I had the great pleasure last night of meeting Melissa of Shakespeare’s Sister fame and some of the great cast of characters she has assembled over at her blog, including Mr. Shakes, Litbrit, Paul the Spud, and others. The occasion was a visit to our northern suburb of Evanston to catch Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth. In fact I had already seen the movie, but was more than willing to see it twice. I am quick to admit that I am not a Gore fan, and the thought of paying hard cash to see a movie that consists mostly of him giving a Keynote presentation (there was plenty of Apple product placement) falls somewhat below “drinks at Clooney’s villa in Tuscany with the gang” on my list of exciting ways to spend an evening.
But it turns out to be a great film, oddly compelling, with at least one priceless joke about gold bars. It’s not a science documentary — many graphs have no labels on their axes (much less error bars), and much of the evidence adduced is anecdotal and aimed at the gut rather than the brain. But what anecdotes they are. It’s hard to see pictures of Russian fishing boats stranded in a barren sandy landscape that once was a major lake bed without thinking that something needs to be done.
There isn’t any scientific controversy over whether or not climate change is happening, or whether or not human beings are a major cause of it. That argument is over; the only ones left on the other side are hired guns and crackpots. But the guns are hired by people with an awful lot of money, and they’re extremely successful at sowing doubt where there shouldn’t be any.
Their task is made easier by the fact that the atmosphere is a complicated place, and the inherent difficulties in modeling something as messy as our climate. But climate models are not the point. The point is not even the dramatic upward trend in atmospheric temperature in recent years. The actual point is made clear by the plot of atmospheric CO2 concentration as a function of time, which I just posted a couple of days ago but will happily keep posting until I save the planet.
Here is the point: We are taking an enormously complex, highly nonlinear, intricately interconnected system that we don’t fully understand and on which everything about our lives depends — the environment — and repeatedly whacking it with sledgehammers, in the form of atmospheric gasses of various sorts. Statements of the form “well, we don’t really know what that particular piece of the system does, so we can’t be rigorously certain that smashing it with a sledgehammer would necessarily be a bad thing” are, in some limited sense, perfectly true. They are also reckless and stupid. The fact that there are things we don’t understand about the environment isn’t a license to do whatever we like to it, it’s the best possible reason why we should be careful. And being careful won’t spell the doom of our economic system, bringing global capitalism crashing to the floor and returning us all to hunter-gatherer societies. We just have to take some straightforward steps to mimimize the damage we are doing, just as we very successfully did with atmospheric chloro-fluorocarbons to save the ozone layer. And the best way to ensure that those steps are taken is to elect leaders who are smart and determined enough to take them.
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Sean,
your chart looks really scary. Fortunatley, the climate forcing due to CO2 increases proportional to ln(C) only, with C being the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Anecdotal?
Bullshit. What you see is what you get. Nothing anecdotal about it.
I’ve not seen the film yet – it doesn’t seem to be showing much in GA – but
I’m looking forward to it. RealClimate.org is a good place to go to learn about
what is happening in climate science and they give it a thumbs up. As for Sean’s
quip about non-scientific graphics, I can’t help but notice the scale on Sean’s CO2 plot.
Yeap, that’s called the Precautionary Principle.
Detractors have tried to discredit the IPCC conclusions, ranging from the Gaia Principle to the uncertain and yet potentially ameliorating role of water vapur and aerosols. However, the key word is the balance of evidence.
There is nothing inconvenient about the truth, only vested interests that serve as blinders.
Sean, and everyone,
what is your take on Steve McIntyre’s skeptical stance on the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis, discussed at length at his blog (http://www.climateaudit.org/)? He doesn’t sound like a crackpot, and I believe he’s not being paid by the bad guys (in fact by anyone). I can’t claim to understand everything he’s saying, but I’ve been impressed by this article, and nothing I can find on the RealClimate site has convinced me that he’s wrong. I’m interested in learning what you think is wrong about his work. I look forward to being educated. Thank you.
Right, and the economy is a intricate, complex and robust system that we can whack at with carbon restrictions?
The precautionary principle is paralyzing. It’s better to understand risks rather than assume them, for any cost-benefit analysis to be accurate.
You know what, Sourav? Over the next century, if not sooner, we will be whacking at the economy with carbon restrictions anyway, because we are running out of fossil fuels that we can afford to exploit. We’re better off whacking at something that we created and are tinkering with on a daily basis, than an immense and ancient natural system that has been a precondition for our existence. After all, as the free market advocates would have it, the economy is a system for effectively allocating resources and managing limitations on those resources. More generally, it’s a system for solving problems. Running the risk of making the planet unlivable for much of its human population—not to mention many other species—is a big problem.
Right, and the economy is a intricate, complex and robust system that we can whack at with [a massive and growing federal deficit, or a hugely expensive war in the mideast, or the gross mismanagement of multiple Fortune 100 companies, etc, etc, etc…]?
I just saw this brilliant, terrifying film. Hopefully it will do more than preach to the choir, and reach a wide audience. I am sorry to hear that you think Al Gore is not one of those leaders who would satisfy your last sentence “And the best way to ensure that those steps are taken is to elect leaders who are smart and determined enough to take them.” He seemed anything but wooden, very sincere, and driven by a genuine concern for the future of the planet. Not that I have any influence on US politics, but I am not aware of anyone in the current crop of politicians who shows a similar concern about this vital issue.
The single most useful thing people could do for this issue is rename “greenhouse effect”. Most people have no experience with greenhouses, and the very word greenhouse has a positive connotation.
What do I suggest?
When you park your car in summer with the windows closed, then come back two hours later, the car interior is *scorching*, easily 10 or 15 degrees hotter than outside. THAT is the greenhouse effect — light comes in easily through the windows, but IR does not go out easily. What we need is a name along the lines of the “summer parked car effect”, but something quite a bit catchier and less dorky. I am serious about this — words matter, and we need a good phrase here.
Chris W.:
The world is a much varied place, by geography and over time. The human species has succeeded not because we live close to the land, but because we can adapt technologically through our industry. As such, our technology and the economic preconditions to it are more valuable to our survival than small climate variations.
Indeed, research afforded by (or done by) the capitalist economy will allow us to adapt to a climate crisis. But I don’t see much sense in cabon caps, emissions restrictions, etc. without an assessment of the attendant costs and benefits.
As for the other stuff, e.g. unnecessary wars and budget deficits, no argument here.
Sourav, what do you call a small climate variation? If it is small enough that it is not a problem, then it is not a problem. But it is not small. A global temperature rise of few degrees Kelvin has a devastating effect on gulf streams, sea levels, etc.
Also, economic forces won’t work very effectively, because poor regions will be affected first (droughts in Africa, etc.), and poor regions do not have a strong economic impact, by definition.
Wolfgang,
Proportion to ln(C) if there is no feedback (which there is).
Sourav,
The Tibetan glaciers are retreating fast (says the Chinese Academy of Sciences) – threatened are the major Chinese rivers as well as the Indus, Ganga, Yamuna, Brahmaputra. What the around-billion people who depend on these rivers will do if their volumes diminish is a big unknown.
Hiranya,
Though I voted for Gore and was very sad at the results of the 2000 election, I must say Gore then was wooden, and often uninspiring. Even so, he would have been better than the current Preznit; unfortunately I do not decide elections.
Sourav: In the movie there is a graph of the *natural* CO2 variation over the past 650,000 years, with the temperature tracking it faithfully in a sawtooth pattern (it corresponds to ice ages and interglacial periods). This natural temperature variation (what you call a “small” climate change) is the difference between a nice summer day in New England and a mile of ice over your head (good luck to the capitalist system dealing with that). The CO2 has never naturally been over 300 ppm. You can see in Sean’s graph where it is now. The attendant temperature variation could be much greater than the mile of ice, but in the other direction. Please please watch this movie – its meant to educate people who think the way you seem to – and you will see that there are measures you can take with *current* technology, that won’t bankrupt the economy and go a long way to dealing with this problem.
Maynard,
If “greenhouse effect” is too positive, try calling it the “Venus effect” instead. it sounds sufficiently scary to me, at least.
Hiranya,
There has been several natural occurences with higher carbon dioxide content. During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum “Atmospheric carbon levels then are thought to have been about 2-3,000 parts per million (ppm)” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum ).
Tobjorn: I was referring to the last 650,000 years in my comment (i.e. the era of the modern humans). The conditions during the PETM does not instill me with a great deal of confidence that the capitalist system will take it in its stride 🙁
adrian-
While this film is sparsely being shown in the lesser-red-state of GA, I can vouch that this film is more sparsely being shown in the greater-red-state of AL. Furthermore, if Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear” was ever made into a film, then the movie houses within the nation’s red states would unquestionably make certain that this counterpart to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” was readily available for mass showings.
Sean-
I have a slightly better opinion of Al Gore. Even if Al Gore is not a cousin of the highly celebrated author and renowned social critic- Gore Vidal, I still consider Al Gore to be one of the finest orators in present-day politics.
Arun,
> Proportion to ln(C) if there is no feedback (which there is).
the CO2 forcing is proportional to ln(C) since Arrhenius and in all GCMs.
The question about the feedback is what the climate change discussion
is all about of course. I just thought it is a bit strange that Sean shows a
chart with linear scale, showing a linear increase of CO2 without further comment other than “be scared”…
This blog is about science or so I thought.
Perhaps this blog is not about science, but we do know enough to say that (1) log plots and linear plots convey precisely the same information, and (2) it would be hard to come up with a curve that was less linear than the one shown on that plot.
Sean,
> a curve that was less linear
yes, a nice hockey stick. But as I wrote it is “showing a linear increase of CO2”
for the relevant periode (the red line).
Of course, I guess I agree with you that climate change is more about politics and scary charts than science 😎
Um – Wolfgang – if the climate forcing was proportional to ln C, and C was increasing exponentially, or at best a powerlaw, as the chart shows (I do agree that the rate of change is better apparent with a logarithmic y axis) – maybe you really should be concerned about what the “scary graph” tells you, rather than criticising the messenger…
> and C was increasing exponentially
ahhh, finally somebody gets my point. The whole story hangs on the assumption that C grows exponentially. But so far this is an assumption only and Sean’s chart does not adress this question at all (the only relevant question about CO2 in the context of climate change).
I am not sure which web page you are looking at, Wolfgang, but the one I see in this post precisely addresses your question – i.e., it shows C as a function of time, and shows what looks like a near-exponential increase of C from the “baseline”.