The Bad News
- Posted by ryan on January 19th, 2009 filed in Environment
Yglesias writes:
Long story short, my best guess is that Obama’s climate proposals are too ambitious to be enacted and too timid to avert catastrophe.
I have become increasingly pessimistic about our ability to address the climate change crisis. The dynamics are simply deadly — the most dangerous effects begin arriving after it’s too late to do anything about them — which leaves as our great hope the chance that a strong enough intellectual argument can be made to convince us all to challenge thousands of entrenched interests (among them our own) and significantly change the path of policy. Frankly, there’s nothing in our history that suggests this is possible. Time and again, slow-burning environmental crises have emerged to devastate civilizations. That we’re smart enough to see it coming and understand the mechanisms involved only renders our failure more tragic.
I don’t think warming will mean the end of humanity, but it will be serious enough that major geo-political change will take place, leading to all manner of unpredictable, and often catastrophic, outcomes. And as we approach critical thresholds, I think you’ll begin to see some scientists and activists grow radicalized by our inaction. When people see that the political leaders aren’t going to take the necessary steps, they’re going to start blowing up coal plants. I’m not kidding.
This is the bad news that increasingly colors my optimism on other fronts. If Obama succeeds beyond our wildest expectations on every other front and fails on climate change, then his presidency is a failure. And all we’ll be able to do is sit back and enjoy being the last (or maybe penultimate) generation to enjoy the planet as it is, and as it has been for all of human history.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
There is enough play in the models that if some of us treat this as urgent and some treat it as important but not urgent, we might come out ok. Just see that I’m buried somewhere high and cool.
January 19th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
No, Doug, I don’t think there is. It will take something extremely unexpected to save us now.
January 19th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Well, I think modeling error is pretty much the only hope. What you say is true, we just can’t grab a gear it seems. My confession: I bought a Prius a year and a half ago and I’ve put 50,000 miles on it since, which is still a huge carbon footprint.
January 20th, 2009 at 8:29 am
You know, there is a pretty good chance that this Global Warming danger is overblown…
There is even a good chance that the world will start cooling slightly from current levels. It might turn out that solar activity dominates.
But let’s say the IPCC forecast is correct. Warming continues. So what? Things change. Oceans deepen a few feet. Weather patterns shift a bit. But so what? People thrive in Iceland and Dubai.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Sure, civilizations have been overwhelmed by climate change before the invention of the electric light bulb.
Obviously, not everyone with an internet has gotten the message. But we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Which is probably a good thing, because the last time the climate was really different, Kansas was an ocean.
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:18 pm
I live in Alberta and there have been several stories regarding possible eco-terrorism. Encana, Canada’s largest natural gas company has had their pipeline bombed several times and is now promising a $500, 000 award for information. A second story is the former CFO of Syncrude, one of the largest oilsands companies in Canada, had his house burned down by molotov cocktails. I dont think this act has been confirmed as eco terrorism but its highly likely.
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Ryan you’re too optimistic. It may take a couple hundred years, but human induced climate change will result in the end of humanity (unless it’s superseded by some other catastrophe).
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:29 pm
My prediction is that we will not address climate change until the evidence is overwhelming and at which point obviously too late. So what will happen at that point. The earth will continue to spin, it will still rain, snow, be hot but the change will be where and in what quantities. Coastal habitats will disappear as the sea rises, there will be a forced inward migration which will cause conflict over existing natural resources and open space.
Will America be threatened? Somewhat, we’ll lose some arable land, and some coastline, there’s going to be a economy shift as values of certain things change with the global climate changes but in the end we have the financial resources and technological means to address these issues, huge solar run domes with artificial weather for farming or ranching or genetically modified crops that can handle the hotter/wetter weather depending on situation.
The danger are the poorer areas, some Central and South American countries, Africa, parts of Asia, perhaps the Sub Continent. One can see lots of conflicts, nations dissolving, famine and so forth. America could end up with a Israeli like wall along our southern border as people try to make their way here not for jobs but food.
I think over the next fifty years we end our reliance on oil as it is no longer profitable and then jump the hydrogen/solar/electric band wagon. Eventually, 100-200 years the Earth balances itself back, maybe given us a well deserved ice age as payback.
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:38 pm
@ 4. stephen stanton:
Ordinarily, I’d agree with you. However, ever hear of a ‘feedback loop’? That’s one experiment I’d rather not run on our planet.
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:42 pm
But let’s say the IPCC forecast is correct. Warming continues. So what? Things change. Oceans deepen a few feet. Weather patterns shift a bit. But so what? People thrive in Iceland and Dubai.
The big deal is that a 5 ft rise in sea level completely drowns much of the coastline around the world. First world nations can build levees and make do to some extent.
Bangladesh?
China?
The Pacific Islands?
No way. You will see population stampedes, recourse wars and genocide/famine on a scale even Thomas Malthus would never have deemed credible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malthus
January 22nd, 2009 at 3:07 pm
No way. You will see population stampedes, recourse wars and genocide/famine on a scale even Thomas Malthus would never have deemed credible.
Seriously. People who think we can adjust to the impact of Global Warming without some major, major pain (the scale is the death of millions, and that’s -if- we’re lucky and don’t get this), really need to study the Rwandan Genocide. We are not going to be able to engineer our way out of climate change. We must reduce our carbon emissions or reduce our numbers voluntarily, before Nature does it on an involuntary basis.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:15 pm
I’ll tell you where you will see this so-called eco-terrorism: In the emerging economies, where the abjectly impoverished are just starting to see the promise of prosperity, and where, if AGW believers and policy advocates want to really make a difference, economic advancement will need to be halted in its tracks. Go ahead, tell all those people in India they can’t have a better standard of living because “sustainable” is better for the planet. You want to see “sustainable living”, visit a dirt farmer in Southern India.
THERE’s your eco-terrorism.
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:19 pm
I, for one, fervently hope that Global Warming DOES decimate humanity and SOON. Because I simply cannot stand to inhabit this planet with you pussified, enviro-mental case, chicken-little liberals NUTJOBS anymore anyway. Go f’ing put a gun to your heads and get it over with already, you are ALREADY dead between the ears anyway.
Geez……
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:21 pm
You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There’s been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away — all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It’s powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that’s happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn’t have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We’ve been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we’re gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:03 pm
But let’s say the IPCC forecast is correct. Warming continues. So what? Things change. Oceans deepen a few feet. Weather patterns shift a bit. But so what? People thrive in Iceland and Dubai.
Stanton dissembles. I expect nothing less from a TCS contributor.
Why does this dissembling matter?
Two degrees would take us into an entirely new regime that Homo sapiens has never encountered.
I guess that’s OK for you to go blindly forward with zero instructions into a world of ecological stress and changing regimes, but I’m not going down the path of crazy, lazy, or dumb people.
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Geez, I scrolled down only AFTER posting, not reading the rest of the comments.
Infected by denialists, are we?
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:40 am
Hi, Ryan. It’s a shame you - and so many others - are worried about this. It really is quite silly, considering the absolute lack of evidence to support these dire consequences. I won’t bore you with a plethora of details, but let me mention just two:
1) CO2 and methane make up something like 3-4% of ‘greenhouse gases.’ The rest is water vapor, which also produces a greenhouse effect. The only thing we know about temperature and CO2 is that higher temps release more of the latter … we have no evidence that CO2 is the driver of radically increased temperature. That’s why the ice cores show a ~900 year lag between temp and CO2.
2) There is also no evidence of a “tipping point” or threshold effect towards higher temperatures. The only historic record we have is towards lower temperatures (ice ages and such). Anyone who tells you we are on a dangerous cusp and about to go over a cliff is simply talking out of their ass.
These hyper-fears about global warming being human-induced are just the latest fad … a meme that we shall soon forget, I hope.
Cheers,
Ted