Killian writes “The Rodale multi-decade study is the one to look at if you want to understand the significance of regenerative farming.”
I’m not sure why this study is of any significance. Consider the following claim from the Rodale Study : “If, at the same time, all global pasture was managed to a regenerative model, an additional 71% (~37 GtCO2) might be sequestered, [ft.1]…”
The footnote in question states: “The pasture system figure is based on the maximum annual potential of 3.04 Mg C ha-1 yr -1 for pasture with improved grass species as reviewed by Conant et al., 2001.”
The article by Conant et al. is a survey paper on grassland management and carbon sequestration of soils. With regards to the number reported above, which are reported in Table 4 of the survey, the authors note : “Introduction of earthworms, sowing of improved grass species, and sowing legumes had very high rates of C storage (Table 4), though the number of observations was limited and results were influenced by unique conditions including allophanic soils and somewhat controversial results (Davidson et al. 1995).”
In addition, the authors notes “Sowing legumes and grasses led to an mean annual increase of 2.0% and 2.3%, respectively, but the mean for grasses was largely driven by the large changes reported with the introduction of deep-rooted African grasses in Colombian savanna (Fisher et al. 1994).
From what I see, the Rodale Institute is cherry-picking controversial results from over twenty years ago and making unmerited extrapolations.
“Thus human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future. Within a few centuries we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated organic carbon stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years. This experiment, if adequately documented, may yield a far-reaching insight into the processes determining weather and climate. It therefore becomes of prime importance to attempt to determine the way in which carbon dioxide is partitioned between the atmosphere, the oceans, the biosphere and the lithosphere.”
–Revelle and Hans E. Suess, “Carbon Dioxide Exchange Between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of
an Increase of Atmospheric CO2 during the Past Decades,” Tellus IX (1957) pp. 19-20.
Unless I’m misunderstanding your post, Hank?
Killiansays
#294 Jasper Jaynes said is a non-starter in the real world. Sustainability; forget it.
Can’t be done! Caaaan’t be done!
This is a self-defeating, boring, self-fulfilling prophecy in which I have zero interest. Go talk to Guy. He’s all over that and becoming quite the celebrity advocating exactly that defeatism.
BTW, the post was about modeling, nothing else.
Killiansays
#299 Chris Dudley says ***
Those “negative” emissions are tiny. That is not at all what I have suggested. I am talking about back to 300ppm by 2035 – 2100.
You keep asking for a model but all you really need is a calculation. It is confusing.
About half of cumulative emissions have ended up in the atmosphere with the rest ending up in the oceans and biosphere (not geologically sequestered as you propose):
“Total cumulative emissions from 1870 to 2013 were 390±20 GtC from fossil fuels and cement, and 145± 50 from land use change. The total of 535±55GtC was partitioned among the atmosphere (225±5 GtC), ocean (150±20 GtC), and the land (155±60 GtC).” http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/14/hl-full.htm
So, to clean up the atmosphere rapidly, sequester 255 GtC rapidly. After that, the oceans will fight you by returning 150 GtC to the atmosphere, but that will take some time and you’ll get many centuries to handle that. So, during your rapid phase, finished by 2075, say, you need to sequester a little more that 4 GtC/yr, a little less than half the current emissions rate.
So, there is you answer. Nothing more needed than a pen and a postit.
Killiansays
#301 OnceJolly said From what I see, the Rodale Institute is cherry-picking controversial results from over twenty years ago and making unmerited extrapolations.
Thanks for responding without being rude. Quite rare. But we must address just whom is cherry picking what, here. Unfortunately, your response reads like someone hoping for and looking for reasons to doubt. As the report states, even if the gains are modest (an obvious juxtaposition with their best-case findings), they need to be pursued. You didn’t go there, tho. Why?
Let’s look at what Rodale *actually* said vs your mild cherry picking.
First, you say: I’m not sure why this study is of any significance.
That’s not even remotely possible. The best case scenarios were 40% of emissions with regenerative farming. Half that is 20%. Not significant? Are you serious about that? Even a quarter, 10%, is significant.
Your first contention is false.
You continue, “If, at the same time, all global pasture was managed to a regenerative model, an additional 71% (~37 GtCO2) might be sequestered,”
First, note that if is a conditional. It requires a condition to be met. There no claim it will be met, only that the potential exists.
Second, you say, “The footnote in question states: “The pasture system figure is based on the maximum annual potential of 3.04 Mg C ha-1 yr -1 for pasture with improved grass species as reviewed by Conant et al., 2001.”
The article by Conant et al. …“Introduction of earthworms, sowing of improved grass species, and sowing legumes had very high rates of C storage (Table 4), though the number of observations was limited…
In addition, the authors notes “Sowing legumes and grasses led to an mean annual increase of 2.0% and 2.3%, respectively, but …was largely driven by the large changes reported with the introduction of deep-rooted African grasses in Colombian savanna (Fisher et al. 1994).
I am not sure why this supposedly goes against what was stated. What matters is total sequestration, e.g., not whether it is dominated by one region, so who cares?
Further, this is quoting a study that does not cover current best practices WRT grassland management, agreoforestry, etc., so is, if anything, conservative. 71%? OK, again, let’s assume best practices today suck in comparison, so we only get 35%. That’s still 45% of current emissions with no changes to industrial society at all.
According you’re “not sure that is significant.”
What in the world *is* swignificant? For goodness’ sakes!
And here is the actual sequence of the Rodal summary, the last bit of which you left out.
If management of all current cropland shifted to reflect the regenerative model as practiced at the research sites included in the white paper, we could potentially sequester more than 40% of annual emissions.
Note it says if, not when, not definitively. Just potential.
Now that does not include the fact estimates say we need 50% more food production to accommodate 9 billion. So there’s that much MORE land under production.
If it’s not clear to you a significant % of emissions is not only possible, but easily achievable, then you just don’t want to see it.
Iif all global pasture was managed using a regenerative model, an additional 71% could be sequestered.
Rodale did not study grasslands, thus I assume the study writeup chose not to make claims that would be dismissed as not in some study somewhere, so they referred back to something in the literature. I am certain they were fully aware of what is happening in other areas of ag. Despite the dismissive response to the work by Savory, et al., here at RC, this is extremely promising work. Again, people can fault the practicioners that gov’ts have not been aware enough, intelligent enough, unbiased enough to fund such research and accelerate it, or you can applaud them for doing what they can on their own.
Regardless, if a significant fraction of 71% can be achieved, it’s massively significant.
Even if modest assumptions about soil’s carbon sequestration potential are made, regenerative agriculture can easily keep annual emissions to within a desirable range.
Your post gave the false impression the Rodale study was unrealistic and not “significant.” Yet, the entire summary is full of conditionals and modals, a veritable model of modesty and caveats.
Thanks for the time, and not being rude, but you are not being fair with the study. So…
* grassland management and regeneratively managed *current* farm acreage gives a modest possibility of 50% of emissions.
* does not include homes, yards, urban ag.
* does not include expanded production to meet population gains.
* does not include reforestation.
* does not include aforestation.
* does not include agroforestry.
* does not include bio-char.
* does not include any other form of mitigation or reduced consumption.
That’s pretty danged hopeful by any stretch, and far, far, far beyond not sure it’s significant.
Cheers
Mal Adaptedsays
If the Rodale solution involves “introduction of earthworms, sowing of improved grass species, and sowing legumes”, it sounds like they are willing to write off countless native species and ecosystems for the sake of carbon sequestration. I realize AGW itself means extinction for a large fraction of the world’s remaining native species and ecosystems. But deliberately replacing them everywhere with a few preferred species, however carefully chosen, is just more of the heedless ecological imperialism that’s driving the sixth great extinction of global biodiversity. I’d class it with deliberate injection of SO2 into the upper atmosphere to increase albedo, as a wrong-headed approach to fixing what we broke. Count me out.
“As to RCP 4.5, is that really doable anymore? Do you find the IPCC numbers completely reliable? Do they rely on massive amounts of sequestration that we don’t really know how to do yet?”
As far as I can tell, the aim for Paris is to get commitments that have emissions peaking around 2030 and falling after that so basically the RCP4.5 path. Now that China is somewhat on board, that seems doable. There are some things I don’t agree with in the IPCC analysis. I think that there is an opportunity cost in retaining dilapidated nuclear reactors that diverts investment in lower cost renewables that they have missed. And, we will inevitable lose more territory the way we have in Fukushima and Chernobyl if we string out those plants. So, I think they’ve made a sign error in the economic model. I don’t think that we should ignore species extinction that can’t be directly tied to warming since mitigation could have an impact as well. I am pleased though that RCP3.0 avoids warming related extinctions. There are probably a few other things to quibble about.
There is massive sequestration in RCP4.5 or 3.0 if fossil fuels continue to be used, but if there are replaced, then only 3.0 requires sequestration and that not on a really larger scale. And, if much hydrogen made from water is involved in the energy economy, then sequestration becomes essentially free since the associated oxygen can be used to produce a pure carbon dioxide stream from biomass burning, for example. Most of the difficulty in CCS is capturing the carbon dioxide since it is usually mixed with nitrogen. Free oxygen means the nitrogen can be left out of the picture. Can’t know for sure that hydrogen would be a part of a clean economy, but if it is, it makes RCP3.0 fall into place regarding CCS.
Hank, (#285) Science fiction author Frederik Pohl published “Homegoing” in 1989, writing about a future in which Alaska has hurricanes and much of New York is underwater. He does a simple comparison of the atmospheres of Venus and Mars, with extrapolation for continued burning of fossil fuels on Earth.
Pete Bestsays
Re #273 and 274
I think Kevin Anderson is essentially saying is that the UK government (although others might be the same)when thinking of energy appear to think that its all down to the electricity grid but this on represents one quarter of all UK energy use and hence probably Europe’s and possibly the USA as well when of course we all need energy for everything we do especially transport and heating and cooking in our homes as well as some industrial activities. In the video you link to and others he has done in recent years Anderson is simply stating that everything we do is based around wind turbines and solar power for the electricity grid leaving everything else untouched which could just be compounding the issue due to the following reasons stated here in another one of his videos where he is seen presently to the house of lords:
Some of the people he is presently to here cant even see climate change as an issue but maybe the bit where Anderson speaks about putting cars, heating and cooking into the grid makes for the most realistic statement he makes here. The bit about air conditioning (the new normal as he puts it)says it all really.
Government has been briefed but does not appear to be able to respond but the wind turbines are going up offshore as our present government does not like onshore turbines nor solar (Government ministers have said so).
So these presentations say the following in my mind. We simply are not doing enough in the fight against global warming. The west has exported its goods to the far east and China and India has massive populations and energy is needed to serve them and coal is the primary driver of this industry and enterprise meaning that peak coal globally is not known but all indicators point to 2030 at the earliest for Africa is another continent coming online and although solar and wind can feature heavily on these continents coal is still not going anywhere soon as stated here:
I know that Chris at #281 seems to think differently but he does not know so Anderson is making solid and good points here about how the 2C door is closing and little is being done about it.
Jasper Jaynessays
Killian#303,
“This is a self-defeating, boring, self-fulfilling prophecy in which I have zero interest. Go talk to Guy. He’s all over that and becoming quite the celebrity advocating exactly that defeatism.”
There’s a major difference. Guy basically says it’s too late. The wheels of motion have started to turn, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. I believe, based on the scientific evidence, that it MAY BE still possible to avoid extinction. Unfortunately, I see no Early Warning Indicators of changes (present or future) that will turn us away from the present extinction trajectory. Proposing a ‘solution’ that no one will buy, as you do, is truly a defeatist approach. Show me even one poster (other than yourself) who is willing to adopt the lifestyle required by your concept.
2nd warmest January (as was the case with the GISTEMP data), behind 2007–though the gap between 2007 and 2015 is less in the NCDC data than was the case for GISTEMP. (0.77°C versus 2007’s 0.86°C.)
Suggestions and feedback welcome. Perhaps it may provide another source to point to for some!
Rafael Molina Navas, Madridsays
#292 Chuck Hughes says:
“My own family doesn’t want to discuss it. I don’t know of anyone outside the science blogs that is even interested in the topic. It’s a sad situation we’re in”.
I can say exactly the same. Beeing honest, I´ll say that among my seblings, nephews and nieces i´m considered pretty useful when some of them wants an explanation about basic science questions, especially if relative to Physics (though I´m better in solid mechanics, I must say) … In this field of global warming they just ignore me and my arguments!
You know, as kind of a protest I´m even not assisting to weddings, birthdays and similar family events since a few years ago… to no avail! (surely you know of the big carbon footprint of that type of events).
Okay, I downloaded Hadley CRUTEM4, CO2 (Law Dome 1850-1958, Mauna Loa 1959-2014), and International Sunspot Number for 1850-2014 (N = 165 years, a pretty fair sample size). r2 is 0.80 for dT and CO2, 0.03 for dT and sunspots. Student’s t is 25.7 and 2.24, respectively. I’m not accounting for autocorrelation in the residuals, but it sure looks like carbon dioxide has been the dominant factor affecting temperature for the last century and a half.
“Dozens of new craters suspected in northern Russia”
Killiansays
#307 Mal Adapted said, If the Rodale solution involves “introduction of earthworms, sowing of improved grass species, and sowing legumes”
It doesn’t. That is clear from my comments here and from the info from the site. I suggest you read both. Grasslands are not part of the study at all, in fact. They were offering a best-case fer instance, nothing more.
# 312 Jasper Jaynes said There’s a major difference. Guy basically says it’s too late. The wheels of motion have started to turn, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. I believe, based on the scientific evidence, that it MAY BE still possible to avoid extinction. Unfortunately, I see no Early Warning Indicators of changes (present or future)
48% of Republicans wanting gov’t action not a signal? There are others.
Show me even one poster (other than yourself) who is willing to adopt the lifestyle required by your concept.
The people here are basically eggheads (with all due respect from an egghead) and, well, they spend their time at computers. No, they can’t imagine it, and I could care less. I have maintained what we *want* is irrelevant. Nature doesn’t care. As people get that, they will more and more adapt their behavior to conditions, eventually figuring out Nature is not in a negotiating mood and that only First Principles problem solving is going to get us through this, that their beliefs and ideologies do not grow gardens or build shelters, etc., etc., and the principles will guide them.
Or, it falls down and goes boom. That binary, potentially any decade now. The longer they wait, the harder it will be. So be it.
Thomassays
For Killian,
Its not a climate simulation, but a lot can be learned from some simple models. You seem to want
climate simulations based upon hypothetical models. Below I show how assuming a simple carbon cycle
model, you can solve for the atmospheric concentration as a function of time, given a predetermined
emissions schedule. I assume moderate algebraic and at least modest programming capability. You
should be able to use whatever comp language you are most comfortable with (Fortran, C, Python, Matlab, or whatever).
How to use the Bern Carbon cycle model to compute atmosheric concentration
versus time for an arbitrary emissions scenario.
The Bern Carbon Cycle is a fit to a linear reservoir model with only a few
discrete reservoirs. The BCCM does not include feedbacks, although if you
have some model of CO2 feedback versus concentration -or of global temperature
(given a simple model of how CO2 affects the global temp, you could solve for
temperature), however, this note only covers the case of no feedbacks.
The BCCM, is really just a handful of numbers. A one dimensional vector
TCi contains decay lifetimes in years. A second one dimensional vector
covers participation factors for the same indices (i). The participation factor
for the Ith term is Pi. The standard model (they have several choices available)
has six terms:
TC = 1.e33,371.6,55.70,17.01,4.16,1.33
P = .1369,.1298,.1938,.2502,.2086,.0807
These can be used to determine the way an emissions pulse (instantaneous
release) of Co2 will decay over time. For t being the time in years since
the release the remaining atmosheric concentration C(t) is given by:
(1) C(t) = E*sum(i=1 to 6){ Pi*exp( -t/TCi )}
You should be able to use for favorite simulation language to code this
in just a few lines. For instance in C the impulse respose is given by the
following function:
float co2decay(float t){
float p[6]={.1369,.1298,.1938,.2502,.2086,.0807};
float tau[6]={1.e33,371.6,55.70,17.01,4.16,1.33};
float c=0.;int j;
for(j=0;j<6;j++)c+=p[j]*exp(-t/tau[j]);
return c;
}
Generalization to a series of annual emissions:
Let us assume that annual emisions are values stored in a
vector Ej. Then assuming emisions are given in units such that an emission of
One will instantaneously increase the atmospheric concentration by one PPM.
We can avoid having to integrate backwards in time, by partitioning the
atmospheric concentartion into six modes Ci. Each component Ci decays at
the rate given by TCi. We can advance the component concentrations by one
year by performing the following two steps:
Decay:
Ci[n+1]=Ci[n]*exp(-1/TCi)
Effect of emission spike (at midyear)
Ci[n+1]=Ci(n) +E[n]*exp(-.5/TCi)
To intitialize, set the preindustrial mode factors Ci to (280,0,0,0,0,0) ppm.
The atmospheric concentration is the sum of Ci. So you should be able to
easily compute the evolution of the atmospheric concentration according to this
model/proceedure very easily and inexpensively.
patricksays
#302 Kevin: What a fine example of the shoulders of giants.
The part you cite is actually marked out in the margin of this document:
“Revelle and Suess described the ‘buffer factor,’ now known as the ‘Revelle factor’ which is a resistance to atmospheric carbon dioxide being absorbed by the ocean surface layer posed by bicarbonate chemistry. Essentially, in order to enter the ocean, carbon dioxide gas has to partition into one of the components of carbonic acid: carbonate ion, bicarbonate ion, or protonated carbonic acid, and the product of these many chemical dissociation constants factors into a kind of back-pressure that limits how fast the carbon dioxide can enter the surface ocean. Geology, geochemistry, atmospheric chemistry, ocean chemistry … this amounted to one of the earliest examples of ‘integrated assessment,’ which 50 years later became an entire branch of global warming science.”
Killian writes: “As the report states, even if the gains are modest (an obvious juxtaposition with their best-case findings), they need to be pursued. You didn’t go there, tho. Why?”
The Rodale Institute is hardly the only entity to advocate for methods (organic and otherwise) that increase sequestration of carbon in the soil and elsewhere, but they are an *advocacy* group for organic methods and I think they have a tendency to oversell accordingly on the basis of a rather limited number of studies. In fact, they are explicit about what they are doing in the White Paper, noting “On-farm soil carbon sequestration can potentially sequester all of our current annual global greenhouse gas emissions of roughly 52 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (52 GtCO2e). Indeed, if sequestration rates attained by *exemplar* [emphasis mine] cases were achieved on crop and pastureland across the globe, regenerative agriculture could sequester more than our current annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.”
The problem is that even their “modest” scenarios assume that, while somewhat less than 100% of all existing farm and grasslands adopts regenerative methods, all of the sites that do that adopt these methods will be able to obtain rates of sequestration that match those “exemplar” cases (the Iranian and Egyptian farm sites and the grassland rates obtained through seeding of introduced grass species). Claims based on a handful of exemplar results may be suggestive, but they hardly strike me as scientifically significant.
OnceJollysays
I used the phrase “scientifically significant” above, which I think is meaningless. I meant that the claims in question are not based on what I view to be strong (or compelling) evidence.
One problem with the Rodale study is extrapolating field studies without accounting for the associated land needs for some of the techniques. For example, dairy manure is already widely used in crop fields, but you need a whole bunch of pasture to produce the manure. So, the effort is already going about as fast as it can. If you are going to extrapolate to more intensive use of manure on cropland, then you need to produce more milk than we drink on more pasture than we have.
There are ways to bootstrap. For example, in permaculture, you can set up a Mollison grove. But it takes a long time to get the whole thing going so your sequestration rate is not going to be much better than reforestation. And, such systems are pretty labor intensive so there may not be the population available to do the upkeep. Agricultural robotics is coming along, so there may be something that can be done there.
Russel @318.
Aren’t we three million years past crossing the galactic disc and another twelve million from being out at the furthest point from it. By that sort of reasoning, it surely suggests the dinasaurs went extinct, not from a gigantic meteor strike but throught boredom.
Jasper Jaynessays
Killian#321,
” 48% of Republicans wanting gov’t action not a signal? There are others.”
I see. 48% of Republicans and probably far more Democrats. That’s a voting majority, and probably a super-majority. Then, please tell me, with all this support for ‘gov’t action’ for the most critical problem facing our civilization, how did we ever end up with a Congress trying to kill every law and regulation in place that could help ameliorate climate change? And, with all the relevant Committee Chairs pledging to do whatever they can to wipe out every last vestige of ‘gov’t action’ to ameliorate the same. I hope your proposals are based on better data and logic that your statement above.
Thanks for doing the math! If more people would do that, a lot of argument could be avoided.
James McDonaldsays
278 (brown) & 279 (MARodger):
Thank you for your replies, but I guess I wasn’t clear enough about my concern. I’m not looking for anecdotes or offhand opinions about the quality of the contrarian literature — I can sort of do that myself.
What I’d like to see is a definitive list of all contrarian papers, each annotated with a description of its current status: retracted; refuted by papers A,B,C; made obvious error X; made prediction Y that was or was not later confirmed; made prediction Z for which the jury is still out; is a rehash of earlier paper W; etc. Ideally, such a review would itself be peer-reviewed.
I assume that none of those papers have made a case that still holds water, but before asserting that to others I’d like someone in the know to give a disciplined answer I could cite for support.
I realize this is pretty low on the list of things a practioner would want to do (publish a review of all the bad papers?). On the other hand, it’s probably not a huge task for someone who followed the literature over the years, and it would serve a useful role in the body politic surrounding climate research. For example, I could imagine something like this being presented in a Congressional hearing, as evidence that no (or few) contrarian arguments are still (or ever were) viable. An authoritative and definitive review would tend to knock the props out from under the argument that there are scientists arguing “both sides” of the issue.
I could take a stab at doing something like this myself, but (a) I’m not a climate scientist, (b) I’ve got my own day jobs, and (c) someone else may have already done it. Hence my post here.
Well, if the Simplify/Transition Town model were to somehow go viral, as Killian hopes, you’d have an awful lot of unemployed, as whole swathes of the contemporary economy would be shut down. The issue would be retraining them; there’d be huge skill (and perhaps inclination) mismatches. Also mismatches of geography: concentrations of population that are oriented around FF-powered transportation will not necessarily match well with those fitting agricultural productivity. So folks would be migrating in large numbers (which we expect anyway.)
The Transition Town model is meant to ’emerge’ from our current socio-economic model and supplant it, if I understand it correctly. But there seems to me to be a lot of disruption ‘baked in’ between here and there, suggesting to me that such ’emergence’ is most readily imaginable in the context of ongoing social collapse. (That’s been hinted at in some comments, IIRC.) And then the question becomes, can these sustainable communities be militarily effective, as they would not be able to rely on the legal protections afforded by a stable nation state? I’m not so sure how well ‘horizontal decision-making’ is going to work when standing off bands of looters, bandits, or even just large numbers of desperate refugees. It’s suggestive, if not particularly cheerful to contemplate, that over human history, forms of government have tended to correlate with levels of population, as it could be supported by available resources and tech. Can we ‘will our way out of’ these pervasive historical patterns, and just not have strongmen taking charge of these communities, as happened time and again in many, many different cultural settings?
And that gets us back, by implication, to the population question again. How productive are these agricultural practices? What are the labor requirements, particularly as they de-mechanize? What carrying capacity results from the paradigm shift to a community-centered ‘sustainable’ world? Killian would no doubt point out that we might not have a choice: if that’s the only thing that works over the long run, then it’s like it or lump it. But from my POV, there’s an awful lot of questions to address at this particular time, faced as we are with this particular climate crisis.
wilisays
JJ at #328 asks: “…with all this support for ‘gov’t action’ for the most critical problem facing our civilization, how did we ever end up with a Congress trying to kill every law and regulation in place that could help ameliorate climate change?”
A majority of Republicans _under 50_ accepts climate science. But: 1) Older voters vote more reliably than younger voters; and B) Climate is not necessarily the top priority when even younger voters show up to vote.
Still, if Republicans really wanted to represent their own legitimate constituency rather than just the people who bought them their election, at least some of them should be trying to represent the large numbers that accept the science and are concerned about the future.
wilisays
“Show me even one poster (other than yourself) who is willing to adopt the lifestyle required by your concept.” (I hesitate to ask, but:) Did I miss something? What lifestyle exactly is Killian requiring of us? And how does anyone know exactly what the posters here lifestyles are?
As to soil sequestration: I’m all for it, but going forward, there is no guarantee that soils will hold their carbon. Most soils will either dry up and lose it or be washed into the sea by torrential downpours, where again much of it will be lost. And my impression is that there is just too much excess carbon both already in the atmosphere and about to be released by our continued un-sequestering of it and by melting permafrost, etc, for all of that to be adequately held by some subset of terrestrial soils. Isn’t there more carbon in permafrost alone than in all other soils combined?
Sorry if my comments pop up multiple times, and in multiple versions. I often get error messages here indicating that a post did not get through, and I do it again, and then it turns out the post did get through after all. *sigh*
I wonder though, if this is really appropriate for sequestration. If we were to suddenly remove carbon dioxide, would the oceans release carbon dioxide to atmosphere with the same functional form as when they remove it when the partial pressure goes up during a sudden increase? Would the biosphere release carbon dioxide at all? In the limit of Snowball Earth, one has to wait for volcanoes to release the spell since the oceans and biosphere are held incommunicado.
Well, rural collectivization has been tried in the 20th century in the USSR and China and it led to famine. So, I doubt this model has much to recommend itself. However, in a Mollison permaculture grove, the introduction of sophisticated robots would allow culture promoted by urban life to continue while doing the nitpicking extra work of tending very mixed crops without population dispersion.
In my opinion, renewable energy is so much more efficient than photosynthesis that it is very likely we will synthesize glucose from carbon dioxide and water without photosynthesis and at the least replace animal feed with that. That will allow vast regions to be returned to near wilderness, perhaps with sequestration promoting management. A home where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play is a pretty natural consequence of 24% efficient solar cells.
It can be hard for people who don’t speak math to understand why it is important to ask clear questions, or even to understand what a clear question is. That took a huge amount of deciphering to get to that point. Asking for models sounded at first like economic models like the one that shows that mitigation costs little that the IPCC presented. Those take a long time to put together. Then the claim was that negative emissions had never been modeled, however they had been. The phrase falling emissions was then used rather than negative emissions which also lacked clarity since it seemed to be presented as an alternative to negative emissions. Hopefully, now, the question is clear and has been addressed.
Jasper Jaynessays
Wili#334,
““Show me even one poster (other than yourself) who is willing to adopt the lifestyle required by your concept.” (I hesitate to ask, but:) Did I miss something? What lifestyle exactly is Killian requiring of us? And how does anyone know exactly what the posters here lifestyles are?”
I don’t know what level of detail you require with use of ‘exactly’, but it seems rather obvious to me. Killian has stated in no uncertain terms that the target is ‘sustainability’, and the items that I remember him listing under sustainability include wind, solar, fossil, SUVs/cars, etc, etc. There are probably far more he would include in a detailed list. Those pieces should give you some idea of the total picture. Use minimal resources, including energy!
I have no idea of the lifestyles of the various posters, nor do I care. That issue was not part of my comment. I was trying to make the point that, even on this site, where posters are probably as interested in ameliorating climate change as anywhere, very few (if any) would be willing to adopt the sustainability lifestyle being promoted by Killian. If that’s the case on RC, then it’s far less among the general public. It’s a non-starter.
Ray Ladburysays
James McDonald,
Did it occur to you that climate scientists have day jobs as well? Moreover, science doesn’t really work that way. If a paper is published, the special-ists in the same field will read it to see if it adds to their understanding or provides useful tools that allow them to do things they couldn’t before. If it does, it gets cited and its results get used. If it doesn’t, it sits there like a dog turd on a New York sidewalk. If a paper is crap, it will generally be met with silence. Only rarely will a scientist find the errors in it worth writing a comment. It may attract some interest in the blogosphere for a week or a month or perhaps even a year. That would be where you should look for refutations of crap papers–Skeptical Science, Tamino’s Open Mind, sometimes here, ATTP, Chris Colese’s blog when he has time. The problem is that most efforts by denialists are so patently absurd that real scientists can’t be arsed to respond.
wilisays
“rural collectivization has been tried in the 20th century in the USSR and China”
I’m confused again. Who was advocating Soviet or Maoist style collectivization?
Large scale ag is already pretty mechanized. Not sure that robots would make much of a difference. Not to mention the large upfront cost involved. Might as well advocate terraforming the moon or something equally techno-fantastic. (As I push the button that affirms that “I’m not a robot” ag robot or otherwise!)
Tom Adamssays
New movie Kingsmen movie seems bad propaganda against AGW activist. Not sure I should spoil it by saying more…
Jasper Jaynessays
Wili#333,
” Climate is not necessarily the top priority when even younger voters show up to vote. ”
In other words, the most important problem facing our civilization is nobody’s top priority. We see that by the people we have been electing to national office, and by the policies they have promulgated, and are proposing to advance. And, that’s not confined to the USA. If we look at the governments voted into office in Canada, Australia, Russia, etc, climate change appears to be nobody’s top priority, or even close to it. Face it, in a situation where everybody in the world has to care in order to bring emissions and concentrations under control, almost no one cares. That’s the most frightening Early Warning Indicator of all!
Sure, but that’s not at all parallel to what Killian is advocating or the Transition Town folks envisage. It was done at the point of a gun, and it put Party apparatchiks in charge–folks whose only interest and criteria were purely ideological and political. They apparently lacked any relevant agricultural or technical experience, and didn’t care what happened to the populace (or maybe that’s too benign a construction of their attitude?)
In Killian’s model, you’d have the populace in charge–‘horizontal decision-making’–and people would be part of these communities because they chose to be. That doesn’t prove that the vision is workable, but I think it’s a crucial set of differences, which would be more than enough to invalidate the Stalinist and Maoist precedents as having predictive value.
On the other hand, I think your point about 24% efficient PV is very telling. (And, FWIW, you can buy residential systems close to that level of efficiency today, for example Sunpower’s X-series, which are claimed to do 21.5%.)
Steve Fishsays
Re- Comment by wili — 24 Feb 2015 @ 8:36 AM, ~#334
Wili, you ask- “What lifestyle exactly is Killian requiring of us?” Killian has repeatedly stated that only sustainable lifestyles should be allowed and this would be at the aboriginal or near aboriginal level that he has also described as pre industrial. He has claimed that renewable energy for electricity is not sustainable and this should preclude, for example, electricity and equipment for recording and playing back music. He has claimed that steel manufacturing is not sustainable and this would mean that tractors for agriculture (like used in the Rodale 30 year study) should not be allowed. He has no strategy for convincing the developed world to go back to a bronze age society or any plan for how seven-come-eleven billion people could sustain themselves at this level. If man can’t live on bread alone, what about when there is no bread?
James (#331), you might try the Skeptical Science community. Some of the folks over there (such as J. Cook) are authors of the ‘97%’ literature survey, and there was a citizen science component to that survey, which a lot of us on the site participating in (prelim screening, basically.)
#322 Thomas said <bFor Killian,
…You seem to want climate simulations based upon hypothetical models…
What I suggested is to do a simple rapid carbon sequestration model to see what effect it had if returning to sub-300, then, if encouraging, do a more complete modeling.
Below I show how assuming a simple carbon cycle model, you can solve for the atmospheric concentration as a function of time, given a predetermined emissions schedule.
I assume moderate algebraic and at least modest programming capability.
Yeah, not so much. Great post. Hopefully someone with the knowledge required will do so and get this ball rolling.
Killiansays
#305 Chris Dudley says: Killian (#304),
You keep asking for a model but all you really need is a calculation. It is confusing… So, there is you answer. Nothing more needed than a pen and a postit.
Thank you. This is very useful. How do I equate to ppm with some rigor? I can do simple division, but, after all, some has broken down over the years, etc., etc.
Gt is meaningless for me. Not intuitive while ppm is clear, obvious, and easy to conceive of.
Killiansays
#328 Jasper Jaynes said Killian#321,
” 48% of Republicans wanting gov’t action not a signal? There are others.”
I see. 48% of Republicans and probably far more Democrats. That’s a voting majority, and probably a super-majority. Then, please tell me, with all this support for ‘gov’t action’ for the most critical problem facing our civilization, how did we ever end up with a Congress trying to kill every law…
Now you are just being argumentative. The poll was from *January*, not 15 years ago.
#324 OnceJolly said, Killian writes: “As the report states, even if the gains are modest (an obvious juxtaposition with their best-case findings), they need to be pursued. You didn’t go there, tho. Why?”
The Rodale Institute is… an *advocacy* group for organic methods and I think they have a tendency to oversell accordingly on the basis of a rather limited number of studies.
You think Schmidt, Mann, et al., are not at this point sold on what the science says and studying something they already believe to be true? How is this different? You are faulting Rodale, et al., for figuring out there’s a problem and a solution. Hardly makes any sense.
In fact, they are explicit about what they are doing in the White Paper
And honesty is bad because…?
The problem is that even their “modest” scenarios assume that, while somewhat less than 100% of all existing farm and grasslands adopts regenerative methods, all of the sites that do that adopt these methods will be able to obtain rates of sequestration that match those “exemplar”
No, they don’t. That’s what “if” means. It means…. if. What do you know of such types of agriculture? Perhaps you would feel less critical if you had any idea at all how simple it is to grow this way, and people tend to be more invested when growing for their own communities, which is part of the goal.
Frankly, it’s hard not to get to best practices because you sort of can’t help but get there.
Claims based on a handful of exemplar results may be suggestive, but they hardly strike me as scientifically significant.
Then you go convince gov’t’s and NGO’s to get off their butts on this rather than minimizing the hard work done to convince people of what is possible.
And the day a 30-year longitudinal comparative study isn’t scientifically meaningful is the day we should all just give up.
Always bear in mind, all this in the context of simplification. Without that, it’s all spitting in the wind. With simplification, if regenerative farming achieves as little as a 10% reduction, we’d be looking at neutral emissions. 20% equals a long slow return to pre-industrial.
Yeah, dang, that sucks.
326 Chris Dudley said One problem with the Rodale study is extrapolating field studies without accounting for the associated land needs for some of the techniques. For example, dairy manure
If familiar, you know Pc emphasizes location-specific techniques, so whatever is best suited is used. Yes, there will be variations in sequestration.
is already widely used in crop fields, but you need a whole bunch of pasture to produce the manure. So, the effort is already going about as fast as it can.
Nah. CAFO -> pature. That’s a lotta new cow poo going to the right places.
For example, in permaculture, you can set up a Mollison grove.
I assume you mean a food forest?
such systems are pretty labor intensive so there may not be the population available to do the upkeep.
The opposite. After 5 years there is virtually no upkeep needed (2 people, 2 days for 1 acre chop and drop/yr) and even if left unattended, will remain highly productive and, because we do maintain them, do pull carbon out and sequester, will have a higher sequestration than a natural forest.
And, as I said to OnceJolly, context matters. Simplification will release a huge number of work hours for all communities and you do not get to sustainability but through simplification.
Killiansays
(Wanted to combine all this in previous post, but seemed to be getting too long.)
#332 Kevin McKinney said
#346–“…such systems are pretty labor intensive so there may not be the population available to do the upkeep.”
Well, if the Simplify/Transition Town model were to somehow go viral, as Killian hopes
No hope, just will or won’t. I’d much rather be a rich guy with ten houses and pleasures of the world, but…
you’d have an awful lot of unemployed, as whole swathes of the contemporary economy would be shut down. The issue would be retraining them; there’d be huge skill (and perhaps inclination) mismatches. Also mismatches
Re-skilling is an important part of any community that is awakening to the issues.
So folks would be migrating in large numbers (which we expect anyway.)
Indeed. Something I strenuously brought to the attention of the Detroit Works people, who completely ignored this.
The Transition Town model is meant to ‘emerge’ from our current socio-economic model and supplant it, if I understand it correctly.
Not sure about that, but my model is predicated on this.
But there seems to me to be a lot of disruption ‘baked in’ between here and there, suggesting to me that such ‘emergence’ is most readily imaginable in the context of ongoing social collapse.
I purposely do not address the transition period much, and mostly not at all. There is one pragmatic reason for that: Sustainability is ultimately local (extending up to bio-regional, tho.) Design must be place-based, so what this all specifically looks like will vary significantly from place to place. Only the broad patterns can be spoken of with any confidence.
Secondly, you can’t design for the future without choosing a set of conditions to design to. I cannot get people to include backcasting in their planning, and without backcasting we’re just throwing mud at walls. We’re not psychic, but we can make educated guesses. Luckily, much of what we need to do serves transition and stabilization, however, much we can do during transition may not be possible far into the new equilibrium, so care is needed.
the question becomes, can these sustainable communities be militarily effective
Moot. As you say, Killian would no doubt point out that we might not have a choice: if that’s the only thing that works over the long run, then it’s like it or lump it.
While sustainability is ultimately local, it is also ultimately a lot of local interconnected systems. Unsustainable systems anywhere can cause unsustainable outcomes everywhere potentially.
There’s a very real all-or-nothing component in all this. If we fail in communicating that connectedness matters, cooperation is non-negotiable, then we will ultimately fail, period. If we succeed in that communication, you won’t need to militarize.
Killian writes “The Rodale multi-decade study is the one to look at if you want to understand the significance of regenerative farming.”
I’m not sure why this study is of any significance. Consider the following claim from the Rodale Study : “If, at the same time, all global pasture was managed to a regenerative model, an additional 71% (~37 GtCO2) might be sequestered, [ft.1]…”
The footnote in question states: “The pasture system figure is based on the maximum annual potential of 3.04 Mg C ha-1 yr -1 for pasture with improved grass species as reviewed by Conant et al., 2001.”
The article by Conant et al. is a survey paper on grassland management and carbon sequestration of soils. With regards to the number reported above, which are reported in Table 4 of the survey, the authors note : “Introduction of earthworms, sowing of improved grass species, and sowing legumes had very high rates of C storage (Table 4), though the number of observations was limited and results were influenced by unique conditions including allophanic soils and somewhat controversial results (Davidson et al. 1995).”
In addition, the authors notes “Sowing legumes and grasses led to an mean annual increase of 2.0% and 2.3%, respectively, but the mean for grasses was largely driven by the large changes reported with the introduction of deep-rooted African grasses in Colombian savanna (Fisher et al. 1994).
From what I see, the Rodale Institute is cherry-picking controversial results from over twenty years ago and making unmerited extrapolations.
#285–The first one I know of is Roger Revelle:
Unless I’m misunderstanding your post, Hank?
#294 Jasper Jaynes said is a non-starter in the real world. Sustainability; forget it.
Can’t be done! Caaaan’t be done!
This is a self-defeating, boring, self-fulfilling prophecy in which I have zero interest. Go talk to Guy. He’s all over that and becoming quite the celebrity advocating exactly that defeatism.
BTW, the post was about modeling, nothing else.
#299 Chris Dudley says ***
Those “negative” emissions are tiny. That is not at all what I have suggested. I am talking about back to 300ppm by 2035 – 2100.
Ridiculous response, of course.
Killian (#304),
You keep asking for a model but all you really need is a calculation. It is confusing.
About half of cumulative emissions have ended up in the atmosphere with the rest ending up in the oceans and biosphere (not geologically sequestered as you propose):
“Total cumulative emissions from 1870 to 2013 were 390±20 GtC from fossil fuels and cement, and 145± 50 from land use change. The total of 535±55GtC was partitioned among the atmosphere (225±5 GtC), ocean (150±20 GtC), and the land (155±60 GtC).” http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/14/hl-full.htm
So, to clean up the atmosphere rapidly, sequester 255 GtC rapidly. After that, the oceans will fight you by returning 150 GtC to the atmosphere, but that will take some time and you’ll get many centuries to handle that. So, during your rapid phase, finished by 2075, say, you need to sequester a little more that 4 GtC/yr, a little less than half the current emissions rate.
So, there is you answer. Nothing more needed than a pen and a postit.
#301 OnceJolly said From what I see, the Rodale Institute is cherry-picking controversial results from over twenty years ago and making unmerited extrapolations.
Thanks for responding without being rude. Quite rare. But we must address just whom is cherry picking what, here. Unfortunately, your response reads like someone hoping for and looking for reasons to doubt. As the report states, even if the gains are modest (an obvious juxtaposition with their best-case findings), they need to be pursued. You didn’t go there, tho. Why?
Let’s look at what Rodale *actually* said vs your mild cherry picking.
First, you say: I’m not sure why this study is of any significance.
That’s not even remotely possible. The best case scenarios were 40% of emissions with regenerative farming. Half that is 20%. Not significant? Are you serious about that? Even a quarter, 10%, is significant.
Your first contention is false.
You continue, “If, at the same time, all global pasture was managed to a regenerative model, an additional 71% (~37 GtCO2) might be sequestered,”
First, note that if is a conditional. It requires a condition to be met. There no claim it will be met, only that the potential exists.
Second, you say, “The footnote in question states: “The pasture system figure is based on the maximum annual potential of 3.04 Mg C ha-1 yr -1 for pasture with improved grass species as reviewed by Conant et al., 2001.”
The article by Conant et al. …“Introduction of earthworms, sowing of improved grass species, and sowing legumes had very high rates of C storage (Table 4), though the number of observations was limited…
In addition, the authors notes “Sowing legumes and grasses led to an mean annual increase of 2.0% and 2.3%, respectively, but …was largely driven by the large changes reported with the introduction of deep-rooted African grasses in Colombian savanna (Fisher et al. 1994).
I am not sure why this supposedly goes against what was stated. What matters is total sequestration, e.g., not whether it is dominated by one region, so who cares?
Further, this is quoting a study that does not cover current best practices WRT grassland management, agreoforestry, etc., so is, if anything, conservative. 71%? OK, again, let’s assume best practices today suck in comparison, so we only get 35%. That’s still 45% of current emissions with no changes to industrial society at all.
According you’re “not sure that is significant.”
What in the world *is* swignificant? For goodness’ sakes!
And here is the actual sequence of the Rodal summary, the last bit of which you left out.
If management of all current cropland shifted to reflect the regenerative model as practiced at the research sites included in the white paper, we could potentially sequester more than 40% of annual emissions.
Note it says if, not when, not definitively. Just potential.
Now that does not include the fact estimates say we need 50% more food production to accommodate 9 billion. So there’s that much MORE land under production.
If it’s not clear to you a significant % of emissions is not only possible, but easily achievable, then you just don’t want to see it.
Iif all global pasture was managed using a regenerative model, an additional 71% could be sequestered.
Rodale did not study grasslands, thus I assume the study writeup chose not to make claims that would be dismissed as not in some study somewhere, so they referred back to something in the literature. I am certain they were fully aware of what is happening in other areas of ag. Despite the dismissive response to the work by Savory, et al., here at RC, this is extremely promising work. Again, people can fault the practicioners that gov’ts have not been aware enough, intelligent enough, unbiased enough to fund such research and accelerate it, or you can applaud them for doing what they can on their own.
Regardless, if a significant fraction of 71% can be achieved, it’s massively significant.
Even if modest assumptions about soil’s carbon sequestration potential are made, regenerative agriculture can easily keep annual emissions to within a desirable range.
Your post gave the false impression the Rodale study was unrealistic and not “significant.” Yet, the entire summary is full of conditionals and modals, a veritable model of modesty and caveats.
Thanks for the time, and not being rude, but you are not being fair with the study. So…
* grassland management and regeneratively managed *current* farm acreage gives a modest possibility of 50% of emissions.
* does not include homes, yards, urban ag.
* does not include expanded production to meet population gains.
* does not include reforestation.
* does not include aforestation.
* does not include agroforestry.
* does not include bio-char.
* does not include any other form of mitigation or reduced consumption.
That’s pretty danged hopeful by any stretch, and far, far, far beyond not sure it’s significant.
Cheers
If the Rodale solution involves “introduction of earthworms, sowing of improved grass species, and sowing legumes”, it sounds like they are willing to write off countless native species and ecosystems for the sake of carbon sequestration. I realize AGW itself means extinction for a large fraction of the world’s remaining native species and ecosystems. But deliberately replacing them everywhere with a few preferred species, however carefully chosen, is just more of the heedless ecological imperialism that’s driving the sixth great extinction of global biodiversity. I’d class it with deliberate injection of SO2 into the upper atmosphere to increase albedo, as a wrong-headed approach to fixing what we broke. Count me out.
Wili (#294),
“As to RCP 4.5, is that really doable anymore? Do you find the IPCC numbers completely reliable? Do they rely on massive amounts of sequestration that we don’t really know how to do yet?”
As far as I can tell, the aim for Paris is to get commitments that have emissions peaking around 2030 and falling after that so basically the RCP4.5 path. Now that China is somewhat on board, that seems doable. There are some things I don’t agree with in the IPCC analysis. I think that there is an opportunity cost in retaining dilapidated nuclear reactors that diverts investment in lower cost renewables that they have missed. And, we will inevitable lose more territory the way we have in Fukushima and Chernobyl if we string out those plants. So, I think they’ve made a sign error in the economic model. I don’t think that we should ignore species extinction that can’t be directly tied to warming since mitigation could have an impact as well. I am pleased though that RCP3.0 avoids warming related extinctions. There are probably a few other things to quibble about.
There is massive sequestration in RCP4.5 or 3.0 if fossil fuels continue to be used, but if there are replaced, then only 3.0 requires sequestration and that not on a really larger scale. And, if much hydrogen made from water is involved in the energy economy, then sequestration becomes essentially free since the associated oxygen can be used to produce a pure carbon dioxide stream from biomass burning, for example. Most of the difficulty in CCS is capturing the carbon dioxide since it is usually mixed with nitrogen. Free oxygen means the nitrogen can be left out of the picture. Can’t know for sure that hydrogen would be a part of a clean economy, but if it is, it makes RCP3.0 fall into place regarding CCS.
Good one, thank you Kevin
Hank, (#285) Science fiction author Frederik Pohl published “Homegoing” in 1989, writing about a future in which Alaska has hurricanes and much of New York is underwater. He does a simple comparison of the atmospheres of Venus and Mars, with extrapolation for continued burning of fossil fuels on Earth.
Re #273 and 274
I think Kevin Anderson is essentially saying is that the UK government (although others might be the same)when thinking of energy appear to think that its all down to the electricity grid but this on represents one quarter of all UK energy use and hence probably Europe’s and possibly the USA as well when of course we all need energy for everything we do especially transport and heating and cooking in our homes as well as some industrial activities. In the video you link to and others he has done in recent years Anderson is simply stating that everything we do is based around wind turbines and solar power for the electricity grid leaving everything else untouched which could just be compounding the issue due to the following reasons stated here in another one of his videos where he is seen presently to the house of lords:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ0JyGMA-ak
Some of the people he is presently to here cant even see climate change as an issue but maybe the bit where Anderson speaks about putting cars, heating and cooking into the grid makes for the most realistic statement he makes here. The bit about air conditioning (the new normal as he puts it)says it all really.
Government has been briefed but does not appear to be able to respond but the wind turbines are going up offshore as our present government does not like onshore turbines nor solar (Government ministers have said so).
So these presentations say the following in my mind. We simply are not doing enough in the fight against global warming. The west has exported its goods to the far east and China and India has massive populations and energy is needed to serve them and coal is the primary driver of this industry and enterprise meaning that peak coal globally is not known but all indicators point to 2030 at the earliest for Africa is another continent coming online and although solar and wind can feature heavily on these continents coal is still not going anywhere soon as stated here:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/a-look-behind-the-headlines-on-chinas-coal-trends/?emc=edit_tnt_20150218&nlid=38021197&tntemail0=y&_r=0
I know that Chris at #281 seems to think differently but he does not know so Anderson is making solid and good points here about how the 2C door is closing and little is being done about it.
Killian#303,
“This is a self-defeating, boring, self-fulfilling prophecy in which I have zero interest. Go talk to Guy. He’s all over that and becoming quite the celebrity advocating exactly that defeatism.”
There’s a major difference. Guy basically says it’s too late. The wheels of motion have started to turn, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. I believe, based on the scientific evidence, that it MAY BE still possible to avoid extinction. Unfortunately, I see no Early Warning Indicators of changes (present or future) that will turn us away from the present extinction trajectory. Proposing a ‘solution’ that no one will buy, as you do, is truly a defeatist approach. Show me even one poster (other than yourself) who is willing to adopt the lifestyle required by your concept.
NCDC is out with the January update–missed it last week, if that’s when it was issued.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2015/1
2nd warmest January (as was the case with the GISTEMP data), behind 2007–though the gap between 2007 and 2015 is less in the NCDC data than was the case for GISTEMP. (0.77°C versus 2007’s 0.86°C.)
Eric (#287),
Here is an article that lists some of the publications that have been contacted. Science Bulletin is not included. http://insideclimatenews.org/news/23022015/scientific-journals-alerted-fossil-fuel-funding-contrarian-climate-studies
If you host a blog, study this
Yes, it’s argument by analogy.
Since some here have been kind enough in the past to take an interest, let me announce a new article on climate change, just out this morning:
http://doc-snow.hubpages.com/hub/How-Do-We-Know-That-CO2-Is-Warming-The-Planet
Applied epistemology…
Suggestions and feedback welcome. Perhaps it may provide another source to point to for some!
#292 Chuck Hughes says:
“My own family doesn’t want to discuss it. I don’t know of anyone outside the science blogs that is even interested in the topic. It’s a sad situation we’re in”.
I can say exactly the same. Beeing honest, I´ll say that among my seblings, nephews and nieces i´m considered pretty useful when some of them wants an explanation about basic science questions, especially if relative to Physics (though I´m better in solid mechanics, I must say) … In this field of global warming they just ignore me and my arguments!
You know, as kind of a protest I´m even not assisting to weddings, birthdays and similar family events since a few years ago… to no avail! (surely you know of the big carbon footprint of that type of events).
At last , a new mechanism of hypothetical climate change that lets the atmospheric science take a break —
Best chew it up and spit it out before Michaels, Watts and Monckton sink their teeth in too far .
Okay, I downloaded Hadley CRUTEM4, CO2 (Law Dome 1850-1958, Mauna Loa 1959-2014), and International Sunspot Number for 1850-2014 (N = 165 years, a pretty fair sample size). r2 is 0.80 for dT and CO2, 0.03 for dT and sunspots. Student’s t is 25.7 and 2.24, respectively. I’m not accounting for autocorrelation in the residuals, but it sure looks like carbon dioxide has been the dominant factor affecting temperature for the last century and a half.
http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/n0127-dozens-of-mysterious-new-craters-suspected-in-northern-russia/
“Dozens of new craters suspected in northern Russia”
#307 Mal Adapted said, If the Rodale solution involves “introduction of earthworms, sowing of improved grass species, and sowing legumes”
It doesn’t. That is clear from my comments here and from the info from the site. I suggest you read both. Grasslands are not part of the study at all, in fact. They were offering a best-case fer instance, nothing more.
# 312 Jasper Jaynes said There’s a major difference. Guy basically says it’s too late. The wheels of motion have started to turn, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. I believe, based on the scientific evidence, that it MAY BE still possible to avoid extinction. Unfortunately, I see no Early Warning Indicators of changes (present or future)
48% of Republicans wanting gov’t action not a signal? There are others.
Show me even one poster (other than yourself) who is willing to adopt the lifestyle required by your concept.
The people here are basically eggheads (with all due respect from an egghead) and, well, they spend their time at computers. No, they can’t imagine it, and I could care less. I have maintained what we *want* is irrelevant. Nature doesn’t care. As people get that, they will more and more adapt their behavior to conditions, eventually figuring out Nature is not in a negotiating mood and that only First Principles problem solving is going to get us through this, that their beliefs and ideologies do not grow gardens or build shelters, etc., etc., and the principles will guide them.
Or, it falls down and goes boom. That binary, potentially any decade now. The longer they wait, the harder it will be. So be it.
For Killian,
Its not a climate simulation, but a lot can be learned from some simple models. You seem to want
climate simulations based upon hypothetical models. Below I show how assuming a simple carbon cycle
model, you can solve for the atmospheric concentration as a function of time, given a predetermined
emissions schedule. I assume moderate algebraic and at least modest programming capability. You
should be able to use whatever comp language you are most comfortable with (Fortran, C, Python, Matlab, or whatever).
How to use the Bern Carbon cycle model to compute atmosheric concentration
versus time for an arbitrary emissions scenario.
The Bern Carbon Cycle is a fit to a linear reservoir model with only a few
discrete reservoirs. The BCCM does not include feedbacks, although if you
have some model of CO2 feedback versus concentration -or of global temperature
(given a simple model of how CO2 affects the global temp, you could solve for
temperature), however, this note only covers the case of no feedbacks.
The BCCM, is really just a handful of numbers. A one dimensional vector
TCi contains decay lifetimes in years. A second one dimensional vector
covers participation factors for the same indices (i). The participation factor
for the Ith term is Pi. The standard model (they have several choices available)
has six terms:
TC = 1.e33,371.6,55.70,17.01,4.16,1.33
P = .1369,.1298,.1938,.2502,.2086,.0807
These can be used to determine the way an emissions pulse (instantaneous
release) of Co2 will decay over time. For t being the time in years since
the release the remaining atmosheric concentration C(t) is given by:
(1) C(t) = E*sum(i=1 to 6){ Pi*exp( -t/TCi )}
You should be able to use for favorite simulation language to code this
in just a few lines. For instance in C the impulse respose is given by the
following function:
float co2decay(float t){
float p[6]={.1369,.1298,.1938,.2502,.2086,.0807};
float tau[6]={1.e33,371.6,55.70,17.01,4.16,1.33};
float c=0.;int j;
for(j=0;j<6;j++)c+=p[j]*exp(-t/tau[j]);
return c;
}
Generalization to a series of annual emissions:
Let us assume that annual emisions are values stored in a
vector Ej. Then assuming emisions are given in units such that an emission of
One will instantaneously increase the atmospheric concentration by one PPM.
We can avoid having to integrate backwards in time, by partitioning the
atmospheric concentartion into six modes Ci. Each component Ci decays at
the rate given by TCi. We can advance the component concentrations by one
year by performing the following two steps:
Decay:
Ci[n+1]=Ci[n]*exp(-1/TCi)
Effect of emission spike (at midyear)
Ci[n+1]=Ci(n) +E[n]*exp(-.5/TCi)
To intitialize, set the preindustrial mode factors Ci to (280,0,0,0,0,0) ppm.
The atmospheric concentration is the sum of Ci. So you should be able to
easily compute the evolution of the atmospheric concentration according to this
model/proceedure very easily and inexpensively.
#302 Kevin: What a fine example of the shoulders of giants.
The part you cite is actually marked out in the margin of this document:
http://uscentrist.org/platform/positions/environment/context-environment/docs/Revelle-Suess1957.pdf
Elsewhere:
“Revelle and Suess described the ‘buffer factor,’ now known as the ‘Revelle factor’ which is a resistance to atmospheric carbon dioxide being absorbed by the ocean surface layer posed by bicarbonate chemistry. Essentially, in order to enter the ocean, carbon dioxide gas has to partition into one of the components of carbonic acid: carbonate ion, bicarbonate ion, or protonated carbonic acid, and the product of these many chemical dissociation constants factors into a kind of back-pressure that limits how fast the carbon dioxide can enter the surface ocean. Geology, geochemistry, atmospheric chemistry, ocean chemistry … this amounted to one of the earliest examples of ‘integrated assessment,’ which 50 years later became an entire branch of global warming science.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Revelle
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suess_effect
Killian writes: “As the report states, even if the gains are modest (an obvious juxtaposition with their best-case findings), they need to be pursued. You didn’t go there, tho. Why?”
The Rodale Institute is hardly the only entity to advocate for methods (organic and otherwise) that increase sequestration of carbon in the soil and elsewhere, but they are an *advocacy* group for organic methods and I think they have a tendency to oversell accordingly on the basis of a rather limited number of studies. In fact, they are explicit about what they are doing in the White Paper, noting “On-farm soil carbon sequestration can potentially sequester all of our current annual global greenhouse gas emissions of roughly 52 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (52 GtCO2e). Indeed, if sequestration rates attained by *exemplar* [emphasis mine] cases were achieved on crop and pastureland across the globe, regenerative agriculture could sequester more than our current annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.”
The problem is that even their “modest” scenarios assume that, while somewhat less than 100% of all existing farm and grasslands adopts regenerative methods, all of the sites that do that adopt these methods will be able to obtain rates of sequestration that match those “exemplar” cases (the Iranian and Egyptian farm sites and the grassland rates obtained through seeding of introduced grass species). Claims based on a handful of exemplar results may be suggestive, but they hardly strike me as scientifically significant.
I used the phrase “scientifically significant” above, which I think is meaningless. I meant that the claims in question are not based on what I view to be strong (or compelling) evidence.
One problem with the Rodale study is extrapolating field studies without accounting for the associated land needs for some of the techniques. For example, dairy manure is already widely used in crop fields, but you need a whole bunch of pasture to produce the manure. So, the effort is already going about as fast as it can. If you are going to extrapolate to more intensive use of manure on cropland, then you need to produce more milk than we drink on more pasture than we have.
There are ways to bootstrap. For example, in permaculture, you can set up a Mollison grove. But it takes a long time to get the whole thing going so your sequestration rate is not going to be much better than reforestation. And, such systems are pretty labor intensive so there may not be the population available to do the upkeep. Agricultural robotics is coming along, so there may be something that can be done there.
Russel @318.
Aren’t we three million years past crossing the galactic disc and another twelve million from being out at the furthest point from it. By that sort of reasoning, it surely suggests the dinasaurs went extinct, not from a gigantic meteor strike but throught boredom.
Killian#321,
” 48% of Republicans wanting gov’t action not a signal? There are others.”
I see. 48% of Republicans and probably far more Democrats. That’s a voting majority, and probably a super-majority. Then, please tell me, with all this support for ‘gov’t action’ for the most critical problem facing our civilization, how did we ever end up with a Congress trying to kill every law and regulation in place that could help ameliorate climate change? And, with all the relevant Committee Chairs pledging to do whatever they can to wipe out every last vestige of ‘gov’t action’ to ameliorate the same. I hope your proposals are based on better data and logic that your statement above.
Raj Pachauri quits over sexual harassment case:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-31601122
Chris,
Thanks for doing the math! If more people would do that, a lot of argument could be avoided.
278 (brown) & 279 (MARodger):
Thank you for your replies, but I guess I wasn’t clear enough about my concern. I’m not looking for anecdotes or offhand opinions about the quality of the contrarian literature — I can sort of do that myself.
What I’d like to see is a definitive list of all contrarian papers, each annotated with a description of its current status: retracted; refuted by papers A,B,C; made obvious error X; made prediction Y that was or was not later confirmed; made prediction Z for which the jury is still out; is a rehash of earlier paper W; etc. Ideally, such a review would itself be peer-reviewed.
I assume that none of those papers have made a case that still holds water, but before asserting that to others I’d like someone in the know to give a disciplined answer I could cite for support.
I realize this is pretty low on the list of things a practioner would want to do (publish a review of all the bad papers?). On the other hand, it’s probably not a huge task for someone who followed the literature over the years, and it would serve a useful role in the body politic surrounding climate research. For example, I could imagine something like this being presented in a Congressional hearing, as evidence that no (or few) contrarian arguments are still (or ever were) viable. An authoritative and definitive review would tend to knock the props out from under the argument that there are scientists arguing “both sides” of the issue.
I could take a stab at doing something like this myself, but (a) I’m not a climate scientist, (b) I’ve got my own day jobs, and (c) someone else may have already done it. Hence my post here.
#346–“…such systems are pretty labor intensive so there may not be the population available to do the upkeep.”
– See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/02/unforced-variations-feb-2015/comment-page-7/#comment-625981
Well, if the Simplify/Transition Town model were to somehow go viral, as Killian hopes, you’d have an awful lot of unemployed, as whole swathes of the contemporary economy would be shut down. The issue would be retraining them; there’d be huge skill (and perhaps inclination) mismatches. Also mismatches of geography: concentrations of population that are oriented around FF-powered transportation will not necessarily match well with those fitting agricultural productivity. So folks would be migrating in large numbers (which we expect anyway.)
The Transition Town model is meant to ’emerge’ from our current socio-economic model and supplant it, if I understand it correctly. But there seems to me to be a lot of disruption ‘baked in’ between here and there, suggesting to me that such ’emergence’ is most readily imaginable in the context of ongoing social collapse. (That’s been hinted at in some comments, IIRC.) And then the question becomes, can these sustainable communities be militarily effective, as they would not be able to rely on the legal protections afforded by a stable nation state? I’m not so sure how well ‘horizontal decision-making’ is going to work when standing off bands of looters, bandits, or even just large numbers of desperate refugees. It’s suggestive, if not particularly cheerful to contemplate, that over human history, forms of government have tended to correlate with levels of population, as it could be supported by available resources and tech. Can we ‘will our way out of’ these pervasive historical patterns, and just not have strongmen taking charge of these communities, as happened time and again in many, many different cultural settings?
And that gets us back, by implication, to the population question again. How productive are these agricultural practices? What are the labor requirements, particularly as they de-mechanize? What carrying capacity results from the paradigm shift to a community-centered ‘sustainable’ world? Killian would no doubt point out that we might not have a choice: if that’s the only thing that works over the long run, then it’s like it or lump it. But from my POV, there’s an awful lot of questions to address at this particular time, faced as we are with this particular climate crisis.
JJ at #328 asks: “…with all this support for ‘gov’t action’ for the most critical problem facing our civilization, how did we ever end up with a Congress trying to kill every law and regulation in place that could help ameliorate climate change?”
A majority of Republicans _under 50_ accepts climate science. But: 1) Older voters vote more reliably than younger voters; and B) Climate is not necessarily the top priority when even younger voters show up to vote.
Still, if Republicans really wanted to represent their own legitimate constituency rather than just the people who bought them their election, at least some of them should be trying to represent the large numbers that accept the science and are concerned about the future.
“Show me even one poster (other than yourself) who is willing to adopt the lifestyle required by your concept.” (I hesitate to ask, but:) Did I miss something? What lifestyle exactly is Killian requiring of us? And how does anyone know exactly what the posters here lifestyles are?
As to soil sequestration: I’m all for it, but going forward, there is no guarantee that soils will hold their carbon. Most soils will either dry up and lose it or be washed into the sea by torrential downpours, where again much of it will be lost. And my impression is that there is just too much excess carbon both already in the atmosphere and about to be released by our continued un-sequestering of it and by melting permafrost, etc, for all of that to be adequately held by some subset of terrestrial soils. Isn’t there more carbon in permafrost alone than in all other soils combined?
Sorry if my comments pop up multiple times, and in multiple versions. I often get error messages here indicating that a post did not get through, and I do it again, and then it turns out the post did get through after all. *sigh*
Thomas (#322),
Here is a five term prameterization taken from Kharecha and Hansen (2008) http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Kharecha_Hansen_1.pdf for comparison.
a=findgen(1000)
c=(18.+14.*exp(-a/420.)+18.*exp(-a/70.)+24.*exp(-a/21.)+26.*exp(-a/3.4))/100. ;Kharecha and Hansen eqn 1
cc=(13.69*exp(-a/1e33) + 12.98*exp(-a/371.6) + 19.38*exp(-a/55.7) + 25.02*exp(-a/17.01) + 20.86*exp(-a/4.16) + 8.07*exp(-a/1.33))/100. ;Thomas post 322
I wonder though, if this is really appropriate for sequestration. If we were to suddenly remove carbon dioxide, would the oceans release carbon dioxide to atmosphere with the same functional form as when they remove it when the partial pressure goes up during a sudden increase? Would the biosphere release carbon dioxide at all? In the limit of Snowball Earth, one has to wait for volcanoes to release the spell since the oceans and biosphere are held incommunicado.
Kevin (#332),
Well, rural collectivization has been tried in the 20th century in the USSR and China and it led to famine. So, I doubt this model has much to recommend itself. However, in a Mollison permaculture grove, the introduction of sophisticated robots would allow culture promoted by urban life to continue while doing the nitpicking extra work of tending very mixed crops without population dispersion.
In my opinion, renewable energy is so much more efficient than photosynthesis that it is very likely we will synthesize glucose from carbon dioxide and water without photosynthesis and at the least replace animal feed with that. That will allow vast regions to be returned to near wilderness, perhaps with sequestration promoting management. A home where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play is a pretty natural consequence of 24% efficient solar cells.
BPL (#330),
It can be hard for people who don’t speak math to understand why it is important to ask clear questions, or even to understand what a clear question is. That took a huge amount of deciphering to get to that point. Asking for models sounded at first like economic models like the one that shows that mitigation costs little that the IPCC presented. Those take a long time to put together. Then the claim was that negative emissions had never been modeled, however they had been. The phrase falling emissions was then used rather than negative emissions which also lacked clarity since it seemed to be presented as an alternative to negative emissions. Hopefully, now, the question is clear and has been addressed.
Wili#334,
““Show me even one poster (other than yourself) who is willing to adopt the lifestyle required by your concept.” (I hesitate to ask, but:) Did I miss something? What lifestyle exactly is Killian requiring of us? And how does anyone know exactly what the posters here lifestyles are?”
I don’t know what level of detail you require with use of ‘exactly’, but it seems rather obvious to me. Killian has stated in no uncertain terms that the target is ‘sustainability’, and the items that I remember him listing under sustainability include wind, solar, fossil, SUVs/cars, etc, etc. There are probably far more he would include in a detailed list. Those pieces should give you some idea of the total picture. Use minimal resources, including energy!
I have no idea of the lifestyles of the various posters, nor do I care. That issue was not part of my comment. I was trying to make the point that, even on this site, where posters are probably as interested in ameliorating climate change as anywhere, very few (if any) would be willing to adopt the sustainability lifestyle being promoted by Killian. If that’s the case on RC, then it’s far less among the general public. It’s a non-starter.
James McDonald,
Did it occur to you that climate scientists have day jobs as well? Moreover, science doesn’t really work that way. If a paper is published, the special-ists in the same field will read it to see if it adds to their understanding or provides useful tools that allow them to do things they couldn’t before. If it does, it gets cited and its results get used. If it doesn’t, it sits there like a dog turd on a New York sidewalk. If a paper is crap, it will generally be met with silence. Only rarely will a scientist find the errors in it worth writing a comment. It may attract some interest in the blogosphere for a week or a month or perhaps even a year. That would be where you should look for refutations of crap papers–Skeptical Science, Tamino’s Open Mind, sometimes here, ATTP, Chris Colese’s blog when he has time. The problem is that most efforts by denialists are so patently absurd that real scientists can’t be arsed to respond.
“rural collectivization has been tried in the 20th century in the USSR and China”
I’m confused again. Who was advocating Soviet or Maoist style collectivization?
Large scale ag is already pretty mechanized. Not sure that robots would make much of a difference. Not to mention the large upfront cost involved. Might as well advocate terraforming the moon or something equally techno-fantastic. (As I push the button that affirms that “I’m not a robot” ag robot or otherwise!)
New movie Kingsmen movie seems bad propaganda against AGW activist. Not sure I should spoil it by saying more…
Wili#333,
” Climate is not necessarily the top priority when even younger voters show up to vote. ”
In other words, the most important problem facing our civilization is nobody’s top priority. We see that by the people we have been electing to national office, and by the policies they have promulgated, and are proposing to advance. And, that’s not confined to the USA. If we look at the governments voted into office in Canada, Australia, Russia, etc, climate change appears to be nobody’s top priority, or even close to it. Face it, in a situation where everybody in the world has to care in order to bring emissions and concentrations under control, almost no one cares. That’s the most frightening Early Warning Indicator of all!
“…rural collectivization has been tried in the 20th century in the USSR and China and it led to famine…”
– See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/02/unforced-variations-feb-2015/comment-page-7/#comment-625998
Sure, but that’s not at all parallel to what Killian is advocating or the Transition Town folks envisage. It was done at the point of a gun, and it put Party apparatchiks in charge–folks whose only interest and criteria were purely ideological and political. They apparently lacked any relevant agricultural or technical experience, and didn’t care what happened to the populace (or maybe that’s too benign a construction of their attitude?)
In Killian’s model, you’d have the populace in charge–‘horizontal decision-making’–and people would be part of these communities because they chose to be. That doesn’t prove that the vision is workable, but I think it’s a crucial set of differences, which would be more than enough to invalidate the Stalinist and Maoist precedents as having predictive value.
On the other hand, I think your point about 24% efficient PV is very telling. (And, FWIW, you can buy residential systems close to that level of efficiency today, for example Sunpower’s X-series, which are claimed to do 21.5%.)
Re- Comment by wili — 24 Feb 2015 @ 8:36 AM, ~#334
Wili, you ask- “What lifestyle exactly is Killian requiring of us?” Killian has repeatedly stated that only sustainable lifestyles should be allowed and this would be at the aboriginal or near aboriginal level that he has also described as pre industrial. He has claimed that renewable energy for electricity is not sustainable and this should preclude, for example, electricity and equipment for recording and playing back music. He has claimed that steel manufacturing is not sustainable and this would mean that tractors for agriculture (like used in the Rodale 30 year study) should not be allowed. He has no strategy for convincing the developed world to go back to a bronze age society or any plan for how seven-come-eleven billion people could sustain themselves at this level. If man can’t live on bread alone, what about when there is no bread?
Steve
James (#331), you might try the Skeptical Science community. Some of the folks over there (such as J. Cook) are authors of the ‘97%’ literature survey, and there was a citizen science component to that survey, which a lot of us on the site participating in (prelim screening, basically.)
So there could well be relevant expertise there.
http://www.skepticalscience.com
#322 Thomas said <bFor Killian,
…You seem to want climate simulations based upon hypothetical models…
What I suggested is to do a simple rapid carbon sequestration model to see what effect it had if returning to sub-300, then, if encouraging, do a more complete modeling.
What I *want* is this:
World Simulation
Below I show how assuming a simple carbon cycle model, you can solve for the atmospheric concentration as a function of time, given a predetermined emissions schedule.
I assume moderate algebraic and at least modest programming capability.
Yeah, not so much. Great post. Hopefully someone with the knowledge required will do so and get this ball rolling.
#305 Chris Dudley says: Killian (#304),
You keep asking for a model but all you really need is a calculation. It is confusing… So, there is you answer. Nothing more needed than a pen and a postit.
Thank you. This is very useful. How do I equate to ppm with some rigor? I can do simple division, but, after all, some has broken down over the years, etc., etc.
Gt is meaningless for me. Not intuitive while ppm is clear, obvious, and easy to conceive of.
#328 Jasper Jaynes said Killian#321,
” 48% of Republicans wanting gov’t action not a signal? There are others.”
I see. 48% of Republicans and probably far more Democrats. That’s a voting majority, and probably a super-majority. Then, please tell me, with all this support for ‘gov’t action’ for the most critical problem facing our civilization, how did we ever end up with a Congress trying to kill every law…
Now you are just being argumentative. The poll was from *January*, not 15 years ago.
#324 OnceJolly said, Killian writes: “As the report states, even if the gains are modest (an obvious juxtaposition with their best-case findings), they need to be pursued. You didn’t go there, tho. Why?”
The Rodale Institute is… an *advocacy* group for organic methods and I think they have a tendency to oversell accordingly on the basis of a rather limited number of studies.
You think Schmidt, Mann, et al., are not at this point sold on what the science says and studying something they already believe to be true? How is this different? You are faulting Rodale, et al., for figuring out there’s a problem and a solution. Hardly makes any sense.
In fact, they are explicit about what they are doing in the White Paper
And honesty is bad because…?
The problem is that even their “modest” scenarios assume that, while somewhat less than 100% of all existing farm and grasslands adopts regenerative methods, all of the sites that do that adopt these methods will be able to obtain rates of sequestration that match those “exemplar”
No, they don’t. That’s what “if” means. It means…. if. What do you know of such types of agriculture? Perhaps you would feel less critical if you had any idea at all how simple it is to grow this way, and people tend to be more invested when growing for their own communities, which is part of the goal.
Frankly, it’s hard not to get to best practices because you sort of can’t help but get there.
Claims based on a handful of exemplar results may be suggestive, but they hardly strike me as scientifically significant.
Then you go convince gov’t’s and NGO’s to get off their butts on this rather than minimizing the hard work done to convince people of what is possible.
And the day a 30-year longitudinal comparative study isn’t scientifically meaningful is the day we should all just give up.
Always bear in mind, all this in the context of simplification. Without that, it’s all spitting in the wind. With simplification, if regenerative farming achieves as little as a 10% reduction, we’d be looking at neutral emissions. 20% equals a long slow return to pre-industrial.
Yeah, dang, that sucks.
326 Chris Dudley said One problem with the Rodale study is extrapolating field studies without accounting for the associated land needs for some of the techniques. For example, dairy manure
If familiar, you know Pc emphasizes location-specific techniques, so whatever is best suited is used. Yes, there will be variations in sequestration.
is already widely used in crop fields, but you need a whole bunch of pasture to produce the manure. So, the effort is already going about as fast as it can.
Nah. CAFO -> pature. That’s a lotta new cow poo going to the right places.
For example, in permaculture, you can set up a Mollison grove.
I assume you mean a food forest?
such systems are pretty labor intensive so there may not be the population available to do the upkeep.
The opposite. After 5 years there is virtually no upkeep needed (2 people, 2 days for 1 acre chop and drop/yr) and even if left unattended, will remain highly productive and, because we do maintain them, do pull carbon out and sequester, will have a higher sequestration than a natural forest.
Quick view through Food Forest progression
And, as I said to OnceJolly, context matters. Simplification will release a huge number of work hours for all communities and you do not get to sustainability but through simplification.
(Wanted to combine all this in previous post, but seemed to be getting too long.)
#332 Kevin McKinney said
#346–“…such systems are pretty labor intensive so there may not be the population available to do the upkeep.”
Well, if the Simplify/Transition Town model were to somehow go viral, as Killian hopes
No hope, just will or won’t. I’d much rather be a rich guy with ten houses and pleasures of the world, but…
you’d have an awful lot of unemployed, as whole swathes of the contemporary economy would be shut down. The issue would be retraining them; there’d be huge skill (and perhaps inclination) mismatches. Also mismatches
Re-skilling is an important part of any community that is awakening to the issues.
So folks would be migrating in large numbers (which we expect anyway.)
Indeed. Something I strenuously brought to the attention of the Detroit Works people, who completely ignored this.
The Transition Town model is meant to ‘emerge’ from our current socio-economic model and supplant it, if I understand it correctly.
Not sure about that, but my model is predicated on this.
But there seems to me to be a lot of disruption ‘baked in’ between here and there, suggesting to me that such ‘emergence’ is most readily imaginable in the context of ongoing social collapse.
I purposely do not address the transition period much, and mostly not at all. There is one pragmatic reason for that: Sustainability is ultimately local (extending up to bio-regional, tho.) Design must be place-based, so what this all specifically looks like will vary significantly from place to place. Only the broad patterns can be spoken of with any confidence.
Secondly, you can’t design for the future without choosing a set of conditions to design to. I cannot get people to include backcasting in their planning, and without backcasting we’re just throwing mud at walls. We’re not psychic, but we can make educated guesses. Luckily, much of what we need to do serves transition and stabilization, however, much we can do during transition may not be possible far into the new equilibrium, so care is needed.
the question becomes, can these sustainable communities be militarily effective
Moot. As you say, Killian would no doubt point out that we might not have a choice: if that’s the only thing that works over the long run, then it’s like it or lump it.
While sustainability is ultimately local, it is also ultimately a lot of local interconnected systems. Unsustainable systems anywhere can cause unsustainable outcomes everywhere potentially.
if the Amazonian bio-region is not managed well, it affects rainfall across the globe, e.g. Amazon determines rainfall patterns
There’s a very real all-or-nothing component in all this. If we fail in communicating that connectedness matters, cooperation is non-negotiable, then we will ultimately fail, period. If we succeed in that communication, you won’t need to militarize.