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Six Degrees
I learned from this new book. Most of all it shows how the earth likely will change as temperatures rise.
For instance Lima and the Andean parts of Ecuador and Boliva are heavily dependent on Andean glacial melting for their water. An earth warmer by two degrees would create very serious problems for them, once the glaciers disappear. Most of all I came away with a renewed sense of the importance of water issues and the need for greater investment in desalination technologies (yes I know it's not easy and transporting the desalinized water is often a greater problem than getting the salt out.) Stopping the destruction of tropical forests is another partial remedy for warming and it seems more doable than shutting down all or most carbon emissions.
That said, parts of the book struck me as very weak. The discussions of biodiversity destruction did not convince me that the scope of pending losses is unacceptable. There's a lot of handwaving and listing of lost species as if that ends the argument. We're in a mass extinction anyway and I'd like a serious analysis of the marginal impact on global warming on this process. "It's so bad anyway that further species loss must be unacceptable" doesn't cut it for me.
It is also claimed (p.236) that an earth five degrees warmer would result in the culling of "billions." Of humans that is. There is little talk of substitution or technological adaptation. Nor do I buy the claim that carbon rationing would bring "a dramatic improvement in our quality of life" by getting us off the streets, out of the planes, and bringing us closer to the rest of the community.
Overall I found this the best, most accessible, and most vivid book for visualizing the actual problems from global warming. But the Cassandras of global warming need to be more responsible, and more wary of overstatement, if they wish to press home their very important arguments.
Jonathan Adler has a good recent round-up post on some global warming issues.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 3, 2008 at 06:11 AM in Books, Science | Permalink
Comments
It's too bad for the "Cassandras" that the earth is starting to cool; and too bad for us too, because global warming would be good for us.
Posted by: Dennis Mangan at Feb 3, 2008 9:14:30 AM
I think one of the biggest challenges is that there isn't a good consensus on what will happen as the _average_ temperature increases. Some have argued that the average will increase because winters will be warmer. However, many of those areas experience prolonged sub-zero temps. Warmer, but still sub-freezing, temps could very well result in increased precipitation.
We humans seems to be very good at figuring things out retrospectively, while really bad at guessing what will happen in the future. Part of that seems to be because we humans eagerly jump on correlations, treating them as causations. The media clearly doesn't understand the difference, and that means the public oftentimes gets the wrong message from Science (look at all the medical studies that come out each year leading to various fads).
My guess is that reality will fall somewhere between the hystericals on one side, who think the world will come to an end, and the Bjorn Lomborgs of the world on the other side, who think that things won't be nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be. One thing is for sure: there's very little balance in discussions and articles these days, which makes for lots of misinformation and very little quality, reliable advice.
Personally, I think it's exemplary of the human mindset (self-importance) that we believe after hundreds of millions of years the planet will suddenly come to an end because of global warming. If we frame the discussion in terms of prolonging the human race through changing and difficult conditions, instead of "saving the planet," then perhaps we might see discoveries and changes that will be (mutually) beneficial. The hysterics need to be discounted, and we need to focus on how to adapt and save our sorry selves, with staid determination. After all, that is the crux of the global warming (or global climate change) dilemma, is it not?
Posted by: Ben at Feb 3, 2008 10:54:17 AM
WRT both the water issue and global warming, I've long thought (since '92) that a hydrogen based fuel economy would reduce the production of greenhouse gases and mitigate water supply issues. Imagine nuclear power plants near the ocean with electrolysis plants down the coastline a little ways. Sea water is converted to hydrogen and oxygen at the electrolysis plant and the hydrogen is piped inland. Perhaps there would be efficiencies to piping hydrogen for use inland; however, hydrogen is only 20% of the mass of water. Then again, it's very difficult to contain and transport hydrogen, so perhaps not. Infrastructure for piping hydrogen would provide a mechanism for throttling water availability independent of geologic water flows (rivers, aquifers, etc.).
Posted by: dsm at Feb 3, 2008 11:34:48 AM
Too bad that the IPCC report of 2007 said that it is more likely that the warming until 2100 will be around the 2°C mark rather than 6°C. Also, a question I have regarding tropical forests and CO2 absorption. Can they absorb atmospheric CO2 or is the process even fast enought to intervene in any measurable way?
Posted by: max at Feb 3, 2008 1:24:33 PM
But remember, Cassandra was right!
Posted by: Macneil at Feb 3, 2008 3:19:36 PM
Most of all I came away with a renewed sense of the importance of water issues and the need for greater investment in desalination technologies (yes I know it's not easy and transporting the desalinized water is often a greater problem than getting the salt out.
What's needed maybe more than a 'technology', is just getting people over the psychological hurdle of drinking indirect potable reuse.
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Feb 3, 2008 4:45:05 PM
Isn't this just accelerating the inevitable, since they are depending on the *melt* (not the existence) of the glaciers, and this has likely been occurring since the last Ice Age? I'm guessing that they are unable to capture the "extra" runoff, but weren't they going to have to face this eventually? Or do the glaciers keep regenerating from annual snow accumulation? In which case, does AGW increase or decrease precipitation in those areas?
Posted by: Eric H at Feb 3, 2008 5:27:52 PM
We're in a mass extinction anyway and I'd like a serious analysis of the marginal impact on global warming on this process. "It's so bad anyway that further species loss must be unacceptable" doesn't cut it for me.
So we're in one. How can we decide if that is a good or bad thing?
Is there always a marginal loss, on all bad things?
I'd think with slow ecological problems in general the marginal loss is very hard to see.
Posted by: odograph at Feb 3, 2008 6:36:39 PM
There are a lot of books out there that focus on the damage of global warming. Are there any that focus on the benefits?
Posted by: Ken at Feb 4, 2008 1:02:51 AM
As I have said numerous times on my blog, desal is not the low hanging fruit here. It's water markets. In California, for example, farmers use 40 or 80 percent of the water (depends if you include instream flows as "use") and much of that water goes into low value crops. Let them sell 25 percent of their water, and -- using the 80 percent share -- urban supplies DOUBLE. That doesn't mean we should be playing golf in the desert, but it does give you an idea of bang for the buck. Farmers, BTW, are prevented from selling by (1) other farmers who want the water for themselves, (2) community activist who think desert farming is "traditional" and (3) bureaucrats who cannot reconcile existing law with highest and best use.
That said -- I think 6 degrees (even if it's Fahrenheit AND I haven't read it) is a good way to convey the magnitude of the coming problems...
Posted by: David Zetland at Feb 4, 2008 1:20:36 AM
Is there any evidence that this warming is going to be any worse than then previous fifty warmings? I understand that people have guesses, but is there any evidence that the guesses are correct?
(If it makes you any happier, change "guesses" to "models".)
Posted by: Russell Nelson at Feb 4, 2008 2:21:18 AM
Imagine that you gave people a quiz, with 10 questions related to the confidence in, and problems resulting from, global warming.
Imagine that you asked one group of people to study those questions carefully, and then turn in their quiz and state whether US action on GW is warranted.
Now imagine that you tell a second group that they can tear up their quiz into little pieces, put it in their pocket, and just say whether action was warranted.
That is the GW debate in a nutshell.
Posted by: odograph at Feb 4, 2008 8:43:58 AM
With environmentalism, it's really a question of whether we let these anti-human, anti-progress religious extremists control our lives.
We shouldn't let creationists decide our science policy, or enviro-catastrophists decide our economic policy.
Sound public policy requires sound science, sound economics, and sound ethics. Although environmentalists at least give lip service to sound science, they ignore the economic problems, and have profoundly immoral ethics.
Environmentalism is the enemy of secular humanism.
Posted by: dave at Feb 4, 2008 3:53:09 PM
For the folks who think that global warming etc. is just a bunch of hippy silliness, trot over to your library and borrow "With Speed and Violence." The IPCC reports are conservative, and there are a number of recent discoveries that suggest that the climate could change much more swiftly than previously thought; tipping points that would push the climate into accelerated warming. There are few discussions of how rapid climate change could be good because biological systems are generally not good at change significantly beyond their normal environments -- hence the mass extinctions we're seeing now.
Posted by: Doug Blair at Feb 4, 2008 11:33:40 PM
1. the 1% rule applies. If there's a 1% chance of the sort of extreme effects we would see, eg a 5 degree centigrare
rise in average temperatures, then strong action is justified to present it. Since that action will take
decades to put into effect, we have to start now.
2. Above 2 degrees C, it's really quite uncertain what will happen, and in what time scale. A world with
water levels 60-100' higher is certainly possible, and probably inevitable in a world 5 degrees warmer, but
we don't know when.
3. life forms historically have not adapted well to sudden changes in temperature as opposed to over thouseands
of years. The colony honey bee disorder is a warning: a species can threaten to disappear on us, and we have
no substitute (it pollinates most of our fruit crops) and there will be huge impacts on human life. We are
part of the intricate web of life, and we do not know what happens when pieces of that web disappear.
4. IPCC forecasts are deliberately conservative. They don't include the kind of sea level rises and storm activity
a world that much hotter would entail.
5. out there lies the Great Permian Extinction. A rise in temperature leads to mass methane release from permafrost
and we cook. We have no idea at what point we reach no return on that, but it would be the end of the human
race. Best guess: somewhere between 750ppm-1000ppm CO2 (equivalent). Within the realm of some of our forecasts
if we continue unabated on the present course.
6. remember we are a civilisation with nuclear weapons. Climate change is associated with the potential for mass political and
social disruption especially in countries like eg Pakistan and between Israel and its neighbours. So societal breakdown in one corner of the world can impact on us all.
7. just to be really helpful, we won't know how bad things are until we get there: there is a 20-50 year
lag between our actions in terms of emission, and their main consequences.
So we'll have to act without full knowledge of the future, in anticipation of the worst consequences.
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Posted by: baom at Feb 8, 2008 11:38:56 PM
The striking thing is the idea that temperatures will rise by anywhere near six degrees in the next century. Generally speaking, don't estimates cluster around about two degrees?
Posted by: Andrew at Feb 10, 2008 2:32:34 PM
Andrew
Yes but no. What we have is a set of models that deliberately exclude known positive feedback factors (permafrost melt, rainforest dying etc.) because we can't quantify those factors.
The result is that the median projection is less useful than it might otherwise be. Quite credible model runs show temperature rises of +10, +12 degrees centigrade. See climatepredictions.net for some examples.
When you have a steeply rising cumulative damage function, you have to look at the extremes as well as the median forecast. The 'fat tails'.
The problem of global warming is the problem of the unknowable. We don't know:
- what the real probability of 2 degrees is v. say 5 degrees (there is unlikely to be a symmetric downside case but even if there is, it doesn't matter, that just says that we took a gamble and it paid off)
- what the real damage of 2 degrees is, in particular disruption and extinction of life forms, which could adversely effect our food supply or other parts of the biological system
- when we hit a 'tipping point' after which our own actions could no longer stop the rise in temperatures. That tipping point is real, but we just don't where where it (they) are
We'd be fools to bet our future on the face of this planet (at least in the current civilisation: my gut is that human beings are adaptable, and a few millions or 10s of millions of us would survive most things) on the fact that the consensus of our models is 2 degrees.
(note parenthetically that if we set the world on a course for +6 degrees, it's slightly academic whether we get their in the 22nd century than the 21st-- we have more time to adapt and prepare, but we still have to live on that planet)
Posted by: Valuethinker at Feb 19, 2008 7:40:58 AM
I'm only 14, so i don't really understand, but if we don't really know anything about it, then what are we doing telling people things as if it were all fact? Six degrees is National Geographic's opinion, while 2 degrees is where people seem to be leaning towards. I actually do not think that two degrees will be the dead point, I agree with National Geo. but I have a theory that the public and media would much rather believe the worst of things. And i'm sure that a lot of other people realize this too. There is too much hand waving and saying that "this is it"
Why scare people? Yes, let the world know that we're ruining the one thing that we REALLY need (a home to inhabit), but don't tell them yet that we're all just going to die...
Posted by: only14notsosure at Apr 29, 2008 8:34:41 PM
To the contrary, 2 degrees is NOT what most models are stating. 2 degrees is generally accepted as the tipping point. It is the lower limit of what is being predicted.
The bulk of the models do go between 2-12 degrees. Generally speaking, the middle is usually (but not always) correct, so we're looking at about 6 degrees for the next century if that is true.
This has been stated above, but I should point it out: the IPCC is quite conservative. I am concerned that global warming effects may have been understated, rather than overstated as some on the political right say. This has already happened in real life by the way.
There is really one way to test the models:
Enter temperature data in from the 19th and early 20th centuries in (before that, we don't have recorded data). Then use the computers to predict the expected temperatures in the late 20th century to today and compare those numbers with the actual numbers. They match so far, which is ominously suggesting that the models may becoming close enough that we should take them as reality. (There are still some things that need to be analyzed for global warming though, such as cloud cover which are not fully understood. Cloud cover is important because it affects precipitation and temperatures - clouds can trap heat and act as blanket in the evenings).
The truth is, if we take appropriate steps, this need not be as scary as it sounds. Otherwise, we are now in our last century of civilization. Personally, I give us a 50% chance of surviving into the next century.
Today, we need to take action ASAP. As Lynas commented in his book, he estimates that we have until 2015. Then emissions MUST go down or we are in big trouble (unless earth proves even more sensitive than predicted); then 2015 may be 2012 or earlier ...
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