Outside the box

Will Wilkinson wants to know whether climate change worriers are as interested in abatement as they are in prevention:

Also… from Warren Meyer I see this: “[Some climate scientists] claim now that man-made sulfate aerosols and black carbon are cooling the earth, and when some day these pollutants are reduced, we will see huge catch-up warming.”

Has anyone in the Pigou Club advanced the argument for subsidizing sulfate aerosols and black carbon (and whatever else has cooling effects)?

That's a good question; there's no reason that global warming has to be fixed through conservation, and in part the focus on conservation has a lot to do with what the environmentalists would say is a broader worry about outstripping the planet's sustainable carrying strategy, and what their critics would call an aesthetic fixation on a low-consumption lifestyle. Me, I think it's probably a little bit from column A, a little bit from Column B. But either way, using AGW as a stealth way to advance your other agendas is a little bit disingenuous.

As to the particulars of Will's question, however, I certainly hope no one's arguing in favor of subsidies for suflate aerosol emission, since we just implemented a massive emissions trading program to remove the damn things from the atmosphere. Sulfate aerosols are what cause acid rain.

Comments

Sulfate is an ion and must have a counterion present. The acidity of solutions of it is determined by the counterion. It would be a simple matter to introduce sulfate salt aerosols that produced solutions of neutral pH (or just about any pH, for that matter).

Posted by NutellaonToast | February 13, 2008 3:25 PM

If global warming is so serious, an "existential risk" even, all research into mitigation should be pursued as quickly and vigorously as possible. It seems unlikely, if not naive, to think that humans won't somewhere, somehow, burn all hydrocarbons easily available. And if we release methane from bogs and the ocean...

Posted by Gore/Edwards 08 | February 13, 2008 3:26 PM

I'm all for swallowing the spider to swallow the fly if that seems like the best thing to do. I will take some convincing though. I will be more skeptical when you come by with a bird. When I see you coming with a cat, I will shout you down with profanity.

Posted by Njorl | February 13, 2008 3:56 PM

An "aesthetic fixation on a low-consumption lifestyle." Don't you mean ascetic? That makes more sense. Also, that's a run-on sentence if I've ever seen one.

Posted by Mortimer Madler | February 13, 2008 3:58 PM

The problem with man-made mitigation efforts is their unpredictability. If you think predicting whether AGW is tough, try predicting the unintended consequences of mitigation efforts.

The whole Gaia cycle is a feedback loop, i.e., for those non-engineers out there, part of the output is cycled back into the input. This means that the output is not a simple function of only hte input variables, but also a function of the output.

Feedback loops can be stable or unstable. Introducing a new variable (or increasing the level of an old variable) into the input can cause a change which causes the output to reach a stable, but different, level.

One example is the rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Experiments in closed environments have shown that increased CO2 causes additional chlorophyll to be produced in the plants, so that the excess CO2 disappears. This is a stable reaction. (A curious side note is that those experiments also determined that the resulting greener foliage did not provide a smuch nutrition to the animals that ate it.)

I would be very cautious about messing with the huge Gaia feedback loop in any meaningful way. Just look at the winters that ensued from the Mount St. Helens eruptions.

Posted by Rex | February 13, 2008 4:06 PM

Njorl: Is that some kind of weird Mercury Morris impression or am I missing some kind of literary reference?

Posted by Klug | February 13, 2008 4:07 PM

I've seen semi-serious arguments that the most economical way of fighting global warming is giant artillery guns firing millions of sulfur-laden shells into the upper atmosphere.

Anyway, isn't global warming old and busted, with the new hotness being the coming solar minimum?

I'm sure the recommendation will be to give up our immoral capalistic lifestyle, either way.

Posted by Michael Earl | February 13, 2008 4:08 PM

I'm all for swallowing the spider to swallow the fly if that seems like the best thing to do.

Well, perhaps in that case we'll all die.

Posted by Rob Lyman | February 13, 2008 4:16 PM

I think Njorl was referencing:

There was an old woman who swallowed a cow, I don't know how she swallowed a cow! She swallowed the cow to catch the goat, She swallowed the goat to catch the dog, She swallowed the dog to catch the cat, She swallowed the cat to catch the bird, She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her, She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed the fly, Perhaps she'll die.

Posted by rob | February 13, 2008 4:18 PM

"Njorl: Is that some kind of weird Mercury Morris impression or am I missing some kind of literary reference? "

It was a reference to "The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly"

Here is the final verse:

There was an old lady who swallowed a cow.
I don't know how she swallowed a cow!
She swallowed the cow to catch the goat... She swallowed the goat to catch the dog...
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat...
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird ...
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wriggled and jiggled and wiggled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a horse -
She's dead, of course.

Posted by Njorl | February 13, 2008 4:22 PM

"I certainly hope no one's arguing in favor of subsidies for sulfate aerosol emissions.."

Why not? It is the obvious answer for the global warming problem. Economically, it provides the most impact for the lowest cost. And the temperature reduction impact is immediate, so we should be able to fine tune the global temperature to the optimal point. So we really only need two steps to solve global warming.

1. Determine what temperature that we want the earth to be.

2. Turn the engineers loose with a mandate to achieve the desired temperature.

What could possibly go wrong?

Posted by zoot fenster | February 13, 2008 4:37 PM

For the record, the quote from me is from a different context, where I am summarizing why I think global warming will not be catastrophic. (short answer: greenhouse effect, which is pretty defensible, gets us about 1 degree next century. The catastrophe, 5,6,7 degrees, comes from hypothesized massive positive feedbacks in the climate system, which are not nearly as defensible)

The whole point is that sulfur dioxide aerosols are exactly the kinds of pollutant we should be eliminating. If we found a trillion dollars of spare change in the couch, and wanted to spend it on the environment, CO2 reduction would be way, way down the list. And a few trillion dollars of economic growth in Asia is going to do a lot more to help people weather storms and natural disasters than a few trillion dollars of CO2 abatement.

Posted by Warren Meyer | February 13, 2008 4:52 PM

Anything done on a scale that can affect global temperature is also done on a scale that can f--k up some poorly-understood component of the atmosphere, climate, ecosystem, etc., in some massive, Chernobyl-sized way. ("And after our initial experiments seemed to work out, we implemented our plan, and brought global temperatures under control. Yes, that was just about a decade before that weird ocean chemistry change caused most ocean life to die off....") Experiments to see whether there will be ill effects won't be sufficient to get a good sense of any risks, because you have to extrapolate global effects from much smaller trials.

I'm not especially green, am extremely pro technology, and have no desire whatsoever to revert to a "simpler" (aka poorer) way of life. But while I can see research on this kind of emergency remediation in case of some global disaster, actually doing it in response to small temperature increases is a breathtakingly bad idea.

Posted by albatross | February 13, 2008 5:19 PM

Hey Warren, Sorry my post lost the context of your really excellent post, which I highly recommend to everyone. I was just wondering out loud if any of the people who thought aerosols, etc. were keeping us from hitting some catastrophic threshold were plumping to subsidize these or similar emmisions, since it seems only logical if one accepts the logic of the carbon tax.

Posted by Will Wilkinson | February 13, 2008 5:37 PM

Controlling temperature by limiting the amount of sunlight that reaches the surface is not thermodynamically equivalent to controlling temperature by limiting the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere, and the former isn't necessarily an effective substitute for the latter. There was a post about this at realclimate.org a while back.

Still, we should certainly look at all response options, including GHG emissions reduction, adaptation to warming, and geoengineering possibilities such as pumping particulates into the atmosphere.

Posted by Mixner | February 13, 2008 6:36 PM

Sir Richard Branson was on Charlie Rose last night and was asked his opinion on global warming. (The whole interview was fascinating, as all interviews with Branson tend to be; he's an intriguing fellow.) He replied that he agreed with Dr. James Lovelock that it was probably already too late to begin making changes to reduce carbon emissions in the hopes of avoiding the worst effects of global warming; but that didn't mean we should give up on all efforts at mitigation and just eat, drink and be merry. He held out some hope that, given suitable financing, a technological solution could be found that would halt the effects before they became truly catastrophic (in terms of wiping out all life on Earth rather than just killing a billion or so humans).

Personally, I think it makes sense to pursue both mitigation and prevention to the maximum extent possible. We should try at the same time to preserve our lifestyle (and thereby our civilization and culture) to the maximum extent consistent with not ruining the planet.

Posted by liberalrob | February 13, 2008 7:10 PM

The Charlie Rose interview with Richard Branson is available on the Charlie Rose site for the next couple of days. He speaks on global warming right at the first of the interview.

http://www.charlierose.com/home

Posted by liberalrob | February 13, 2008 7:16 PM

liberalrob,

I'm sure Richard Branson is a lovely man, but he has no recognized expertise in climate science.

I'm not sure what pursuing "both mitigation and prevention to the maximum extent possible" is supposed to mean. The strategy of limiting the amount of warming is generally called "mitigation." The strategy of limiting the adverse effects of warming is generally called "adaptation." I'm not sure what "prevention" is supposed to be.

In any case, the idea that we should pursue either strategy "to the maximum extent possible" is absurd.

Posted by Mixner | February 13, 2008 8:38 PM

This discussion points out to me one of my frequent frustrations when discussing climate change. "Albatross" and "Rex" above speak to the same issue. There seems to be this attitude among the hip, contrarian "environmentalists are alarmists" crowd that we can use thought experiments to solve our problems. I apologize for stereotyping, in fact I'm frequently critical of the environmental movement myself, but this is just bloody ridiculous. The "alarmism" that most of us feel regarding climate change is because of what we're measuring objectively, in the real world, rather than extrapolating from ideas that, while novel, are essentially limited to laboratories and short-term observations.

I'm not a climate scientist, but I am a working scientist. Nothing irritates me more than the blase assumption that "hey, it's more cost-effective to just change things using [insert idea here]." You've got to deal with what's established using the best objective methods possible, in the real world whenever possible, and you've got to keep coming back to check on your conclusions. And when you want to fix a problem like this, you've got to attack it from multiple angles, with solutions established by the same pattern, and you've got to treat it with the severity that it deserves. Yes, those are a lot of conditions. It's a very difficult issue, which is why many of us are so worried.

Posted by Sefrankel | February 13, 2008 9:00 PM

Re: He held out some hope that, given suitable financing, a technological solution could be found that would halt the effects before they became truly catastrophic (in terms of wiping out all life on Earth rather than just killing a billion or so humans).

I can well imagine that we could make things really unpleasant for ourselves. I cannot imagine that we could wipe out all life on Earth, even if we used our entire nuclear arsenal and then some (deep-living organisms, and radioactivity-resistant organisms would survive even that). The Global Warming Armageddonists are ignoring a rather obvious fact: the Earth has remained habitable for life for almost four billion years despite some extraordinary catastrophes along the way, including asteroid collisions, complete transformation of the atnmospheric chemistry (oxygen was and is a deadly poison to many living things), immense volcanism, fierce radiation baths from exploding stars, and dramatic cooling and warming of the sun (and probably some things we don’t even know about yet.) This suggests either divine intervention or some manner of natural self-regulatory mechanisms that does not allow things to get too out of hand. If it can handle a supernova or an asteroid packing more punch than everything we have put together, I doubt something as paltry as humankind will short circuit it. Indeed, long before that happens we will A) run out of fossil fuels and/or B) our numbers will reduce to the point that nothing we do will matter one whit ecologically.

Posted by JonF | February 13, 2008 9:25 PM

JonF,

Yeah, climate change "wiping out all life on earth" is hyperbole, for exactly the reasons you mention. It's more the "make natural systems less predictable and hospitable to people" and "catastrophically diminish the diversity of species and our planet's living heritage" that we worry about. That said, where we're really playing with gasoline is the effect climate change could have on the oceans, we could potentially do some nigh-apocalyptic damage to what's left of the food web there.

Posted by Sefrankel | February 13, 2008 11:16 PM

Nothing irritates me more than the blase assumption that "hey, it's more cost-effective to just change things using [insert idea here]."

That's a terrific insight. Such wild speculation seems to run counter to the spirit of both liberalism and Burkean conservatism, as well as of scientific rationalism. It's more akin to the kinds of totalitarian sci-fi thinking that left the USSR such an environmental and social wreck.

Posted by brooksfoe | February 14, 2008 12:28 AM

I'm sure Richard Branson is a lovely man, but he has no recognized expertise in climate science.

No, but he hangs around those who do, talks with them regularly, and puts up $25M as an incentive for them to come up with solutions to what even our own anti-science President can no longer deny is something to be concerned about.

Good grief, there's literally nothing I can say on any subject whatsoever that you won't sneer at, is there? I was giving a pointer to an interview I found interesting, with an influential person in a position to take action and who indeed is taking action. Watch it or don't.

I'm not sure what pursuing "both mitigation and prevention to the maximum extent possible" is supposed to mean.

"Mitigation" to me means countering and reducing the effects we are suffering at a point in time, be it now or some time in the future. "Prevention" means preventing the effects from happening in the first place, or at least preventing them from getting worse or preventing actively making them worse. What's so counterintuitive about that?

In any case, the idea that we should pursue either strategy "to the maximum extent possible" is absurd.

No, of course we should instead bury our heads in the sand or cover our ears and yell LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA LA whenever the scientific community warns us of an impending catastrophe. Brilliant!

Posted by liberalrob | February 14, 2008 12:48 AM

Does anyone know anything about albedo? I read a Lomborg piece arguing that the most cost-effective thing we could do is require that all new roofs, roads, and parking lots be as white as possible. Since nobody else is talking about it, I sort of assumed it was the goldbug version of GW redudction.

Posted by J Mann | February 14, 2008 8:59 AM

1) What is the ideal global temperature?
2) What is the ideal atmospheric CO2 concentration?
3) By what percentage must anthropogenic CO2 emissions be reduced to halt the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration?
4) Over what time period must these reductions occur?
5) Over what time period must atmospheric CO2 concentrations be returned to the ideal level?
6) Who will convince all of the world's governments to take the steps required, regardless of the economic consequences?

Since the science is "settled", the answers to these questions should be known or knowable.

I suggest that, if you think logically about each question in turn, the answer to question 3 is "intuitively obvious to the casual observer". (HINT: The answer is NOT 7% below 1990 levels."

I would likely give more credence to the AGW "religionists" if they provided honest answers to these questions. I will likely not hold my breath in anticipation of that outcome.

Posted by Ed Reid | February 14, 2008 10:14 AM

Albedo is roughly a measure of reflection used for gross energy transferrence. It signifies the amount of light that comes back from a surface. It is not reflectance. A rough surface of shiny crystals that scattered light would have high reflectance but low albedo because the light does not go back the way it came.

Albedo is important in climate studies because of the mechanism of the greenhouse effect. Most of the light from the sun is in the visible range. When it is reflected back up, it passes out of the atmosphere back to space. When it is absorbed, it generates heat which is partially released by emmission of infrared wavelength light. It is that light that is reflected back to Earth by CO2.

Increasing albedo would reduce the amount of energy that was absorbed, converted to heat and emitted as infrared.

I have no idea how effective or cost effective playing with the albedo would be. There might be some low hanging fruit to be picked. Interestingly, this is one avenue that could not be handled by carbon taxes. Not easily anyway.

Posted by Njorl | February 14, 2008 10:28 AM

Explaining ecology to an economist should not be as difficult as it is, considering that both sciences are profoundly similar (economics being a special case of ecology, in my opinion).

Try this analogy. The earth's environment is a large and successful free market, the distributions and abundances of species reflecting the "invisible hand" of ecological processes. By and large it works pretty well, and we have built our current civilization taking advantage of the set of conditions created on by this global market.

Addressing the effects of an oversupply of carbon dioxide through various mitigations is akin to using a system of tariffs to address an oversupply of any resource. There may be some affect on carbon dioxide levels and warming, but the approach is fraught with the unintended consequences inherent to a dynamic, non-linear system. It is far better to address an oversupply by tightening the supply itself.

Posted by Alex | February 14, 2008 10:56 AM

liberalrob,

I agree that a lot of the criticism you take here is a bit too ad hominem or disingenuous, but here's the thing: you basically say we should work on mitigation, prevention, AND maintaining high living standards. The problem is that's a rather empty campaign promise. Those of us who study economics (and in my case engineering) tend to see things as tradeoffs, because in real life they so often are.

You've got $30 trillion. Do you want to spend $10T each on mitigation, prevention, and living standards? Or $20T on prevention, $5T on mitigation, $5T on living standards?

Of course it's a silly question, because there's no one guy in charge of distributing all the world's resources, so even if you reached a decision on this split, it's nigh impossible to implement. I like my cheeseburgers and iPods, so I'm unlikely to give you most of my living standard budget for your carbon reduction programs.

So my stance, much like that of Branson or Lomborg, is to say it's kind of too late or not feasible to really do much in the way of prevention. Let's focus our resources on research of new technology and mitigation of the effects of the problem. It may turn out the problem wasn't as bad as we predicted (in which case it's good we didn't waste a ton of resources on preventing it) or that it's far worse that predicted (in which case it's good we didn't waste a ton of resources on a problem we couldn't prevent).

Posted by Geoff | February 14, 2008 11:12 AM

Geoff,

Roughly $30 trillion, invested over the period through 2050 to apply currently available technologies, could achieve energy independence and approaching zero anthropogenic carbon emissions while maintaining lifestyle for a 50% greater population in the US. Another ~ $70 trillion would do the same for the rest of the world, though most of them would probably prefer to increase lifestyle as well.

Cheeseburgers + iPods, on the cheap! Whodathunkit?

Posted by Ed Reid | February 14, 2008 11:34 AM

liberalrob,

No, but he hangs around those who do, talks with them regularly, and puts up $25M as an incentive for them to come up with solutions

That obviously doesn't mean he knows what he's talking about. If you want the best scientific information on global warming, you should consult the IPCC or the National Academy of Sciences or some other reputable scientific body, not Richard Branson.

"Mitigation" to me means countering and reducing the effects we are suffering at a point in time, be it now or some time in the future. "Prevention" means preventing the effects from happening in the first place, or at least preventing them from getting worse or preventing actively making them worse. What's so counterintuitive about that?

"Mitigation" has an established meaning in climate science and policy literature, and if you're going to use the word to mean something else (you're using it to refer to what the literature calls "adaptation") you're likely to confuse your audience.

No, of course we should instead bury our heads in the sand or cover our ears

No, we shouldn't do that, either. There's a rather large window between "do nothing" and "do everything POSSIBLE." Try to find a responsible position somewhere in that window.

Posted by Mixner | February 14, 2008 12:49 PM

liberalrob wrote: No, of course we should instead bury our heads in the sand or cover our ears and yell LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA LA whenever the scientific community warns us of an impending catastrophe. Brilliant!

While it is most certainly disingenuous to do that as a matter of general principle, on the flipside, some of us have not yet deified the scientific community, nor canonified its writings. When a scientist says "x is fact", the open-minded among us respond "That's interesting and has serious implications if true, but how did you determine that?"

When the reply takes the form of "Why, it is settled scientific consensus among people-not-you in the position to know", followed by a quiet whisper of "...although the models are simplistic and fraught with assumptions" behind their hand, it doesn't take a very cynical person to conclude that the science is at least partially politics, and someone is making a grab for either more land or more vassals.

Posted by anony-mouse | February 14, 2008 12:53 PM

Sefrankel said, "The "alarmism" that most of us feel regarding climate change is because of what we're measuring objectively, in the real world, rather than extrapolating from ideas that, while novel, are essentially limited to laboratories and short-term observations."

One real problem I see is that we are NOT measuring objectively. For example, go to www.climateaudit.org to see a lot of smart folks dissect the problems with determining temperatures, both at the present time and making smart guesses as to past temperatures. And yes, politics enters into it, too. Too many in the world see the AGW scare as a (welcome) means for hurting the U.S. and the rest of the developed world.

This is one area where we truly need to be pouring money into research--it will be helpful whether we are truly experiencing AGW or merely are at the mercy of the sun, which by the way, accounts very nicely for the increased global temperatures we are seeing, and which shows signs of bringing us to a new Maunder Minimum.

We need more information.

Posted by Rex | February 14, 2008 12:57 PM

In response to Rex and to Anony-mouse:

I think you're misreading how the process of reaching scientific consensus works. Yes, models are models and have their problems, but by putting your assumptions up front (in the methods sections of your papers) you get a constant back-and-forth criticism that leads to suggestions for improving the models. That doesn't mean any one study proves a point, it's not unlike the blog conversation we're having now, but that over time researchers consider some elements to be as well established as it is practical to require and move onto clarifying other aspects of the system. The "politics" are the disagreements that make the process work, by constantly suggesting corrections. To imply that we have no understanding, and can thus take no action, until we have achieved a perfect understanding of the system ignores that we have a fairly well developed grasp of certain key elements. What we understand of these key elements suggests that we be seriously, seriously concerned.

Posted by Sefrankel | February 14, 2008 1:43 PM

I think someday a lot of people are going to feel pretty stupid for taking the AGW scare seriously.

It's OK for people to get their knickers in a bunch now, to show their bona fides as earnest, caring, concerned people.

But please don't actually do anything to the environment that the grownups will have to try to undo later when AGW takes its rightful place alongside nuclear winter, shark summer, killer bees, and Y2K.

Recall that 30 years, when global cooling was going to kill us all, earnest, caring, concerned people (or their similarly-inclined parents) proposed spreading carbon particles over the North Pole to increase solar heating. (Google it - it's true.)

Aren't we all glad that cooler (?) heads prevailed? Otherwise we'd have a bunch of grimy polar bears shaking their paws at us now.

My advice: take a deep breath, and exhale (through calcium hydroxide solution, if you're worried about the CO2), and don't worry about it. Someday you'll laugh nervously when someone mentions AGW, and say you never really believed it either. By then there will have been at least one or two intervening scares to divert the weak-minded.

Posted by Occam's Beard | February 14, 2008 1:43 PM

"If you want the best scientific information on global warming, you should consult the IPCC or the National Academy of Sciences or some other reputable scientific body, not Richard Branson."

True, but scientists do not generally make their arguments accessible to the laymen. You get the best info from peer reviewed technical journals, but even scientists outside their field have trouble understanding these. Most people can't even follow the arguements in the less daunting Scientific American or Nature. It is no more valid to exclude those who need to rely on popularizers like Al Gore from the political aspects of the debate than it is to exclude those who can't comprehend the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics.

Posted by Njorl | February 14, 2008 1:50 PM

Ed Reid, I think you're buying into the fallacy that I mentioned in my post above, that because we don't know everything perfectly it makes sense to do nothing.

What is the ideal global temperature, or atmospheric CO2 concentration? I'm not sure, but given that we clearly can destabilize the system over a very short period of time, then it follows that reducing our impact to non-destabilizing point makes sense. What is that point, how quickly do we need to get there? People are doing their damn best to answer those questions. But given that it is already well established that we are upsetting the system then we can move forward to reduce our impact while we clarify these questions.

About the supposed lack of scientific consensus that several have alluded to: I'm just going to say it straight, we've got a better consensus on certain fundamentals of climate change (i.e. that we're fucking things up) than almost any other issue in the sciences. The disputes are in the details.

Posted by Sefrankel | February 14, 2008 1:57 PM

Njorl,

True, but scientists do not generally make their arguments accessible to the laymen.

The IPCC reports are freely available on the web, including the Summary for Policymakers that describes the key scientific findings in clear language. The NAS report is also freely available.

It is no more valid to exclude those who need to rely on popularizers like Al Gore from the political aspects of the debate than it is to exclude those who can't comprehend the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics.

No one needs to rely on popularizers like Al Gore. Al Gore's presentation of climate science is selective and one-sided. He focuses on evidence that supports his predetermined conclusion and downplays or ignores evidence that conflicts with it.

I think many of Gore's defenders recognize this, but rationalize their defense of him by assuming that unless we scare people by exaggerating the threat, they won't do enough to address it.

Posted by Mixner | February 14, 2008 2:05 PM

"Recall that 30 years, when global cooling was going to kill us all, earnest, caring, concerned people (or their similarly-inclined parents) proposed spreading carbon particles over the North Pole to increase solar heating. (Google it - it's true.) "

Thirty years ago was 1977. In 1982 I was working for NASA on the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment, which had been ongoing for many years. The Nimbus-6 satellite was launched before 1977 specifically to monitor the effects of the mechanisms of global warming.

There does not exist a single peer reviewed technical journal article espousing the probabbility of an onsetting global cooling. There were quacks. They were not taken seriously.

This is one of the myths used by the irrational global warming denialists who preen like clever idiots about their superior wisdom, when they are actually betraying their own ignorance.

There are a lot of good arguments to make about global warming. This isn't one of them.

Posted by Njorl | February 14, 2008 2:10 PM

No, of course we should instead bury our heads in the sand or cover our ears

I see no economic reason why we can't do both, given the low cost of such actions. It's just ignorant politicians who insist we have to choose.

Posted by Rob Lyman | February 14, 2008 2:21 PM

I apologize for clogging the comments today, but wanted to make one other point after reading posts by Njorl, Brooksfoe and others. It's a personal point rather than an argumentative point. Climate change more than any other issue has caused me to abandon ideological politics and embrace rationality in politics and public policy (which is partly what leads me here, reading a libertarian-minded blog when in the past I would have been considered a doctrinaire leftist). That's why I find it so distressing when we argue over whether it is genuinely a serious issue.

Posted by Sefrankel | February 14, 2008 2:22 PM

sethfrankel,

What is the ideal global temperature, or atmospheric CO2 concentration? I'm not sure, but given that we clearly can destabilize the system over a very short period of time, then it follows that reducing our impact to non-destabilizing point makes sense.

Sorry, but this statement is typical of the simplistic analysis I often see from the left. It's hard to see how it would "make sense" to "reduce our impact to non-destabilizing point" without at least a rough cost-benefit analysis of that policy, and of alternative policies that may produce a greater benefit at lower cost. As Geoff points out above, no one really has a good idea of how much we should spend on mitigation vs. adaptation to get the best balance of benefits to costs. This doesn't mean we should do nothing, but it does mean we should be cautious and flexible in our response, instead of just throwing vast sums of money at one kind of response (such as "reducing our impact to non-destabilizing point") without any serious idea of how much bang we will get for the buck.

About the supposed lack of scientific consensus that several have alluded to: I'm just going to say it straight, we've got a better consensus on certain fundamentals of climate change (i.e. that we're fucking things up) than almost any other issue in the sciences. The disputes are in the details.

This is just wrong. There is no consensus on climate sensitivity (the change in temperature that would occur from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration). There is no consensus on the relative contributions to climate change from human activities and natural variation. There is no consensus on the magnitude of sea level increases for a given temperature increase. And so on. That's why the IPCC tends to report its findings in terms of ranges of likely change under different scenarios. These issues are not "details," they are crucial to the relative merits of different kinds of policy response.

Posted by Mixner | February 14, 2008 2:22 PM

"The IPCC reports are freely available on the web, including the Summary for Policymakers that describes the key scientific findings in clear language. "

The policy summary for carbon sequestration alone is over 400 pages. Large numbers of people who either can not or will not comprehend these documents are going to take part in our political process. That process will be the ultimate arbiter of what gets done about global climate change.

Here is a nice quote from the simplified summary to be considered by our scientifically literate public:

3.5.4.4 Chemical looping gasification/reforming
The chemical looping concept described in 3.4.6 is being considered for reforming of a fuel to produce H2 and CO (Zafar et al., 2005). When the amount of oxygen brought by the metal oxide into the reduction reactor is below stoichiometric
requirements, the chemical reaction with the fuel produces H2 and CO. The reaction products may subsequently be shifted with steam to yield CO2 and more H2.

Popularizers are necessary - as are more well versed people who criticize the popularizers.

Posted by Njorl | February 14, 2008 2:26 PM

Sefrankel,

I am buying into nothing. I am questioning consensus. I am questioning the goal. I am questioning the plan, or lack thereof.

I am trying to make several broad points:
1) "A goal without a plan is just a wish.", St. Exupery
2) "A plan without a goal is insanity.", Ed Reid
3) Don't begin vast programs with half-vast ideas.", Ed Reid
4) "You've got to be careful, if you don't know where you're going, because you might end up someplace else.", Yogi Berra
5) Global problems are not amenable to local or even national solutions. Anything less than a global solution is doomed to failure.

By the way, the "intuitively obvious" answer to the third question in my early post is ZERO. Think about it.

Posted by Ed Reid | February 14, 2008 2:31 PM

I think you're misreading how the process of reaching scientific consensus works.

I am sufficiently versed in its operations to understand that it has two logically opposed, but humanly inseperable, elements: healthy debate, and groupthink. Which one has greater influence in generating the consensus is directly proportional to the degree of politication present in the field of study. Politicization, in turn, usually arises when the system under examination is too complex to study with reliable and consistent experiments and models, and therefore alternate explanations of the evidence are crowded out by whichever one is popular and likely to stroke the biggest egos and produce the most funding.

Another hindrance to healthy debate is the one Njorl referred to: on account of ever-increasing specialization, the technical literature in any given field is often difficult for even scientists from other fields to access, but GW and AGW in particular rests on the study of a system whose operational mechanisms cross numerous disciplines.

Cynical? Maybe. But scientists are human, and I expect human foibles, follies, and limitations from them. Moreover more than one scientific consensus of history past was proven quite wrong. Even though the consensus was often arrived at honestly, and the knowledge acquired was useful in moving the overall state of knowledge forward, anyone who had bet several large economies' worth of income on the basis of the consensus would now be recognized as one of history's greatest fools.

That's not a call to inaction. It is, however, a call to reasonable, pragmatic solutions tempered by a healthy dose of humility, something many of the vocal AGW proponents (present company agnostic) are plainly lacking.

Posted by anony-mouse | February 14, 2008 2:55 PM

Most people don't understand the degree to which our current infrastructure is climate dependent. Here in sunny Southern California (actually kinda cloudy today), water is shipped from hundreds of miles away. Billions of dollars of reservoirs, canals, pumps, dams etc. have been built based on, it turns out, a series of assumptions about when it snows and when it rains.

Water managers in California ALREADY HAVE the evidence that the climate is changing. It is already snowing less and raining more. Adjusting to the new reality is going to be very expensive.

Posted by Francis | February 14, 2008 3:13 PM

There does not exist a single peer reviewed technical journal article espousing the probabbility of an onsetting global cooling. There were quacks. They were not taken seriously.

Quacks? Not taken seriously? The National Academy of Sciences took it seriously enough to bring it up in a report. Newsweek, April 28th 1975, citing the NAS report:

“Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. ‘Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.’”

Now, God knows the Academy has a few quacks in it, but by and large its members do not qualify.

Furthermore, the Newsweek article quotes Murray Mitchell and James D. McQuigg of NOAA, and George Kukla of Columbia. More quacks, I guess.

A contemporaneous article on global cooling in Time June 24, 1974 cites climatologists at Wisconsin and the National Weather Service. Not exactly Art Bell country, yes?

My point is not that one viewpoint is right and one is wrong. My point is that climatology is at a nascent stage, and obviously pretty flaky, since within living memory exactly the opposite views have been espoused by people who most certainly were taken seriously. So taking current predictions with a grain of salt – make that a dump truck full of salt – is entirely appropriate. Call it “global salting.”

This is one of the myths used by the irrational global warming denialists who preen like clever idiots about their superior wisdom, when they are actually betraying their own ignorance.

I spent decades as a professor of chemistry at a top five university.

Posted by Occam's Beard | February 14, 2008 3:41 PM

"I spent decades as a professor of chemistry at a top five university."

Please let me know which one, so that I don't recommend it to anyone.

You seem to think that Time and Newsweek are peer reviewed journals. There is a vast difference between a scientist seeing an interesting phenomenon and commenting to a news periodical that it is worth consideration of study and the publication of work for peer review. A real scientist would know this you fraud.

Posted by Njorl | February 14, 2008 4:21 PM

I know they're not peer-reviewed, Njorl, but simply the time and inclination to go to the library. Presumably someone who conducts a study and is willing to talk about to a national magazine also intends to publish it - a logical presumption, you'll agree. Otherwise, he's a hobbyist.

Please let me know which one, so that I don't recommend it to anyone.

One you could neither get into, nor afford if you did. Every word I wrote is true.

Posted by Occam's Beard | February 14, 2008 4:30 PM

"Presumably someone who conducts a study and is willing to talk about to a national magazine also intends to publish it - a logical presumption, you'll agree."

I think you will find many people with unpublishable work willing to talk to national magazines. These magazines need enough stories to fill each week's issue.

I've done the searches. No such papers exist. There's plenty of research into climate change mechanisms that goes in the cooling direction. You can find plenty of papers on possible causes of the many ice ages that have happened in the past, but there are no peer reviewed papers about a pending cooling crises.

There are many peer reviewed journal articles on the mechanisms, models, trends, possible effects, possible remedies etc of global warming. There are published criticisms of these works and responses to those cricisms and responses to those responses. There is nothing about global cooling. No scientist who could get a paper past a reviewer put their reputation on the line to argue that global cooling was real. Some, in informal avenues claimed that evidence indicated that we might be warranted in investigating if it were a threat. There is a vast ocean of difference between the two.

Posted by Njorl | February 14, 2008 5:05 PM

Occam, if you're so worried about precedent, I guess you realize that cultures have only ever been destroyed by four factors (of which I know)

1) Invasion by other cultures
2) Local climate change
3) Resource depletion
4) Pollution (arguably)

So, given that 1 is completely far fetched given our current scenario and the precedent for 4 is iffy, shouldn't we do everything we can to prevent 2 and 3 (of which I'm actually more concerned with the later, but finding a way to reduce CO2 will most likely address both if you assume CO2 is the cause of anthropogenic climate change)? Have you heard of the Easter (Sp?) Islands?

You make all these assumptions based on no science at all, only your theories about human nature, and then back them up by claiming to be a research scientist of prominence. WTF? You make no sense at all. You're not being objective, you're speaking from prejudice.

Now, since there's a correlation with having worked somewhere for decade and being older, I'm going to assume that you are close to or of retirement age. Care to dig up some APA article on the correlation between openness to new ideas and age?

See, we can all base our arguments off of bias about our opponents. My bias is that I think you've got your grey head up your wrinkled ass.

Posted by NutellaonToast | February 14, 2008 5:12 PM

So Gregory Benford is a nut? He wrote about global cooling; now he writes about global warming. I wish I knew what changed his mind.

Posted by Rex | February 14, 2008 5:30 PM

Nutella, thank you for your closely reasoned and temperate response.

Having gray hair (what of it is left) and a wrinkled ass, I have seen any number of scares and fads come and go, and this has all the pawprints of yet another one. I refer specifically to the messianic, nay hysterical, demeanor of its proponents, who regularly evince a conviction that would do the most radical imams proud. "But ...but...this time it's different!", you say. Sure. Call it puppy love for mass movements. Nothing easier than stampeding the young and the silly, for whom peer acceptance short-circuits critical faculties. (Google "population bomb," or "nuclear winter" for other examples.)

Even in a well-established field, such as chemistry, initial viewpoints are often shown to be incorrect. (For example, this week's C&EN has an article about the correction of a mistaken structural assignment in a natural product. Not a big deal, but even rock hard scientific disciplines make mistakes.)

In climatology, which is hardly rock hard, and is largely an observationally rather than experimentally-based discipline, it is reasonable to assume that mistakes and oversights are more prevalent. Theoretical calculations on chemical compounds can reach diametrically opposed results simply arising from choice of basis sets of orbitals. How much more flakiness must there be in climatological models, where no one even knows for certain what all the variables - much less their interactions - are? (For example, how does one account for increased plant growth occasioned by a rise in CO2 partial pressure? Are climatologists experts in botany as well?)

To take the models as Gospel reflects galloping hubris, in my view. Remember Lord Kelvin's calculation of the age of the earth from its cooling rate was off by three orders of magnitude because he didn't know about (and therefore didn't take into account) heating from decay of radioisotopes in the earth's crust. Oops. Can anyone guarantee (or even assert with a straight face) that the climatological models cannot have even worse problems? (Kelvin also famously scoffed at the possibility of radio communications. Oops.)

For these reasons, and the inherent implausibility of AGW, I remain sceptical. Liken the atmosphere to the population of the US. In that case, CO2 would comprise ca. 150,000 people (0.05 mole%). Anthropogenic CO2 would constitute about 4500 people (ca. 3% of the total). It's difficult to believe that the addition of 4500 people, who were identical in every respect with an existing 150,000, could qualititatively change anything in the US.

(Contrast the above case with ozone depletion arising from fluorochlorcarbons. I found that much more plausible, because the chlorine atoms were postulated to play a catalytic role; in AGW, the CO2 plays a stoichiometric role, and so presumably its effect would be a linear function of its partial pressure.)

I'm not saying AGW is impossible. I make room for the possibility that it may be occurring, but find unconvincing the data and arguments proffered so far. I think a risk-benefit calculation favors doing nothing for the time being. The observed warming trend is like noticing a mole on the arm. AGW proponents consider it might be melanoma, so the arm should be amputated. The solution (economic collapse) is a bit drastic for the threat, which might not even exist. When AGW proponents insist that to save the earth everyone must do what leftists have been advocating for 40 years (state control of the economy), and when a washed up unhinged politician (for whom I voted, btw) uses AGW as a vehicle to erase the chalk outline around his political career, my scepticism grows apace.

That's why I am sceptical about global warming.

Posted by Occam's Beard | February 14, 2008 6:03 PM

Skeptics don't usually argue a side. That's reserved for people who have chosen a side. You make a bunch of blanket assessments of people who are convinced and then claim to be open minded.

You head is in your ass, whether I'm temperate or not. The fact that I have no patience for your biased idiocy doesn't make you less of a biased idiot.

I'm a climate change skeptic, too, which is why I leave my hat out of these rings.

Posted by NutellaonToast | February 14, 2008 6:32 PM

You persist in putting words in my mouth. I am assessing the demeanor of AGW proponents, which is entirely appropriate, and drawing inferences from that assessment.

You confuse bias with scepticism. I remain to be convinced. Grownups default to scepticism when confronted with an implausible argument.

Characterizing that as choosing sides is inappropriate because it implies symmetry between pro and con positions. No one initially was worried about AGW; some have now moved to accept that concern, while others of us have declined to move because we're unconvinced.

If the debate centered on the propriety of the designated hitter rule, it wouldn't really matter. But taking AGW seriously, and taking the draconian steps against it that some call for, can only be justified when the existence of the threat is inconvertible. As of yet, it's not.

And thank you again for your temperate tone. There's a certain virtue in consistency, I guess.

Posted by Occam's Beard | February 14, 2008 6:55 PM

Oh, Occam, you're so much better than me. If only the rest of the internet could be as loving and giving as you, Godwin's law would be all for not.

Actually, sarcasm aside, I find requests for civility from a man who describe everyone who hasn't "convinced" him yet as having "their knickers in a bunch" and accusing them of merely putting on a show of being earnest and caring to be, I dunno, COMPLETELY RIDICULOUSLY FUCKING ABSURD. I also love the part where you tell a man that you don't know whether or not he could get into your as yet unnamed school of unquestionable awesomeness. I mean, he disagrees with you. He must be clear da d-u-m-n-e-s-s incarnate. Not s-m-r-t smart like you!

You chide me for my tone, but at least it's god damn honest instead of your superior, high horse shit faced smugness. Hey, fuck face, you're not better than everyone. In fact, you're no better than anyone.

Now be a good fuck face and fuck off. You can do it for a couple of decades in the ivy leagues if it makes you feel better about yourself, but just do it somewhere.

Posted by NutellaonToast | February 14, 2008 8:30 PM

Your compelling logic overwhelms me. I now see that I was wrong.

Posted by Occam's Beard | February 14, 2008 9:06 PM

Re: There does not exist a single peer reviewed technical journal article espousing the probabbility of an onsetting global cooling. There were quacks. They were not taken seriously.

I think that's way too strong. I was still a child in the 70s (though a precocious one) but I do recall honest concern about a new Ice Age, or at least a new Little Ice Age. There was a succession of remarkably cold (by 20th century standards) winters, including one I recall vividly when snow, in shaded areas, lay unmelted on the ground in the summer as far south as Michigan Upper Peninsula (which nearly halfway between the Equator and the North Pole). That was considered a danger sign since snow reflects a lot of sunlight and one of the hallmarks of global cooling is the failure of snow and ice to fully melt in the warmer seasons. It is not quackery to note such things and express concern about them.

Posted by JonF | February 14, 2008 10:16 PM

Yeah, it's hard to argue with curse words. I forgive you Occam.

Posted by NutellaonToast | February 14, 2008 11:08 PM

"So Gregory Benford is a nut? He wrote about global cooling; now he writes about global warming. I wish I knew what changed his mind."

Please indicate the peer reviewed article in which he expresses a belief that global cooling is a likely and dangerous phenomenon. You can't. I don't know anything about Benford, and don't mean to impugn his reputation, but in general, I'm sure a few nuts argue in favor of global warming. That doesn't make it false.

There were people of good conscience, sound mind and respectable qualifications who were concerned about anecdotal evidence to such a degree that they expressed interest in the situation. Preliminary data were taken and discussed. Conclusions that significant cooling was coming were NOT drawn by these people. It just didn't happen. When you heard people saying that an ice age was on the way, they were quacks. They were not supported by the scientific community.

Posted by Njorl | February 15, 2008 9:49 AM

"It is not quackery to note such things and express concern about them."-Posted by JonF

I agree. It is good science to note anecdotal evidence as a reason to commence research. Those who performed it did not come to the conclusion that an ice age was on the way. The ones who did say we were headed for dangerous cooling were quacks who used anecdotal evidence as proof of their crazy theories, and skipped the entire scientific process.

Posted by Njorl | February 15, 2008 10:00 AM

Yeah, it's hard to argue with curse words.

Oh, it's possible, it's just not worthwhile, since the person who resorts to that kind of language has clearly abandoned the argument (such as it was) in favor of a childish temper tantrum.

I recommend alcohol. It's not really a solution per se, but it at least slurs your speech to the point where nobody else has to hear your four-letter explanation of how you received inadequate discipline back when it still had the ability to improve your civility.

Posted by anony-mouse | February 15, 2008 12:07 PM

You confuse bias with scepticism. I remain to be convinced. Grownups default to scepticism when confronted with an implausible argument.

And who are you to decide that the argument is 'implausible'? Just some sort of open-minded fellow?

Uh, no. The mechanisms for global warming, the actual physics has been known for over a century. They are anything but 'implausible'.

And you're a chemist? Really? Then why don't you know basic physics?

Characterizing that as choosing sides is inappropriate because it implies symmetry between pro and con positions. No one initially was worried about AGW; some have now moved to accept that concern, while others of us have declined to move because we're unconvinced.

Just like 'being unconvinced that evolution is a viable theory', or that one is 'open' to the possibility that smoking does not cause cancer, or HIV, aids, is the mark of the true mature skeptic.

And you're a chemist? I find that extremely hard to believe. What sort of mathematics do you use, some diff-eq? If so, could you give me a mini-lecture on them (or some other related math)? Just being skeptical and 'open to the possibility' that you may be inflating your credentials just a we bit.

Posted by ScentOfViolets | February 15, 2008 2:55 PM

re: Please indicate the peer reviewed article in which he expresses a belief that global cooling is a likely and dangerous phenomenon.

What is it with this obsession with "peer reviewed articles"? Have we turned scientific journals into some version of the old Catholic Holy Office whereby no idea is worthy of our consideration unless it has the blessings of some congregation of PhD-crowned hierarchs on high?

By the way I don't see why the brief episode of cooling we had in the 70s should impugn global warming which I believe is well supported. Cimate does bounce up and down and a few years cooling in the midst of a long-term warming trend does not invalidate that latter trend.

Posted by JonF | February 16, 2008 9:23 PM