I agree with you, and just want to add that the “it’s too late” argument is one that’s heard constantly about the real estate market. “If only I had bought 20 years ago – or 10 – or even five years ago – but now it’s too late!.” I’ve been hearing this for probably 40 years, and it’s never been true. In fact the house I bought most recently, less than 10 years ago, has shot up at the most astronomical rate of appreciation I’ve ever seen. Interestingly, exactly the same thing is likely to happen with global temperature.
ETA: And one of the most dangerous – literally dangerous – conclusions that some draw from the “it’s too late to mitigate emissions” argument is that the only option left is some type of crazy geo-engineering scheme. Sure, pump the atmosphere full of CO2, and then pump in some unknown and potentially hazardous additional substances to try to block sunlight!
I don’t think so. There is no reason to believe that China, for instance, would be doing anything any differently than they are if the US had signed. Nor India. And I don’t see Europe or Canada doing anything effectively different if the US had signed either. I agree, from a leadership perspective it would have been better if the US had signed, but, frankly, I doubt the actual outcome would be different than it is right now, regardless. The agreement simply didn’t and doesn’t have the teeth, and I think Sam is right…when push comes to shove the political realities are going to be what prevents really sweeping change. Let’s say the US had signed…then what? Would the Republicans have then been on board and not fighting, tooth and nail to prevent, change or modify anything the Dems and Obama tried to pass wrt carbon taxes and the like? :dubious: I think what the practical effect would have been looks a lot like the practical effects of health care reform, but probably even more screwed up and contentious. Until and unless there is a political consensus, it’s not going to happen in the US and I doubt around the world either. China is not going to do anything that they perceive as not in their best interests, regardless of what they signed. Hell, they signed the WTO agreements and happily violate them all the time. China’s word wrt anything they sign isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on unless the CCP thinks it is in their best interest…and what’s in their best interest is not what’s in the best interest of the planet. These accords? China basically uses them as PR in their effort to show how ‘green’ they are becoming, and folks eat it up. The reality, though, is very different.
The uncertainties over that period are vast, and not all related to climate modeling. The RCP scenarios themselves are simple extrapolations of trends, and can’t possibly take into account the unknown unknowns like future technology, wars, migration patterns, etc.
The models for damages are equally suspect. We have no idea how people will react to slowly increasing sea levels, for example. We have no idea what inventions might be developed to mitigate damage, how people’s choices in where to live will change, and all the rest.
Imagine if in 1900 you were asked to predict the environmental catastrophes of the next 100 years. High on the list might be the critical problem of horse manure in increasingly dense cities. You’d probably admit that the unsustainability of whale oil, the last generation’s environmental scare, turns out to be not as big an issue as you thought. But what would be utterly unknown to you would be WWI, WWII, the rise of the automobile, air travel, nuclear power, the computer revolution… All of which would play havoc with ANY model of the future you built in 1900.
One answer I keep hearing regarding this is, “Yes, it’s true that we don’t know what we don’t know. So we stick to modeling what we do know, and that’s the best we can do and it’s good enough.” The problem with that is that the future is dominated by unknown unknowns, and this is increasingly true the farther out you go.
Let’s even bring it closer to the present time. I was recently at the local space and science center, and they have had an environmental exhibit there for years. Inside the exhibit was a demonstration of ‘peak oil’, and a warning that we would be running out of fossil fuels very soon. Right across from it was the exhibit on global warming, where they talked about oil as if it would be continued to be used forever unless we did something to voluntarily restrict it.
The ‘Peak Oil’ display called out the immense economic destruction that would happen if oil prices began to spike, while the exhibit across from it called out the economic destruction that would result if we didn’t voluntarily restrict oil and raise the price of it through taxes, which was described as being a potential economic benefit. No one seemed to see the inherent contradiction between the two exhibits. The Peak Oil one represented a major fear of just a decade or two ago.
When I started on this board, we were still in the throes of the ‘population boom crisis’, and I was one of the ones on this board trying to explain that there had been a demographic shift, and that the U.N was no longer predicting 15-20 billion people on the planet, but that we could actually see a declining population under some scenarios.
If someone had done a 100 year model based on the assumptions of population growth that were in the mainstream in 1980, it would already be clear that it was wildly wrong.
I thought I read in ARR5 that cloud feedback was still considered to be the major unknown short to medium term feedback in climate modeling? And that one of the big uncertainties was whether the cloud formation would be typically high altitude or low altitude cloud cover. Is that not correct?
But again, predicting the impact of climate change 100 years into the future requires not just modeling of the climate, but making guesses as to our ability to mitigate climate change, the state of the economy, progress in energy efficiency and alternate energy sources, migration effects, economic growth in India and Africa and China, and a number of other things. Each one of these are complex in their own right, and the errors multiply. And if they are dominated by unknown unknowns, even if we could model the system perfectly today, our models will be increasingly wrong as we move into the future.
One other factor - even if the models are perfect, the climate is still subject to chaos and nonlinear responses. A good example is the period between the early 1940’s to the early 1980’s, where global temperatures actually dropped for a period of approximately 40 years. But if you look at the longer trend, it made no difference to the clear warming that was going on. However, if you were in those 40 years, it would be easy to say that the Earth was cooling. Variance is the enemy of people making precise predictions.
By making specific, somewhat precise predictions, my belief is that you are shooting yourself in the foot because those predictions are bound to be wrong at any given time, even if the conclusion isn’t. And certainly, the predictions won’t exactly match any intermediate period because of variance.
The same goes for the constant drumbeat of “The Hottest Year on Record”. Anyone who understands climate knows that a single year, or even a single decade, doesn’t mean anything. And temperatures in the short term are even more chaotic and driven by things like El Nino cycles. But if variance works against you and temperatures drop for a decade you will have given your opponents fodder to throw your ‘hottest year on record’ rhetoric back in your face - as they did when we had that short cooling period a few years ago. Tactically, it’s just not wise to make predictions you can’t back up.
Also, the more scientifically aware among us will note that people have claimed ‘the hottest year on record’ when the temperature difference between the past few years was within the range of the error bars even if the absolute value was slightly up, and so we can see that some shenanigans are being played. That makes it look like biased science, at least the public facing side of it.
There is a fundamental difference between the way the left seems to see international relations and the way the right does. The left uses the language of ‘moral authority’, and ‘consensus’, and ‘determination’, and seems to think that if we just show enough moral leadership, self-sacrifice, and cooperation that the rest of the world will go along.
The right tends to see things in terms of raw realpolitik. Countries will always act in their best interest. Treaties only hold until one side has enough of a justification to break them. Multilateral treaties in particular are useless in this way, unless they have real, physical teeth behind them. We took out all the teeth in the Kyoto and Paris accords, because that’s the only way we could get countries to sign on to them. That should tell you something about how seriously we should take them.
Should we go down the list of treaties that were violated as soon as it was expedient to do so? We can start with Versailles, the League of Nations, The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the Geneva Conventions, various UN treaties and declarations, the ABM treaty, the INF treaty, about a zillion peace treaties and trade agreements…
You can get countries to sign on to things like the Paris Accords. That doesn’t mean you can get them to follow through when doing so means taking on substantial economic damage. And if those countries are democracies, don’t expect their leaders to survive if they try.
It depends on how you define “major feedback”, and you seem to be suggesting that clouds are a highly unknown feedback that could drastically change our understanding of future climate change, including by making it a lesser problem than scientists currently think – which seems to be a favorite conservative mantra. That’s not what the IPCC is saying. What they’re saying is that it’s very likely the primary factor contributing to the model spread in predictions of climate sensitivity. I said earlier that ECS has only been established “within a broad range”, but perhaps I should refine that by saying it’s a broader range than we would like and are working to narrow it, but the fact of the matter is that the range has remained remarkably consistent over decades, and the last IPCC report, which pegs it in the range of 2.1°C to 4.7°C, is basically confirming the same range we’ve been predicting for decades.
Moreover, you appear to be implying (at least, as I read it) that all this “unknown” means that maybe cloud feedback might automagically mitigate climate change. Actually, the opposite is true. From the IPCC AR5 Technical Summary (bolding mine):
New approaches to diagnosing cloud feedback in General Circulation Models (GCMs) have clarified robust cloud responses, while continuing to implicate low cloud cover as the most important source of intermodel spread in simulated cloud feedbacks. The net radiative feedback due to all cloud types is likely positive. This conclusion is reached by considering a plausible range for unknown contributions by processes yet to be accounted for, in addition to those occurring in current climate models.
IOW, (1) if cloud cover changes in any significant way, it will likely make global warming worse, not better, and (2) other potentially unknown feedbacks can be ruled out as minor.
Also, you might be interested in this brief article from NASA GISS. It’s older than the AR5 report but much of it is still substantially correct.
Just as an aside, most major climate feedbacks are strongly positive, so I don’t know where this mythology about potential saviors in the form of hitherto unknown negative feedbacks comes from. It has no basis in science.
What “errors”? Responsible attempts at climate projection clearly distinguish between the physical science and the political and economic unknowns. That’s precisely why the RCPs exist. The idea is to develop climate projections based on a range of hard numbers on climate forcing and see what the consequences are, and then work backwards from that to policy recommendations – i.e.- “this shows we have to keep forcings / CO2 levels / temperature increase down below this threshold or the following very bad things will happen”. Whether we are willing and able to do it or not is a different question and I think most everyone agrees that mitigation policies and political will are by far the biggest unknowns in all this, much more than the science at this point.
What happened in that period had nothing to do with “chaos” or chaos theory. What happened was primarily that the relatively uncontrolled release of sulphate aerosols (and NOx, particulates, and other things) – the same stuff that was producing acid rain and destroying our lakes and cities during that time – was systematically and predictably reducing the amount of solar insolation reaching the surface, even as more CO2 was trapping more heat. When we cleaned up the aerosol pollution, global warming made itself felt with a vengeance.
And you don’t think that having enough food, having enough clean water, freedom from migrating pests and disease and droughts and floods, and not being killed or rendered homeless and jobless by extreme and violent weather constitutes “acting in one’s best interest”? Most of us think it does. Some of us, however, don’t associate those consequences with climate change.
Inaction also creates damage, and as time goes on, that damage grows greater and greater. Eventually it becomes incalculable.
True, but the wrong action can make things worse and push back the time table for actual working solutions by years or decades. Yet, that’s what we are doing, basically. Tick tock.
Every time I see one of these discussions that focuses on how the Republicans are completely to blame I think about how nuclear energy is dying in the US, with 10 little 9 little, 8 little nuclear plants…and then there was one. It’s quite possible that, in my lifetime the last one will be decommissioned in the US. That’s 20% (used to be higher) of our total production of non-CO2 emitting power gone. Poof. And what will replace that? Probably natural gas plants. Not AS bad as, say, coal, but not optimal. But the reality is that this is the logical progression and path we are actually on, due to contentious politics and pie in the sky instead of hard headed real-politic and folks who can do some real risk verse reward assessment and make the tough calls. Which we don’t have. Instead, as in other things, it’s all about the finger pointing. Republicans are obviously to blame because a political consensus hasn’t and seemingly can’t be reached and the public is divided…in the US. In other countries, some are paying lip service to the accords and going green while their actions are pretty obviously geared to doing what they think is best for themselves. Other countries are making some sacrifices, but aren’t really doing that much in the greater scheme of things. Generally, those countries don’t have to fear the bite of real change, as they are either small, have concentrated populations, or they have either the current infrastructure to support green already (France springs to mind). In the countries that really, truly matter, whatever they sign isn’t going to mean anything when push comes to shove. Lots is made on this board about how great and green the Chinese are, how they are building all sorts of (stolen) green tech, but the reality is the data (even the freaking Chinese data, which is almost certainly fudged) doesn’t back that up when you dig even a little.
When I see Democrats/liberals/progressives/left wingers get behind nuclear energy and push, push hard, MAKE it happen and hammer it through with real gusto, then I’ll say that the Dems really care about climate change. When I see something like the Green New Deal I basically think ‘yeah, they aren’t serious…it’s really just a political tool they are using to get something they want’. IOW, to me, you guys are the same as the Republicans (I know you aren’t an American, but the broader ‘you’). Oh, I vote Democrat these days, but that doesn’t mean I actually think that the Dems are substantially different, at their core. They still use issues like this as political fodder. If they didn’t, then they would be pushing for nuclear energy as an alternative that could actually, really make an impact…and they would be pretty much hammering the NGD and decrying it for the stupid, unhelpful and self-serving fluff it is, instead of trying to squint to make it work or defending it.
Yes, they deserve blame and that is because they had control over the house senate and the presidency for years and instead they decided to pick up the idiot ball in place of pushing nuclear energy more in the open.
Actually I remember seeing a report that indeed there was no reason to trust the Chinese data, but after 2012 the pollution just could not be denied and one result of the criticism (that also came from environmentalists) was better reporting from then and then more effective efforts to control pollution.
This research reviewed by The Lancet points at several efforts made and they even point at what still needs to improve.
As I pointed many times before, the problem is that in the end a very socialistic move such as government control and standardization of nuclear plants like in France is needed, that includes also more education and respect for science.
The current Republicans in power are keen to prevent that.
And powerful interests are still poisoning the discussion.
No, I never said nuclear was a silver bullet (at least, I don’t think I said this last night when I was in my cups). However, it is a viable solution right now, that we can do today, to produce energy on demand 24/7 that is scale-able to our actual needs. Will it solve all our problems? No. But by not doing it basically at all, we are essentially saying ‘well, let’s use natural gas instead’, because that’s the practical outcome. Sure, we are also using solar and wind, but they can’t meet our needs or scale up to them. They are and will be for a long time to come a niche source, until and unless we get large scale grid sized battery backup. Even then, they don’t really scale all that well to meet the huge demand, but until we get the batteries they can’t fulfill our core requirements of power any time in any condition.
As for liberals/progressives/leftwings or, more importantly than those factions, Democrats supporting nuclear, well…to me, they will be doing that when they make it a plank of their party and actually push for it, not make some noises about maybe doing it. When they stomp on the factions resisting it in their own party, THEN I’ll think they are serious. Instead, we have the topic of this thread, the GND, which doesn’t mention nuclear at all (yet finds the time to mention a bunch of stuff that has zero to do with climate change and CO2 mitigation), and I haven’t heard a lot of Democrats coming out exclaiming about that oversight or asking why it’s not in there, oh, and here is some legislature (or, hell, another mission statement) that includes nuclear and a plan to start putting in new plants as well as figuring out how to keep the ones we have going long enough (safely) to cover the gap so we don’t HAVE to build a bunch of natural gas plants in the mean time. I’m good with them including wind, solar, thermal and other green tech in the mix too. But to not include nuclear at all? Yeah, it’s not a silver bullet…but it IS a freaking bullet that can be useful. If, you know, we are actually serious about this climate stuff, and this isn’t all political maneuvering and exploitation of an issue for political gain.
Which highlights a basic disconnect between Democrats and Republicans.
One of, if not the, major obstacles to new nuclear power plants is the incredible burden of bureaucracy and paperwork and environmental assessments and re-assessments and re-re-assessments and lawsuits from environmental NIMBYs and anti-nuclear greens composed mostly of Democrats. The preferred approach to that problem for Republicans is, well, less paperwork and bureaucracy. The preferred approach to that problem for Democrats is a government take over of the industry. And when Republicans resist the idea of doing exactly the opposite of what needs to be done, Democrats dig in their heels and won’t allow nuclear energy on any other terms.
Tell you what - if the GOP tells its AGW deniers that the science shows that global warming is real, maybe the Dems can tell its environmentalist whackos that nuclear energy is safer and more effective than solar and wind.
If we don’t regulate the nuclear industry to death, hundreds might die from reactor accidents or whatever. If we do regulate it to death, then we won’t have much of a nuclear industry - and millions will die from global warming.
“Small” nuclear accidents would kill the industry. The only way to have a successful and safe nuclear power industry is to regulate the hell out of it, because even a single accident risks (due to PR and politics) killing the entire industry. The US nuclear navy only survives because Naval Reactors is an insanely bureaucratic organization that nitpicks every last typo and every last error, to the degree that working for them (or under their direct supervision) for more than a few months is beyond normal human endurance, based on my personal experience (there are folks who have worked there for years, of course, but based on my experience, they are “beyond normal human” in… let’s just say many interesting ways). And they’re necessary, because without them, we likely would have had a few nuclear accidents that resulted in loss of life, and there’s a great chance this would have lead to an elimination (or vast reduction) in the nuclear navy.
That’s separate from NIMBYism (which is bad), but in a free society, sky-high standards for personal and environmental safety are absolutely mandatory for the existence of a nuclear power industry.
Do you think that global climate change caused by human emitted CO2 will have dire consequences world wide? Are those going to be bad? Will simply changing out some of our coal fired plants (which China builds new ones like mad) with natural gas mitigate that to a large degree? If the answer to any of this is ‘no’, then basically you have two choices. Either you don’t put in place ridiculous over regulation (and STILL allow foot dragging, law suits to cease construction and the rest) and actually, I don’t know, build some freaking nuclear power plants, like, soonish, or we just accept that there isn’t anything that can be done, at least wrt to the US, and hope the Chinese, Indians and the rest of the heavy emitters figure stuff out, or perhaps that the sun suddenly decides to go into one of it’s periodic modes of lower power for a few decades while we get our shit together and maybe figure out magic fusion or something. We seem to be at a tipping point. Solar and wind are not going to save us…they aren’t a silver bullet EITHER. What we need is a good mix, and that mix includes NEW nuclear power, not a fading nuclear power system of 10 little, 9 little, 8 little reactors, until there is 1. At a certain point you either have to set some things aside risk wise (especially since, frankly, it wouldn’t be all that risky) and accept a local disaster risk to mitigate a global one, or you just accept that it’s going to happen, and also accept that part of the reason is your own side can be just as mule headed, stubborn and frankly stupid as the guys on the other side. And, considering how fucking stupid THEY are, that should really turn on a light bulb.
Like I said before, what we need is a POLITICAL consensus, and also a political process that actually works, and can work together. The (now few and seemingly diminishing) politicians on both sides who are able to or willing to reach across the isle to do things and work with the other party are basically our only hope. At a minimum, the Dems need to be the adult in the room, reining in their own idiots, putting forth things that will actually work and have an effect and forcing the Republicans to either work with them on real solutions or be completely discredited. A plank on nuclear energy, with a huge push by the Dems for it as well as stomping on stupid shit like the GND or their own anti-nuke factions would undercut so much of the Republican narrative, and it’s what the country needs. When they do stuff like that, THEN I’ll believe they are doing everything they can and are taking climate change as seriously as I think it needs to be taken.
I think nuclear power is a necessary and significant component to fighting climate change, but sky-high regulation standards are absolutely necessary and can’t be cut back. Nuclear power requires a 100% safety record, because it’s nuclear – even if a “minor” accident isn’t that bad compared to accidents from other types of power plants, it’s still a nuclear accident… and that phrase carries baggage that “coal accident” or “natural gas accident” does not, and I don’t see any reason to believe this will change in the near future. And I’m not sure that it should, considering the potential harm of catastrophic accidents.
That being said, I’m still in favor of nuclear power because I think the benefits outweigh these risks, as long as there is proper regulation and oversight. If this requires a government takeover of the industry, I’m absolutely fine with that – the US government has more than 50 years of experience running and overseeing hundreds of nuclear reactors in the fleet, with zero nuclear accidents that caused loss of life or significant environmental harm. The US government has proven that it can safely run nuclear reactors.
If we regulate to the point where we can’t build enough nuclear reactors to meet our demand for power, which is what we are doing now in pursuit of a perfect safety record, then millions will die (allegedly) from global warming. IOW there is no practical difference between killing the entire industry, and what we are doing now. And thereby condemning millions (allegedly) to die from the effects of global warming.
Or, we can reduce regulations, and when hundreds die as they may eventually do, point out that we have saved millions of lives.
If we can’t have nuclear power because it isn’t perfect, then we have the alternative, which is hugely worse.
How many US civilian nuclear accidents in the last 50 years have caused loss of life or significant environmental harm?
We can (and should) have nuclear power – we just need extremely high levels of regulation and oversight. If this means that private industry doesn’t want to make new power plants, then the government should do it.
None, I’m pretty sure, due to those very high levels of regulation and oversight.
The extremely high levels of regulation and oversight are what are preventing us from having more nuclear power now. Those extremely high levels are imposed by the government. A government takeover is not going to reduce them, thus the government is not likely to be able to implement any more nuclear power plants than we can now.
If the extreme burden of regulation can be reduced, no purpose is served by a government takeover. If it can’t, no government takeover is going to help.
The safety record of both the US government,and civilian nuclear power, is nearly perfect. Therefore there is no indication that the government is better prepared to do nuclear power than the civilian sector.
And again - if we can’t reduce the very high burden of regulation on nuclear power, we will not have any significant amount of nuclear power. And therefore millions will die (allegedly) from global warming.
Saying “we can and should have nuclear power, but we can’t reduce the regulatory burden because the bad PR if some hundreds of people will die” is the same thing as saying “we can’t have nuclear power”. Not by the government, not by civilians, not by nobody.
We can reduce the regulatory burden, and thereby run the risk that maybe a hundred people a year will die. Or we can continue as we do now, and run the risk of millions dying every year.
What we are doing now is not working. We need the energy, and nuclear power is the only even remotely reasonable alternative. Wind and solar will not scale up - the science says that just as clearly as it says that AGW is real.
Let’s continue to do something (nuclear power) in a way that isn’t working, and also do something else (wind and solar) in ways that won’t work. This is the Green New Deal? No thanks - How about a nice game of chess instead?
None of this is likely at all – all of this is pretty close to wishful thinking in the present level of political dysfunction. My supposition is that government-driven new nuclear power plants are more likely to happen, and more likely to succeed in the long run, then reducing oversight/regulation, even if both of these options are highly unlikely right now.
The government, unlike the private sector, can take on projects that don’t generate great profits – like, say, a nuclear navy, or (perhaps) well regulated nuclear power plants. I trust the civilian sector fine, because of the high level of government regulation and oversight. But if they deem new plants to be unprofitable with those high levels, then the only option with a decent chance of long term success, IMO, is for government to do it.
Unless the government does it. I believe that if we reduced this level of regulation, nuclear accidents in the next decade or two would kill the industry for good, which would also not aid in fighting climate change. So in order to fight climate change, I think the best thing to do is to maintain high levels of oversight and regulation, and if that means private industry won’t make new plants, then government should do it.
The government already does this, and has done this, for decades, for the Navy. It could do this for civilian power too. The only reason it couldn’t would be political (which is certainly a formidable obstacle).
Yes, I generally agree with the second paragraph. And I disagree with the first, because I think your plan to reduce the regulatory burden would kill the entire industry for decades or longer. So if the only option left is a government takeover, then I’m fine with that – we already know that the government can safely run nuclear reactors without a profit.
But we don’t need to go on and on about it – we know the point of disagreement. My position, by the way, is based on my years of experience serving on a nuclear submarine and qualifying as a Prospective Nuclear Engineer Officer (which involved quite a lot of education on nuclear safety and how the public sees nuclear power).
I’ll also note that easing up on regulations and oversight wouldn’t just increase the risk of “minor” nuclear accidents, but also Chernobyl/Fukoshima sized catastrophes. A single one of those would likely kill the entire US nuclear industry for decades, if not longer.