Your daily dose of sunshine

The great news just keeps on coming:

The IPCC says that rich industrial countries must cut emissions 25 to 40 percent by 2020 (from 1990 levels) if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. By contrast, the WBGU [the German Advisory Council on Global Change] study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020--i.e., quit carbon entirely within ten years. Germany, Italy and other industrial nations must do the same by 2025 to 2030. China only has until 2035, and the world as a whole must be carbon-free by 2050.

Yeah, see, that's not going to happen.  And to appreciate just how much that's not going to happen, keep in mind that the Obama administration is trying to set 2005 as the baseline year for emissions rather than 1990 (the baseline year in the Kyoto Protocol), since the 2005 emission levels for the U.S. were 17% higher than in 1990.

As you can see from this interview, though, WBGU chairman Hans Joachim Schellnhuber is clinically insane:

Schellnhuber: Our basic principle is that all humans have equal rights to the atmosphere. This is a basic right. This is also what German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh decided at a meeting in 2007. Why should a German be allowed to emit more CO2 into the atmosphere than someone from Bangladesh? No, we must divide the quota equally and fairly among all nations.

Someone from Bangladesh should be allowed to emit as much CO2 as an actual human being?  But plasma screen TV market penetration there is minimal at best!  If Schellnhuber's bizarre value system is any guide to the quality of his team's science, we've got nothing to worry about.

Comments

[SteveB]

Wow, the Germans have come a long way since 1945, haven't they? Gives me hope for this country.

[Marcus]

I saw a poll that said 93% of Germans trust Barry Obomba.

So if the necessary changes to prevent GW are impossible, why worry about it at all? Are there any benefits to expect from a fraction of these recommended carbon decreases?

And what do you make of things like this, I mean I'd hate to think there is any chance Al Gore is a liar:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8299079.stm

[NomadUK]

And what do you make of things like this, I mean I'd hate to think there is any chance Al Gore is a liar

I make of it that the usual bunch of tools and idiots in the media have swallowed the usual crap spewed by 'climate change sceptics', thus continuing to confuse the public, bolster the supporters of steady-as-she-goes industry, and further decrease the already miniscule — if not already nil — chance we have of averting utter catastrophe.

That's what I make of it, Marcus, old boy.

[John Caruso]

Since this is the Internets, I answer this link with another link.

Coincidentally, I was considering the why worry about it at all? question as I wrote this posting. And my answer was pretty much, don't. Which is freeing in its way. Though to answer your other question, there are benefits from fractional decreases (for example, WBGU's findings specify probabilistic chances of temperature change at various levels of carbon decrease). But with games like the ones the Obama administration is playing (just like the ones the the Clinton administration played before it) I don't expect much more than token change.

Also, this is just one study, and I posted about it mainly to give a sense of how bad things may already be. But just because they're German doesn't mean they're right.

[Marcus]

The media I see overwhelmingly operates under the assumption that GW is a sure thing, and has been bombarding the population with the idea for years. I thought once Pat Robertson announced that he believed in GW it could no longer be considered an exclusive club.

Yet questioning the dogma, even by a member of the IPCC, is tantamount to questioning the Leader during war.

It seems there are a lot of people who really want GW to happen, like a secular version of the apocalypse revenge fantasy. "See, I warned you." And if Mother Nature doesn't flood the Earth in twenty years? Well, there's always the next twenty years to worry about, the apocalypse has to come some time. Sure, there are plastic-choked fished-out oceans, deforestation, smoggy skies, water poisoned with rocket fuel and antibiotics, oil spills, nuclear waste, and all those other old-fashioned environmental concerns. But those are such parochial matters, it's just not the same as the whole planet being consumed by heat: nuclear war, the sun, the fires of hell.

And some day, people will read their sacred religious text, and find out about Gore's Ark.

Why not think about the positive aspects of a warmer planet, and also how we can adjust to the change, rather than fearmongering over something that won't be stopped, i.e. carbon emission. Does the planet just happen to be at the ideal temperature? Will global warming really make everything worse as we are constantly told? Isn't life, including human life, far more abundant in warmer climates? Maybe global warming is just what we need. It's like preaching Satanism in a church, I know.

Whatever, I'm close to Antarctica, I'm hoping it thaws out so there will be a new frontier.

[SteveB]

It seems there are a lot of people who really want GW to happen...

Yes, and they all live inside your head.

[John Caruso]

...like a secular version of the apocalypse revenge fantasy.

The thing is, accurate warnings of potentially apocalyptic events are going to sound apocalyptic.

Maybe global warming is just what we need.

That'd be great if it were true, but I don't think you'll convince many people in the Maldives.

Al Gore is a liar, by the way, but he also has no more to do with the extensive research on anthropogenic global warming than he did with creating the Internet.

[Marcus]

Once people like Gore and Obama take up the Carbon Crusade, is there any chance that they will seriously confront the problem, or just use it to further their agendas? I know you are working to point out what a farce Obama's climate policies are. But the automatic answer to most GW worriers is, What will our leaders do to save us? So not only are the leaders handed more power, but the followers cleanse themselves of responsibility. To me this is another facet of the forced binary system that produces lines of conversation such as, "You like Obama?" No. "Oh, so then you like Bush?"

There is a well-tested scientific theory that everything Pat Robertson believed in is false, so we do have some conflicting research here.

I wouldn't choose to flood the Earth and destroy the homes of certain people in order to benefit others. But I'm not making the choice. If it's going to happen, we need to think about how to adapt, including what the benefits can be.

[NomadUK]

But I'm not making the choice. If it's going to happen, we need to think about how to adapt, including what the benefits can be.

I'm all for thinking about how to adapt to the incipient slaughter of billions of people. But first I want to see the heads of those who are making the choice for me fixed firmly on the ends of pikes.

[Distressed]

I know you gotta be witty here but can I (sceptically) point out:

We appear to have to trends. 1 recent global warming. 2 increased greenhouse gases.

From wikipedia: Naturally occurring greenhouse gases have a mean warming effect of about 33 °C (59 °F).[20][C] The major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70 percent of the greenhouse effect; carbon dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26 percent; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9 percent[not in citation given]; and ozone (O3), which causes 3–7 percent.[21][22] Clouds also affect the radiation balance, but they are composed of liquid water or ice and so are considered separately from water vapor and other gases.

a. The link

So let's be generous and say that between CO2 and CH4 and CFCs (and their ilk) and Ozone depletion we are responsible for a half of the modest alterations in atmospheric composition. So we can agree on anthropogenic atmospheric alteration. Fine. But anthropogenic global warming? Sure, I see two trends, but it could easily be solar radiation. But fine, I'll grant you that it is suspicious that post-industrialisation we have these temperature movements. But why discount water vapour and solar radiation altogether?

b. Rising waters

I have read that the rising waters is caused by thermal expansion. This is much more plausible than glacier and ice sheet melt. Obviously this melt is effecting the ocean levels somewhat but I think it is negligible. I would be more worried about the decrease in global fresh water reserves.

c. And if they do rise?

We adapt. Surely it would be economically cheaper to adapt where necessary by providing a global fund rather than creating an inefficient, highly technical and probably corrupt carbon economy on insufficient data.

d. Eco-nomics?

I believe that cheap and plentiful electricity is one the pillars of poverty reduction. If that means burning messy coal then so be it. Why should we deny to the rest what luxuries we've had in the West? Making coal-fired power stations less efficient for extra cost, what a great idea! Again, if that also means some short term nuclear waste then so be it.

http://www.new.ans.org/pubs/magazines/download/a_647 [Traveling-Wave Reactor]

e. Plants like CO2

There have been studies that show that plants thrive in a CO2 rich atmosphere. This we know from recent experiments and ancient soil analysis.

http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=29437 [TREES: Facing Up to a Carbon Dioxide Rich Future]

f. Actual priorities.

Diarrhoea prevention in small children. Malaria prevention. Clean water distribution. The ending of agricultural subsidies. A reduction in state-sponsored terrorism.

---

There now. Stuff that in your pipe and smoke it!

[SteveB]

Distressed:
Scroll a few posts down, and you'll find a report that higher atmospheric CO2 levels are causing the acidification of the ocean, which will "soon start dissolving the shells of living sea creatures." But that's just the collapse of the entire oceanic food chain, and you probably didn't like fish anyway, right?

See, climate change isn't just "It gets a bit warmer and there's more CO2 in the air", there a lot of science pointing to effects that you haven't even considered yet.

Which means that if you want to take up the job of being a climate-change denialist, you're going to have to put more effort into it.

[NomadUK]

It also requires that, when one quotes such definitive sources as Wikipedia and throws around statements such as 'The major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70 percent of the greenhouse effect; carbon dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26 percent; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9 percent[not in citation given]; and ozone (O3), which causes 3–7 percent', one have some fucking idea of what in the fuck those numbers mean and what in the fuck one is fucking talking about.

Which, clearly, Mr Distressed does not.

I'm not even certain why I'm wasting my time on this. That being the case, I shall hereby cease to do so.

[Donald Johnson]

Sounds like someone has been reading Lomborg. That guy rubs me the wrong way. Yeah, we should spend more money fighting malaria or Chagas's disease or whatever, but why should that issue be pitted against global warming? Who gets to set up these false dichotomies? I'd take some money from the war in Afghanistan myself.

A useful link (same site as John's link above)

link

[SteveB]

why should that issue be pitted against global warming?

It's a silly thing to do, especially since one of Distressed goals is "The ending of agricultural subsidies." A social movement strong enough to accomplish that, over the resistance of ADM and Cargill, would also be strong enough to take on Big Pharma and make drugs more affordable around the world, and take on Big Oil and Big Nuclear and make green energy sources more widely available around the world.

In other words, all of these problems have, at their core, massive abuses of corporate power, and you're not going to overcome that by arguing that "My issue is more important that yours." If you do overcome it (and I admit that's unlikely) it will only be by seeing the connections between these issues, and uniting against a common corporate foe.

But something tells me Distressed isn't doing a damn thing about malaria or ag subsidies either.

[John Caruso]

Marcus: If it's going to happen, we need to think about how to adapt, including what the benefits can be.

I'd agree with the first half, but not all situations have an upside—or not enough of one to warrant the term. If someone's about to hack off all your limbs you will indeed have to think about how to adapt, but you probably won't spend much time thinking about how fun it'll be to roll unimpeded down hills. There'll no doubt be some bright spots in among the droughts, famine, contamination of fresh water supplies, mass refugee migrations from flooded areas, storms, riots, resource wars, and so on, but humanity being what it is there'll also likely be millions of dead (and that's conservative). And the "benefits" won't be equally shared by any means—and I'm sure we can all guess which people are going to suffer the most.

Regarding your earlier question about the planet just happening to be at the ideal temperature, the point isn't whether or not a given temperature range is better or worse, it's that the planet's biosphere is an intricate and deeply interconnected set of ecosystems that have evolved together over millions of years, and the current climate is the one to which all those natural systems have adapted. What we're doing now is artificially forcing that climate to become much hotter over a very short period of time, and increasing the amount ofCO2—with barely an inkling of the disasterous effects that might have on these interconnected systems (like the ocean acidification Steve mentioned, coral reef destruction, and so on).

Distressed: But why discount water vapour...

You might want to read this, and realclimate.org more generally.

Steve: In other words, all of these problems have, at their core, massive abuses of corporate power...

Absolutely agreed. If there was just one notion I could get into people's heads, that'd be it.

[KDelphi]

Marcus--"I wouldn't choose to flood the Earth and destroy the homes of certain people in order to benefit others. But I'm not making the choice."

If you believe the "bible", apparently, gawd did. And, by denying it, yes you are makign the choice.

When I look at Bio Statistics, my eyes glaze over. I always wonder why the people who went into these fieldsa arent doing anything with it to help humanity, but, oh, well, I was a Liberal Arts major. I'm not reading it from wikipedia, though. I did take SOME Biology and chemistry.

As Donald Johnson says, false dichotomies. Yes, send more coal-powered plants to poor neighborhoods--oh, that right, you already did. Just leave them there then, and fight like hell to keep corporates from paying for the damange@. Let 80% if their kids get asthma, and, yet, conversely feel good about yourself. Bravo.

I agree about corporate power.

[Distressed]

Hey NomadUK, it sure is easier to claim I'm ignorant and use corrosive language than address the substance of what I posted, isn't it? Of course I don't think Wikipedia is definitive but if you could provide me with some definitive and authoritative sources, that'd be ever so swell.

And I'll tell you why these issues are somewhat in competition. We have finite resources. We have a finite amount of motivation. We should address those issues where a little effort and funds goes a long way first. I haven't read Lomborg but here is a TED talk video by him. I think he makes sense. Every philanthropic organisation must make these sort of rational decisions all the time. It's just that maybe we need to do this in a global context.

Global Priorities

I really don't think that it's a false dichotomy.

SteveB, I am not a climate-change denialist. I read scientific magazines like New Scientist. I read Monbiot. Following Mr. Caruso's advice I shall read realclimate.org as well. I actually enjoy reading and discovering the truth about things. Strange that, isn't it? Maybe it's why I read blogs like this? Nice angle though with the observation that all these issues involve the misuse of corporate power. Maybe we should really be thinking how to solve that problem. And yes! We can even do it simultaneously :) See how fair I am.

But you're right to a certain extent. In this one area I am a sceptic. I have a degree in philosophy and mathematics so I guess it's just in my nature. I think global meteorology and climatology is still in its infancy. And science has been wrong in the past, you know. But I'll not deny excellent scientific evidence. That'd be stupid.

But yeah, it's so much easier to fling insults. How's that working out for you?

[Distressed]

To answer myself and to show that I do read stuff sent to me and that I am not just some mindless drone sitting at a keyboard:

From the realclimate.org "Start Here" page:

What is the Relationship between Climate Change and Weather?

To put it another way, long-term variations brought about by changes in the composition of the atmosphere are much more predictable than individual weather events. As an example, while we cannot predict the outcome of a single coin toss or roll of the dice, we can predict the statistical behaviour of a large number of such trials.

You see, I was thinking that our limited ability to predict in the short term implied an even greater lack of ability in the long term. Comprehended in these terms I stand corrected if it is true that this is how our forecasting works. However, I still do think that we haven't a panoptic knowledge about the inputs, interactions, and outputs of our bio-system and how fragile or resilient it is. For instance if scientists start yelling something this week, "look, this unforeseen X is happening!" then surely this alters all previous predictions ... and what if some other mechanism kicks in that balances out our actions and we spend a whole bunch of money and waste a whole lot of effort needlessly.

But yes, if the consensus is that we need to get average CO2 concentration in the atmosphere down to 350 then by all means I'm not going to run around demanding otherwise.

And thanks for the link Mr. Caruso and keep on doing what you do cuz you have an avid reader here :)

And kind of slightly off-topic but not really off-topic: here is a TED talk by David Deutsch of "The Fabric of Reality" fame (a stonking read, btw). The talk is quirky but full of awesomeness. It is about Spaceship Earth:

Our place in the cosmos

[John Caruso]

Not to go all blogmom on you, Nomad, but while I understand the source of the frustration, please do keep it civil.

Distressed: You see, I was thinking that our limited ability to predict in the short term implied an even greater lack of ability in the long term.

Yeah, the difference between climate and weather is a pretty common source of confusion. Glad to hear you're checking out realclimate—they're a great source of information, especially when you're looking for a fact-based rebuttal of the deniers' argument du jour.

However, I still do think that we haven't a panoptic knowledge about the inputs, interactions, and outputs of our bio-system and how fragile or resilient it is.

I'd agree about the interactions (taken as a whole), but we do in fact know quite a bit about the fragility of many systems (like the aforementioned coral reefs). And the uncertainty you mention is exactly why we shouldn't be doing this blindfolded chemistry experiment on the entire planet, you know? Because the second law of thermodynamics implies that the result is all but certain not to be an improvement.

Glad to have you reading.

[Donald Johnson]

It's a false dichotomy to pit fighting malaria against the global climate issue because there are countless ways in which we use resources wastefully or for purposes which are actually immoral and for some reason, when it's global climate people think they have to compare this to fighting malaria. Why? Why not compare the money we spend on malaria with the money we spend on fighting wars or manufacturing luxury cars or any of a host of other dubious expenditures? It seems like bad faith to do what Lomborg does. Either fight global warming or fight malaria--money is limited and we can't do both. Really? That's the choice?

Saying that philanthropic organizations have to face this all the time is playing Lomborg's game. It's saying that there is this set of issues called "philanthropic issues" which have to compete against each other for resources. But why think about it that way? Fighting global warming is an issue which in many respects links up nicely with a lot of other issues we should be for anyway--improving energy efficiency, supporting mass transit, coming up with alternative energy sources (something we need to do even if global warming had nothing to do with us).

[NomadUK]

Not to go all blogmom on you, Nomad, but while I understand the source of the frustration, please do keep it civil.

Apologies to the blog host. My patience with the Distresseds of this world is, unfortunately, nil; since you have more, I leave him to you.