Recently, I’ve come across several newspaper and magazine articles about the plight of the Alaskan glaciers. Here’s an example. There have been similar reports about the Antarctic ice plates as well.
Some people also suspect that the unusual weather much of the world has been having for the past several years isn’t merely coincidence or a temporary fluctuation in the global climate, but the forerunners of global warming.
Is this a sign of the coming ecological apocalypse? Better get my sunglasses…
For those tempted to fall for the “But melting ice doesn’t raise sea levels!” line, this is only true for the Arctic. In Alaska and the Antarctic, the vast glaciers and ice shelves are melting from the land into the sea.
For those tempted to suggest that “It’s nothing to do with us!”, note that carbon dioxide levels have risen 30% directly in relation to the level of industrial activity since the industrial revolution. Unlike most other greenhouse gases which have some natural “balancing” mechanism, this represents a massive nudge off equilibrium - we have not been further from equilibrium for many millennia. You may, of course, insist that the fact that the planet is undeniably growing warmer is merely a coincidence.
As for “apocalypse”, well, there are best, moderate and worst cases:
Best case scenario: Everything’s fine. Don’t worry. Shush, there there. It’ll all be okay. I promise. Really. It’ll be fine.
Moderate: Melting ice raises sea levels over some unfortunate islands in the Pacific, and more flooding occurs worldwide. Colder water heading towrds the equator from the poles diverts the Gulf Stream, causing climate changes in many countries (*eg.*temperate Britain becomes the Canadian tundra it shares a latitude with).
Bad: The Gulf Stream turns off completely, causing havoc with the planet’s marine ecosystems and cataclysmic weather systems due to the absence of its “mixing” effect, as well as a far less diverse global climate (ie tundra or desert, with not much in between).
Worst: A 5 degree increase in global temperatures instantly releases the vast methane deposits in the sea bed, which warm the planet by a further 5 degrees. A ten degree average rise would wipe out most forms of life, most likely including us, just as it did at the end of the Permian.
I was in Alaska on vacation last summer. I was in Glacier National Park the year before. There’s no doubt that the glaciers are getting smaller. The ice fields are dramatically smaller than they once were.
Unfortunately, it’s not clear whether anything can be done to stop it. Not all scientists agree that so-called “greenhouse gases” are the cause of the globla warming. However, it’s inconceivable that the world could reduce greenhouse gases down to the level of 100 years ago. It would take much, much more than Kyoto, and we cannot even agree on Kyoto. (Nor should we IMHO, since it’s totally inadequate.)
ISTM there are two reasonable approaches:
Look for a new technology that could reduce global warming more efficiently than reduction of “greenhouse gases.” Heaven only knows whether any such technology exists or what unintended side effects if might have.
Learn to live with global warming. After all, while global warming will lead to destruction or floodiong of low-lying areas, it will make various cold areas more inhabitable. There’s a lot to be said for simply accepting global warming and focusing on how best to deal with it. It’s something each locality can deal with individually on a step by step basis, depending on what their particular risks and needs are.
There is also a third option, which is to not buy into the logic of those who have such a strong vested interest in fossil fuels and to instead actually set out to do something about global warming through a combination of prevention and mitigation (i.e., dealing with the consequences of the warming we have already committed ourselves to). [Note that the list of those with a strong vested interest who are continuing to ignore reality and dealing with it is getting smaller, as companies such as British Petroleum accept the scientific consensus on global warming and endorse Kyoto. In BP’s case, they have reached a company-wide emissions reduction target slightly stronger than Kyoto, have done it 8 years ahead of schedule and claim that they did it at negative cost…i.e., they are saving money.]
december, you have adopted the current line of the Bush Administration et al. which are conveniently switching from “it’s too early” (i.e., the science isn’t decided yet) to “it’s too late to do anything about it.” The fact is that while we have certainly committed ourselves to some warming, we still have a good chance to prevent the worst effects if we change course now.
That is what Kyoto is all about doing…getting us onto a new path. Yes, the emissions goals of Kyoto alone won’t be the sort of eventual reductions we will need to make a very significant difference. Kyoto is only a beginning. It is a way to get that new technology you talk about developed and implemented. Markets only solve problems that they know exist and as long as folks can drive around in their highly inefficient SUVs (for example) and not pay the costs of the CO2 they are emitting, the market does not understand there is a problem to be solved. CO2 (and other greenhouse gas) emission in the U.S. right now is essentially free. This is all such basic economics that I am surprised that it seems lost on so many people of the conservative persuasion.
Postscript to Anthracite (in case she stops by): “so many” does not include you. And, sorry to bash conservatives over this, but the simple unfortunate fact is that conservative & libertarian groups are in the vanguard of global warming deniers and apologists.
While I do appreciate the consideration, I just don’t see why liberal/conservative had to come into a non-partisan OP so quickly. For my part, I think there’s only one issue I’ll mention that could be construed as that later on (tort reform), unless my comments about the “environmental lobby” are that as well. I suppose so.
I have an issue with BP in that I find their press releases difficult to believe. I applaud them for the effort, but I think they may be playing fast and loose with their emissions and energy accounting amongst their different divisions, and might actually be in non-compliance. However, that’s a subject I can’t discuss in detail here on this Board, so I yield that point entirely.
I believe you are correct in most of your positions on cause, effect, and ways to mitigate. In fact, on the “technical” level, I think our only disagreement is on developing countries/nations and their duties under Kyoto.
I for one would like to see sharply graduated energy taxation or energy costs, but I know that’s pretty unpopular among many. Plus, I can just imagine the different States and regions fighting over the breakpoints and rates for energy usage. A 10 cent per kWh charge for any use above 1 kW (average) per day is going to be hit much more often in Kansas than in California. Oddly, to me at least, these measures are often opposed by both conservatives (interferes with the free market) and liberals (only used to keep the poor down).
I for one have been greatly enthused with the steady progress of wind power, especially in the UK but also across the US, and have been changing my opinions on it the more I read. Of course, there was a rather partisan Pit thread recently on wind power, which seemed to show that there’s a whole lot of blame to spread around for failure to adopt due to NIMBY. I also have been doing tons of work on biomass recently, working directly with those “vested fossil interests”, and all I hear from my clients is “we want to reduce CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions - now if not sooner.” Some of them are really actively trying to decide how to use biomass to supplant coal, in solid, liquid, and/or gasified form. And currently, I have multiple projects under me evaluating all three of those means. All of them funded by very large coal users.
The key is - what is stopping them? In one case, an environmental lobby group has threatened to sue if a biomass processing facility is built, seemingly not giving a damn that it will remove the CO[sub]2[/sub] of several tens of thousands of tons of coal per year. For another client, a pipeline for transporting gasified wood waste is being opposed by a group of homes associations that think that the pipeline will be too close to their homes, and thus drop their property values.
And let’s not get into the clearing of forest land that’s too dense and too choked with underbrush. I remember well how “conservatives” were mocked openly for advocating forest management involving cutting of trees was needed. Having personally driven through and past a few forest fires this very last week, and having inspected this brush and tree-choked land myself, it’s pretty clear to me that something needs to be done to clear wood. And that wood can be burned, gasified, liquified…etc. to produce almost CO[sub]2[/sub]-neutral power. However, the odds of the environmental lobby allowing that to happen are dim. So Arizona will keep having forest fires. Sure, “one side” wants to cut too much, perhaps, but the “other side”, which I am dealing with right now on my projects, doesn’t want a single tree to fall. Where’s the sense in that sort of radical abolitionist approach?
Now here’s the partisanship - how about this radical conservative idea: massive, sweeping tort reform to allow biomass and renewables projects to proceed to the generating stage without myriad nuisance lawsuits being filed? And nuclear as well? Think that will find support on the “other side” of the political fence? To quote Golliath, “I don’t think soooo, Davey…”
“Significant consequences” could happen quite a bit sooner than the “melt the ice sheets and flood low-lying areas” problem.
To start with, tropical storms (the more severe of which are hurricanes, typhoons, etc.) form in the summers over bodies of water with a surface temperature of 27.5 C or higher. These areas are rather small on a planetary basis. So long as a tropical storm is over such an area, it grows and becomes more severe; when it moves over cooler water or land, it begins to dissipate.
Even a slight increase in mean planetary temperature means a significantly larger area of 27.5+ water – and hence larger and more severe storms.
Second, there’s quite a bit of evidence indicating that the ice cover in the Beaufort Sea is clearing, leaving that small area of the Arctic Ocean (north of Alaska) open water. This can reasonably be attributed to global warming – and one can reasonably extrapolate the trend to see more of the Arctic as open water as time goes by.
Because of ice’s high albedo and resistance to melting/sublimation, the high latitudes are, insofar as precipitation goes, arid as a standard desert, even though they show on a map as water.
However, air moving over open water naturally picks up moisture, from evaporation and from spray (winds raising waves, etc.). Frigid air moving from an open Arctic over land will deposit its moisture load as snow, causing more severe (in terms of snowy) winters. Indeed, there is some evidence (arguable but plausible) that indicates that one of the conditions for the formation of continental glaciation (as in the Pleistocene ice advances) is open water in the Arctic Ocean.
So two strong consequences that can be expected earlier on are more, and more severe, tropical storms/hurricanes/typhoons and snowier winters – with the threat of another Ice Age as a longer-term possibility.
And that’s well before we ever reach the “melt the Greenland icecap” level of warming.
You’d have to get a professional climatologist to push the numbers – what I’ve done here is report likely consequences based on trends.
Much of what Anthracite has to say is definitely worth taking into consideration. There is wildlife that needs the “thicket” sort of woods condition she describes – but a significant part of it can be harvested at no real cost to our forestation and no endangerment of species survival.
It needs to be kept in mind that burning fossil fuels re-introduces carbon into the global system that has been tucked away for geologic time; burning “renewable resources” not only helps conserve the remaining fossil fuels but also keeps the ambient Co[sub]2[/sub] levels stable.
One truly intelligent move that no politician, liberal or conservative, seems willing to put any significant resources towards, is controlled fusion. We have the technology to do it now, but not the engineering to do it profitably – all it would take is a long-range investment in engineering. What it would produce is a “clean” technology, with virtually no pollution save waste heat that would be the product of power generation almost any other way, anyway. (Tritium is, admittedly, a possible byproduct, but there seems to have been no noticeable impact from the documented manyfold increase in ambient tritium since 1945, so “virtually no pollution” should be accurate.)
Thanks for your thoughtful post, Anthracite. When I was talking about the partisanship, I was addressing the narrower issues of general acknowledgement of the seriousness of the global warming issue and a willingness to participate in Kyoto or set other serious targets, like in the Lieberman-McCain bill.
Wow, that’s a pretty serious charge. I had suspected that their numbers for how much money they saved might be a tad optimistic (since Browne is kind of on the line on this and these numbers are probably a little open to interpretation). But, I thought that the emissions would be pretty straightforward to calculate and hard to fudge.
You’ve got a good point there. I wince when I hear liberal Senators and Reps complaining about high gas prices. It seems like almost noone is willing to support high energy taxes. I can understand the concerns about it being regressive…But, it seems you could couple it with a tax cut of some sort for the poor to offset this.
Note, however, that most liberals (except for a few notable exceptions like those two Michigan Senators…urgh!!!) and only very few conservatives in the Senate supported a significant increase in CAFE standards, which I think some conservatives rightly argue is, in some ways, an energy tax. But it is one that is politically more palatable it seems.
What group is it and why are they opposing it?
I think this is an oversimplification of the realities of the situation as I understand them. The problem with the approach of Bush et al. is that they don’t just let the companies cut the brush but also the larger more fire-resistant trees, which is really what they are after in order to make money. And, there is also disagreement about where the most aggressive forest management should be carried out. E.g., Sierra Club wants the effort concentrated near forest boundaries with communities.
As for tort reform, I think I’ll avoid that topic at the moment. That opens a whole can of worms that I am only marginally familiar with. But, I guess my general belief is that we are walking a line. I think there probably really does need to be some tort reforms enacted but I think they need to be done carefully to protect people’s right to redress and to provide the proper incentives for industries to be responsible and careful.
It’s not a “charge”, but I’ve seen this same sort of thing with other petroleum companies I have worked with, where the ownership of some of their entities becomes sufficiently murky that claims of reductions of such things as heavy metals (especailly vanadium and nickel) become hard to assign to a particular company name. That is, the EPA knows who’s emitting what, but what someone calls themselves on any particular accounting is a good way to shift costs, debts, and liabilities - including environmental. It’s not an area of expertise of mine, but I have experience with investigating claims like this, and all I was saying is that I find it open to question. It doesn’t change the fact that I believe, from what I know, that they have in fact made serious strides towards meeting CO2 targets.
If it was truly a tax cut. It has been debated in many threads here that a large portion of that group lumped as the poor actually pay little to no taxes, but that’s a very general and inaccurate statement for me to make. Suffice to say that I feel that it might not have enough benefit, and working the graduation may end up yielding better results. But that’s quibbling on my part.
Making gasoline purchases have a regressive tax is much more difficult. It’s fairly easy for a utility to say “anything over X kWh per month is subject to an additional tax of this…”, but with gasoline purchases at the pump, how does one do this? It would have to be built in via CAFE or by “gas guzzler” taxes. Something I’m actually a bit in favour of. I think the CAFE has stood far too long at its current level, and should start a gradual increase once again.
The thing that burns me is that there is little to no incentive to conserve. Last year I went on a “hyper-conservation project” of my own, where I reduced my electric, gas, and water bills tremendously, in terms of percent usage. And I was hot, cold, miserable, and unhappy. This year, I’ve set my thermostats and used all the water I want. The difference? A 250% or so increase in usage. The real difference relative to my salary? Not really measureable. A $30 electric bill and a $100 electric bill may as well be the same to me. To someone who makes much less, it’s the difference between eating and not eating that month. If I could save more, it would cause me to conserve more again.
(However, in my defense part of the reason I went back to sloppy energy usage was due to being ill, and feeling very cold and hot much of the time, as well as not spending so many weeks in the UK like I did last year.)
I cannot speak of the group or the specific situation, but the opposition is due to concern over spills of the bio-diesel, noise of the plant and machinery, truck traffic on the roads, bridge wear due to the trucks, and potential emissions of volatile hydrocarbons which will “have a certainty of causing leukemia and asthma in every child within 100 miles”.
All of the concerns are valid (save for the health ones, which has no real evidence nor claim of proof behind it), but the point is…so? Has anyone thought to quantify the benefit of the reduced coal and natural gas use? No - they just want to oppose, oppose, and oppose some more, and these groups of homeowners and others seemingly have unlimited legal resources. Just my rant here.
The problem is - the financial drivers for doing some of these efforts are nearly nonexistant, even by the most optimistic metrics one can dream up. And I’ve been in lock-down meetings where we dream up those metrics - “Let’s assume that a new political party gets elected, and we get a $2 per MBtu tax credit…yeah…that makes the spreadsheet look better…and let’s assume the forestry service gives us free transport to the fuel prep station…OK…they’ll do that…” Add to the “liability” column a few million in defense of nuisance lawsuits, and then the drivers vanish completely. And it’s not just the cost, it’s the siting, planning, engineering, procurement, and construction delays.
>For those tempted to fall for the “But melting ice doesn’t raise sea levels!” line, this is only true for the Arctic. In Alaska and the Antarctic, the vast glaciers and ice shelves are melting from the land into the sea.
Not to mention Greenland, so there is some part of the Arctic for which it’s not true too.
This is logical, and it may be correct. However, speaking as someone who was in the hurricane reinsurance business, it’s not entirely accepted that global warming is leading to fiercer hurricanes.
There is little doubt that global warming is taking place. It’s also true that hurricanes are becoming more costly. However, the increase in damage may be entirely due to the greater amount of property in exposed areas.
Thanks, december. I’m finding little that isn’t histrionic on the concept if it addresses it at all – if you’d be willing to check out sources on the topic, based on your previous experience with it, I’d be greatly appreciative.
As I said, you may cry coincidence if you wish, but it’s a heck of a strong correlation between C02 imbalance, human activity and rising temperatures, given past records. I suspect the minority scientists of which you speak rather like the attention, and would certainly not be so reckless if their own lives were under threat from a hazard showing a similar level of correlation with immediate and serious danger as that between human activity and warming.
It might not! It might merely require that we keep levels at or around those of 1990, in order that we do not move further off equilibrium. Nobody is saying our only chance is to shut down all carbon emissions until 1900 levels are reached. It could be that it’s too late, and nothing can stop whatever comes to pass. It could be that the warming is an unlikely coincidence.
Kyoto was merely saying “we are not up shit creek yet, so let’s just stop paddling shall we?”
Incidentally, the UK signed up for an 8% reduction on 1990 levels. This would be one heck of an acheivement, and all the signs are that we are on course (even if most of Europe misses their targets, which incidentally is still not as bad as carelessly plunging over the waterfall without any moderation whatsoever).
If it can be shown that the UK economy has not suffered unduly, the world will have missed an opportunity.
Talking of the UK and global warming, apparently tommorrow is expected to be the hottest day in England since records began :eek: with temperatures of about 100 degrees F.
Odds, are you aren’t “up [vulgarity] creeki”. However, in any case, there is no way you will successfully stop the third world from expansion of industry by targeting Europe and the States. Assuming you are correct, which I doubt, then you have a horse with one broken leg and three about to be broken, and you’re saying you can keep trotting by putting a band-aid on the other.
The hell with that.
Your best bet is to encourage the development of fission power, and eventually fusion.
