“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”
– Danish physicist, Neils Bohr
A few posts ago I attempted to list the top environmental stories of the last decade: the Doha development agenda stall, the 2008 economic downturn, Al Gore’s Nobel prize, and others, ending with the Credit Card Reform Act of 2009. This month we’ll consider the future environmental topics in this column even though forecasting is iffy.
Climate Change
Look for responses to curb global warming to fall short of targets. After all, some folks like Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute call for cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 80% by 2020. Park your car now. Walk everywhere. No open fires.
As the shortfall looms larger, we should see more discussions revolving around geo-engineering, mammoth engineering projects to counteract changes in our atmosphere’s chemistry such as afforestation of the Sahara; and adapting to changes brought about by warmer climate, such as diking against higher sea levels. Current plans center on limiting GHG emissions through carbon taxes, a tax assessed on how much carbon a fuel contains; or cap and trade systems, or a payment system for forestation or forest retention, or other carbon-limiting schemes.
Our earth’s climate has been significantly higher (medieval warm period) and significantly lower (little ice age) than present within just the past 1000 years. Prior to man’s influence on the planet, climate has been much warmer and much cooler and CO2 levels increased and decreased accordingly. “Past climate changes, sea-level changes and catastrophes are written in stone,” writes geologist, Ian Plimer. Plimer, who has some 60 academic papers to his name, continues, “The [United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] process is related to environmental activism, politics and opportunism.” In his estimation, we are “currently in an ice age.”
The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) would be good to remember the words of philosophy professor Alston Chase,
“When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.”
Update (5 Apr 2010): Greenpeace seems to be getting frustrated and some want to kick some energy-wastrel butt.
If you’re one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this:
We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.
Come, let us reason together…Now where did I put my tire iron?
Michael Crichton’s techno-fable, State of Fear, is looking pretty prophetic.
Nullius in Verba 
I love the quote from Bohr, not so sure about Plimer though. As with investing in stocks and shares, climate science is an area where past performance is no guarantee of anything. This is the first time that human activity has had such a huge impact on the climate, and even if we stopped emitting GHGs now, the climate would take 50 years to recover from the damage. We have no way of saying for certain that the climate, or humans, can handle that, let alone continuing emissions.
As you know, I’m a flood forecaster, which means I only have to do predictions on short timescales – hours or days ahead. I know a little about weather and climate though and regardless of what any international panels or more learned scientists than me may think, I’d prefer to take a low risk approach to this investment. Which means me cutting my emissions and using my vote to make my opinions heard. Relying on techno-fixes and being able to spend our way out of trouble sounds too risky to me. Just the opinion of one individual.
K
Hi Katharine, thanks for commenting.
I love the Bohr quote too. Some say he said he was quoting or paraphrasing Mark Twain.
I agree that the planet is warming and we should be prudent in our use of resources. These are laudatory goals. I disagree with the dire Armageddonesque assertions. Has science sufficiently established the sensitivity of our planet’s climate system to justify a Draconian response, given other pressing problems, particularly poverty? I don’t think so. We can help the people affected by a warmer climate by dealing with their problems directly and not indirectly by lowering the CO2 output as the only method.
My point was to show that we’re not going to be able to make eviscerating cuts to our CO2 (and the GhG equivalents). If one puts enormous faith in the present climate models and their predictions, then one ought to be just as comfortable with putting their faith in the techno-solutions.
I prefer the Copenhagen Consensus Center’s approach to “promote the use of sound economic science to make sure that with limited resources, we achieve the most good for people and the planet.”
Katharine, to expand on the geo-engineering, a number of respected greens such as Stewart Brand of the Whole Earth Catalog think that it will come to that.
I found a review of Brand’s new book Whole Earth Discipline where “[Brand argues] that we may well end up doing geo-engineering, whose potential power he admires. I think he’s saying that we won’t do meaningful alternatives to fossil fuels so we’re going to need to fix the system with cloud-making (or whatever).”
Hi Norm
the reason I have some faith in the models used to predict warming trends is that I’ve seen them accurately model the past. So I trust that the parameters, relationships, feedback, etc could give realistic outputs. Geoengineering would play with elements of that and couldn’t be proven until it was done. So it seems far riskier. Which doesn’t mean it won’t or shouldn’t be tried of course. But I’m convinced we should address our unsustainable lifestyles too. The summary of Brand misses that point: even if we can’t find meaningful alternatives to fossil fuels, we can reduce our use of them.
Anyway, just as an aside, have you seen this website? As someone clued up about climate matters the debates about recent research might interest you.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
K
K, This might interest you. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
By far the most concise and up to date information I found on this topic. Sure glad that I navigated to your page by accident. I’ll be subscribing to your feed so that I can get the latest updates. Appreciate all the information here
Click the button that says “subscribe to RSS feed” at the upper right corner of the screen. That should do it.