The past few weeks and years have seen a bushel of papers finding that the natural world, in particular perhaps the ocean, is getting fed up with absorbing our CO2. There are uncertainties and caveats associated with each study, but taken as a whole, they provide convincing evidence that the hypothesized carbon cycle positive feedback has begun.
Of the new carbon released to the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, some remains in the atmosphere, while some is taken up into the land biosphere (in places other than those which are being cut) and into the ocean. The natural uptake has been taking up more than half of the carbon emission. If changing climate were to cause the natural world to slow down its carbon uptake, or even begin to release carbon, that would exacerbate the climate forcing from fossil fuels: a positive feedback.
The ocean has a tendency to take up more carbon as the CO2 concentration in the air rises, because of Henry’s Law, which states that in equilibrium, more in the air means more dissolved in the water. Stratification of the waters in the ocean, due to warming at the surface for example, tends to oppose CO2 invasion, by slowing the rate of replenishing surface waters by deep waters which haven’t taken up fossil fuel CO2 yet.
The Southern Ocean is an important avenue of carbon invasion into the ocean, because the deep ocean outcrops here. Le Quere et al. [2007] diagnosed the uptake of CO2 into the Southern Ocean using atmospheric CO2 concentration data from a dozen or so sites in the Southern hemisphere. They find that the Southern Ocean has begun to release carbon since about 1990, in contrast to the model predictions that Southern Ocean carbon uptake should be increasing because of the Henry’s Law thing. We have to keep in mind that it is a tricky business to invert the atmospheric CO2 concentration to get sources and sinks. The history of this type of study tells us to wait for independent replication before taking this result to the bank.
Le Quere et al propose that the sluggish Southern Ocean CO2 uptake could be due to a windier Southern Ocean. Here the literature gets complicated. The deep ocean contains high concentrations of CO2, the product of organic carbon degradation (think exhaling fish). The effect of the winds is to open a ventilation channel between the atmosphere and the deep ocean. Stratification, especially some decades from now, would tend to shut down this ventilation channel. The ventilation channel could let the deep ocean carbon out, or it could let atmospheric carbon in, especially in a few decades as the CO2 concentration gets ever higher (Henry’s Law again). I guess it’s fair to say that models are not decisive in their assessment about which of these two factors should be dominating at present. The atmospheric inversion method, once it passes the test of independent replication, would trump model predictions of what ought to be happening, in my book.
A decrease in ocean uptake is more clearly documented in the North Atlantic by Schuster and Watson [2007]. They show surface ocean CO2 measurements from ships of opportunity from the period 1994-1995, and from 2002-2005. Their surface ocean chemistry data is expressed in terms of partial pressure of CO2 that would be in equilibrium with the water. If the pCO2 of the air is higher than the calculated pCO2 of the water for example, then CO2 will be dissolving into the water.
The pCO2 of the air rose by about 15 microatmospheres in that decade. The strongest Henry’s Law scenario would be for the ocean pCO2 to remain constant through that time, so that the air/sea difference would increase by the 15 microatmospheres of the atmospheric rise. Instead what happened is that the pCO2 of the water rose twice as fast as the atmosphere did, by about 30 microatmospheres. The air-sea difference in pCO2 collapsed to zero in the high latitudes, meaning no CO2 uptake at all in a place where the CO2 uptake might be expected to be strongest.
One factor that might be changing the pressure of CO2 coming from the sea surface might be the warming surface waters, because CO2 becomes less soluble as the temperature rises. But that ain’t it, as it turns out. The surface ocean is warming in their data, except for the two most tropical regions, but the amount of warming can only explain a small fraction of the CO2 pressure change. The culprit is not in hand exactly, but is described as some change in ocean circulation, caused maybe by stratification or by the North Atlantic Oscillation, bringing a different crop of water to the surface. At any event, the decrease in ocean uptake in the North Atlantic is convincing. It’s real, all right.
Canadell et al [2007] claim to see the recent sluggishness of natural CO2 uptake in the rate of atmospheric CO2 rise relative to the total rate of CO2 release (from fossil fuels plus land use changes). They construct records of the atmospheric fraction of the total carbon release, and find that it has increased from 0.4 back in about 1960, to 0.45 today. Carbon cycle models (13 of them, from the SRES A2 scenario) also predict that the atmospheric fraction should increase, but not yet. For the time period from 1960 to 2000, the models predict that we would find the opposite of what is observed: a slight decrease in the atmospheric fraction, driven by increasing carbon uptake into the natural world. Positive feedbacks in the real-world carbon cycle seem to be kicking in faster than anticipated, Canadell et al conclude.
There is no real new information in the Canadell et al [2007] analysis on whether the sinking sink is in the ocean or on land. They use an ocean model to do this bookkeeping, but we have just seen how hard it is to model or even understand some of the observed changes in ocean uptake. In addition to the changing ocean sink, drought and heat wave conditions may change the uptake of carbon on land. The infamously hot summer of 2003 in Europe for example cut the rate of photosynthesis by 50%, dumping as much carbon into the air as had been taken up by that same area for the four previous years [Ciais et al., 2005].
The warming at the end of the last ice age was prompted by changes in Earth’s orbit around the sun, but it was greatly amplified by the rising CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The orbits pushed on ice sheets, which pushed on climate. The climate changes triggered a strong positive carbon cycle feedback which is, yes, still poorly understood.
Now industrial activity is pushing on atmospheric CO2 directly. The question is when and how strongly the carbon cycle will push back.
—–
Canadell, J.G., C.L. Quere, M.R. Raupach, C.B. Field, E.T. Buitehuis, P. Ciais, T.J. Conway, N.P. Gillett, R.A. Houghton, and G. Marland, Contributions to accelerating atmospheric CO2 growth from economic activity, carbon intensity, and efficiency of natural sinks, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, doi 10.1073, 2007.
Ciais, P., M. Reichstein, N. Viovy, A. Granier, J. Ogee, V. Allard, M. Aubinet, N. Buchmann, C. Bernhofer, A. Carrara, F. Chevallier, N. De Noblet, A.D. Friend, P. Friedlingstein, T. Grunwald, B. Heinesch, P. Keronen, A. Knohl, G. Krinner, D. Loustau, G. Manca, G. Matteucci, F. Miglietta, J.M. Ourcival, D. Papale, K. Pilegaard, S. Rambal, G. Seufert, J.F. Soussana, M.J. Sanz, E.D. Schulze, T. Vesala, and R. Valentini, Europe-wide reduction in primary productivity caused by the heat and drought in 2003, Nature, 437 (7058), 529-533, 2005.
Le Quere, C., C. Rodenbeck, E.T. Buitenhuis, T.J. Conway, R. Langenfelds, A. Gomez, C. Labuschagne, M. Ramonet, T. Nakazawa, N. Metzl, N. Gillett, and M. Heimann, Saturation of the Southern Ocean CO2 sink due to recent climate change, Science, 316 (5832), 1735-1738, 2007.
Schuster, U., and A.J. Watson, A variable and decreasing sink for atmospheric CO2 in the North Atlantic, J. Geophysical Res., in press, 2007.
Lynn Vincentnathan (#320) wrote:
That isn’t quite the way that Jim Hansen reads the paleoclimate record. According to him, the fast-feedback climate sensitivity is 3 C/CO2-doubling. The slow-feedback climate sensitivity is 6 C/CO2-doubling. However, even once we get to 3 C, some of the feedback will have been slow-feedback. So a 2 C fast-feedback rise in temperature would more or less mean that you’ll get 4 C slow-feedback rise in temperature but not 5 C.
As for the feedbacks we are seeing at this point from the carbon cycle, they are still simply a weakening of the carbon sinks, not the transformation of sinks into emitters. So at this point, while we are getting feedback, it is still the kind of feedback where nature has given us a pillow and we are hitting ourselves over the head, only its a shrinking pillow. Nature hasn’t started swinging its own bat, and even when it does, it will take some more doing on our part to turn it into a real sledgehammer.
Lynn Vincentnathan (#320) wrote:
Each additional degree is a great deal worse that the degree before it. I think Lynas plays with the analogy of the Richter scale (which would certainly make sense) although I’m not sure. I haven’t found the book yet. However, we always have plenty of incentive for pulling back.
James,
Having a look back over the paper, I should modify my comments (and type slower and think more beforehand). First off it is not useful to discuss the implications of infinite forgone consumption because it can only exist in the presence of infinite downside (which is equally incompatible with the real world as the former). Secondly, as regards implications for differing levels of mitigation, what you’re getting out is really an indifference price between current and future consumption under the circumstances (which will, irrespective of lower bounds, be higher than subsistence level consumption, which was where I was originally going). The price is the price and it will include the first marginal unit (the first consumption equivalent of +1ppm) and all the consumption equivalent +ppms up until indifference. In any case, my understanding is that your concern relates to conflating damage cost with this price and the finding of infinite discomfort with future uncertainty, which is being read into too much in the first place.
Matt (301,330) — Baring anthropogenic influences, the global climate ought to be slowly cooling towards the next attempt at a stade (massive ice sheets) 20,000 years from now. Given this, I am unwilling to credit a claim of ‘natural’ sea stand rise in 320 years. I am willing to credit a claim of sea stand rise for centuries due to anthropogenically induced global warming. Which needs to be reversed. Badly.
And by the way, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere appears now to be increasing at about 2 ppm, faster than previously.
Re 293. Rod – Your retelling is not quite accurate. Clinton supported Kyoto and it was during his administration that the U.S. signed it. He did not, however, send the treaty to the Senate for ratification in the face of a “sense of the Senate” 95-0 vote in July 1997 stating that “the Senate would not ratify the Protocol unless rapidly developing countries such as China were included in its requirements to reduce greenhouse gases.” Certainly it was disappointing that the Clinton-Gore administration did not go all out in support of the treaty but with absolutely no support whatsoever in the Senate it was probably always unrealistic to expect them to do so. Nevertheless, according to Wikipedia, the Clinton administration continued to show at least some support for the treaty, and in July 1998, “released an economic analysis …, prepared by the Council of Economic Advisors, which concluded that with emissions trading among the Annex B/Annex I countries, and participation of key developing countries in the ‘Clean Development Mechanism’ — which grants the latter business-as-usual emissions rates through 2012 — the costs of implementing the Kyoto Protocol could be reduced as much as 60% from many estimates.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol)
Bush, on the other hand, publicly opposed the treaty. On March 29, 2001, just two months after his inauguration, an article at cnn.com reported that “……White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said on Wednesday: ‘The president has been unequivocal. He does not support the Kyoto treaty. It is not in the United States’ economic best interest.'”
(http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/italy/03/29/environment.kyoto/)
Since I was speaking specifically of “nay-sayers” in my post 288, I think my point stands with no damage to my credibility.
> real Lomborg quote
Real cite
http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_information/dissemination/unexpected/unexpected_8_en.htm#2
Matt,
A charitable interpretation of your riposte to my factoid about global growth rates is that it was unclear. More generally, your hand waving has long since broken the sound barrier, and I’m not going to indulge it any longer. Your thesis that no potential circumstance is a problem because there ways to address them is absurd on its face. Just fyi: that problems can be dealt with will not come as a surprise. I can pick up the glass and replace the window when Jimmy throws a ball through it, but it’d be cheaper to walk to the front yard beforehand and tell him to take his game to the park. Global warming wouldn’t be a problem if we collectively decided to cease all emissions- it can be done, it isn’t cost effective though. Solar panels with 30% efficiency can be made, but not at a cost that doesn’t make it much cheaper to simply make more of the current variety. Etc. Etc. You have not even attempted to demonstrate that any of these adaptation routines are efficient, nor suggested any line of reasoning on why they might be intuitively appealing (to most here, I believe them not to be). How does one respond to, “well you could build a sea wall, or you could evacuate”, except to say, no kidding- look me up when you have anything remotely interesting to claim. Speaking of which, I think that’s where this discussion ends.
RE #346, & “if we accept the Permian/Triassic Extinction as the best analogy for what could happen, it’s when we get to the greater than 5degC range that there is a risk of clathrate outgassing which will then produce a substantial outgassing.”
That is probably the most probable boundary figure for hysteresis (greater than 5degC range), but I’m not sure that scientists actually know whether or not 3C might be enough to EVENTUALLY over a long time play out to much greater increasts via nature’s contributions. Perhaps 6C warming ensures massive outgassing, but a 3C warming might lead to a bit of outgassing, leading to a bit more warmnig, and so on up to a 6C warming.
I’m not familiar with the science, but I would be looking for proof that a 3C warming in the past did NOT result in such an effect (eventually). and maybe the scientists have this proof, but I just am unaware of it.
BTW, SIX DEGREES (Mark Lynas) is for sale in the UK, and will be over here in January 2008. I used http://www.amazon.co.uk to get my copy. It is based an a lot of scientific studies.
Martin Vermeer answered to Matt on the Dutch dikes:
“If all your arguments are as facts based as this one, I am not
impressed.”
Typically, that is the way with denialists’ arguments. When checked, they evaporate. That do not hinder them to sprout such garbage a dozen times in a post.
It makes me wonder, why an earth such behaviour is tolerated?
A correction to earlier comment. The great storm in the North Sea was in 1953 and not 1958.
About 170 people died in East Anglia as a result of it and over a 1000 in Holland.
By the way, as I writte just now a severe weather warning is being issued due to similar conditions to 1953 happening this very night. Rotterdam port will is currently closed and homes are being evacuated in East Anglia.
This set of conditions: high tides and stormy weather are not related with AGW however, in a scenario of higher average level of Oceans will obviously influence the impact of these occurrences increasing therefore the risk.
Cobblyworlds,
It’s funny that you say that because I was attempted to post yesterday, as I veered dangerously close to on-topic, that there should be a discussion of climate sensitivity to CO2 emissions rather than simply CO2 concentrations. I didn’t post that because it occurred to me that sink saturation isn’t necessarily an appropriate criticism of the economic modeling (in other words, I would imagine- and hope- that the consensus on the relationship between future emissions and their direct effect on GHG concentrations in the upper atmosphere is taken into account in the models, although it is less than clear that the uncertainty of said is). What hadn’t occurred to me is the potential relevance of the separate issue of melting permafrost or any other feedbacks that could result in significant (or very significant) emissions of GHGs- i.e. the relationship between future emissions and their indirect effect on GHG concentrations- which won’t be incorporated in the models unless it is taken into account in the climate sensitivity scale parameter.
Anyone care to comment? I’ve heard it said that climate sensitivity is an equilibrium concept. Does that imply that it includes long term feedbacks especially those that are highly unpredictable and unstable/non-linear like the thawing of permafrost? Are those (rumored-to-be) highly positive feedbacks part of the 3ºC sensitivity even as they are one-off? The more I think about climate sensitivity, the more the mind boggles.
Lynn Vincentnathan (357) — I opine that a better analogy is PETM, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. The Wikipedia page on this appears to have updated recently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum
Joe Duck, I agree that we should be discussing issues, rather than Lomborg’s style or positions. In fact, I would contend that like most ideologically driven “advocates,” (be they from right or left) Lomborg has made himself irrelevant.
So, I ask you, if you had never read Lomborg and his soothing words, how you would prioritize resources given that
1)climate change has at least the potential to damage civilization beyond repair
2)the probability of 1) cannot be reliably bounded at present
3)we do not know where the tipping points for irreversible change are
4)we have many other crises and needs, which climate change will exacerbate, and which must be solved simultaneously if we are to reach the ultimate goal of economic and ecological sustainability.
Lomborg and Gore are lightning rods. Let us lay them aside until the sparks die down. Do you disagree with the above points? If so, which? If not how would YOU prioritize efforts.
It’s a strawman. Direct deaths due to excess heat is not claimed by anyone credible to be high on the list of problems that will be caused by accelerated warming.
Setting up a strawman, knocking it down – surely you realize that this is a dishonest tactic?
It’s crap like this that cause us to call him a liar.
The annual death rate and life expectancy in Minnesota are little different than they are in Florida. The grim reaper is not that easily fooled.
Re. 363, it’s not only a straw man, it’s also a good illustration of (apparently) intentionally misleading the public with statistics; because what counts isn’t the total numbers of deaths occurring presently, but the number of additional heat-related deaths that are expected to occur as a result of increased temperatures, vs. the number of cold-related deaths that are expected to be avoided as a result of increased temperatures. On that measure the net number of deaths is expected to rise substantially as temperatures rise (see here for instance, and/or see the IPCC WGII reports).
Regarding alternative fuels and CO2, an interesting piece from the NYT:
The Carbon Calculus
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/business/businessspecial3/07carbon.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin
Also, re. 363, it’s also a very good example of cherry picking. Why quote statistics for Europe rather than give the worldwide statistics (which would show a far higher proportion of heat-related deaths)? When it comes to the expected impacts of global warming, he almost always focusses on Europe and/or the US, and ignores the expected (far more serious impact) on tropical countries – most of which are the same developing countries that he claims to be so concerned about. It’s a classic example of mendacious cherry picking.
Re, Joe Duck, 310:
Joe you’re dissembling. What you actually wrote was:
When someone accuses someone else of cherry picking, for you to say that they are thereby “conceding the facts” that are being cherry-picked (as if that made the charge of cherry picking somehow less serious) is an outrageous attempt to defend the practice of cherry picking, and you know it.
RE #363:
“For Europe as a whole, about 200,000 people die from excess heat each year. However, about 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold”
Sorry I can not reel back to the originator of this nonsense.
BS and nothing else. Where is his/her reference? Where is his/her common sense?
We do cope quite well with the usual winter weather, thank you.
I pointed earlier to a link with actual numbers on excess wintertime deaths — which is not the same as deaths “from excess cold” at all.
The actual number reported is a tenth the number you’re attributing to Lomborg. Where do you find that in what Lomborg published?
Closer to on-topic, here is a most disturbing recent report by the IEA regarding increases in global warming gases:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view_article.php?article_id=99485
Matt wrote:
According to CNNMoney.com, Exxon-Mobil is the world’s largest publicly traded company, and in February 2007 reported the largest annual profit of any corporation in US history for 2006: $39.5 billion, an increase over its previous record-seting $36.1 billion profit in 2005.
I would say that setting records two years in a row for the largest profit of any corporation in US history qualifies as “unimaginably rich.”
Microsoft’s annual profits are less than half of Exxon-Mobil’s and Google’s profits are less than one tenth. Fortune 500 lists Exxon-Mobil as the most profitable US corporation for 2007; Microsoft doesn’t even make the top 10, and Google doesn’t make the top 20.
RE: Lomborg quote about deaths was from “Cool It” and pulled from Lomborg.org. Not sure of his source as I don’t have the book where it’ll be noted. I agree these numbers are not a reason to be complacent in face of global warming, but disagree that he’s suggesting they are. He’s correctly using this as a good example of the media’s tendency to ignore this significant aspect of climate related deaths. It’s interesting that some above call this a strawman while others say it’s cherry picking and others say irrelevant altogether and others say the numbers are bogus. It CANNOT be all those things, folks.
Dave:
When someone accuses someone else of cherry picking, for you to say that they are thereby “conceding the facts”
This is an odd interpretation of what I wrote, but usually cherry picking accusations do concede the veracity of the limited set of facts in an analysis, but suggest they are presented in a misleading way.
*
With both Gore and Lomborg critiques I think you need to be careful to look separately at the *facts*, which both Lomborg and Gore tend to have right and the selection and interpretation of those facts, which they both do to some extent selectively (aka cherry pick). Because cherry picking varies in degree it’s hard to address exactly how defective a cherry picked analysis turns out to be.
*
Dave you do make a good point about Europe vs Global – what are the numbers? This would be a legitimate “cherry picking” point against Lomborg though it would not invalidate his main point – let’s look broadly at the issue.
Ray wrote:
Presenting challenges to sustainability as a “multichotomy” and forcing people to choose which concerns are addressed is simply a recipe for fracturing consensus to deal with any of them.
I think this is the most powerful criticism of what could happen from the Lomborg / Copenhagen Concensus approach. But it’s up to us to prioritize on the basis of reason rather than on the basis of emotion. On that point most people can agree even if reasonable people disagree about the probabilities, which brings up your other question to me:
how you would prioritize resources given that
1)climate change has at least the potential to damage civilization beyond repair
2)the probability of 1) cannot be reliably bounded at present
3)we do not know where the tipping points for irreversible change are
4)we have many other crises and needs, which climate change will exacerbate, and which must be solved simultaneously if we are to reach the ultimate goal of economic and ecological sustainability.
Complex but great question Ray. I’m starting to study the idea of “unbounded risk” that keeps cropping up here. I think the concept is questionably applied in teh RC discussions, often treated here as if unbounded risk should be assigned a super high value because it is unbounded. I’m assuming (I don’t understand this yet) that for a risk analysis you’ll need to assign some probabilities to the risks, unbounded or not. For example a major asteroid collision or huge solar flare would be more problematic for us than any climate scenario, yet we all (correctly) don’t want to spend much time worrying about those possibilities or spending money or innovation devising mitigations. However, a short and generic short answer is that I’d follow Mendelsohn’s advice and do moderate mitigation.
Ray also noted this:
Lomborg and Gore are lightning rods. Let us lay them aside until the sparks die down
Great idea!
Ray – I’d vote for this approach to mitigation. This is the very thoughtful reply I had from Dr. Mendelsohn at Yale. I just got his permission to post this:
Robert Mendelsohn:
The economics community involved in climate change generally agrees that it is time to start controlling greenhouse gases. The prevailing wisdom in this community is that we should start with a relatively modest program that gets more stringent over time (although there are a few dissenters to this conclusion). A policy that begins with massive immediate mitigation will tend to be wasteful on a number of criteria. First, the costs will far exceed the benefits. The present value of damages from current emissions are relatively low, so that any immediate program that has very high costs per ton will be wasteful. The benefits of controlling carbon dioxide this decade are less than $10/ton of carbon dioxide. The abatement costs will exceed the benefits for any effort that costs more than this amount. Second, the optimal response to a stock pollutant like greenhouse gases is a dynamic policy that tightens over time. This optimal response delays expenditures on abatement until later. The optimal response postpones massive costs until the second half of the century. This reduces the overall cost of abatement, regardless of the long term cumulative target, by a factor of three. Third, we want to take advantage of technical change. If we invest in abatement too soon, we will invest in poorly designed programs and technology. The current corn ethanol program in the United States is a good example. It costs a lot of money and has the same carbon footprint as gasoline. That is, it is completely ineffective at controlling greenhouse gases. Let technical change proceed and then invest heavily in effective alternatives. Finally, the optimal program is a universal program that applies to every emitter in the world. It is wasteful to spend $10 per ton to remove a ton of emissions in one place while failing to spend $1 per ton removing a ton in another. The more stringent the policy becomes, the more critical that it be applied
universally. R. Mendelsohn
” The Harvard study found that low-income, white rural populations in the North, including Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, Montana, and Nebraska, have life expectancies of 76.2 years for men and 81.8 years for women. That’s substantially more than 98% of the average white population. Many counties in the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” fared well in life expectancy, but Nicollet County was the top at 81.1 years. …”
Go north of those states, and life expectancy goes up even higher.
Warming Minnesota is not going to materially lengthen life expectancy for its citizens.
“The most extensive study on Excess winter mortality in Europe: a cross country analysis identifying key risk factors was published in 2002. The results show a positive link between premature winter deaths, mean winter environmental temperature and mean winter precipitation. In other words, the premature death toll is higher in countries with a warmer winter climate. …”
It’s not significant.
Why do you imagine that it is?
Because Lomborg says it is. Got it.
Yes, it is.
Strawmen are often built of statements containing cherry-picked data used to refute an argument the other side never makes.
Because knocking down a strawmen IS irrelevant.
They may well be. Building a strawman by making shit up is a lot easier than searching for data to cherry-pick. Knocking down a strawman argument is a form of lying, so why would one be terribly surprised if the facts being quoted are also a lie?
Sure it can, and indeed appears to be.
I’d love to see the analysis that allows him to make this statement in such an authoritative manner.
In #373 above, Joe Duck states (regarding Lomborg’s claim that GCC will save lives overall from the reduction in deaths from cold in witner):
“It’s interesting that some above call this a strawman while others say it’s cherry picking and others say irrelevant altogether and others say the numbers are bogus. It CANNOT be all those things, folks.”
I would invite you to reconsider that statement, since clearly a claim *CAN* be all those things (whether or not Lomborg’s is being a separate question.
A strawman is a false representation of an opposing position, manufactured to be easily knocked down. The easiest way to fabircate such a false representation is by cherry-picking the data. Cherry-picked data is, on the account of the “bogus” selection criteria, irrelevant. The issue is largely a matter of which aspect of the irrelevant cherry-picked bogus strawman misrepresentation of the facts one chooses to emphasize.
Joe, did you ask professor Mendelsohn why it made sense to pay for mitigation when the, “costs of global warming roughly equal the benefits” as he stated just a few short years ago? One might say that given this remarkable turnaround in such a short period that skepticism might be in order when this good doctor makes a claim. Btw, there was nothing in that ‘thoughtful’ response but a serious of unsubstantiated conclusions stamped with the, “my view is the mainstream view” seal of approval. Though the good professor is in a position to know that, I do find myself seriously doubting that he posseses even a modicum of objectivity. In any case, I would be willing to bet that amongst the smelling sweetly as Linberger cheese assumptions required to get to his result you would find:
A fixed climate sensitivity parameter
A net positive effect on disese mortality from global warming
No effect of global warming on drinking/fresh water availability
No scenarios that introduce damages from ice sheet melt
A fixed horizon of 100 years (pre-selecting a strategy that emphasizes late mitigation)
A slightly negative net effect on agricultural yields but positive in the early to middle part of the horizon
Mitigation costs that do not account for what mere lay persons might see as the positive geopolitical ramifications of less dependence on fossil fuels from unstable nations and despots. Neither will the positive effect on persistent and destabalizing trade imbalances factor here.
The discount rate applied will assume a perfect correlation between benefits from mitigation and per capita growth while risk aversion and the pure rate of time preference are likewise fixed parameters
Etc. etc. etc. I don’t know any of this for certain as I haven’t look through his work, but it describes my strong suspicions, and a critical mass of these would certainly account for his ‘reasoned’ stance. I would actually think it a good idea to put these assumptions to the good doctor and see if he objects. Do you mind shooting him an email Joe?
Assuming that these assumptions hold in the main, this is precisely what I mean by economists with the temerity to push their grossly crude models on the public as if they represent wisdom. Small. Joke.
Joe, first some definitions–any adverse outcome has a cost that would be incurred if it happened and a probability of occurence. Multiply these together and you have risk. For a risk to be unbounded, it must have a very high cost–incalculable or inestimable–and there is also a difficulty in calculating its probability of occurrence. A good example of such a risk was that of terrorist attack just after 9/11/2001–insurance companies wouldn’t touch it, and when the insurance companies turn their back, you know you’ve got an unbounded risk.
Climate change fits this definition quite nicely. There are many threats arising from climate change that have extremely severe consequences–e.g. Lovelock’s hypothesis of near complete loss of ocean productivity. Now Lovelock has taken some hits for some ideas that sounded a bit too new agey in the past, but he is a sharp guy. His concern is deemed credible by several experts. The problem is that we don’t know enough to calculate the probability. Another: loss of agricultural productivity at a time when human population is growing to 9-12 billion. Extreme weather events, and so on.
When you have unbounded risk, one thing you have to do is more research to better define the probability. However, often the study will take so long that mitigation would not be possible once it was completed. In this case, you have to begin mitigation concurrently with further study. In the case of climate, it is the positive feedbacks in the system–saturation and eventual outgassing of the oceans (hey, I’m on topic!!!) and permafrost, water vapor, loss of forests and their resulting decay. We don’t know where that point is, but there is some evidence we are close.
So here’s the problem I have with Mendelsohn’s analysis. The $10/ton cost of carbon is considered by Mendelsohn as a one-time cost, but it is a gift that keeps on giving. Every ton of carbon we emit now, puts us closer to the point of no return. It means that much less time we have to 1)adapt, 2)mitigate or 3)invent ourselves out of this mess. In a very real sense, it may be now or never.
So, I am all for carrying out inexpensive mitigations first. However, the actions we carry out have to be enough to be effective. They have to really buy us time. A tepid approach will not result in a tepid climate, but rather a hot climate maybe a little more slowly.
Re. Joe Duck, 374:
Why not?
1) dhogaza pointed out that it’s a straw man, which it clearly is, in the sense that no-one is claiming that the major and extremely serious negative impacts that are expected as a result of climate change will be due to mainly deaths caused directly by temperature. So pretending that the figures for deaths directly caused by temperature could be a reason not to be worried is a straw man. The deaths, mass migrations, famines, wars, water shortages and general reduction of quality of life, will be due to indirect effects, such as greatly increased levels of droughts, flooding, extreme weather events, incidence of many diseases such as cholera, and so on.
2) I pointed out that in addition to this, it’s a statistical sleight of hand designed to mislead the public, because given that we’re talking about climate change, the statistic that matters is not how many people are dying today as a result of overheating vs. as a result of cold, but the net increases that are expected in these figure as the climate changes; and far more additional deaths are expected to occur due to heat than due to cold, for the reasons given in the article I linked to. This point does not in any way contradict point 1).
3) I also pointed out that it was a cherry pick, because he pretended you can extrapolate Europe to the rest of the world (which he frequently does), despite the fact that in the tropics it’s obvious that far more people would be likely to die from heat than from cold, relative to in Europe. (As for your request for the exact worldwide figures, you can google as easily as I can – the point is not what the exact figures are, but that the tropics are incontrovertibly less prone to cold than Europe is, so it’s a clear cherry pick.)
4) Pekka J. Kostamo asked you where the figures you quoted came from (in terms of a primary peer reviewed source), which is a very reasonable request.
5) JCH quoted from a study which found that, counter-intuitively, the premature winter death toll in Europe is higher in countries with a warmer winter climate. It also states:
“Housing standards are a potential factor behind this paradox. Houses in countries with comparatively warm climates all year round tend to lose heat easily, so people find it hard to heat their homes when winter arrives. This is especially true in Portugal, Spain, and Ireland, where winter temperatures are comparatively mild and excess mortality rates in winter very high. Conversely, houses in countries with severe climates – such as Scandinavia – have to be thermally efficient to retain warmth.”
So again, Lomborg cherry-picked a statistic that suited his purposes (total number of deaths in Europe directly from heat vs. directly from cold), while ignoring statistics that do not suit his purposes (the premature winter death toll in European countries with a warmer vs. a cooler winter climate.)
None of these points contradict each other. I see no logical inconsistency between the above points.
Joe Duck, #374, in Mendelsohn’s analysis I see no mention of the fact that the longer governments wait before taking serious action to cut emissions, the greater the eventual cut will have to be; and that for example, there is general agreement that a 20-year delay means that we must reduce emissions at an annual rate that is 5 to 11 times greater than with immediate action.
re 291 (J.S. McIntyre )
I’ll get to agreeing with the post, but first a couple of checks:
I’m not sure of the (your) definition of “true” cost. Depending how it is defined and what’s loaded onto it, your $70/bbl might be right-on or off by miles.
Other than Mexico production maybe having a nudge (but noticeable) effect, the others, except one of the five, are pretty much insignificant. Two are just political rants that snuck out of their box when nobody was watching. Taking refineries off line affects the price of gasoline, not crude. But your last point, sans the little oil company dig (you know Exxon-Mobil has less than 4% of world production — chances zero to none of manipulating oil prices.) is right on — see below.
“…“Easy” oil production is becoming more a thing of the past …”
Yes and no. I think increased production will not be materially more costly in the future (to a point). True, much (but not all) is being found in more remote/extreme places, but the technology of finding and drilling keeps improving. Eventually, though, I agree — production costs will start to experience large quantum increases as drilling goes secondary and tertiary, let alone sand and shale. The billions spent in Iraq is a diversion has no bearing other than a twit by some green eye shade CPA doing cost accounting,
“…There are more consumers than consumables. In such a world, it’s a seller’s market…”
This seems to be your main point, and I entirely agree. (Maybe the above are just flies in the ointment…) Actually, it was also my original point, though I wrote it poorly. It’s not the embedded cost of production that presently determines the price of crude, it’s the demand. Like the production cost of Pepsi doesn’t determine its price (more than refined gasoline, as you know) either.
Re Lomborg: [For Europe as a whole, about 200,000 people die from excess heat each year. However, about 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold.]
Does anyone else see a really basic problem with this? Wikipedia says the population of the EU is ~500 million. Given an average life expectancy of a bit over 70 years, that’d mean about 7 million deaths per year. So if my math is correct, Lomborg’s statement implies that something over 1 of every 5 European deaths is due to cold.
It seems that either I’ve made a math error so obvious that I can’t see it, or Lomborg is having us on.
re 354 (Mary C)
Good accurate recitation of the history. None-the-less, singling out Bush for skewering over the Kyoto treaty is one hellacious stretch.
#337 Gavin’s Inline: Everyone’s actual statements are fair game – but the problem with much of this analysis is that you are quoting biased paraphrases of what was actually said
OK, then let’s look at the actual quotes of the first three. We can go deeper if you want. We are almost to the essence of what really bugs everyone, so let’s push through in spite of everyone detesting the topic. We are in search of truth, right?
Lomborg: SE, page 249: [commenting on how much ‘punch’ the much larger figures have in describing extinction] “Punch which the more realistic figure of 0.7% over the next 50 years would not achieve to the same degree.”…p255”An extinction rate of 0.7% over the next 50 years is not trivial. It is a rate about 1500 times higher than the natural background extinction”
Gore: EITB p 28: “Along with millions of others, I had been delighted to see them go free, but . . it occurred to me that if we are causing 100 extinctions each day – and many scientists believe we are – approximately 2,000 living species had disappeared from the earth during the whales´ ordeal.” Note that 100 * 365 = 36500 per year. Note this wasn’t species condemned to die. He clearly said they had died and left the earth.
Lovejoy: “What then is a reasonable estimate of global extinctions by 2000? In the low deforestation case, approximately l5 percent of the planet’s species can be expected to be lost. In the high deforestation case, perhaps as much as 20 percent will be lost. This means that of the 3-l0 million species now present on the earth, at least 500,000-600,000 will be extinguished during the next two decades. (The Global 2000 Report to the President, Vol. II, (Washington: GPO, 1980)., p. 33l).” Hmmm. Again, pretty clear that they were leaving the earth.
Let’s review the numbers once again:
UN Global Biodiversity Assessment, 1995, p244: “the rate of extinction today is hundreds, if not thousands, of times higher than the natural background rate.”
Lomborg: 0.7% per 50 years. Above he claims this is 1500X higher than the background rate, which is at the high side of UN estimates. There are lots of ways to calculate the background rate, and he walks through several sources. Quick and dirty: If a species lasts 1-10M years, then over 50 years, there’s a 50/5e6 chance a species expires in that 50 years. This is 0.001% per 50 years. 1000 times this is 1% per 50 years
Gore: 36500 per year, or 12% per 50 years assuming 15M total species.
Lovejoy: 27500 per year, or 9.1% per 50 years assuming 15M total species.
And there you have it. The exact quotes. The numbers in a readily comparable fashion.
I think Lomborg did a very reasonable job.
[Response: Gore’s statement is factually true – some scientists clearly believe that current extinction rates are that fast. Given the nature of the problem – unknown actual number of extant species, and very limited monitoring of extinction rates of those – all estimates must be taken with huge error bars. For instance, instead of 15 Million species, there might be 30 (or 5) – literature estimates of the current extinction rate go from 100 to 11,000 times background (2 orders of magnitude) (IUCN), which itself is uncertain. The resulting error bars encompass all the estimates (including Lomborg’s). But all this is to miss the point. Lomborg consistently prefers the lowest of all possible estimates (sea level rise, temperature change, extinction rate) and he always contrasts that with the high estimates as if there was a rule that uncertainties always get resolved in the most conservative fashion. It’s a ‘schtick’ that he uses effectively, but it’s devoid of actual scientific content – that’s why he gets criticised. – gavin]
Hank Roberts #304, thanks, but that period was part of my sentence. I still cannot raise RealClimate through Google with what ever address I try. I find this disconnect very strange. Lots of folk, I’m sure, will try reach RealClimate through Google. Why is this happening — anyone?
Joe Duck, you’re the person who wrote ‘Here is a real Lomborg quote’ — with no cite — then threw that incredible cold weather death number in.
Bogus? Get fooled by someone you can point to? Got a source?
This is why discussions of Lomborg get so boring so fast — extreme claims, second hand, no idea who’s fooled or trying to fool who.
Where’d you get what you believe? Why do you trust your source?
Do you believe the number you gave us is credible?
If you can’t cite that to Lomborg, just say whether you have any source for it, or admit you were wrong and we can move on, please.
#372 SecularAnimist: I would say that setting records two years in a row for the largest profit of any corporation in US history qualifies as “unimaginably rich.”
Why? The net profit ($39.5B) is the shareholders. Not Exxons. Yes, it’s a big number, but they have a lot more shareholders than MSFT. And honestly, over the last two years GOOG made shareholders a heck of a lot more money than XOM. And over the next 5 years GOOG is projected to make around 25% more for shareholders per year. It’s night and day.
I think you already know, but just to make sure: The CEO and other staff get paid out of the SG&A bucket. They don’t get to keep the net.
Unimaginably rich was the days when MSFT kept $68B in cash on hand.
XOM has $29B in cash, and $9B in debt. Yawn. Adjusted to Exxon’s size, that would mean that MSFT was keeping the equivalent of $130B on hand. Exxon is a small fraction of that. You really can’t even compare the two.
And it’s still an unexciting business for all the reasons I previously mentioned above.
#327 J.S. McIntyre:Matt (249) and Joe (276) – What is about Lomborg that you two find so admirable and credible? I really, really don’t get it.”
I really admire his ability to present technical material is a disarming way. It’s a skill most of us work our entire life on, and seldom succeed.
Think about this: Crichton stood on stage next to real climate scientists, and was able to sway a crowd his direction with a small fraction of the knowledge the scientists had. That is mental and verbal judo that you just don’t see very often. That same skill put into a technical persons box of tools is lighting in a bottle. You might not like Lomborg and Crichton, but you have to pause whenever these guys go into motion. They are very, very good at what they do.
It strikes me there will always be a segment of society that will want the world to be a certain way and to hell with the consequences, or the evidence.
The day someone wants to show me the math on how we get off of oil, skip nuclear, and head into the sunset running on alternate fuels, I’m all ears. I study this stuff for hours per week. Not necessarily to make the world better, but because I sincerely believe there are incredible investment opportunities here.
What equally amazes me are those that don’t want oil, don’t want nukes, and try to make be believe that a technology that requires filling 3/4 the state of california with a certain technology to get 3.6T KWH (our annual consumption) of electricty is viable. Or even better are those that sincerely believe detroit and japanese engineers can make more efficient cars, they are just opting not too.
#330 J.S. McIntyre: There is no real data to support this opinion.
Of course there is. Take a hard problem. Give a reasonable path out. Block that path due to something “scary”. Watch the stalemate result in the status quo.
Problem: Need for clean, cheap power.
Solution: Nuclear.
Scary Thing: Meltdowns and leaks.
Hope: Move to alt fuels.
Result: Stay on coal.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Social security reform. Health care. And on and on.
Blocking the most obvious path (nuclear) will again cause us to stay with conventional energy sources.
Here’s an interesting figure: Since 1980, US coal plants have dumped 53.9 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. What if we had gone nuclear in the early 70’s? Could we have reduced a chunk of that? France sure did.
Wow, participating here is a part time job! But I guess the pay is OK relative to the infinite benefit. The comments have inspired me to learn a lot and I do appreciate the energy people bring to a critical debate.
Ray (380): Very informative comment, thank you.
Risk: unbounded. On topic: Priceless.
Pekka: OK, I’ll try to buy the darn book tomorrow and see what his source is. But remember, it was you who made me help Lomborg turn a buck on “Cool It”.
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Majorajam: Sorry but have no answers and won’t have time to follow up on the Mendelsohn numbers he sent me. As I do with the climate numbers I assume expertise from those in the relevant fields rather than working to prove it.
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Everybody RE: cherry picked bogus data straw man irrelevancies. I will concede this is a possible condition for an argument to take. However it would be a very unusual argument because cherry picking by design tends to use facts that are very hard to refute since bad facts destroy an argument completely. Obviously that condition does not apply here – people (wrongly) seem to suggest his point was about AGW rather than alarmism. I think it took enough hot air to contort that tiny quote to conform to the descriptions above to appreciably raise the carbon footprint of this comment thread.
That quotes point is obviously that the media in particular chooses to focus attention on warming events in ways that suggest impending catastrophe is likely.
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Many people who believe GW is virtually certain, and believe that AGW is a highly likely explanation, also believe media treatments have become alarmist rather than helping explain the science and the economics that lie at the heart of climate controversy. Note that AIT’s website http://climatecrisis.net quantifies increased “deaths from global warming” at 300k in 25 years and thus 150k this year. Is that a net number? I don’t know. A tangential point is that we currently lose more than 300,000 people each *month* from easily preventable health problems like worms, malaria and dehydration.
Cobblyworlds @ 346, Lynn Vincentnathan @ 357: we need to be concerned about clathrates, and when they start sublimating there is a powerful feedback effect, but it’s very much a long-term thing. Thermal signals take decades to centuries to propagate down to the deep sediments on continental shelves where the clathrates are. And the clathrates occupy a wide zone, both physically – in terms of sediment depth – and thermally, so (barring unknown mechanisms) they won’t all go together.
In other words, it’ll take quite a while for the clathrates to start, and the time constant on their feedback is also long. The clathrate sublimation at the PETM (assuming that that’s where the light carbon came from) seems to have taken tens of millennia. The blink of an eye in geological time, but longer than all of human history.
So I think we should bear the clathrates in mind but not have them as our primary short-term concern. If we can mitigate fossil-fuel CO2 and stabilise atmospheric concentrations below (say) 500ppm, then maybe future generations will stand a chance of doing something about the clathrates. If we can’t control fossil-fuel CO2, they won’t get that chance.
[[I’m just merely pointing out that it floods in 320 years naturally anyway. ]]
Who says? Where did you get this figure, and what makes you think it’s accurate?
Joe Duck quoted Robert Mendelsohn: “The economics community involved in climate change generally agrees that it is time to start controlling greenhouse gases. The prevailing wisdom in this community is that we should start with a relatively modest program that gets more stringent over time (although there are a few dissenters to this conclusion).”
Whether that is in fact the “prevailing wisdom” in the “economics community” or not, it does not represent the “prevailing wisdom” in the climate science community and it ignores the established scientific facts about GHG emissions and climate change. As with Lomborg, economic cost-benefit analysis based on faulty information will yield faulty conclusions.
Contrary to Mendelsohn, the consensus in the climate science community is that early, deep cuts in emissions are crucial to avoiding catastrophic climate change. If we wait, while continuing to emit GHGs at current (or even increased) levels, atmospheric concentrations of GHGs will rise to levels where emissions cuts — even very large cuts — will be too late.
With all due respect to everyone here, this thread is coming to resemble one of those interminable discussions in which so-called “trolls” repeatedly post bogus talking points, and when those talking points are soundly refuted, the “trolls” just repeat them, with no other apparent purpose but to waste people’s time.
We’d be better off discussing the views of Richard Heinberg than those of Bjorn Lomborg.
Meanwhile, if you want to read something depressing …
I ask this question occasionally: in what year do you think GHG emissions will peak and begin to decline? Does anyone believe this will happen by 2012? That’s only five years. That’s not much time for “a massive drive in energy efficiency and switch to non-fossil fuels.”
Matt wrote: “Blocking the most obvious path (nuclear) will again cause us to stay with conventional energy sources.”
Nuclear power is the most expensive, most dangerous and least effective path to addressing global warming. Even a massive world-wide expansion of nuclear power — well beyond the wildest dreams of the nuclear industry — would have only a very modest effect on reducing GHG emissions.
The nuclear “path” is “blocked” in the USA by the complete refusal of private industry to pursue it — unless all the costs and all the risks are paid for by the taxpayers. The only way to build more nuclear power plants in the USA is for the Federal government to ignore the verdict of free-market capitalism that nuclear power is an economic failure, and force the market to turn to nuclear power through massive, multi-multi-billion dollar subsidies at taxpayer expense. All of which money would be much more effectively spent elsewhere.
Hi, I would be grateful to understand what the long term consequences would be were we to stablize CO2 in the atmosphere at present levels. Would global temps stablize, and if so at what level? Or would they simply continue to increase indefnitely? In short, do we need to get back to 280ppm to have a stable climate?
[Response: This is termed the ‘current commitment’ and is discussed in the IPCC report. The most likely outcome is that temperatures would stabilise at about 0.5ºC warmer than now after a few decades, but sea level rise would continue for centuries. – gavin]
Joe Duck Says:
9 November 2007 at 1:47 AM
“Obviously that condition does not apply here – people (wrongly) seem to suggest his point was about AGW rather than alarmism. I think it took enough hot air to contort that tiny quote to conform to the descriptions above to appreciably raise the carbon footprint of this comment thread. That quotes point is obviously that the media in particular chooses to focus attention on warming events in ways that suggest impending catastrophe is likely. …”
Alarmism? I think you would see AGW alarmism in a puppy’s wagging tail.
“It is remarkable that a single heat-death episode of 35,000 from many countries can get everyone up in arms, whereas cold deaths of 25,000 to 50,000 a year in just a single country pass almost unnoticed. …” – Lomborg
Who the heck picked up guns over heat deaths? Answer: nobody. No hyperbole to get his point across there, huh?
Unnoticed? The European press and medical/scientific communities have spent ample efforts on studying and publicizing the problem of winter deaths. Raising awareness is probably why they counted winter deaths incorrectly. Lomborg distorts yet again.
And you are wrong. With an array of specious numbers, Lomborg is directly sending a signal to his storm troopers that global warming has yet another benefit for western countries. Why? he’s doing it to sooth the west with plenty of stories about how they win in AGW (Mendelsohn pulls the same stunt). It’s intended to to tell people to keep eating their popcorn despite the fact that there is smoke in the theater. He’s screaming “there is no fire” at the top of his lungs. He’s a dedicated, card carrying non-alarmist.
Matt, Good Lord, now let me get this straight re your comments in 390:
You say: “I really admire his ability to present technical material is a disarming way. It’s a skill most of us work our entire life on, and seldom succeed.”
Yes, few of us ever really get very good at lying and dissembling. Personally, it’s never been a skill I aspired to. You’re saying that you actually admire the way Lomborg and Crichton bullshit convincingly? Look, Matt, we don’t need to be lulled to sleep by comforting voices. We face a very real threat here. We have a physical system with known positive feedbacks of uncertain magnitude and time dependence. If that does not concern you, you need to go back to engineering school. For two decades, we’ve had ignorant food tubes telling us “It’s not happening.” Now they’re telling us, “It won’t be that bad.” And in the mean interim, our time to fully understand and then solve the problem is dwindling. We have a much better chance of solving the problem and of avoiding stupid measures taken in a panic if we start NOW.
And speaking of measures, I think you are entirely too optimistic about nuclear power–not because I’m anti-nuke. On the contrary, I believe it is part of the solution. However, nuclear power plants are very time consuming and capital intensive to build. The waste problem is still unsolved and is far from trivial (I know, as I have friends and family who worked on Yucky Mtn.). And you cannot ignore public opposition. And if you think nuclear power will replace petroleum, I think you may be ignoring a step or two in the energy storage process for transport.
Renewables face similar barriers–solar panel fabs are expensive and hardly green; hydropower has well known issues (ask the Yangtze dolphins); wind, geothermal, etc. They all pose issues.
Always remember what H. L. Mencken said: “…for there is always an easy solution to every problem — neat, plausible and wrong.”
For Matt in 386,
once again, I point you and Joe to E. O. Wilson’s comment:
Vanishing Point: On Bjorn Lomborg and extinction
http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2001/12/12/point
Wilson, for some reason, didn’t make it into your comparison list. I’ve seen both him and Lomborg speak, and I’ll take the biologist’s opinions on population biology over the dilettante’s any day of the week.