Uh-Oh…Chicken Little Speaks
Global warming approaching point of no return, warns leading climate expert.
Money quote…
“Climate change is for real. We have just a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a moment to lose.”
Guess we should stop using our heaters now.
Dr Rajendra Pachauri’s solution…
Question: The Kyoto Protocol alone will not be enough to stabilize the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere. What do you think?
Answer:That’s correct. The Kyoto Protocol is a step in the right direction because, for the first time, a large number of countries have decided to take collective action in this regard. However, for all these years we have been focusing on this treaty, without paying attention to the long-term goal: the stabilization of atmospheric GHG concentration. Even if we succeeded in stabilizing emissions within 20 or 25 years, climate change would persist for a century. Realizing something today is simply not enough.
So even if the Kyoto Protocol were to take effect today (with all of the economic impacts that it would create), it would still not be enough…damn! We’re fucked!
Sounds suspiciously like these statements from the 1970’s…
“Suppose we assume, as did weather scientists interviewed by writer Nigel Calder, that the chances of continued cooling and of an Ice Age dawning within a century are one in ten, odds likened by one scientist to Russian roulette. The odds are in our favor, but consider the stakes being wagered: if the cooling continues, we can reasonably calculate that potentially two billion people could starve to death or die of other symptoms of chronic malnutrition by the year 2050. Potentially, we could all die if global famines and embargos on carce resources, both caused by the cooling, lead to a world war. We simply cannot afford to gamble against this possibility by ignoring it. We cannot risk inaction. Those scientists who say we should ignore the evidence and the theories suggesting Earth is entering a period of climaticinstability are acting irresponsibly. The indications that our climate can soon change for the worse are too strong to be reasonably ignored.” —Lowell Ponte in “The Coolingâ€, 1976
“In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.†—Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day 1970
“The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population.†—Reid Bryson, “Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Manâ€, 1971
Newsweek
April 28, 1975The Cooling World
There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now…
…Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve…
The worry then was the irreversible global cooling disaster. At least we have it right now. *cough*
Update: More environmental goblee-gook can be found at P.S.Babcock’s masterful sight Ask Edgeworth. Don’t forget to read the comments, Chris Reicher, as usual, writes more in comments of others people’s blogs then in his own, what a log-linearization jock .
Update: Humans ‘may have saved world from ice age’
The findings from a team of American climate experts suggest that were it not for greenhouse gases produced by humans, the world would be well on the way to a frozen Armageddon.
on January 23rd, 2005 at 10:24 pm
Sorry, I’ve been spending all weekend riding my bike and log-linearizing. Really. I’ve collected those bits and pieces, cleaned them up, and put them together as posts. I’ll have some original material in the next few days, mostly about TAing, bike riding, and maybe macro.
on January 24th, 2005 at 5:55 am
So we won th gamble once, does this imply that we will win it this time too ?
on January 24th, 2005 at 9:30 am
Not necessarily. But it’s nice to know what the game even is. I see some strong parallels between this sort of thing and macro policy. You’d probably be aware that macro models tend to be pretty bad about predicting the effects of policy shocks or TFP shocks. See the experience of the 1970s in the US and, to a lesser extent, Germany. Same thing with climate models. Are we going to throttle development in order to reduce the surface temperature of the planet by 0.1 degree celsius (the failed Kyoto goal)? It just isn’t worth it. The objective function is, after all, some sort of human welfare.
For the record, I DO favor fairly high pollution taxes for a variety of standard efficiency reasons and because it’s a nondistortionary source of gov’t revenue. But nobody ever talks about taxing pollution this way. Global warming alarmists don’t do the cause of environmental protection any good by panicking over every little weather event. Did it rain last week? Global warming. Is it nice outside today? Global warming. Nobody believed the boy who cried wolf even when the wolf finally came. Environmentalists would advocate pollution taxes, not SUV fuel standards or even price controls on energy, if they wanted people to conserve.
I find this to be terribly sad. If they wanted to be constructive, environmentalists would embrace an agenda of efficiency. They wouldn’t fear nuclear power so much. They’d advocate the market pricing of water (a big issue here in California). They’d ditch most fuel-efficiency regulations in favor of a pollution tax. They’d kill mosquitoes in Sri Lanka to avoid the spread of malaria. Instead, they just want to micromanage people’s lives. No nukes. Rationing for water. Rationing for electricity. No regulatory simplification. No DDT. No. No. No.
This is all too bad because there should be a role for environmentalists in reminding us about the externalities that we inflict upon others, and that we should take these things seriously. But they confuse the existence of anthropogenic warming for magnitude, don’t measure the costs and benefits of these changes, and try to scare people in order to control them. Actual climatologists probably do much better work than this–heck, as someone who works with noisy data in a very uncertain modelling environment, I respect the problems that they face. We just never hear about it outside of climatology.
Does anyone have a good reference where I can bone up on this sort of stuff?
on January 24th, 2005 at 10:26 am
Sorry, I don’t know precise references.
However just one thing regarding efficiency, as a reaction to the Kyoto protocol, the EU (and I think at some point on a world-wide scale) is introducing an Emissions trading scheme. Isn’t that pretty much exactly what you are asking for?
on January 24th, 2005 at 5:45 pm
Well, governments still have to pick an efficient level of emissions. But that’s one of the better ways to go about this sort of thing. It would have to be truly global in reach, however, and balance long-run costs and benefits. Kyoto didn’t really do much in either of these regards.
But I agree with you in principle.
on January 24th, 2005 at 5:58 pm
I believe global warming is occurring (and for arguments sake, I will grant the premise that man is the cause); but draconian measures, such as Kyoto, that have little to offer in the form of results and cause multitudes of negative economic outcomes seem to be a terrible way to approach the problem. The optimal amount of pollution in the world is NOT zero, but what is it? Anyone that gives an exact amount is selling you something - you should grab your wallet and run as fast as possible in the opposite direction. Solutions such as emissions trading schemes seem more effective way to approach the problem; I am open to other creative solutions.
on January 27th, 2005 at 9:11 pm
When the World Was Going to End in Ice
Chris Silvey has collected a cento of nostalgic-inducing quotes about the environmental dread of the 1970’s, viz., the coming Ice Age. For example, there was this application of the Precautionary Principle in a book entitled The Cooling, a best seller
on October 11th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Think about this !
Sent : Wednesday, August 3, 2005 12:20 PM
To : dave3001@hotmail.com
Subject : paper!!!
| | | Inbox
Blinded by Progress
By Dave Latoche
Dave3001@hotmail.com
With the ongoing fixation on carbon dioxide being the cause of “possible global warming,” I think we may be “fiddling while Rome burns.” With all the talk of the dangerous build-up of CO2, nary a word is mentioned of “waste heat,” of which every BTU of energy that we consume becomes “waste heat.” The laws of thermodynamics say this is so, and cannot be rescinded. Eons ago, individual people discovered that fire was a source of power. The idea spread and eventually made modern civilization possible. In the more modern era, engineering as a discipline, already rooted, now flourished. But at some point, an assumption for the sake of convenience was made. This assumption was that the surroundings are an infinite heat sink. Bear in mind that for the purpose of designing, for example internal combustion engines, etc, then this assumption is perfectly valid, for a designer generally focuses only on the design of his or her particular project and not on any larger implication. The problem is that this early assumption, meant only for the purpose of designing various things that used energy, gradually grew into an assertation of fact about the larger world; a completely unquestionable tenant of modern engineering in relationship to the environment of the globe. Maybe it’s time to re-examine that assumption.
While the effect of large cities on the local climate is recognized, perhaps we should take a more inclusive all encompassing view of our energy usage. We are using gargantuan quantities of energy from oil, coal, gas, etc. all around the globe. A great deal of these fossil fuels is converted to electricity at huge generating plants. During the conversion stage, much of the heat energy is given off to the atmosphere either through the chimney along with the flue gases, or dissipated through cooling towers, or discharged as warm water into a nearby river. Also combustion releases water vapor, which has a greater “green house effect than carbon dioxide.” Further more, once the energy of combustion is converted to electricity, the trail of waste heat continues. As the electricity is transmitted, heat is given off along the transmission lines and at the transformers. When the electricity is converted into light energy or mechanical motion, most of this energy ultimately ends up as heat again. Although most of this heat loss is not noticeable, it is measurable, and added up. The amounts are very great indeed.
We have many millions of internal combustion driven vehicles around the world. They convert the energy given off by combustion into motion. Again, the total amounts of energy that these vehicles consume and give off as waste heat is staggering. These automobiles, trucks, trains, boats, and airplanes lose a good portion of the heat of combustion through their exhaust and then more again through their cooling systems. All engines need a cooling system: with land vehicles the cooling system gives off its heat to the air. With ships, that cooling system gives off its heat to the rivers and oceans upon which they travel. The amount of heat given off into the rivers and oceans by the giant barges, tankers, and military vessels would be considerable. Also energy of motion is lost through friction with the medium through which they travel, whether that is the tires against the road, the air against the surface of the vehicle, or the water against the surface of the boat.
The fact that heat losses from the transmission of electricity and from vehicles is spread out over a wider area and not usually noticeable or easily measurable, does not make it insignificant. In total, the amounts are very large.
All of our dwelling places, large and small, over large portions of the globe, must be heated. If they are heated with fossil fuels, a portion of this heat goes into the atmosphere through the flue gases and the rest is merely delayed in the dwelling place. All this heat is dissipated to the surrounds through the walls, sooner or later, depending upon how well the place is insulated. If the dwelling is heated by electric resistance heat, the trail of heat lose begins at the generating plant and ends at the dwelling, with every BTU released into our environment.
All of societies mechanized activities including travel and industrial processes give off a certain amount of heat. The sum of all this waste heat forms a more or less constant baseline which is added to the Earth’s solar gain, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The magnitude of this baseline while large is growing ever larger.
Besides the magnitude of the heat that we are releasing into the biosphere perhaps there are also synergistic effects that come into play. Synergy can be defined as the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects. For example we will commonly go into an area, raze the trees and bulldoze the greenery, which both had previously had a cooling effect, and then build blacktopped parking lots and roads and erect black-roofed buildings. Often we will do this in parts of the world that are already very hot. In addition we will then add internal combustion engines, fossil fueled power plants, etc. to the locale. It might be reasonable to assume that there would be a net warming effect from those changes. Perhaps this warming effect extends further and perhaps is greater than the sum of its components.
Not only do we add heat to the environment at all times due to travel, trade, and industry but we also exert feedback into the natural environment due to residential and business heating and cooling needs. During the “heating season” man’s consumption of all types of fuel and electricity increases in direct proportion to how cold the outside environment is. By necessity, the colder the weather, the more energy we infuse into our homes and businesses, and of course this all leaks “out.” Now an ever-increasing amount of electricity consumption is used for cooling both for air conditioning homes and businesses and to run the ever-increasing number of food and beverage coolers. These cooling processes consume more energy in direct proportion to how high the outside temperature is. By increasing the generation of electricity we also infuse even more energy into the surroundings as it gets hotter outside. Just to repeat, we are adding a positive baseline of heat to the environment at all times, which alone would tend to raise peak temperatures and also raise low temperatures from the previous average. Then again we are adding feedback to the environment for the colder it gets, the more heat we release and the hotter it gets the more heat we release. This process would also tend to raise peak temperatures and low temperatures as well.
And what effect do the vast military, commercial, and pleasure craft navies of the worlds nations have on the ocean temperature or on just the surface temperature. It is said that various types of ships have their own unique heat signatures, making them readily identifiable by infrared imaging via satellite. For all the waste heat of the engines of gigantic battleships, cargo ships, tankers, and cruise liners is released into the surface of the ocean as they travel. Furthermore, ships that require cooling of product or people would use cooling methods that would result in the release of even more heat into the oceans. Although the oceans are vast, is it not possible that there is some effect, especially where marine traffic is large and/or where surface temperatures are already warm. Warm water tends to stay on the surface, and stay warm especially during times of little wave action and when days and nights are warm. Is it not possible that synergistic effects would be seen on sections of the world’s oceans?
There is theory of chaotic behavior, which states that the behavior of very complex systems can be perturbed by relatively small changes from within or outside the system. For instance, supposedly the beat of a butterfly’s wings in South Africa could trigger a blizzard in the Arctic. The point is that chaotic behavior is unpredictable. The weather is widely regarded as a chaotic system and we are making more than small changes to the “outside” world.
Some mental images maybe be appropriate to try to comprehend the scale of the changes that mankind is causing. If the early image of mankind was of scattered bands of people crouched around camp fires, then we have reached a point where a far different scene can be imagined.
If we were naturally endowed with sensitive infrared vision the modern world would be an eye-opening experience. It may help to conceptualize this by imagining this in our local area, perhaps as we drive to work. Picture every source of energy consumption as an open fire. In regards to the laws of thermodynamics it matters not that the energy conversion is contained within a car engine, a home heating system, or an electrical generating plant. It matters not that the conversion from potential energy to kinetic takes place in an open fire or within any of our numerous power devices. All of that heat is sooner or later released to the great outdoors.
Now on this drive to work we would see vehicles of every size, each represented by a fire within, some smaller and some truly large. A busy highway would appear as a continuous stream of fire, for we are burning streams and rivers of oil. A power plant would appear as a gigantic bonfire. Buildings of every sort would glow with fires within.
Meanwhile the scientific debate appears to regard all of this heat as negligible. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t but it does seem worth mentioning when the numbers have become so large! Figures vary but one source puts the conservative total yearly solar input at 7.577×1020 BTUs or 757,000 quads1. Another source puts man’s total energy consumption for 2004 at 412 quads2. Thus man’s total yearly energy consumption seems to be 1/1000 of the total yearly solar gain. We find in the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia3, that the total solar energy reaching Earth is 1.74×1017 watts, and that the tidal energy amounts to 3×1012 watts. The same source puts mankind’s waste heat from fossil fuel consumption at 1.3×1012 watts. Thus it seems that mankind’s waste heat from fossil fuel consumption alone represents 4 times the power of the world’s tides.
To me these are huge numbers and I find it incredible that mankind’s consumption of energy represents more power than the power of the tides (if the figures are truly accurate). Then again, perhaps it is the where and the when of our heat releases, synergistic effects and feedback that are bigger factors than simply the magnitude of our waste heat. I am not a climatologist but have some science background and read a lot. I also work a job in which I directly experience the heat energy that we are releasing into the environment. If this waste heat has become a factor in our weather, it doesn’t help to ignore the issue.
Sources
1. Solar Radiation Budget. Bonnet, Bernard Yves, http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/3621/SOLAR.HTM
2. International Energy Outlook 2005 – Highlights. U.S. Government, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/
3. Earth’s Energy Budget. Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth’s_energy_budget
Blinded By Progress
By Dave Latoche
Dave3001@hotmail.com
With the ongoing fixation on carbon dioxide being the cause of “possible global warming,” I think we may be “fiddling while Rome burns.” With all the talk of the dangerous