In a well-written piece for the April, 2007 issue of The Atlantic, Gregg Easterbrook looks at possible changes in the global distribution of money and power that Global Warming might bring.
For example, general warming will tend to make currently the currently frigid high latitudes (think Siberia and northern Canada) more temperate. Unfreezing the Siberian tundra might make available the largest chunk of pristine soil since the “discovery” of North America (an analogy that might make Canada’s northern native peoples think…). Russia wins big on this one.
A major impact would be that the rich (the industrial west owns most of the high-latitude land on the globe) get richer, reversing a trend toward more global economic equity. A second impact would be the mass migration of economic refugees northward.
Water impacts are harder to predict, but significant changes to the Gulf Stream in the north Atlantic might plunge Europe into a prolonged depression that could have disastrous effects on the global economy at large. Melting of the Arctic Ice Cap could finally make the fabled “Northwest Passage” a reality, shifting the locus of shipping centers from south to north.
Easterbrook’s conclusions are that we need to enact laws/regulations that incent the private markets to find and implement solutions, that the cost of preventing some of these potential problems is much, much less that the cost of fixing them later, and finally, for us Americans, the current world order has us at the top of the heap; therefore, any significant changes to that order are bound to be bad for us.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Gore making a difference
The success of Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” gets a lot of credit in the US press for helping to elevate public awareness of, and concern for, the problem of global warming. I haven’t seen any actual data on this, but the fact that the movie is the third-highest grossing documentary of all time is pretty good supportive evidence.
More evidence comes from Australia: I subscribe to Google Alerts for “Global Warming” and “Climate Change.” That means that I get a daily email with a list of every news article on either subject that Google can find. In early September, Al Gore was in Australia for the opening of his movie, and engaged the government there (which is very Bush-like in its approach) in a public debate about global warming. Australia gets a couple of mentions in his movie, one because Australia is the only industrialized nation besides us that refused to sign the Kyoto agreement, and another because Australia figures to be a major loser (increasing drought and wildfires, the death of the Great Barrier Reef) if the planet keeps heating up.
Not surprisingly, during the time of Gore’s visit the number of news citations on global warming and climate change with an Australian dateline shot up dramatically. What's amazing is that Australian news coverage of global warming has stayed high. Yesterday, a third of the global coverage on the issue emanated from Down Under.
I’d say Al Gore is making not just a splash, but a difference.
More evidence comes from Australia: I subscribe to Google Alerts for “Global Warming” and “Climate Change.” That means that I get a daily email with a list of every news article on either subject that Google can find. In early September, Al Gore was in Australia for the opening of his movie, and engaged the government there (which is very Bush-like in its approach) in a public debate about global warming. Australia gets a couple of mentions in his movie, one because Australia is the only industrialized nation besides us that refused to sign the Kyoto agreement, and another because Australia figures to be a major loser (increasing drought and wildfires, the death of the Great Barrier Reef) if the planet keeps heating up.
Not surprisingly, during the time of Gore’s visit the number of news citations on global warming and climate change with an Australian dateline shot up dramatically. What's amazing is that Australian news coverage of global warming has stayed high. Yesterday, a third of the global coverage on the issue emanated from Down Under.
I’d say Al Gore is making not just a splash, but a difference.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Global Warming is not coming soon...
It’s here. That’s the message that needs to get out. It’s here right now.
Here are a couple of reminders from the news today:
Most worrisome, of course, is that we’re seeing the evidence today – and we’re already locked into several decades of further warming even if we immediately stop pumping CO2 and methane into the atmosphere.
Where is Chicken Little when you need him?
Here are a couple of reminders from the news today:
- Current temperature readings in the Alps show that they are the warmest they’ve been in at least 1200 years. The warming trend began in the 1980s, about the same time that the hockey stick graph of global temperatures shot upwards.
- We know the oceans are warming, and now we have hard evidence of what one of the consequences will be. A study published in Nature provides a direct link between warmer water temperatures and the shrinking of phytoplankton production – a double whammy since they are both the base of the ocean’s food web and a major carbon sink.
Most worrisome, of course, is that we’re seeing the evidence today – and we’re already locked into several decades of further warming even if we immediately stop pumping CO2 and methane into the atmosphere.
Where is Chicken Little when you need him?
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
We have met the enemy...
“When the subject is global warming, the villain is usually the United States.”
This was the lead sentence in an article in the Economist this week. The Economist, for those who don’t know, is a highly regarded weekly news magazine published in England. Sort of like Time or Newsweek, but with brains. And the courage to call it like it is.
Notice that is was the lead sentence in an article. Not an opinion piece. As far as the world is concerned, our shameless refusal to own up to our massive contributions to global warming (25% of the world’s CO2 output, for example) is a fact, not an opinion. The greatest crisis facing the planet, and our government has its collective head in the sand.
This was the lead sentence in an article in the Economist this week. The Economist, for those who don’t know, is a highly regarded weekly news magazine published in England. Sort of like Time or Newsweek, but with brains. And the courage to call it like it is.
Notice that is was the lead sentence in an article. Not an opinion piece. As far as the world is concerned, our shameless refusal to own up to our massive contributions to global warming (25% of the world’s CO2 output, for example) is a fact, not an opinion. The greatest crisis facing the planet, and our government has its collective head in the sand.
Monday, December 4, 2006
It's never simple
Just when you thought it was safe to bet on hydropower for clean energy, there’s new evidence that the reservoirs created behind dams in tropical countries may emit as much – or more – greenhouse gasses than their fossil-fuel counterparts.
In a report in the September 30th issue of Nature, Jim Giles reports on a growing body of research that shows that both carbon dioxide and methane are emitted in large quantities from the water trapped behind, and flowing from, dams in tropical countries. Studies at one site in particular, the Balbina Dam in Brazil, have concluded that the environment would in fact have been better off if they’d built a conventional fossil fuel plant instead.
The problem is organic matter in the reservoir behind the dam: plants submerged as the reservoir is formed and plant matter that gets washed in and trapped later. As the organic matter decays – rapidly in those warm tropical waters – carbon dioxide and methane are produced. There is still disagreement on a formula for calculating how much of these gases are released, and by what mechanism: more research is definitely needed, and urgently.
But the evidence we do have is enough that future construction of hydroelectric facilities in tropical countries needs to be approached with caution. Giles notes that the Clean Development Mechanism, which allows developed nations to fund clean-energy projects in developing countries as a way to earn carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol, may need to be revised as well.
Even more scary, though, is that greenhouse emissions from tropical dams are not included in current climate models, and projections using existing evidence mean we are pumping around 20% more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere than we thought, bringing the day of reckoning that much closer.
In a report in the September 30th issue of Nature, Jim Giles reports on a growing body of research that shows that both carbon dioxide and methane are emitted in large quantities from the water trapped behind, and flowing from, dams in tropical countries. Studies at one site in particular, the Balbina Dam in Brazil, have concluded that the environment would in fact have been better off if they’d built a conventional fossil fuel plant instead.
The problem is organic matter in the reservoir behind the dam: plants submerged as the reservoir is formed and plant matter that gets washed in and trapped later. As the organic matter decays – rapidly in those warm tropical waters – carbon dioxide and methane are produced. There is still disagreement on a formula for calculating how much of these gases are released, and by what mechanism: more research is definitely needed, and urgently.
But the evidence we do have is enough that future construction of hydroelectric facilities in tropical countries needs to be approached with caution. Giles notes that the Clean Development Mechanism, which allows developed nations to fund clean-energy projects in developing countries as a way to earn carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol, may need to be revised as well.
Even more scary, though, is that greenhouse emissions from tropical dams are not included in current climate models, and projections using existing evidence mean we are pumping around 20% more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere than we thought, bringing the day of reckoning that much closer.
Friday, December 1, 2006
Bush change of heart?
There are increasing hints in Washington that Bush is finally going to change his stance on CO2 emissions and possibly push for some kind of regulatory response to global warming. Nope – NOT because of the midterm elections – although I’m sure they may provide him some political cover for his “change of heart.” He’s changing his stance because Big Oil is changing theirs.
What? Big Oil is now FOR regulating CO2 emissions at the federal level? Well, yes and no. Of course they’d rather have no regulation at all, but if they must…. And why must they? Here’s where change is happening from the bottom up.
Turns out that the voting public is by and large (70%) convinced that global warming is a serious problem and are worried about the U.S.’s lack of action on that front. Because of this lack of action from the politicos in Washington, politicians at the state and even local level have responded to increasing pressures from the voting public and instituted measures to regulate CO2 emissions in their jurisdiction. When Republican Governor Schwartzenegger of California signed a major piece of CO2 emission legislation, Big Oil could see the handwriting on the wall.
In effect, the voters did an end run around the oil companies’ highly successful Washington lobbying efforts. Bravo for us!
These state-sponsored efforts create huge headaches for the big oil companies in two ways:
1. They would have to wage their head-in-the-sand battle against global warming measures on 50 fronts instead of one – expensive and difficult. Better to have the regulations come from Washington, where they can concentrate their efforts and lobbying funds.
2. Washington politicians are by definition less connected to the will of the people, the goings-on there are less transparent, and therefore it’s easier to secretly buy influence and water down regulations at the national level than at the state and local level.
Big Oil is agreeing to regulation so that they can return the regulatory efforts to Washington where they can have more control over it. Simple as that. Sure they may have to make a concession or two, but they’re experts at crafting legislation that looks like it’s accomplishing a lot but actually requires very little.
So, although it looks like Bush is having a change of heart on global warming, don’t you believe it. His heart still belongs to Big Oil. And where Big Oil leads, George will follow.
What? Big Oil is now FOR regulating CO2 emissions at the federal level? Well, yes and no. Of course they’d rather have no regulation at all, but if they must…. And why must they? Here’s where change is happening from the bottom up.
Turns out that the voting public is by and large (70%) convinced that global warming is a serious problem and are worried about the U.S.’s lack of action on that front. Because of this lack of action from the politicos in Washington, politicians at the state and even local level have responded to increasing pressures from the voting public and instituted measures to regulate CO2 emissions in their jurisdiction. When Republican Governor Schwartzenegger of California signed a major piece of CO2 emission legislation, Big Oil could see the handwriting on the wall.
In effect, the voters did an end run around the oil companies’ highly successful Washington lobbying efforts. Bravo for us!
These state-sponsored efforts create huge headaches for the big oil companies in two ways:
1. They would have to wage their head-in-the-sand battle against global warming measures on 50 fronts instead of one – expensive and difficult. Better to have the regulations come from Washington, where they can concentrate their efforts and lobbying funds.
2. Washington politicians are by definition less connected to the will of the people, the goings-on there are less transparent, and therefore it’s easier to secretly buy influence and water down regulations at the national level than at the state and local level.
Big Oil is agreeing to regulation so that they can return the regulatory efforts to Washington where they can have more control over it. Simple as that. Sure they may have to make a concession or two, but they’re experts at crafting legislation that looks like it’s accomplishing a lot but actually requires very little.
So, although it looks like Bush is having a change of heart on global warming, don’t you believe it. His heart still belongs to Big Oil. And where Big Oil leads, George will follow.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Double whammy: acceleration and feedback
The global warming naysayers always accuse the scientific community of exaggerating the dangers posed by global warming. In fact, the opposite is true. What the naysayers don’t get is that the scientific projections are, by their nature, almost always conservative. Why? Because they tend to extrapolate past history linearly into the future. What’s wrong with that? Two things: acceleration and feedback.
Acceleration: The problem with extrapolating past CO2 emissions trends into the future is that the increases aren’t linear – they’re accelerating. New data presented by the Global Carbon Project (a consortium of 200 scientists worldwide) at an Earth science conference in Beijing earlier this month shows that global carbon emissions are now growing at a 3.2% per year clip. The average rate of growth as recently as the 1990s was 0.8%. That means that our CO2 production rate has quadrupled from one decade to the next – and we’re only halfway through this one. That also means that we’re already way beyond the IPCC projections that the naysayers were throwing so much heat at in 2001.
It’s not just the carbon, either. Sea-level is now rising at a rate that’s at the upper end of the IPCC projections of just five years ago, and that rate is also accelerating.
In an earlier post (September 12th) I described a plan put forth by two scientists for solving the carbon problem using existing technologies. They based their plan on the fact that we were pumping 7 billons tons of carbon into the atmosphere a year. Now we’re pumping 9 billion tons a year into the atmosphere. That’s almost a 30% increase in just a few years.
Feedback: One feedback loop that has gotten a fair amount of press before occurs in the polar regions: as more ice melts, less sunlight is reflected back into space and therefore more is absorbed into the ocean, heating it up, which melts even more ice, which means more sunlight is absorbed into the ocean, and so on and so on. Because of this feedback loop, many scientists believe we may have already passed the point of no return on Arctic sea ice – and when it’s gone, we don’t know if it will ever come back.
A second worrisome feedback loop has come to light more recently: as the permafrost in the northern tundra melts, less sunlight is reflected back from these regions as well, meaning the ground absorbs more sunlight, heating it up, causing more permafrost to melt, and the spiral continues. The big problem here is that there is a HUGE amount of methane trapped under the permafrost, and as the permafrost melts that methane escapes into the atmosphere. Recent measurements in Russia indicate that the rate of methane emission is accelerating as well. Add to this the fact that methane is 20 times more potent that CO2 as a greenhouse gas, so releasing more methane heats up the atmosphere even faster, which means ice and permafrost will melt even faster, releasing methane at an accelerating rate…..you get the idea.
We’re just starting to get a handle on the nature and size of these feedback mechanisms – which means they aren’t represented in the climate models yet. Which means that the climate models, if anything, are underestimating the severity, and urgency, of the global warming problem.
Acceleration: The problem with extrapolating past CO2 emissions trends into the future is that the increases aren’t linear – they’re accelerating. New data presented by the Global Carbon Project (a consortium of 200 scientists worldwide) at an Earth science conference in Beijing earlier this month shows that global carbon emissions are now growing at a 3.2% per year clip. The average rate of growth as recently as the 1990s was 0.8%. That means that our CO2 production rate has quadrupled from one decade to the next – and we’re only halfway through this one. That also means that we’re already way beyond the IPCC projections that the naysayers were throwing so much heat at in 2001.
It’s not just the carbon, either. Sea-level is now rising at a rate that’s at the upper end of the IPCC projections of just five years ago, and that rate is also accelerating.
In an earlier post (September 12th) I described a plan put forth by two scientists for solving the carbon problem using existing technologies. They based their plan on the fact that we were pumping 7 billons tons of carbon into the atmosphere a year. Now we’re pumping 9 billion tons a year into the atmosphere. That’s almost a 30% increase in just a few years.
Feedback: One feedback loop that has gotten a fair amount of press before occurs in the polar regions: as more ice melts, less sunlight is reflected back into space and therefore more is absorbed into the ocean, heating it up, which melts even more ice, which means more sunlight is absorbed into the ocean, and so on and so on. Because of this feedback loop, many scientists believe we may have already passed the point of no return on Arctic sea ice – and when it’s gone, we don’t know if it will ever come back.
A second worrisome feedback loop has come to light more recently: as the permafrost in the northern tundra melts, less sunlight is reflected back from these regions as well, meaning the ground absorbs more sunlight, heating it up, causing more permafrost to melt, and the spiral continues. The big problem here is that there is a HUGE amount of methane trapped under the permafrost, and as the permafrost melts that methane escapes into the atmosphere. Recent measurements in Russia indicate that the rate of methane emission is accelerating as well. Add to this the fact that methane is 20 times more potent that CO2 as a greenhouse gas, so releasing more methane heats up the atmosphere even faster, which means ice and permafrost will melt even faster, releasing methane at an accelerating rate…..you get the idea.
We’re just starting to get a handle on the nature and size of these feedback mechanisms – which means they aren’t represented in the climate models yet. Which means that the climate models, if anything, are underestimating the severity, and urgency, of the global warming problem.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)