Nothing can be done!

[mmcirvin]

Robert J. Samuelson takes the next step in slagging-on-Al-Gore technology and tells us that, while global warming may be real, nothing can or should be done about it until some vague futurity after "major technological breakthroughs". He sets up a dichotomy between global warming as "moral crusade" or as "engineering problem", and complains that people talking about the problem are keeping us from fixing it by emphasizing the former.

He has a part of a valid point in there but he's too busy strawman-flogging to analyze it properly. Human behavior is indeed more likely to change if, through policy changes or otherwise, it becomes a matter of immediate self-interest rather than of greater moral perfection. There's a strain of environmentalism that has a history of disparaging technological solutions to problems as "quick engineering fixes" to things better addressed by radical transformation of society and fundamental improvements in human behavior, which are somehow regarded as both feasible and less potentially damaging to attempt. But while I admit I haven't seen his movie, I've never seen any evidence that Al Gore is in that camp. For all his schoolmarmish reputation, the man's a technophile and always has been.

It's a false dichotomy, and the choice between doing nothing and radically reshaping global civilization is also a false dichotomy. Samuelson is absolutely right that this is tough; and I also think he's absolutely right that we can't, today, abandon economic growth. But if better technologies exist, countries like India and China might be able to adopt them. If someday it turns out that geo-engineering of the type Samuelson briefly mentions can be managed without being a cure worse than the disease, we'll probably want to use it—but it's just a temporary stopgap if carbon emissions keep on exploding. People may have to adopt nuclear energy to a greater degree if it can be done productively and with acceptable safety. It might be good to encourage patterns of land use along something other than North American lines; as far as I can tell, American-style commercial-residential sprawl isn't absolutely necessary for economic growth. None of these avenues of attack precludes any other, and we may well need them all.

I doubt that it's going to be possible to keep carbon emissions below the level required to prevent any major harmful consequences; indeed, it's possible that we're already seeing harmful consequences. But this isn't a matter of an all-or-nothing threshold either. Personally, I think that while it's good to speak of goals, some of the media talk of this or that level of CO2 emission as a catastrophic "tipping point" is damaging; it makes it sound as if all mitigation efforts are worthless beyond some threshold of doom, which as far as I know is not true. There are worries about positive feedbacks like methane hydrates, but it's not as if, once CO2 levels get beyond a certain point, the Earth is fated to become a second Venus (according to climate models, such a "runaway greenhouse" threshold exists but is so enormous that we'd have a lot of other things to worry about between here and there).

Reductions in the emission rate will always help in the long term. Even if things have gotten really bad, continuing to emit carbon dioxide at a growing rate will make them even worse. Even if emission levels continue to rise in the short term, we're better off than if they rise more rapidly. There is no point at which it makes sense to say, "oh, well, we've screwed the pooch, and we might as well enjoy the last days until doomsday."

Nor is it likely that we'll carry out aggressive research programs into technologies for reducing carbon emission—or even for adapting to the warming that we can't stop—if we believe there is no problem. Samuelson completely ignores the fact that part of what Gore is fighting is an organized industrial-political campaign to convince people that manmade global warming does not even exist, in the face of great and gathering evidence and overwhelming scientific consensus to the contrary. I've said it before: the long-term effects of global warming scare me less than the long-term effects of having leaders who think they can ignore or re-mold at will the picture of the world provided by science.

Update: Just in time for my digression, Gavin of RealClimate posts a good article about "tipping points" and what they mean.

Comments

[jwgh]

Of the various possible reactions to the likelihood of a global catastrophe, Mr. Samuelson's choice of smugness seems like an odd choice.

That observation aside, the essay seems to believe that anything that doesn't actually reduce greenhouse gasses (instead of, say, decreasing the rate of their increase) is useless. If you want a technological solution, though, it seems like even a partial solution would at least buy us a little more time to find something better.

Also, I would think that one of the points of enacting laws and ratifying environmental treaties would be to increase the amount of work done to find the sorts of 'engineering' solutions that he describes (by increasing demand for cleaner energy sources, or by direct funding of research, or both).

The moral vs. engineering thing appears to have been something pulled out of nowhere in the last paragraph; I don't see where moral aspects of global warming are addressed, or even mentioned, in the rest of the essay.

Will we burn it all?

[indyresolve.livejournal.com]

Lets assume that modern fossil fuel exploration methods have found most of the cheaply extractable carbon-based BTUs in existence. How much will it matter to greenhouse temperature effects by 2100 if we burn most of it over the next 40 years or slow it down to 50 or 60 years but add the bulk of the early-burned CO2 to the atmosphere nonetheless? Will a radical change in atmospheric concentration be created by an extra decade of technological progress, or is it the difference in a final CO2 level of maybe between 450 and 480 ppm? It could be a small temperature mitigation with a large economic effect if the world must hold energy consumption at lower than present levels and with no growth for those in the rest of the world who would like to run air conditioners in thier (mostly) hot environments one day.

Or another questions, at some point (probably before 2020), will not growing demand and shrinking supply (both total, and yearly output) raise the price of fossil fuels to such a level that greenhouse-neutral alternatives become competitive and normal market incentives will encourage the development of the cheapest alternative feasible source of energy. But wont that eventual higher price per BTU make us all relatively poorer (compared to now) in the percentage of our wealth that we must dedicate to energy and the energy components of our consumed products?

Would the energy industries develop these alternatives happen faster or slower if we burn the fossil fuels quicker (price goes up sooner, but greenhouse gases increase faster), or slower (price goes up later, but greenhouse gases increase slower). Would they develop these alternatives faster or slower with new investment (or government subsidy) if the economy is racing or recessing?

I dont agree with Robert J. Samuelson either, but if we will not be able to significantly alter the plateau level of CO2 in the atmosphere by more than 10% without devastating the short-term global economy or forsaking our competitiveness with giant countries who will not likely adjust their policy any time soon (China?, India?) then it is indeed worth asking "Is it worth it?" Most of my friends seem to think that if we turned off our nightlights, we could reverse and turn off global warming - but it seems to me the real question is more a matter of degree. Is the difference between 450 and 500ppm by mid-century large enough to warrant the dramatic changes required?

And asking for a "cost/benefit analysis" seems hopeless too - with predictions of catastrophe having large margins of error, and being so speculative and ranging from "minor changes" to "complete and utter devastation"

Re: Will we burn it all?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Lets assume that modern fossil fuel exploration methods have found most of the cheaply extractable carbon-based BTUs in existence. How much will it matter to greenhouse temperature effects by 2100 if we burn most of it over the next 40 years or slow it down to 50 or 60 years but add the bulk of the early-burned CO2 to the atmosphere nonetheless?

There's oil and there's coal. We'll probably burn most of the oil over the next few decades, and there, the effect of conservation efforts is not so much to protect the environment as to slow the price rise, buy us time to adopt different technologies, and maybe prolong the utility of oil as chemical feedstock. But I'm betting the coal lasts longer than that, remains competitive with greenhouse-neutral energy sources for quite some time, and is the bigger environmental problem.

I dont agree with Robert J. Samuelson either, but if we will not be able to significantly alter the plateau level of CO2 in the atmosphere by more than 10% without devastating the short-term global economy or forsaking our competitiveness with giant countries who will not likely adjust their policy any time soon (China?, India?) then it is indeed worth asking "Is it worth it?"

Sure, but I don't buy that that's the tradeoff. The cost of simply shutting down industry that is currently fossil-fueled in sufficient quantity to make a difference is not worth worrying about because it's not going to happen anyway. If that's the only way to avoid catastrophe, we're screwed because there's no way anyone is going to do that.

On the other hand, building things like next-generation nuke plants and renewable energy plants, encouraging more efficient patterns of development and vehicles that can use a flexible variety of power sources, developing an electric battery that doesn't suck, etc... my attitude is that doing all these things just in our country might not change the CO2 level at 2050 by all that much, but most of them are things that will probably benefit the American economy anyway, and they'll lay the groundwork for reversing CO2 emission trends all over the world later on.

Re: Will we burn it all?

[indyresolve.livejournal.com]

I guess the real issue is what's the proper way to go about advocating policy based on science to a public that may not understand it, and especially when those whose interests run opposite to the policy will vociferously, and even fraudulently, deny the validity of the theory? Is it justifiable in such circumstances to fight fire with fire and to overemphasize an improbable but extreme catastrophic scenario to convince people emotionally? Is it likewise justifiable to downplay the idea that, if the policy were to create hardship, it is unclear as to whether that hardship will do much at all to mitigate the scenario that convinced you in the first place?

As an example, I've been told that the EU has just placed a carbon levy on intra-european air travel, something like $60 per long round trip. I don't know what the elasticities are, but doubtless this will price some people, especially low and middle-income families, out of the market.

I know a move like that in the US would significantly reduce my family's flight frequency. I wouldn't like it, but I might be willing to live with it if someone could convincingly demonstrate that it's clearly going to make a big difference. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't be willing to live with it if the analysis showed that, in all probability, the policy will make a negligable contribution to the climate, economy, and so on.

I also don't know if the airlines are a good fit for anti-carbon measures. Most policies try to preserve industrial activity and allow for growth yet create incentives for the development of better technology, or the use of cleaner alternative sources of energy. Choosing nuclear or wind over coal, perhaps, for an energy plant. But I dont think anyone knows of any feasible alternative to kerosene-powered jet propulsion for modern air transport if you need to go long distances in a reasonable timeframe. Airlines cant choose any alternatives and they merely become more expensive .

If you tell me that I should accept less flights because I should be thinking about conserving fossil fuels for the future, for energy as well as chemicals for our descendants, then I would agree with you, because it's clear the fuels are being depleted at a rate that is important within a generation. I would ask that the policy cap production of the fossil fuels instead of capping the carbon. If you can convince me that less flights will create benefits to the economy at large that wouldn't have occured in absence of the policy and that will more than compensate me long term for the lost flights in the short run, I will also happily agree to it. And if you tell me that less flights buys us a little extra time to figure things out before it will be "too late" then I might go along with that.

But practically no one is trying to convince me of of those. (Besides you, much respect to McIrvin). Of Gore fans (though not the scientific ones) I am almost exclusively exposed to something along the lines of "our consumption of fossil fuels has already started global warming and if we continue on our present course, then fairly soon this will yield truly catastrophic results for most of humanity. However, with a few laws that we promise wont hurt very much, we can change the plateau level of CO2 enough to sustain our present climate stability and completly avert catastrophe"

To me, that doesn't seem to make much sense, and I don't think the argument should stand merely to win votes. There's no talk of economy, fuel conservation, or buying time (all good arguments). The argument is all about CO2 and averting a climate catastrophe. Maybe I'm a pessimist in this regard, but I think that either the changes will not be all that catastrophic or if they are, you're right when you say "we're screwed" because we probably wont be able to do much to alleviate CO2 levels without significant disruption to our economy - which you're right again, isn't going to happen.

Re: Will we burn it all?

[indyresolve.livejournal.com]

No doubt, coal is the bigger environmental problem, and it will last longer, but I don't know if it will last a lot longer. BP's Statistical Review of World Energy has a wealth of information on the subject, but their "Reserve to Production" Ratios in terms of "years left" are unsatisfying because they don't account for future growth or decline in production out of each reserve (especially when depletion of one fossil source will shift reliance to another). China has an R/P of 52 years with 13% of global coal reserves (and one might guess, eventually the money to buy other nations' coal when theirs runs thin), however, their production and consumption have increased by over 10% annually for the past few years (after a period of mostly level consumption) and "China accounted for 80% of global growth" in the use of coal, the "world's fastest-growing fuel". Scary stuff if one is hopeful about slowing down emissions growth, in the short-term at least.

Anyway, guessing that one way or another, we're going to get the energy to at least maintain current trends from somewhere (its possible we might not), and summing all the oil, gas, high and low rank coal and rounding up a little to guess that we'll find a little more than is currently proved, the world has about 800 billion tonnes oil equivalent in fossil fuels and uses about 10.5 BTOE/year (85% fossil) growing at about a 2.5% annual rate (almost all fossil, unfortunately). It seems that to add enough affordable renewable sources of power to even make all the fossil fuels last until the end of the century will be a heroic task, not to mention preventing that enormous quantity of carbon from getting into the air.

I hope whatever the politicians decide, we end up buying enough time to figure this one out.

Re: Will we burn it all?

[jwgh]

Another factor is that if we invent and implement a way to reduce carbon emissions (I have heard of various schemes to capture and store CO₂ generated by industrial processes for instance) in 20 years (or whatever) then the amount of carbon that ends up in the atmosphere does differ depending on how quickly we burn up the planet's cheaply-extractable carbon-based fuel.

preventing global warming

[nbrown2.livejournal.com]

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