The Climate of Man

Point taken, but all I had said was that the increased warming in cold places will happen more often than you would predict by a coin toss, not that it will always happen.


The part about the "historic low" is new to me, and contradicts the peer reviewed sources I have read so far. Can you give me a reference for that?

Thomas - certainly. How far back do you want to go - data on atmospheric composition of our planet are available for the last 4.5 billion years!

PS am in France right now so may not revert for a couple of days, but atmospheric composition is available from the NASA and JPL sites among many others.

As to the poster who worried about drought in the mid-West:

"The findings may be representative of past weather conditions throughout the northern Great Plains, a mixed-grass prairie region now characterized by intensive agricultural grazing. The area includes the Dakotas, eastern Montana and Wyoming, western Minnesota, and the adjacent Canadian areas of southern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. "
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0614_050614_drought.html

We're the ones who cut off the grass, true, but more CO2 in the atmosphere (causing more humidity - that's why it's called "greenhouse gas", remember?) would bring back the long grass our ancestors saw before the days of Lewis and Clark.

Quick note to Thomas: the "historic low" is in the series starting after oxygen appeared in the atmosphere in large quantities. It's a toxic gas (just look at its effects on iron!) but without it mammals wouldn't have developed. The time series to be examined is therefore in the order of a few tens of millions of years, not the entire 4.5 billion; I regret the omission of this relevant factor in my earlier post.

Well, HofT,

given that CO2 levels were lower in the 19th than in the 20th and the 21st, it doesn't seem to matter how far back into the past you look. We are not at a historic low now, even if CO2 concentrations were much higher than today than billion years ago. But your general point about high concentrations in the far past is well taken. Almost all life forms that have ever existed are made of carbon that used to be in the atmosphere, and got extracted from it by photosynthesis. So even if we burn all fossil fuels, the worst we can do is bring CO2 concentration back to the level before photosynthesis. If that CO2 level were to start a dynamic turning Earth into Venus, as one of Elisabeth Kolbert's scientists is suggesting, it would have already done so 3 billion years ago -- which is strong geological evidence against the catastrophic scenario.

Thomas - with respect, burning fossil fuels also involves WHAT and HOW.

The Chinese coal-burning power plants poison the Pacific (their own land too, but I don't care since they don't seem to) with mercury and other heavy metals. These are the true danger, not the CO2.

And for those who don't know, the worst polluters (heavy metals and raw sewage poured into the common water supply, runoff in the oceans) on earth are the 2 countries EXCLUDED from the Kyoto CO2 joke, i.e. China and India!

In terms of how it impacts the environment in general, I agree. But in terms of global warming, which is what this thread is about, a CO2 molecule is a CO2 molecule is a CO2 molecule. And if some past CO2 concentration did not lead to the evaporation of the oceans 4 billion years ago, it's a safe bet that it won't in 1000 years either. The physics of the Greenhouse effect haven't changed since then.

Thomas & Friends (wait, that sounds like a toy my daughter plays with quite often . . . ) -- Just wanted to let you know I have been mulling over your posts and want to look back at the articles again. I have out of town guests which is cutting into my computer time -- how inconsiderate.

Apropos of the malthusian line, though -- my sense (not particularly well informed as it may be) is that Malthus did not have the national academies of sciences of the 11 industrialized countries on board. Same with the Population Bomb people. These were a few folks with an offbeat message. Why are each and every one of these national academies convinced and willing to urge their national governments to act promptly rather than wait for more science if it is all open to so much question?

BTW I assume we are not using the Cato Institute being convinced as the burden of proof here -- but let me know if I'm wrong!

Perhaps you want to your library and check the relevant 19th century and 1970s literature for yourself. They did have similarly prestigious backup, at least for moderate versions of their predictions (which proved just as false). In any case, they were much, much more than "a few folks with an offbeat message". I would start with Julian Simon: The Ultimate Resource. Princeton University Press (1980). Simon, arguing for similar positions as I do here, offers a broad range of references to the publications of his opponents, as well as some historical context.


I wouldn't cite their agreement with a point as necessary for proving it true. But I would cite them as a sufficient condition for proving it -- especially if their spokesman is a professional climatologist, and the point in question is coming from their political opponents. This is just what I did in my last post.

Narrow-mindedness
I am new to this discussion. I found Elizabeth Kolbert's articles to be deeply thought-provoking. They deserve to be widely read and debated.

Thomas has made many assertions in this discussion which are misguided at best, absurd at worst.

A case in point: his stated belief that water shortages resulting from climate change can be made up with relatively little cost or effort by means of salt-water "desalinization" (sp.). Thomas states:

". . . with current technology and economies of scale, it [desalination] produces potable water at 50 cents to a dollar per cubic meter (about 1.5-3 cents per gallon). That's still unaffordable for some third-world nations at this point, but for almost all nations on this planet it's much more affordable than a war. This puts a narrow limit on the "geopolitically destabilizing" that is likely to occur."

This is, frankly, absurd. Large-scale shortages of clean, fresh water are already occurring in China, India and Africa. Pollution of local water supplies in booming industrial regions of China has been a major factor in large-scale protests against the government (curiously underreported in the Western media). This problem worsens every year in an increasing number of countries.

Water is not just something we all drink and bathe in, it is a necessary element in the production of almost any manufactured product. Our standard of living, and the stability of our social order, depends on fresh water. Some enlightening statistics:

"The production of a ton of steel requires over 40,000 gallons (182,000 liters) of water; production of a ton of aluminum requires 300,000 gallons (1,364,000 liters) of water. Producing a ton of petrol in a refinery from crude oil needs 20,000 gallons (91,000 liters) of water; producing a ton of artificial fibers from a chemical needs about 200,000 gallons (909,000 liters) of water. Taking these and other similar statistics for other industries together, we find that, over all the industrial activities of the modern world, one ton of industrial products represent an average use of the order of 200 tons of water." (www.waterdesalination.com/introduction.htm)

Only 1% of the world's water is fresh. Most industrial use of this scarce resource is essentially cost-free; in economic terms, access to water and pollution of outflow is treated as an externality. If climate change worsens the world's current water shortage - a reasonable assumption - the cost of water will cease to be an externality and become a major expense. Desalination will not solve the problem. The cost of desalinated sea water, in the quantities required by industry, would add vast marginal expense to almost every unit of production. Industrial regions without adequate water sources would be bankrupted.

More than half of the desalination plants in the world today are located in the Middle East, where there is no alternative supply of fresh water. No advanced economies derive a significant amount of water from desalination. Middle Eastern plants are viable because the nations in the region have abundant supplies of oil and natural gas, and free access to sea water. It costs countries such as Dubai and Saudi Arabia essentially nothing to fuel their water plants.

What of countries without cheap energy or access to the sea? If climate change brings drought, they will face economic crisis, destabilization and mass emigration.

It may be comforting to quote Adam Smith and adopt a Panglossian view of the future - but the stakes are too grave for such complacency.

Other than such minor facts as...

1. China, India, and sub-Saharan Africa are responsible for their own catastrophic deforestation, which
2. in turn causes less rainfall on these areas, which
3. would be improved by more CO2 in the atmosphere, not less, and that
4. none of the 3 was a party to the Kyoto treaty, which,
5. doesn't even begin to address the main problems of the planet, these being pollution by toxic metals and "human pollution" by particulates emitted in overpopulated areas (those 3 being the worst),

...Sharpsprocket's maiden contribution to this forum was of interest!

Re: Narrow-mindedness

Nice to meet you too, sharpsprocket. I am always gratified when I see people appreciate my writing.


Note that your quote does not establish the way you summarize it. I was speaking about one of Kolbert's sources, who had claimed that water shortages will prove geopolitically destabilizing. I responded that desalination (without "iz" in the middle) would become profitable in most regions of the world before that happened. There is a huge deal of middle ground between my "not geopolitically destabilizing" and your "can be made up with relatively little cost or effort", so it seems you overstated what I said so you could call it "absurd". I stand by what I wrote.


This may be a reasonable approximation for raw water -- but generally, the water we drink has been transported through pipes and has been processed, both of which cost money, and both of which are not externalties. If you add to them the cost of seawater desalination, that raises the prices we pay, but far short of a level that would be geopolitically destabilizing.


Please make up your mind: the extra cost can be marginal or vast, but they cannot be both. I agree that any shift from fresh water to desalinized seawater would probably cause some shift from the centers to the coasts. But we are talking about changes that take place over decades here, and societies are fairly flexible on that timescale.


I disagree. The opportunity cost to Saudis of using oil in a desalination plant is the market price for oil, just like it is for everybody else. And the Middle East proves that seawater desalination is a viable alternative when no freshwater is available. The Saudis are as deprived of fresh water as we are ever going to be -- and they aren't at war about it with Jordania. If freshwater shortages caused geopolitical instability, we would expect to observe wars over water on the Arabian peninsula -- and we don't. What we see is the occasional diplomatic eyebrow-raising between Turkey, Syria, and Iraq over the water of the Tigris and the Euphrates. But their disagreements over water have always been settled diplomatically, even if relations between the countries themselves were cold to hostile.

happyjill, Monica38, and Sharpsrocket --

I notice that all of you here are new to A2K, and all of you chose this thread for submitting your first post. I also notice that this thread has an unusually high number of views, considering its number of posts. If you don't mind my asking, how did you get here? Is someone's blog pointing here or something? Just curious.

Could just be Google search.

Yep, 9th result for search for "Climate of Man."

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=%22the+climate+of+man%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

And welcome, you guys, glad to see your views and you bring me closer to my hope of just sitting back and watching some intelligent people debate this -- lazy of me, I know, and I swear I'll re-read the whole thing sometime...

Thomas - the CO2 statistical series cited earlier was somewhat sweeping in covering a hundred million years of our planet; this series is from the Antarctic ice core and covers only 400,000 years:

Antarctic Time Series for Carbon Dioxide, Methane and Temperature





http://planetforlife.com/gwarm/glob400000.html

A detailed analysis of the last 8,000 years shows that the most recent spurt in the CO2 series coincides with the advent of agriculture.

P.S. Note that while the CO2 currently is off the 400,000 years range (purple dot, top chart) coincident temperatures (bottom chart) have actually been dropping.

P.P.S. methane concentration (you'll have to refer to notes on link) is also off the 400,000 year chart currently, again starting rising at the same time as agriculture and keeping of domestic animals.

Some additional analysis here
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn4464

Hey everyone -- I found this site by searching for Elizabeth Kolbert's name. I'm glad I found it. I'm too clueless about the site to tell views vs. posts but I'm glad people are reading it, because the more people think about climate change, the better, as far as I'm concerned.

I reread the articles bearing in mind Thomas' points, also HoT's to the extent I could follow them and they bore on climate change specifically, also the sharpsproket comment (BTW is that "sharp sprocket" or "sharps rocket" ) -- and speaking of having the articles more widely read, I have been handing them out like candy, except people welcome candy much more than they like getting these. I also looked up some of the economic analysis Thomas mentioned, although I haven't had much time to really read it. Thomas, I would appreciate a couple specific suggestions, if you have the time, on cogent economic analyses. How *do* they (or perhaps the question is do they) take into account the higher cost of water for industrial processes as well as agriculture etc. when they make their rather rosy projections? I expect to be talking to some folks who work in this area soon and I'd like to know what to ask them -- already your comments have given me a lot of fodder there.

So after all of that -- I am not as panicked as I was when I first read the series, but yet I am not sanguine. As I said before I didn't really buy the notion that we were going to be wiped out by this as a civilization. Also, I do think the series, while extremely impressive, would have been better with a discussion of the economists' points. But the bottom lines still appear to be:

-- the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are very high relative to where they were prior to industrialization and relative to the temperate climate we've been enjoying for the last few thousand years or so.

-- this carbon dioxide will increase the earth's average temperature. If we get to 500 ppm (or whatever that magic number is), projections are we will increase our temps by 4-9 degrees

-- during the whole of our existence as a species, it has never been more than 2 degrees on average warmer than this, so if we get even 4 degrees higher, we are into uncharted territory

-- while the modelling is not precise, quite extreme drought and (perhaps not as extreme) rising sea levels are forecast. Thomas seems to reject the models almost wholesale, and it does seem hard to rely on things that are trying to model the climate (when they can barely tell me what things will be like next weekend), but they seem to be the best info we have.

-- certain systems that regulate our climate will take whatever warming we cause with the CO2 and amplify it, e.g. via the albedo factor and the thawing permafrost that will release the carbon trapped there currently -- and once they get started we can't stop them

-- while the economists say reducing CO2 levels to the degree Kyoto requires is uneconomic, that seems to be because they assume we (that is the USA) will simply write off our agriculture, forestry, and ranching industries because they are only 3% of our economy, plus build sea walls to protect all the valuable oceanside real estate that would otherwise be inundated.

-- and oh but by the way, there is quite a bit of uncertainty here, which frankly cuts both ways -- in a big way. I can't remember the Yale economist's name, but he himself states that his projections assume no desertification and other assumptions that may well prove unjustified. Plus while what can be *proven* is fairly limited, the experts who work in this field are plainly more alarmed than their "official" statements say -- which Thomas feels means they are exaggerating but which I feel means they are afraid that by the time they can say things definitively it will be far too late.

I guess the bottom line for me is these are risks I am just not prepared to take with my daughter's future. We do not have a control planet to move to. I do not accept, as a parent or (sorry to be corny) an American, a future where the US does not produce food or have healthy national forests (such as a forestry industry needs -- the first time the logging companies and I have been on the same side) and we live behind sea walls and use desalinated water to drink and wash while our native plants and animals die off. Maybe it won't be civilization-ending, and maybe it won't cause wars (although maybe it will), but as I said in an earlier post I just don't think that's the test. We know this is happening; we know it will make the world materially less hospitable for our children; and it could well make life very hard for them. So let's pick up the pace and take care of it.

I don't think the closest analog is Malthus, I think it's the ozone hole, albeit much more complex and difficult to deal with. I share Thomas' skepticism with anyone predicting the end of the world, but you know, we dodged some bullets predicted in the past partly because *we dodged them*. We did something about the problems described and we didn't have the catastrophe predicted. Again and I hate to sound so corny, but I don't feel it's the responsible thing to do as a parent to just hope the optimists are right and the pessimists are wrong.