Two other problems remain with solar and wind – capital cost of
the photovoltaics and turbines themselves, and
land usage. Actually, land usage for solar may not be worse than
for coal, when the area destroyed by coal mining is counted; of course
existing coal mines are one of the “lock-in” features of our
current fossil fuel dependency, so it’s still a problem. But capital
costs are the real show-stoppers: for photovoltaics, at $3/peak watt
current prices (solar thermal systems are roughly the same),
even in an ideal location, 2000 TWh/yr requires about 1 TW peak
capacity, or $3 trillion capital investment. For wind, prices are
now about $1/peak watt, and capacity factors somewhat better, so
the 1000 TWh/yr for wind may require “only” $300 billion
investment (but addresses only about 4% of the minimal
renewable requirement). Continued cost improvements as
manufacturing scales up should cut these costs somewhat.
Annual expenditures on energy systems are already close to
$1 trillion/yr, however, so these numbers, while immense, shouldn’t
be impossible. Doubling or tripling world hydro capacity, as
this scenario calls for, would also involve trillions of dollars of
capital investment.
But there are three other major energy options that need to be considered
to help fill this need for non-fossil energy by 2050, one or all
of which may end up being more cost effective and thus less harmful to
global economic growth: nuclear fission (chapter 7), fusion
(chapter 8), and solar power collected in space rather than
on Earth’s surface (chapter 9).
What fission, fusion, and space solar all have in common is their
ability to directly replace base power supply currently provided
by coal (fission already supplies about 0.5 TW of base power worldwide).
These are not intermittent, as are wind and terrestrial solar. Even hydro and
biomass have seasonal supply variations. Coal has the highest carbon
intensity of any fossil fuel; replacement of utility base power
generation should be the top priority to combat global warming.
Krakowski and Wilson (chapter 7) give an amazingly thorough review
of the situation for nuclear fission energy. The first concern is
fuel supply itself. Fission, like fossil
energy, relies on a fuel material whose supply may be somewhat
limited. Known reserves of uranium (other than low concentrations
in granite and seawater) are actually roughly equivalent
in energy content to estimated fossil fuel reserves. However, on
the fossil fuel side, that equivalence is dominated by
oil shale and sub-sea “clathrates”, which may not be physically
(or environmentally soundly) recoverable. Total fossil fuel
is close to a million EJ or about 500 years of the long-run
thermal energy requirement in the high-growth scenario (at 60 TW(thermal)
by 2100), but not including clathrates and oil shale, that
is reduced to about 50 years of reserves at the 2100 rate (i.e.
we’re not even going to make it to 2100).
But the uranium number also depends on use of breeder reactors
and fuel reprocessing to make use of the full energy content
of the U-238, as well as the initial U-235 that supplies
energy the first time through. Krakowski and Wilson go into
a lot of details on proposals to make that as safe as possible
and reduce the threat of terrorists or rogue states
getting hold of the intermediate plutonium. They wrote, however,
before September 11, 2001; even these proposals may not be
viable any longer. With just once-through processing, the
high-grade uranium known would only last us about 5 years
if it were to supply the world’s energy at 2100 levels. They
speculate that there is a lot of uranium ore still waiting to
be discovered, however, if prices were to rise. Reprocessing,
use of thorium, and extraction from low concentrations in rock
or seawater would increase the supply to thousands of years worth.
Whatever the solution it is clera that fission energy, to meet world
energy needs, would have a much bigger impact on the world than
it has up to now.
Aside from fuel supply, four cardinal issues for expansion of nuclear
energy are of concern:
1. Safety – North American reactors have a good safety record; nevertheless
the Chernobyl accident demonstrated the devastation that is potentially
there. Systems are designed to have a probability of less than one
in ten thousand for a core meltdown in any given year; but that could
mean one every 5 years if nuclear supplied 2 TW of power, or one per year
at the 10 TW or higher level (with roughly 10,000 nuclear plants worldwide).
Most scenarios for future fission have kept total supply below 1.5 TW
through 2050 for this and other reasons.
2. Waste disposal – there are actually some solutions to this. Sweden
apparently has settled on a publicly agreeable disposal solution for their
reactors. Fuel reprocessing can extract the worst isotopes and send
them back into the fuel cycle to have their energy actually do some good.
The remaining fuel could potentially be less hazardous than the original
uranium ore. The current situation in the US with once-through fuel
cycles and hundreds of supposedly temporary waste storage sites
is not reassuring to anybody, though.
3. Proliferation of nuclear weapons – basically eternal vigilence
is the key. Will that be possible? Particularly as the industry has
to cut costs to be competitive? Proliferation is less of an issue with
the once-through cycles, however, since the resultant plutonium
stays embedded with other highly radioactive wastes.
4. Costs. In the 1970′s-1980′s, primarily due to burdensome
safety reviews and what the authors term “over-regulation”, nuclear
power plants in the US came in with costs on the order
of $4000/kW or more. Those costs may not be really representative;
a new reactor in Taiwan is being built for about $1690 per kW (electric).
That still means 1.5 TW of nuclear power (supplying roughly 12,000 TWh
(electric) per year of energy) would have a capital cost of $2.5 trillion
or so.
Fusion – the picture painted here is one of long-term promise,
but probably not helpful by 2050. Two major fusion research
reactors are being built over the next decade – the international
ITER magnetic confinement reactor (for $5 to 10 billion) and
the US National Ignition Facility (NIF – $2 to 5 billion) to
study “inertial confinement”. Both projects are suitable for
scientific and engineering discovery of extreme properties,
but disturbingly, neither turns out to be close to a good
design for a commercial reactor. Supply of fuel, however,
is not a problem: it seems that water by weight contains roughly
100 to 300 times as much energy as gasoline, for the various
fusion reactions that may be feasible “early in the
third millenium”, as the authors phrase it.
So – short story – fusion will likely not be helping much,
if at all, by 2050.
Chapter 9 is David Criswell’s take on space solar power,
in particular heavily promoting his
Lunar Solar Power proposal.
I’m most familiar with the situation here, and find I have
to quibble with some of the numbers he uses; on the other
hand, he makes a very persuasive case.
Unlike all the other strategies outlined in the book, Criswell’s
lunar solar power is (at least according to him) scalable and
affordable enough to not only meet all world energy needs as
currently projected, but to allow for significant expansion in
global world product without environmental harm.
Now, like all the others, Criswell’s scheme is a trillion-dollar
scale proposal. Unfortunately, unlike the others, it’s hard to do
it in small steps; this is one giant project. While it seems likely
it could be the most economically efficient of all of them, working
towards it in smaller chunks seems the only way to make it actually
happen. What would those smaller chunks be? Criswell discusses more
traditional solar power satellites (in geosynchronous orbit); he
dismisses them on a number of grounds (for example, their large
size would make the number required for his 20 TW electric rather
excessive – however, at a smaller scale they make a lot of sense)
and I believe we can now do better than some of his numbers for
regular satellites. But he makes a lot of good points.
I actually met Criswell last May – I had invited him as our Saturday
keynote speaker at the National Space Society
annual meeting in San Jose. His
congressional
testimony from last fall is an eloquent
summary of his position. Of course he’s been talking about this
for nearly 20 years; what’s different now seems to be (1) we need
the energy now more than ever, and (2) the space program is really
looking for a new goal. Is there any chance something will come of this?
We’ll see.
Finally, to sum it all up:
(1) Human-generated CO2 and the associated global warming is a big
problem for the coming century, although there are some engineering
strategies that could (with other side-effects) mitigate it.
(2) We’re going to be running out of fossil fuels anyway in the
next few centuries; without alternatives, global economic prosperity
will be endangered much sooner than that.
(3) Depending on how far efficiency improvements can get us, the
mid-century energy requirement from non-fossil sources is between
9 and 30 TW(thermal), or 3 – 10 TW (electric), year-round.
(4) No current renewable technology can provide that power level
for less than about $10 trillion in capital investment.
(5) The best plan seems to be an adaptive one: introduce a carbon
tax and technology incentives of all sorts for the renewable options,
and then adjust both taxes and incentives in response to changing
assessments of CO2 damage and non-fossil technological promise.
(6) Wind may be ready for large scale installation; however
investments are needed in energy storage and transmission technologies
to make it really practical. Biofuels are already in large-scale
use: R&D investments to improve their efficiencies, perhaps including
genetically engineered crops, should be supported. Solar is a little
further away, but R&D there should be strengthened because of the
huge potential.
(7) Nuclear fission will be around – we need to decide whether to
try to make it a big part, or a small part, of our energy future
(i.e. choosing between once-through and breeder fuel cycles).
(8) Fusion likely won’t help by mid-century. But the long-term
payoff may be large; we should continue to invest moderately in
the technology.
(9) Space solar power, whether or not on the Moon, has enormous
theoretical potential. Technology incentives to prove its capabilities
seem warranted – investments and demonstration projects at least
for photovoltaic capabilities, light-weight
space construction, space launch, and wireless power transmission.
all seem well justified by this and spinoff applications.
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jdoe
January 9th, 2004 at 6:54 am
This is one unsubstantiated politically loaded statement
No, we are not doomed.
Yes. Don’t go searching for imaginary
problems. Michael Crichton summed it up nicely in a recent Caltech lecture.
apsmith
January 9th, 2004 at 9:26 am
Why do you see it as political? I quoted (linked to) the recent statement from the American Geophysical Union, the largest organization of Earth scientists in the world. It’s a statement by a body of scientists, echoed by every other major body of scientists the world over.
You linked to a diatribe from a science fiction author. And what Crichton argues for is relying on the science – well, who knows the science better than the scientists who study this stuff? Every single climate scientist I have ever talked to is extremely worried.
What do you propose as a criterion for judging what the scientific consensus is here? To me, if the largest scientific societies in the world, the major scientific journals, large independent panels of government scientists, even the US Environmental Protection Agency under an anti-environment administration, if all these agree that humans are causing global warming, I think the scientific case is rather clear-cut.
Sweetwind
January 9th, 2004 at 11:36 am
I would quibble with the use of the word “will”, though. Already ecosystems are being changed to the extent that species are being stressed. Extinctions will follow. For my citation of the day, I have selected a disturbing article in this month’s Scientific American. The take-away message from the article is that different species use different cues to “know” when to mate, build nests, sprout leaves, or whatever things they have to do at each spring. As global warming makes spring come earlier than it used to, some species do these things earlier in the year because their cues move (e.g. they are cueing on temperature), but some species do not because their cues are fixed (i.e. cueing on day length). Species which were formerly synched up are becoming unsynched – the central example in the article is a bird whose eggs used to hatch at the time of peak availability of local grubs to feed the chicks. Now the baby birds are hatching when the grubs are no longer available. A decline in the bird population seems inevitable.
Great review, apsmith! Thanks!
SEWilco
January 9th, 2004 at 9:36 pm
There have been several recent glaciation episodes. Try to keep in mind that many of these species somehow survived an ice age just 15,000 years ago. Those creatures in your backyard haven’t been living the way you see them for millions of years. Times change.
the central example in the article is a bird whose eggs used to hatch at the time of peak availability of local grubs to feed the chicks. Now the baby birds are hatching when the grubs are no longer available. A decline in the bird population seems inevitable.
Some chicks are born before others. Those which happen to hatch while their food is available do seem most likely to survive best. So what seems inevitable is a decline in those which are least fit to survive. Next year’s chicks will probably have a tendency to be born closer to the right time. Or they’ll have been eating different things.
jdoe
January 9th, 2004 at 10:36 pm
I can’t read it because it’s subscription only.Is it based on the same whould be scientific research, as the one published in Nature about global extinction? If yes, take a look here
As for dangers of global warming, temperetures are known to be at least 20C higher than now. Life survived it just fine.
jdoe
January 9th, 2004 at 10:57 pm
OK, so you are saying it’s based on belief that the opinion of a large organization must be correct. Because it’s a large organization. OK. Good argument. “Have faith in large organizations”.
See, you are not arguing on a merit of his statements, you are attacking on a personal level
Again, you are talking about opinions, not science. Carl Sagan was also extremely worried about global winter.
Since you like going after personality, let me do it too. Could it be that they worried about the lack of public attention that may cause reduction in funding for their research?
I believe it’s a way to waste money on chasing ghosts making a few people rich in the process
apsmith
January 10th, 2004 at 8:02 pm
Any climate scientist who wanted to prove global warming isn’t a problem has eager sponsors in hundred-billion-dollar-a-year industries. This is a ridiculous argument.
If you don’t think you can trust the majority of scientific experts in an area, what exactly would you base a “scientific” statement on the subject on?
In any case, the statement is a scientific one, it says nothing about politics. Science gives data. Politics decides what to do with that data. If you think the data means we need to quit creating CO2, that’s a political decision. But the fact is that humans are causing huge increases in atmospheric CO2, and that’s likely already causing, and certainly will cause, significant climate changes. There’s no scientific dispute there – even Lomborg agrees.
apsmith
January 10th, 2004 at 8:08 pm
As far as we know, temperatures have not changed as fast as they seem to have been the last few years, and certainly not as fast as they are predicted to in coming decades, in at least several thousand years. Perhaps not since the last major extinction.
In any case, it’s too late to do anything about it for the next 20-30 years, so we’ll have to live through that and see what happens. Will you still be singing the same tune after more and more species die off? What level of extinction is ok with you? That’s the political decision here – because the extinctions ARE going to happen.
jdoe
January 10th, 2004 at 11:06 pm
“Huge” is not a number. Even if a raise in CO2 levels is observed, it still has to be proven that it’s not natural. Yes, it’s likely that it’s related to human activity, but still not certain.
And I say it’s a far-fetched conjecture which is likely wrong. The warming is a part of a natural cicle. Look up “little ice age” in google. Even if it’s true and humans are significantly contributed to warming, the effects are stretched over many decades. The world economy and technology over these decades would change so much that our current attempts to reduce CO2 emissions would likely to be irrelevant.
jdoe
January 10th, 2004 at 11:19 pm
I often hear about extinction of species like it’s a final argument no one expects to argue against. “Oh, creeeeepy. Some species will go extinct”. So what? History knows massive extinction events, when the majority of species was wiped out. Biodiversity was quickly restored afterwards. Besides, at the current rate of advances in genetics in 20 years humans will likely be able to create any species, existing or imaginary. Then there is another question. Why is biodiversity treated as an axiomatically Good Thing?
apsmith
January 11th, 2004 at 2:22 pm
Nobody, scientist or non, who has looked at the data can dispute that humans have increased CO2 from about 280 ppmv pre-industrial to about 370 ppmv now; even the best hoped-for scenario (for example from the book reviewed here) is to limit the continued growth to at most a doubling (to 560 ppmv) by 2100.
See here,
here, here, here, and etc. etc. etc. (you can use Google too I’m sure).
Quoting one of these:
But the big problem isn’t the past 30 years, it’s the next 50-100 years when human contributions will be 5-10 times greater than that accumulated so far, on present trends. That’s the big issue – not the past, but the future based on unimpeachable data and trends.
jdoe
January 12th, 2004 at 2:11 am
Present trends. That’s the problem, even if we forget that the connection between CO2 level and warming is just an unproven conjecture.
Take some trend which was seen as important in 1904, for example the growth in the amount of horse manure in the streets of large cities. Or population growth. Extend it for 100 years. Compare the actual 2004 to your projection.
What makes you believe your current projection for 2104 is any better?
apsmith
January 12th, 2004 at 5:07 am
Read the IPCC reports to see what we’re talking about with trends. You didn’t admit that your previous statement was false – please read up on this yourself before making further uninformed comments, thanks. I’m sure you can use Google as well as the rest of us.
apsmith
January 12th, 2004 at 6:22 am
read the article you’re commenting on here. I’ll give you a hint: Kaya identity, about a third of the way in. That’s exactly what the prediction of future trends in CO2 is based on, and this article is reviewing a book that is focused on exactly this problem – how, given current and near-term expected technologies, can we help to tackle this problem of predicted growth in CO2.
Which of the terms in the Kaya identity do you see resolving the problem? Global population collapse (term 1)? Global poverty (term 2)? Or some form of mitigation (terms 3 and 4) which is what the rest of it is all about? Those are the alternatives!
Power production infrastructure (coal plants, rail lines, etc.) have life times of 50 years or longer; if we’re going to do anything about the problem this century, we need to get started with the technology we’ve got, not wait for some miracle!
And the statement that “the connection between CO2 level and warming is just an unproven conjecture.” is flat-out false. It’s not a conjecture, it’s a consequence of simple physics. CO2 is a greenhouse gas – that’s been measured, calculated, explored countless different ways. Nobody who’s read any of the science on this disputes that. What is disputed is the degree of warming – will it be just a few degrees, or ten degrees or more, with a doubling of CO2. The IPCC scientists concluded, conservatively, that a doubling of CO2 was probably the limit beyond which we’d be in unknown territory for Earth’s climate. If we don’t do anything about it at all, we’re hitting a doubling of CO2 by mid-century.
Let’s look at some of the statements you’ve made here, all without ANY supporting links, other than the Crichton talk and an opinion piece from the Exxon-Mobil funded “Tech Central Station”:
on my statement about the evidence, not policy
a crazy statement, following on a set attacking the credibility of thousands of scientists and their institutions.
It’s huge, and it’s certain.
Read the article – it’s advocating research, in particular; the adaptive approach. But we need to target this problem, because it’s a serious problem. You think some magic technology will save us without people even looking for it? That would have been a good way to lose WWII.
What sort of straw man attack is this? I cite data, you cite fantasy?
Go look up biodiversity on the web, some time.
When was that, back in the triassic? Cite your source please, and also the critical information about HOW FAST did this change happen. Over less than a century? I wonder how the anti-warming folks can manage to come up with all this data on climate hundreds of millions of years ago, but don’t believe climate researchers numbers for the past few hundred years?
Anyway, Exxon-Mobil and the other poor defeneseless little oil and coal companies really don’t need you to come to their aid – they’re doing quite well thankyou very much.
jdoe
January 12th, 2004 at 7:31 am
Are you authorized to forbid my postings on this site? I am sure the site owner can cancel my registration at any time.
Would you please tell me exactly who “us” is and what kind of authority you have to represent this group of people?
looks like you are loosing temper. It seems like it is unusual for you to hear an opposing opinion.
Sweetwind
January 12th, 2004 at 9:13 am
Which issue of Nature are you talking about? All the links from the article you linked to which might get more specific about the Nature research are registration-only. OK, I could register for free, I guess… but you could go down to your local library and pull the January issue of Scientific American off the shelf for free, too, ya know! :-)
As I summarized, the article I cited doesn’t say anything about mass extinctions, or extinctions at all. (“Extinctions will follow” is my own commentary, I apologize if that was not clear.) So although I am was not familiar with the Nature article, the link you provided debunking it has no bearing on this particular article I was discussing. Based on the article you linked to, the Nature article does indeed sound rather histrionic. I think one reason I found the Scientific American article so disturbing was that it was not histrionic at all. It was very matter of fact and dealt with a very small part of nature. It presented the dates for the first flower or songbird or whatnot of spring each year over the past 60 years or so in one specific region. Some things are happening earlier than they used to each spring, but most are happening later. I concede that it is only one set of data points. I would be happy to read an article as well-researched and well-reasoned that had good news instead.
I agree that Life on Earth will survive anything humans can throw at it. But call me anthropocentric, I’m a little more worried about my great-grandchildren than I am about Life. I want them to have bumblebees and butterflies and songbirds, not just cockroaches.
zappini
January 13th, 2004 at 1:27 am
apsmith-
Excellent review.
A couple of things.
I’ve never quite understood why nominally intelligent parties opposed the Kyoto Protocol. For instance, The Economist. Something about “too expensive”. Which is an interesting concept. Because waste (pollution) saps profits. So I just sort of always assumed the pro-business cadre would be anti-waste (anti-pollution). Of course, all that wealth-creation would get in the way of wealth-transfer (theft).
And what exactly is not being dead worth?
But, from your review, it appears that adopting the Kyoto Protocol wouldn’t be nearly enough. Darn.
I think it’s very humane of you to focus on factors #3 and #4.
But I just can’t shake the feeling that #1 (population) is going to take a significant hit. For instance. My cousin, a physicist researching oceanographic stuff, says the ocean is projected to rise, between the melting of ice and thermal expansion, about a meter. I forget the timeframe. Something like 50 years. And maybe it was 3 meters. Regardless. That alone will take out a sizeable portion of inhabited areas. Which will lead to mass migration. Which will in itself be disruptive of economies, societies, and so forth. Leading to pogroms, civil wars, etc.
Then, of course, there’s always disease. And more extremes in weather (as we’re seeing) disrupting economies as well as food supplies.
Moving right along…
I also think a significant reduction in #2 (global GDP) is not farfetched. Paul Krugman (NY Times) recentedly likened America’s ballooning federal and trade deficits to Argentina’s (pre-crash). Sure, America might be too big to be allowed to fail. But vague notions of catastrophe theory and complex systems keep haunting me. And if America tubes, then the world goes with it.
As for the bozo brigade…
There’s no reasoning with the clinically insane. I admire your good faith effort. Alas, even a self-evidently false belief system will have at least 15% of the population champion it. Conversely, given any obviously correct belief system (e.g. objective reality), at least 30% of the population would deny it. Being a charitable person, I’m using imagined conservative numbers where propaganda isn’t factored in (“up is down”). Michael Shermer has much to say about this.
Maybe Aristotle wasn’t completely offbase when he suggested a benevolent dictatorship type arrangement.
This whole media phenome is amazing to me. How is it that the wishes of the majority of the people (e.g. to live to see their grandchildren lead their own productive lives) can be completely ignored while a couple of whackjobs consume most of the bandwidth? For instance, the writer Micheal Crouton is a career Luddite and xenophobe peddling sophmor(on)ic fiction, and yet, and yet!, he gets paraded around like some kind of authority. (I can’t help but think that his lecture is just a publicity stunt. Book sales must be down.)
I keep waiting for some sort of signal-to-noise autocorrecting mechanism to kick in with all this new social software, higher plane of consciousness, internet superdatachocolatehighway stuff. Shouldn’t public discourse be self-regulating like any other biological system? Like maybe a cultural immune function to hysteria and anti-intellectualism. Or is that too much to hope for?
About that extinction thing. In addition to the extreme rate of climatic change (as you pointed out to joeblow), other contributing factors are pollution (etc. mercury, dioxin), massive habitate loss, disjoint habitats (“islands”), and collapsing ecosystems (e.g. a keystone species in a food chain dies off). So even if many species were able to migrate to find more suitable environs, where would they go? how would they get there? what would they eat when they arrived?
Another thing about extinction, for joeblow, is the whole carnary in a coal mine analogy. If everything around you started to die off, wouldn’t you get worried? Just a little?
As with all dynamic systems, this whole issue is a self-correcting problem. One way or another, the earth will re-establish an equalibrium. Surely, some humans will survive. For instance, all of the (Native) Americans descended from a group of about 20 people. But the transistion wouldn’t be pretty.
I’m heartened by the optimism of joeblow and other ostriches. The problem is so big, I have trouble fully believing it myself. And I like to think that we’ll pull through.
So the choices are discomfort or death. Why is this a tough decision? I’d rather error on the side of caution and suffer a bit of discomfort. It couldn’t be any worse than what I’m experiencing right now.
Cheers, Zappini
gypsysoul
January 13th, 2004 at 6:06 am
You verbalized what at least one other reader didn’t know how to say.
apsmith
January 13th, 2004 at 9:23 pm
I’m starting to think the media deliberately manipulate certain contentious issues (including political topics) to achieve a roughly 50/50 split of the population, in the US. Having a 50/50 split means they get roughly equal quantities of mail supporting one side as the other, and so they feel they’ve achieved “balance”. Having the issue contentious, and hyping any of the “underdog” side’s points while downplaying points on the other side, keeps it in the public view, keeps the two sides excited about it all, and means higher ratings and more eyeballs for media coverage…
Ok, maybe that’s a cynical view, but there does seem to be a driving force in exactly this direction – i.e. what’s driving the news media is not truth, but excitement and this weird notion of “balance”. Truth is boring.
Anyway, nice thoughts, Zappini. And maybe together here we can make a start, here, now, on this new social software, higher plane of consciousness, internet superdatachocolatehighway stuff. :-)
zappini
January 14th, 2004 at 12:21 am
Wikipedia keeps impressing me (which is pretty hard to even once). Here’s a couple good entry points on this topic, with many, many links therein:
Global warming
Global warming controversy
Kyoto Protocol
lgroner
January 14th, 2004 at 3:59 pm
The important point of these models is not any point prediction but a realization that the global climate is an unstable dynamic system. This conclusion is buttressed by ice cores and geological findings showing much more variability in earth’s climate than we have experienced since written records exist.
When mankind disturbs this system it runs incalculable risks. We disturb the climate system taking concentrations of CO2 outside of historical limits.
It is precisely because the consequences are not predictable that we must be cautious. The burden of proof rests with those who hold that we can exceed global historical limits with impunity and not with those who warn of risks.
Lou Groner
Anonymous
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