Tag Archives: climate change

Climate of Fear VII.

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Back in 1792, the Marquis de Condorcet was in hiding from some French Revolutionaries who wanted to cut off his head. To while away the time in a garret, he wrote an essay predicting the continual improvement of the human situation. Science would tell us more about the world, while education would make that knowledge widely understood and the emancipation of women would enrich the stock of human capital. A week later he was dead, but his philosophical essay continued to inspire optimists. In 1798, Thomas Malthus approached the issue of human progress from the hard-headed perspective of mathematics. Human population would always tend to run ahead of food supply. Most people would find their standard of living forced down to the bare subsistence level. Two intelligent people approaching the same question from two different perspectives arrived at radically different answers.[1]

Accept that global warming is real. What’s the worst that could happen? As was the case with Condorcet and Malthus, the answer depends on who is doing the imagining. Diane Ackerman, The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us (New York: Norton, 2014) is “enormously hopeful.” For one thing, humans have been remodeling the planet almost since they climbed down out of the trees. It has been one long Lowe’s project: dams, dikes, canals, logging, and moving life-forms (bacteria, plants, animals, people) from continent to continent. All of this even before the Industrial Age began. Human beings do stupid things, or smart things that turn out to have awkward, unforeseen consequences. However, human beings are also endlessly inventive when solving problems. Florida may become uninhabitable as the seas rise, but Florida only became inhabitable for large numbers of people in the first place through the invention of air-conditioning and insecticide. People will accommodate to a changing environment; new technologies will emerge to deal with new demands.[2]

Both Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future (New York: Columbia UP, 2014) and Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014) are less sanguine.[3] Klein argues that “we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis.” Where will this lead? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BmEGm-mraE Naomi Klein at least, urges a “Great Transition” away from capitalism that will solve not merely the climate crisis, but will also resolve a host of other social ills.

Nathaniel Rich, “Books: Feeling Our Rising Temperature,” NYT, 23 September 2014, D5.

 

So who is correct? Goldilocks. It’s likely to be worse than Ackerman expects, especially if you live in one of the fragile zones of the Earth. Human adaptivity will deal with the changes better than Klein, Oreskes, and Conway fear.

What is the most prudent response? Do what we can to limit the changes that will come, while creating an environment to stimulate adaptive responses and new technologies. Carbon taxes would be a good place to start. Raise the price of carbon. Let consumers and entrepreneurs—not governments—figure out how to respond.

[1] Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich continued this debate in the late 20th Century.

[2] My own hope is to grow rich by building a marina and resort on Baffin Island.

[3] I suppose you could call them “Naomi-sayers.” Ha! Is joke.

 

Climate of Fear VI.

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Burning carbon emits carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases then trap heat in the atmosphere, preventing it from escaping out into space. This effect is responsible for global warming. Since the late 18th Century, burning carbon has fueled the Industrial Revolution. In the 1980s and 1990s, the surface temperature of the Earth rose by 1.2 degrees. This rise then caused substantial melting of the polar ice caps and extreme weather events.

How much worse, then, would be the effects of the spread of industrialization into the non-Western world in the 21st Century? This has greatly increased the burning of carbon. Between 2000 and 2010, 110 billion tons of carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere. This amounts to an estimated one-fourth of all the greenhouse gases ever emitted. At this rate, the volume of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere compared to pre-industrial times will double by 2050. In 2007 the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that such a doubling could lead to a temperature rise of 5.4 degrees, with increases each decade of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. (Which I think, but I’m a dumb American, works out to be 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit.) So, the temperature of the Earth should be rising even faster than before.

It isn’t. Since 1998 the surface temperature of the Earth has risen by 0.2 degrees. However, this is much less of a rise than climate scientists had projected by extrapolating the temperature increases that were recorded in the 1980s and 1990s. (I think that we should be about 0.5 degrees warmer, but see my earlier disclaimer.) “Baby, Baby, where did the heat go?”

Some climate change skeptics love this: “There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998.” OK, but why did it stop? Will it restart? Another stripe of skeptics take issue with the accuracy of the models used to estimate the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. They argue that the climate is not as sensitive to increases in greenhouse gases as many models assume. We have more time to adapt and at a lower cost than “alarmists” predict.

Climate scientists offer a number of possible explanations for the “missing heat.”

The deep seas absorbed the extra heat, the way they did the “Titanic.” While surface sea temperatures have remained stable, temperatures below 2,300 feet have been rising since 2000.

The rhythms in the heat radiated by the Sun are responsible. The highs and lows of this rhythm are called solar maximums and solar minimums. One solar maximum ended in 2000 and we are in the midst of a solar minimum.

The pollution emitted by major carbon-burners like China actually reflects away some of the Sun’s heat before it becomes trapped in the atmosphere. (You can see how this answer would alarm proponents of responding to climate change. “The real problem with air pollution is that we don’t have enough of it.”)

Climate scientists have also scaled-back their predictions from a possible 5.4 degree rise in surface temperatures to projections between 1.6 and 3.6 degrees. These less-warm decades will then be followed by the roof falling in. The sun will move toward the next solar maximum; the heat trapped in the deep sea will rise toward the surface to boost temperatures; and the “pollution umbrella” will go back to trapping heat in the atmosphere. We’ll fry like eggs. Or perhaps just get poached. Depends on which scientists you believe.

“The missing heat,” The Week, 30 August 2013, p. 11.

Judith Curry, “The Global Warming Statistical Meltdown,” Wall Street Journal, 10 October 2014.

Climate of Fear IV

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Of all the water on the earth, 97.5 percent is salt water. The polar ice caps and the glaciers hold about 68 percent of this fresh water. Another 31 percent of it is not readily accessible because it is buried deep underground.

Like oil, the problem of adequate water supply can be addressed by a combination of greater efficiency in consumption and the opening of new sources to expand supply. For example, between 1980 and 1995 increased efficiency of use in the United States reduced both total consumption of water (10 percent) and per capita consumption (20 percent). Agricultural irrigation is very inefficient and better irrigation methods are available for those who want to use them.

Or you could move water from surplus areas to deficit areas. In a reversion to ancient governmental practice, the Chinese are building three huge canals to carry fresh water from the Yangtze River to northern China. The canals will end up being more than 700 miles long and will carry 12.7 trillion gallons of water per year.

Only about one-third of total annual run-off water is “caught” by reservoirs and dams; therefore, more dams and reservoirs could catch a lot more water for human use.

Deep drilling for water could tap into the 31 percent of total freshwater that is currently unavailable for human use (as compared to the 1 percent of fresh water that is available).

A much more serious problem is the availability of safe drinking water. About forty percent of the world’s population—most of them peasants in developing countries, 1.5 billion in India and China alone–lack access to modern sanitation systems. What this means in real terms is that people and animals shit upstream from where they get the water in which they bathe, with which they cook, and which they drink. What this means, in turn, is that about 2 million children under the age of five in developing countries die each year from waterborne diseases. As many as 76 million people are going to die of water-borne diseases by 2020, according to one projection. This is because 1.1 billion people don’t have a regular supply of safe water for drinking and 2.4 billion people have no access to sanitation systems. As a result, there are about 4 billion cases of diarrhea per year.

How to control this source of illness and how to treat the illnesses it causes are well understood. (Developed countries have been doing this for more than a century.) The real sticking point is that it is expensive to build sewage systems, water treatment plants, and hospitals. In theory, “These nations don’t have a shortage of water; they have a shortage of money.” In practice, a decade of economic growth since this statement was made has generated a lot of national wealth for China and India. Of course the problem is how to get at it. Taxing rich people in developing countries is as difficult as drilling for oil deep off-shore and drilling for the deeply-buried water.

Still, if you want to ask “what is the good” in environmental crisis, the answer is that it is good for American engineering companies. They have the skills to build sanitation and water-treatment facilities. They have the skills for all kinds of deep drilling.  Maybe the could capture melting polar ice at the source.

Or you could open a marina on Baffin Island.

 

Jen Joynt and Marshall Poe, “The World in Numbers: Waterworld,” Atlantic, July/August 2003, pp. 42-43; “Dirty Water: Estimated Deaths from Water-Related Diseases,” Atlantic, November 2002, pp. 46-47.

Climate of Fear II

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Recently, the New York Times has published pieces by economists arguing that the costs of limiting climate change may be much lower than people have feared.

The Cornell economist Robert Frank has made a series of arguments in favor of vigorous action in responding to climate change. Some of them are more persuasive than are others.

First, the same people who argue that climate change isn’t certain also go to the dentist once a year. Why? Because fillings are cheaper than root canals. The same reasoning goes for the uncertain effects of an uncertain degree of climate change.

Second, the same people who want to protect capitalism from excessive regulation ignore that the market works really well. Raise the costs of pollution to producers and consumers and they will find lower-cost alternatives. Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade policies can cut pollution without pushing up over-all prices.

Third, we restrict the right of individuals to exercise their “individual liberty” when it would harm others. Same thing goes for discharging greenhouse gases.

Some of his arguments seem to come from cloud-cuckoo-land.

First, capitalism is “creative destruction.” If carbon-based industries get destroyed by prices that reflect their real costs to the environment, then investors will plow money into alternatives. What Frank fails to understand is what Catherine the Great tried to explain to Denis Diderot: “You write your reforms on paper; I must write them in human flesh.” Coal miners don’t easily convert to barristas. Look at what happened to British coal miners after the Thatcher government decided to close many inefficient coal mines. Boozing away their dole in the local.

Similarly, there are only a relatively small number of convicted felons or people discharged from mental asylums who want to obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon, but lots of people drive cars. It is easy to restrict the rights of the former, but it will be hard to restrict the rights of the latter.

Second, what you lose on the swings you make up on the merry-go-round. That is, high taxes on pollutants would generate huge revenues that would allow other taxes to fall. What Frank fails to notice is that American taxation is highly progressive. The top one percent on tax-payers provide over a third of all income tax revenue, while the bottom fifty percent pay less than five percent. Raising gas taxes, for example, would penalize the vast majority of Americans while off-setting tax cuts would benefit the “one percent.” Good luck getting that through Congress.

However, the proponents of the carbon tax increase + other taxes decrease frankly acknowledge that the two have to run together to keep the tax effect neutral. If the carbon tax is increased without an offsetting reduction in other taxes, then it really is a significant additional cost for the economy.

Third, American leadership would give us the moral high-ground, while the threat of tariffs could be used to lever the Chinese and the Indians into following our lead. I suppose we could ask Vladimir Putin what he thinks of America’s moral high ground—and of economic sanctions.

In short, there are some interesting ideas on offer. However, the political bugs haven’t yet been worked out of the system.

Robert Frank, “Shattering Myths to Help the Climate,” New York Times, 3 August 2014.

Eduardo Porter, “The Benefits of Easing Climate Change,” NYT, September 2014.

Climate of Fear I

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Climate change is an important, but testy, issue. It involves a number of distinct, but related, problems. The problems are more political than scientific or technological.

Burning carbon emits greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Coal, oil, and gasoline powered the previous Industrial Revolutions. Most of the greenhouse gasses of the past came from what are now wealthy Western nations. Now, non-Western nations have embarked on a headlong pursuit of industrialization as a way of raising the living standards for their people. Developing countries now produce two-thirds of all greenhouse gases, and China is the single biggest emitter. China accounts for 28 percent of all emissions. This is more than the United States and the European Union put together. The greenhouses gases of the present and future are chiefly the product of these late-industrializers.

First, how do we cut future greenhouse gas emissions without telling non-Western countries that they can’t industrialize? One answer appears to be heavy investment in renewable energy sources like wind and solar energy. Yet China and India have as much access to solar and wind energy as do Western countries. What they don’t have are well-organized, articulate environmental lobbies. Taking a coldly economic view, the rulers lean toward carbon. They aren’t very interested in developing alternative energy when they have a lot of coal.

Second, who pays for the adjustments caused by the climate change that is already underway? Much attention focuses on countries suffering from “a case of bad latitude.” Climate change threatens “nations” on coral atolls in ways that don’t seem so threatening elsewhere. The Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean and the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean are in danger of disappearing under rising seas. Bangladesh and the Caribbean Islands could face the same fate. (If we get lucky, so could Florida.)

The expectation in some areas is that the wealthy nations of the West will pay. “Don’t tell us you can’t cut emissions, you can’t give money, while you bask in the rich way of life you enjoy now. You know your emissions are damaging us. Help us out here.”—Ronald Jean Jumeau, the Seychelle Islands’ ambassador to the UN for Climate Change. He probably shouldn’t try that attitude on with the Chinese.

Third, people are afraid that the costs of stopping or—better yet—turning back climate change would cause a significant slow-down in economic growth. Alternative energy sources were estimated to cost more than our little friend, carbon, or to involve unacceptable risks (like Chernobyl). A heavy tax on carbon use offers the best means to shift consumption from carbon to non-carbon sources. Many enviro-friendly[1] people are willing to have someone pay it.

Who pays for the investment? Germany has tried taxing carbon to subsidize the development of wind and solar energy. First, they decided to exempt the export-oriented industries from the tax because these are often energy-intensive producers. Higher costs could reduce international competitiveness. German national prosperity through exports came before climate. Then the higher costs of carbon to subsidize alternative energy sources did not produce comparable supplies of wind and solar energy. Instead, energy prices went up. Now the German government has begun scaling-back the subsidies.

Justin Gillis and Coral Davenport, “Push for New Pact on Climate Change Is Plagued by Old Divide of Wealth,” NYT, 21 September 2014, p. 10.

[1] It’s too bad there isn’t some clever euphemism for this constituency in the way that “420 friendly” is a euphemism for dopers.