smandal: Climate change buffoonery

Sourav Mandal (

smandal) wrote,
@ 2008-04-24 14:35:00

Entry tags:

politics, science

Climate change buffoonery
You might disagree with the IPCC. You might consider climate change to be a disaster for individual rights and technological progress. But please, please, don't make stupid arguments, like:

* Rehashing contrarian theories which have been already refuted (an incomplete list: solar variation, sunspots, cosmic rays, natural cycling, CO2 lagging temperature, miscalibration of surface weather stations, volcanic output and galactic motion).

* Ad hominem attacks, e.g. how climate scientists are feeding at the gov't trough and are collectivists trying to ruin your life. This can be applied just as easily to climate change contrarians, most of whom get their funding from oil and auto companies. A conjecture can refuted on the evidence, or not, irrespective of who is proffering it.

* How climate change is "merely" a theory, and so needn't be believed. The consensus hypothesis is a theory like evolution, quantum mechanics and special relativity are theories. Scientific knowledge is always provisional, but the assumption of science is that if a theory survives many attempts at falsification, it's probably close to the truth.

If somebody has a genuine criticism of the consensus hypothesis that passes the laugh test, I'd like to know about it. I have a minor concern that climate models are sensitive to uncertainties in initial parameters and force couplings, though people have looked at this.

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Need for a Planetary Climate-Control System

jordan179
2008-04-24 07:19 am UTC (link)

Climate changes do happen, and ones far more extreme than any likely to happen in the next century or two have happened before. Furthermore, the current net effect of human action is increasing average planetary temperatures through the production of greenhouse gases.

Having said that, we still don't know what's going to happen, because we cannot be sure what non-anthropogenic factors are affecting the system -- and we do know that these non-anthropogenic factors (mainly changes in solar output, vulcanism and the release of methane from the seas) can have far vaster effects than the level of greenhouse gases we are currently putting out.

My opinion is that, if we really want to control the Earth's climate in a manner convenient for Mankind, we need to vastly expand our presence in orbital space and put in place an infrastructure of solettes, lunettes and shades so that we can heat up or cool down the Earth as required to counter natural effects. We should probably on general principles reduce greenhouse gas production as well, but the only economically-sane way to do this is to begin a long-term conversion to nuclear fission and ground-based solar, with an even longer-term plan to convert to nuclear fusion and orbital solar power.

Simply cutting greenhouse gas emissions by shrinking our energy consumption will never work and will harm us if we try it. The reason it will never work is that popular opposition, once the effects are felt in wallets, will not only doom the scheme but damn environmentalism in general in the public mind. The reason it would harm us even if we were able to do it is that shrinking our economy (which is what this would amount to) would reduce the infrastructure from which we could construct a planetary climate-control system.

Such a system is necessary, because we can be sure neither of the direction in which the climate is changing, nor of its extent. Climate control by adjusting planetary atmosphere is not agile enough to deal with all the alternatives.

If, for instance, we are approaching a long solar minimum and another Little Ice Age, we would need to do the reverse of what is being proposed and increase our production of greenhouse gases. If, on the other hand, global warming is occurring faster than we believe, the release of methane from warming seas will utterly swamp any piddling little effects we could accomplish through conservation measures.

We can only surmount the climate crisis by becoming bigger and stronger, not smaller and weaker -- and more vulnerable.

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Re: Need for a Planetary Climate-Control System

smandal
2008-04-24 07:44 am UTC (link)

* If natural variations happened as quickly as the warming trend we observe now, then the "signals" from the models would be swamped by the "background." But they don't.

* I agree that carbon caps will be of limited usefulness because governments have no discipline (as already evidenced by the failure of caps in Europe), and China, India and Russia would tell you to go eff yourself. However, a hefty carbon tax in industrialized countries could spur the development of cheap tech, like thorium nuclear fission and fuel cells (already being deployed by Honda).

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Re: Need for a Planetary Climate-Control System

jordan179
2008-04-24 07:56 am UTC (link)

* If natural variations happened as quickly as the warming trend we observe now, then the "signals" from the models would be swamped by the "background." But they don't.

They don't usually happen as quickly as the warming trend we observe now, but we know of several cases in which they have done. The Younger Dryas event of 10900 BCE shut down the Gulf Stream and temporarily reversed a global warming trend into a global cooling trend: the trigger seems to have been a large meteor hitting North America. The global warming of 55 MYA seems to have happened very quickly: here the release of methane trapped in clathrates is implicated as the causative factor. Also, short-lived but humanly significant temperature excursions, in both directions, are apparently caused by chages in Solar output (the Sun is a slightly variable star); the most famous of these is the Little Ice Age of around CE 1250 to 1900, which corresponds with reductions in sunspot activity.

Volcanic eruptions produce very short-lived but sometimes extreme climate change. We can point to the 1816 "Year Without a Summer" (caused by the Tambora eruption of 1815), which was the height of a general volcanic cooling caused by eruptions between 1812-1817 around the world. This helped defeat Napoleon in Russia. Even more disruptive was the explosion of Krakatoa in 535, which devastated the entire world and aborted the Byzantine hopes of reconstructing the Roman Empire. Nuclear wars would probably produce similar effects.

Even a short climate excursion, in geological terms, can be massively disruptive to human societies. Hence we are better off being rich and powerful and having orbital infrastructure in place to actively manage the planetary climate, than to try to avoid affecting it by being too poor and weak to make a difference.

* I agree that carbon caps will be of limited usefulness because governments have no discipline (as already evidenced by the failure of caps in Europe), and China, India and Russia would tell you to go eff yourself. However, a hefty carbon tax in industrialized countries could spur the development of cheap tech, like thorium nuclear fission and fuel cells (already being deployed by Honda).

Yes. Subsidizing such development would also be a wise move. Nuclear fission is not yet economically competitive with fossil fuels, but it is just one or two minor breakthroughs away from becoming such, and once that happens we won't need to worry about fossil fuels any more, because their use will wither away naturally.

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Re: Need for a Planetary Climate-Control System

smandal
2008-04-24 08:22 am UTC (link)

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	Re: Need for a Planetary Climate-Control System smandal 2008-04-24 08:22 am UTC (link)
	Sorry, I meant to add that darkening the atmosphere with dust might cool things, and more cheaply than large orbital shields. (Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: Need for a Planetary Climate-Control System

jordan179
2008-04-24 09:27 am UTC (link)

* Perhaps I should be clear in one respect: climate models take into account basic physics like solar output, intial conditions of ocean circulation, and volcanic activity. Given these inputs, all causes except human CO2 emissions have been ruled out. (Freeman Dyson contends that we don't know the biomass well enough to say this.)

We can't yet predict vulcanism. We also are not certain yet how the system responds to input changes, because not all of the chemical circulation systems are as yet understood. All we know is that humans have been putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at an accelerating rate since 1750, in general increasing greenhouse gases will increase atmospheric temperatures, and that in general atmospheric temperatures have been increasing over the last century. The conclusion -- that this global warming is probably anthropogenic -- is obvious. However, it is far from obvious to what extent other forces are trying to push the climate, and in what direction.

* Short-term climate excursions can surely screw things up, but with anthropogenic warming the Earth won't get cool again for quite a while (unless we luck out with a solar drop).

There is one very long-term climate change that is operating against global warming -- we are past the natural high point of the current interglacial, and without human intervention would probably descend into another glacial period over the next few millennia. This is one big reason why we need to manage the planetary climate actively as well as passively.

Oh, and solar activity does seem to be dropping, too. We understand the forces underlying these solar cycles very poorly, though continued observation and orbital probes of the Sun will probably increase our knowledge of them over the next few decades.

* I'm not optimistic about building large space structures to shield the Earth ...

"Shield" is only half of it. We need to be able to both warm and cool where required, in order to manage the Earth's climate. We also, of course, need to do this carefully -- done recklessly, we could trigger superstorms!

The advantage of orbital management is that we can reverse direction quickly. By contrast, if we reduce emissions by shrinking our economy, if it turns out that we were wrong and global warming was the only thing staving off an Ice Age, we're screwed.

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Re: Need for a Planetary Climate-Control System

smandal
2008-04-24 11:55 am UTC (link)

We also are not certain yet how the system responds to input changes, because not all of the chemical circulation systems are as yet understood.

This I don't agree with -- climate models are able to reproduce climate history down to "pixels" of ~1 year by 0.1 deg C, with only measured dynamical boundary conditions, measured levels of various gases and chemical concentrations, and basic physics in the models.

We could get lucky with a big solar drop; volcanic activity would only buy a few years before the dust settled back to Earth. I agree we can't predict these events, but they're so few and far between that we obviously can't rely on them.

As far as climate engineering goes, what about the idea of putting up dust in the atmosphere? It's like creating our own volcanic activity, and goes away after a year or two so we can change course if necessary.

Finally, I think we can agree that carbon-based fuels have other problems besides climate change that make them unattractive. For example, making the Middle East relevant to US foreign policy.

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	perich 2008-04-24 12:46 pm UTC (link)
	Thank you for this. (Reply to this)

scottsch
2008-04-24 05:23 pm UTC (link)

My position on global warming is basically that I don't know. I see rampant bias on both sides, especially observation bias. ("Oh no, some ice somewhere melted!" "Don't worry, it's just sunspots.")

One of these days, I will sit down and do some of my own research to figure out what I think. I do think that Gore et al are retarded for not being huge advocates of nuclear power. I also think that we should definitely build a system of orbital climate-control satellites. With lasers. Because that would be awesome.

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	smandal 2008-04-25 03:13 am UTC (link)
	As I argued to jordan179, I think foreign policy and national security concerns are enough to develop oil-free technology, and move away from carbon in general. And it would be neat science/tech. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

scottsch
2008-04-25 08:54 pm UTC (link)

If greenhouse gases will cause damaging global warming, then a carbon tax is a good solution. A correctly priced tax would give people incentives to move to non-carbon-based energy. I think you understand that, so I won't belabor it.

As for foreign policy -- I think trade is a good foreign policy, possibly the best. We need their oil, but they need our money. They can cause us to go into recession at a similar cost to themselves. If, on the other hand, they didn't sell their oil to us, they would lack that incentive to be at peace with us. Based on my limited knowledge, I believe this explains Saudi Arabia's foreign/oil policies especially well, and it applies to other mideast countries in varying degrees.

We do have a screwed up foreign policy in the Middle East. It is significantly motivated by oil, but I don't think oil is to blame. We'd be better off if we continued to trade with the Middle East and intervened less.

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smandal
2008-04-26 05:47 am UTC (link)

The obvious problem with oil is that it is demand inelastic to very high price levels. OPEC and the US have always known this, so they've worked out an agreement at foreign policy: the US will look the other way on theocracy and provide military security to friendly states, who will give up the oil at a discount.

I don't know if the US would be better off economically now if it had played the oil game straight since WWII, but it hasn't hurt Europe (of course the comparison is not that simple -- Europe is more densely populated, has itself participated in the oil game, etc.). I think we could be sure that we would have more clean technologies developed by this point, which would have helped to stave off any coming deleterious warming, made the first Gulf War less appealing and possibly kept the secular shah of Iran in power.

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scottsch
2008-04-26 08:54 am UTC (link)

We can both easily think of foreign policies that would be better than our current one (especially in hindsight).

Why would we have more clean technologies, in your scenario? 1) It's not obvious that oil would be more expensive. The Middle East has as much incentive to sell as we have to buy. Perhaps the USSR would have taken the place over if we had just let them, but I don't see the Middle East not selling us oil out of spite. 2) Oil is such a cheap source of energy that our economic growth would have been much slower without it. We'd be a few decades behind where we are now, and though we'd have a higher relative incentive to invest in alternative energy, we'd have fewer resources to invest. So I think it could have gone either way.

Oil certainly is inelastic in the short term, and probably out to 5 years. My ass think that in the 10 to 20 year timescale, it becomes elastic, since that gives people enough time to invest in alternative energy sources. Once this happens, demand for oil drops and OPEC (or whoever) cannot simply drop their prices to regular levels and expect sales to be the same. Also, long term demand for oil might never recover, since people will have invented new technologies for alternative energy.

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smandal
2008-04-26 02:54 pm UTC (link)

* While I agree that there would have been less prosperity without all the cheap oil, I hadn't thought of the non-linear effect wherein this reduction of prosperity would have prevented the development of clean tech. The only counterargument I can think of is that much of Europe has done well with much higher gasoline prices than the US throughout the 20th century by developing public transportation (again, more densely populated than the US).

* OPEC definitely played hardball in 1973 and there was another crisis in 1979. This prompted offshore drilling, but developing these reserves took a while; Russia has only marketed its oil internationally since the USSR opened up.

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selfishgene
2008-04-24 06:56 pm UTC (link)

Warren Meyer has some interesting views on this :
But some scientists do come up with catastrophic warming forecasts. They do so by assuming that our Earth's climate is dominated by positive feedbacks that multiply the initial warming from CO2 by a factor of three, four, five or more. This is a key point -- the catastrophe does not come from the science of greenhouse gases, but from separate hypotheses that the earth's climate is dominated by positive feedback. This is why saying that greenhouse gas theory is "settled" is irrelevant to the argument about catastrophic forecasts. Because these positive feedbacks are NOT settled science.
See also A Layman's Guide to Man-Made Global Warming

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smandal
2008-04-25 03:11 am UTC (link)

There are various arguments as to what feedback processes to include in models, and these choices will effect the CO2 climate sensitivity, and thereby the spread of temperatures predicted in X number of years under a given CO2 emission scenario. More here.

However, if the sensitivity is low, it also means that it will take longer to return to 20th century conditions. This means that carbon emissions must be cut drastically by 2100 to stabilize the climate, just as in the high sensitivity scenario. More here.

What about short term impacts on coastline and agriculture? A summary,

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selfishgene
2008-04-25 05:44 pm UTC (link)

'it will take longer to return to 20th century conditions' - is this some sort of benchmark of perfection? Shouldn't we return to the conditions of Caesar's time instead? I think a lot of scientists are hung up on the status quo of 1957 (IGY) or thereabouts. They think any deviation from the observed natural world of that time is some kind of disaster or decline. There is no valid basis for this. Earth's climate has fluctuated continually in the past.
I agree that if some civilization breaking disaster is being caused by GW, there may be grounds for some counter action. But :
1. I don't think it has been shown a danger of that magnitude exists.
2. It's not clear all the proposed measures make any sense. Ethanol has already become a social and environmental disaster. Libertarians warned of this years ago, but environmentalists are only now realizing it's a mess.
3. It is clear that people who hated SUVs etc. previously, have latched onto GW as a pretext for implementing their Luddite ideology. That is no proof of error but it is a good reason for extreme skepticism.
4. Putting a bunch of left wing fanatics in charge of determining what economic activities are safe, will probably cause a worse disaster than global warming. If the enviro lobby is given power to forestall GW, who will stop them implementing other measures unrelated to GW?

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smandal
2008-04-25 06:11 pm UTC (link)

First, I must correct an error or mine (or be more clear): the paper I link asks the question, for various CO2 sensitivities, how drastically do we have to cut CO2 emissions by 2100 so that the temperature warms stabilizes at 2 deg C by 2150?

The policy question is how much absolute warming can we tolerate, and how fast? From what I've read (one link in previous comment) 1 deg C in the next few decades could devastate populations relying on subsistence farming. They don't have efficient transportation, industrialized agriculture, and hardly any white-collar industry. The US and Europe can probably adapt because they have these things, minus a bit of shoreline.

Of course, if there is significant global heating, that could destroy agriculture everywhere by creating arid conditions. This is the long-term danger with continued warming -- I don't think 6 billion people can be fed by hydroponics even by 2150. And many deg C of warming would eat up quite a bit of shoreline in a short span of time.

As for how to deal with it, I share you skepticism of gov'ts. On one hand, they lack discipline (e.g., the failure of carbon caps in Europe) and on the other they reflect hysteria in the population. Moreover, India, China and Russia won't give a crap, even if they accept the predictions -- they want to increase their prosperity no matter the carbon, and it's tough to blame them.

The solution will be technological, which is why I think a carbon tax is a good idea. Moreover, clean tech like nuclear and fuel cells are worth developing if for no other reason than to get the hell out of the Middle East. (Coal-fired plants could persist under this scenario, as the US has among the largest coal reserves.)

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	selfishgene 2008-04-25 08:16 pm UTC (link)
	Placing absurd and arbitrary safety requirements on nuclear power may be the worst public policy decision since WW2. The level of danger is minimal by any reasonable standard. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	smandal 2008-04-26 04:57 am UTC (link)
	I agree completely -- coal burning may have caused more cancer deaths to this point! Coal contains low concentrations of radioactive heavy metals; we burn vast amounts of coal, so these metals are released into the atmosphere in significant amount. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	smandal 2008-04-26 04:57 am UTC (link)
	Sorry, correct link. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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