I recently attended the World Congress on Risk in Sydney, primarily to see some sessions on ‘global catastrophic risk’. There were some presentations on the ‘tail risk’ of climate change that made me think that I should take it more seriously as a catastrophic risk than I have over the last few years. Despite
> Aerosols and sea spray gradually fall out of the atmosphere, so these geoengineering activities would need to be kept up continuously. If a disaster ever occurred that interfered with the project, for example a serious pandemic, then temperatures could start rising very quickly. This would lead to a second disaster – unpredictable and dramatic climate change – that humanity would have to deal with on top of the first.
These would lead to negative feedback: a pandemic will crush economic activity and shrink the human population, simultaneously reducing inputs to global warming and also making it easier for the remaining humans to accommodate themselves to the effects of global warming (fewer humans means it's easier to fit everyone into the habitable areas).
Temperature increases are proportional to the log of CO2 concentration rather than correlated in a linear fashion. Temperature sensitivity is dependent on feedback factors with the theoretical greenhouse effect of increased CO2 being very modest. Some feedback factors may be negative and some positive but what matters is the total feedback effect and whether it significantly enhances (or dampens) the CO2 effect. Nobody knows the size of these factors other than via inference. You can look at the last 150 years and say temperature went up by T and guess that x% of this was due to global warming rather than other events (solar flares, statistical variation, inaccurate measurement etc) and so the sensitivity is some factor K greater than the theoretical effect from CO2 alone. There are a lot of assumptions in all of this and it may turn out that the temperature isn't very sensitive to CO2 at all. Only time will tell.
The idea that the best protection for AGW is wealth is completely wrong.
The best protection for AGW is the wisdom to do the right and effective thing at the right time. Sadly, the correlation between wealth acquisition and wisdom to do the right thing is decreasing and right now is at an all time low.
It is afirst world problem because people in the first world have most of their needsmet and can worry about events that may affect their grandkids in a hundredyears. Poor people are more concerned about satisfying their current needs andit does not make sense for them to stop trying to satisfy such needs byadopting policies that will affect economic growth, especially because beingwealthier will allow them to adapt to global warming better.
This isakin to two rich men living in an island with ten homeless men, where the tworich men cut half the forest to build their mansions and prohibit the homelessmen to cut a few trees to build decent shelter because such cutting of trees maydeprive all of them from firewood in a hundred years. The homeless men wouldrather build their shelters so they can live better today and so they do notneed so much firewood later (since their shelter will protect them from the elements).
If therich world wants to convince the rest of the countries to deal with globalwarming, they should dismantle their mansions and share the wood they have so thepoor countries can build their shelters.
roystgnr, you are right, I was thinking of the projections of climate change which are about an order of magnitude less, but they all truncate at 2100 and don't include any unknown factors, so they would be less than what will happen.
Wha? The first world is notably located in colder parts of the globe, and has more money to relocate. If/when rain patterns change and food becomes harder to grow, the people who have trouble affording food will not be the rich ones.
A hundred years ago, the world'spopulation was less than two billion people. If the people from a century agohad been sufficiently concerned with a three-fold increase in human population,they would have probably tried to take measures to stop such populationincrease. Those measures would have caused tremendous suffering (due to oppressionand reduction in liberties, economic slowdown, etc.) and likely been ineffective.
However, the increase in population tookplace and the world is significantly different than a century ago (ourancestors would probably be surprised to realize the degree of urbanization andskill specialization that we have endeavored). However, few besides romanticswould say that people lived better then.
I think something similar happens withglobal warming. The world is changing but it is a gradual change and we willadapt. Maybe people will move away from the coasts and into Canada and Siberia.But global warming is a first world problem.
The best protection for the changes comingfrom global warming is wealth and richer nations will be able to deal with the changein better conditions. Writing from South America, I can say that it is of greaterconcern to lift the people from poverty than trying to deal with this change.
David Whitlock, for prehistoric data I'm just looking at the same NOAA figure that David Manheim linked. Is there something wrong with it? "nearly 300ppm during interglacials, ~200ppm during full-blown ice age, nearly a dozen Kelvin difference between them" roughly accords with my memory as well.
Only if you care about catastrophic AGW, which will happen in the future when we're all either dead, or post-singularity and laughing about AGW as we swirl around the sun as digital minds in a Dyson sphere looking forward to our billion-year lifespan spent on simulated supersex.
The heat of combustion of biochar is ~14,000 btu/lb. That is 28 million btu/ton. Natural gas is ~$3/ MM btu. To make it economic to bury biochar instead of burning it, the carbon tax would have to exceed the value of burning the biochar as fuel, or ~$84 per ton.
Fuel oil is $2.90 per gallon at ~140,000 btu/gallon. That is ~$20/MM btu, or a break-even price of over $500 per ton of biochar.
I don't think anyone would characterize those as "low" carbon taxes.
To make the atmosphere steady-state in CO2, carbon needs to be removed as fast as it is being added. The easiest way to do that is to not generate CO2 in the first place. A tax of $84 per ton of carbon emitted as CO2 would make wind, solar, hydro-power and nuclear enormously more competitive than coal and oil.
That kind of tax only doubles the cost of energy from fossil fuels. Doubling the cost of energy from fossil fuel is pretty cheap if it prevents catastrophic AGW.
It may turn out that a low carbon tax teamed with a payout for removal of co2 from the air will get us to a balance where co2 remains constant. Biochar would be one means to remove co2 from the air cheaply.
No, based on the *prehistorical* data, there is a 10ppm increase in CO2 for every 1.2 degree increase in temperature. Based on the *historical* data, there is a 1 degree increase in temperature for a 100ppm increase in CO2. So either our current temperature is already *way* below equilibrium (possible - CO2 affects heat via radiation, which works on a timescale of hours, but it may take much longer for various heat sinks to warm and/or melt) or our current CO2 levels are way above equilibrium (also likely - carbon sinks include biological and diffusion based processes which operate more slowly than we've been dumping CO2).
The world leaders have gradually come to conclusion since UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)'s Conference of Parties 15 (COP15) in Copenhagen in December 2009 that addressing the climate change by emissions cuts is economically and politically unattainable. As a sponsor of Geoengineering Session at the Copenhagen follow-up meeting, the CMPCC Summit, or the Cochabamba Climate Summit that prepared for the COP16 at Cancun, I have come gradually to the position that cutting carbon dioxide emissions since the collapse of the Kyoto Protocol (COP3) and the Bali Road Map (COP13) there won't be any further attempts made. The switch to costly renewable energy is never going to be taken seriously in quantity that suppresses a global rise in fossil fuel use. Geoengineering as a further remediate move to correct climate excesses, therefore, will always remain in realms of 'technological promise' riddled with accusations of scientists 'playing God' and creating "research for the sake of research".Like the rise of National Socialism in the 1930's Europe was unstoppable, the United States' Republican Party dogma of our world based on "market economy based on infinite economic growth attainable by the fossil-fuelled consumption of goods and services", no amount of opposition to moneyed people will be enough to stop the injustice just like the Civil Society organisations could not stop the Nazi Final Solution which ended in the extermination of 6 million Jews, Gipsys, Slavs, and other unwannabes. The manifestation of the above is clear by the 'Arrogant Acts' that place the Republican Legislatures over and above the Natural Laws which is obviously impossible for any country or state to change by legislation. The purpose of "Arrogant Acts" must be seen as a propaganda measure much alike the National Socialism's and Mein Kampf portrayal of the Jewish people as cause of all and everything that was conceived ill and obstacle to the progressive state that the Nazi Germans saw themselves to get the human race perfected socially, physically and economically to their earthly utopias.The 'Act of God' by the Republican Party demands that sea level rise must stop by the law enforcement of the State of North Carolina: http://www.usnews.com/news/... Similar propaganda moves took place at the UN Conference of Parties 15 in Copenhagen when Professor Ian Plimer's ridiculous conjectures were disseminated as copies of British newspaper (Daily Express) were handed out stating that in the past carbon dioxide level had been 1000 times higher than at the present air and the carbon dioxide levels could easily be raised to 400,000 parts per million (40%). Please note that the available O2 level in the air is at 210,000 parts per million. When I raised a complaint to the UK Press Complaints Commission (PCC) they insisted this was a debatable "matter of opinion" that does not constitute a lie, nor a misrepresentation of facts banned by the UK Press Complaints' Commission "Ethical Code". So, how come 400,000 C + 210,000 O2 = 400,000 CO2? In my calculus 400,000 C + 210,000 O2 = 210,000 CO2 + 190,000 C (uncombusted). As we see from the above the corruption in quasi-UK-government quango that regulates Ethical Code is also present by the press incapacity to regulate themselves against the misrepresentation of facts.A further aggravating factor is that Professor Ian Plimer who claims that air at 40% CO2 (or 400,000 p.p.m.) is breathable is himself a mining expert: the Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide and the University of Melbourne. Where is the "old Canary in a coal mine" to tell Professor Plimer that air in a mine would be breathable and a safe working environment when he knows it fully well that it is toxic at 400,000 p.p.m. Beside above ridiculous newspapers disseminated to confuse COP15 proceedings, Professor Ian Plimer also contradicted himself as in another media he had quoted the same figure of the past atmospheric concentrations peaking at 40,000 parts per million, with 360,000 parts per million gone missing between the interviews A and B within six months. Even to this the corrupt UK Press Complaints Commission did not intervene.The corrupt UK Press Complaints Commission ignored the Workplace Health and Safety Executive’s advice for good indoor CO2 level that suggests that carbon dioxide becomes mildly toxic for human beings at 1,000 p.p.m. when it starts to affect the powers of concentration: http://www.analox.net/carbo...At Rio+20 Lord Christopher Monckton, UK Government's Chief Science Advisor during the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, gave in some ways more honest assessment than the scientists have been willing to admit about the likelihood of the outcome of carbon dioxide emissions reduction: http://www.youtube.com/watc...Lord Monckton (and his clones) at recent Rio+20 summit were very skilful as they were tactfully appealed and implied how the climate scientists are "out there just to steal money through taxes", while other scientists are clearly out there just to "steal God", and still others hold onto their Darwinist philosophy, may be ,trying to "starve out the world's poor", namely the black Africans, by measures of aiming to get CO2 regulating world government. In addition to being toxic for humans and animals at 1,000 p.p.m. and above, carbon dioxide acidifies oceans where organisms relying on exoskeletons made of calcium have difficulties to build or maintain their shells in the ever more acidic ocean.Veli Albert Kallio, FRGSVice-President Environmental Affairs, Sea Research Society
The IPCC Fourth assessment report only used data published before 2006. It is already out of date. Emissions of greenhouse gases have been considerably higher than the worst-case scenario considered in the IPCC IV.
Headline: “Greenhouse gases rise by record amount”
“Levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago”
They report:
“Even though global warming sceptics have criticised the climate change panel as being too alarmist, scientists have generally found their predictions too conservative, Reilly said. He said his university worked on emissions scenarios, their likelihood, and what would happen. The IPCC's worst case scenario was only about in the middle of what MIT calculated are likely scenarios.”
Those projections stop at 2100. AGW will not stop at 2100, it will continue. How high AGW will go depends on what the final CO2 levels are.
The IPCC only projects based on emissions that are known or can be projected. How much methane and CO2 will be emitted from thawed permafrost? No one knows, so the IPCC assumes it is zero.
"Climate model projections are summarized in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They indicate that during the 21st century the global surface temperature is likely to rise a further 1.1 to 2.9 °C (2 to 5.2 °F) for their lowest emissions scenario and 2.4 to 6.4 °C (4.3 to 11.5 °F) for their highest."
> Aerosols and sea spray gradually fall out of the atmosphere, so these geoengineering activities would need to be kept up continuously. If a disaster ever occurred that interfered with the project, for example a serious pandemic, then temperatures could start rising very quickly. This would lead to a second disaster – unpredictable and dramatic climate change – that humanity would have to deal with on top of the first.
These would lead to negative feedback: a pandemic will crush economic activity and shrink the human population, simultaneously reducing inputs to global warming and also making it easier for the remaining humans to accommodate themselves to the effects of global warming (fewer humans means it's easier to fit everyone into the habitable areas).
Temperature increases are proportional to the log of CO2 concentration rather than correlated in a linear fashion. Temperature sensitivity is dependent on feedback factors with the theoretical greenhouse effect of increased CO2 being very modest. Some feedback factors may be negative and some positive but what matters is the total feedback effect and whether it significantly enhances (or dampens) the CO2 effect. Nobody knows the size of these factors other than via inference. You can look at the last 150 years and say temperature went up by T and guess that x% of this was due to global warming rather than other events (solar flares, statistical variation, inaccurate measurement etc) and so the sensitivity is some factor K greater than the theoretical effect from CO2 alone. There are a lot of assumptions in all of this and it may turn out that the temperature isn't very sensitive to CO2 at all. Only time will tell.
The idea that the best protection for AGW is wealth is completely wrong.
The best protection for AGW is the wisdom to do the right and effective thing at the right time. Sadly, the correlation between wealth acquisition and wisdom to do the right thing is decreasing and right now is at an all time low.
It is afirst world problem because people in the first world have most of their needsmet and can worry about events that may affect their grandkids in a hundredyears. Poor people are more concerned about satisfying their current needs andit does not make sense for them to stop trying to satisfy such needs byadopting policies that will affect economic growth, especially because beingwealthier will allow them to adapt to global warming better.
This isakin to two rich men living in an island with ten homeless men, where the tworich men cut half the forest to build their mansions and prohibit the homelessmen to cut a few trees to build decent shelter because such cutting of trees maydeprive all of them from firewood in a hundred years. The homeless men wouldrather build their shelters so they can live better today and so they do notneed so much firewood later (since their shelter will protect them from the elements).
If therich world wants to convince the rest of the countries to deal with globalwarming, they should dismantle their mansions and share the wood they have so thepoor countries can build their shelters.
roystgnr, you are right, I was thinking of the projections of climate change which are about an order of magnitude less, but they all truncate at 2100 and don't include any unknown factors, so they would be less than what will happen.
>global warming is a first world problem.
Wha? The first world is notably located in colder parts of the globe, and has more money to relocate. If/when rain patterns change and food becomes harder to grow, the people who have trouble affording food will not be the rich ones.
A hundred years ago, the world'spopulation was less than two billion people. If the people from a century agohad been sufficiently concerned with a three-fold increase in human population,they would have probably tried to take measures to stop such populationincrease. Those measures would have caused tremendous suffering (due to oppressionand reduction in liberties, economic slowdown, etc.) and likely been ineffective.
However, the increase in population tookplace and the world is significantly different than a century ago (ourancestors would probably be surprised to realize the degree of urbanization andskill specialization that we have endeavored). However, few besides romanticswould say that people lived better then.
I think something similar happens withglobal warming. The world is changing but it is a gradual change and we willadapt. Maybe people will move away from the coasts and into Canada and Siberia.But global warming is a first world problem.
The best protection for the changes comingfrom global warming is wealth and richer nations will be able to deal with the changein better conditions. Writing from South America, I can say that it is of greaterconcern to lift the people from poverty than trying to deal with this change.
David Whitlock, for prehistoric data I'm just looking at the same NOAA figure that David Manheim linked. Is there something wrong with it? "nearly 300ppm during interglacials, ~200ppm during full-blown ice age, nearly a dozen Kelvin difference between them" roughly accords with my memory as well.
Only if you care about catastrophic AGW, which will happen in the future when we're all either dead, or post-singularity and laughing about AGW as we swirl around the sun as digital minds in a Dyson sphere looking forward to our billion-year lifespan spent on simulated supersex.
The heat of combustion of biochar is ~14,000 btu/lb. That is 28 million btu/ton. Natural gas is ~$3/ MM btu. To make it economic to bury biochar instead of burning it, the carbon tax would have to exceed the value of burning the biochar as fuel, or ~$84 per ton.
Fuel oil is $2.90 per gallon at ~140,000 btu/gallon. That is ~$20/MM btu, or a break-even price of over $500 per ton of biochar.
I don't think anyone would characterize those as "low" carbon taxes.
To make the atmosphere steady-state in CO2, carbon needs to be removed as fast as it is being added. The easiest way to do that is to not generate CO2 in the first place. A tax of $84 per ton of carbon emitted as CO2 would make wind, solar, hydro-power and nuclear enormously more competitive than coal and oil.
That kind of tax only doubles the cost of energy from fossil fuels. Doubling the cost of energy from fossil fuel is pretty cheap if it prevents catastrophic AGW.
It may turn out that a low carbon tax teamed with a payout for removal of co2 from the air will get us to a balance where co2 remains constant. Biochar would be one means to remove co2 from the air cheaply.
roystgnr, do you have a citation for that prehistoric correlation? I think you are off by an order of magnitude.
No, based on the *prehistorical* data, there is a 10ppm increase in CO2 for every 1.2 degree increase in temperature. Based on the *historical* data, there is a 1 degree increase in temperature for a 100ppm increase in CO2. So either our current temperature is already *way* below equilibrium (possible - CO2 affects heat via radiation, which works on a timescale of hours, but it may take much longer for various heat sinks to warm and/or melt) or our current CO2 levels are way above equilibrium (also likely - carbon sinks include biological and diffusion based processes which operate more slowly than we've been dumping CO2).
The world leaders have gradually come to conclusion since UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)'s Conference of Parties 15 (COP15) in Copenhagen in December 2009 that addressing the climate change by emissions cuts is economically and politically unattainable. As a sponsor of Geoengineering Session at the Copenhagen follow-up meeting, the CMPCC Summit, or the Cochabamba Climate Summit that prepared for the COP16 at Cancun, I have come gradually to the position that cutting carbon dioxide emissions since the collapse of the Kyoto Protocol (COP3) and the Bali Road Map (COP13) there won't be any further attempts made. The switch to costly renewable energy is never going to be taken seriously in quantity that suppresses a global rise in fossil fuel use. Geoengineering as a further remediate move to correct climate excesses, therefore, will always remain in realms of 'technological promise' riddled with accusations of scientists 'playing God' and creating "research for the sake of research".Like the rise of National Socialism in the 1930's Europe was unstoppable, the United States' Republican Party dogma of our world based on "market economy based on infinite economic growth attainable by the fossil-fuelled consumption of goods and services", no amount of opposition to moneyed people will be enough to stop the injustice just like the Civil Society organisations could not stop the Nazi Final Solution which ended in the extermination of 6 million Jews, Gipsys, Slavs, and other unwannabes. The manifestation of the above is clear by the 'Arrogant Acts' that place the Republican Legislatures over and above the Natural Laws which is obviously impossible for any country or state to change by legislation. The purpose of "Arrogant Acts" must be seen as a propaganda measure much alike the National Socialism's and Mein Kampf portrayal of the Jewish people as cause of all and everything that was conceived ill and obstacle to the progressive state that the Nazi Germans saw themselves to get the human race perfected socially, physically and economically to their earthly utopias.The 'Act of God' by the Republican Party demands that sea level rise must stop by the law enforcement of the State of North Carolina: http://www.usnews.com/news/... Similar propaganda moves took place at the UN Conference of Parties 15 in Copenhagen when Professor Ian Plimer's ridiculous conjectures were disseminated as copies of British newspaper (Daily Express) were handed out stating that in the past carbon dioxide level had been 1000 times higher than at the present air and the carbon dioxide levels could easily be raised to 400,000 parts per million (40%). Please note that the available O2 level in the air is at 210,000 parts per million. When I raised a complaint to the UK Press Complaints Commission (PCC) they insisted this was a debatable "matter of opinion" that does not constitute a lie, nor a misrepresentation of facts banned by the UK Press Complaints' Commission "Ethical Code". So, how come 400,000 C + 210,000 O2 = 400,000 CO2? In my calculus 400,000 C + 210,000 O2 = 210,000 CO2 + 190,000 C (uncombusted). As we see from the above the corruption in quasi-UK-government quango that regulates Ethical Code is also present by the press incapacity to regulate themselves against the misrepresentation of facts.A further aggravating factor is that Professor Ian Plimer who claims that air at 40% CO2 (or 400,000 p.p.m.) is breathable is himself a mining expert: the Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide and the University of Melbourne. Where is the "old Canary in a coal mine" to tell Professor Plimer that air in a mine would be breathable and a safe working environment when he knows it fully well that it is toxic at 400,000 p.p.m. Beside above ridiculous newspapers disseminated to confuse COP15 proceedings, Professor Ian Plimer also contradicted himself as in another media he had quoted the same figure of the past atmospheric concentrations peaking at 40,000 parts per million, with 360,000 parts per million gone missing between the interviews A and B within six months. Even to this the corrupt UK Press Complaints Commission did not intervene.The corrupt UK Press Complaints Commission ignored the Workplace Health and Safety Executive’s advice for good indoor CO2 level that suggests that carbon dioxide becomes mildly toxic for human beings at 1,000 p.p.m. when it starts to affect the powers of concentration: http://www.analox.net/carbo...At Rio+20 Lord Christopher Monckton, UK Government's Chief Science Advisor during the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, gave in some ways more honest assessment than the scientists have been willing to admit about the likelihood of the outcome of carbon dioxide emissions reduction: http://www.youtube.com/watc...Lord Monckton (and his clones) at recent Rio+20 summit were very skilful as they were tactfully appealed and implied how the climate scientists are "out there just to steal money through taxes", while other scientists are clearly out there just to "steal God", and still others hold onto their Darwinist philosophy, may be ,trying to "starve out the world's poor", namely the black Africans, by measures of aiming to get CO2 regulating world government. In addition to being toxic for humans and animals at 1,000 p.p.m. and above, carbon dioxide acidifies oceans where organisms relying on exoskeletons made of calcium have difficulties to build or maintain their shells in the ever more acidic ocean.Veli Albert Kallio, FRGSVice-President Environmental Affairs, Sea Research Society
The IPCC Fourth assessment report only used data published before 2006. It is already out of date. Emissions of greenhouse gases have been considerably higher than the worst-case scenario considered in the IPCC IV.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/e...
Headline: “Greenhouse gases rise by record amount”
“Levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago”
They report:
“Even though global warming sceptics have criticised the climate change panel as being too alarmist, scientists have generally found their predictions too conservative, Reilly said. He said his university worked on emissions scenarios, their likelihood, and what would happen. The IPCC's worst case scenario was only about in the middle of what MIT calculated are likely scenarios.”
Those projections stop at 2100. AGW will not stop at 2100, it will continue. How high AGW will go depends on what the final CO2 levels are.
The IPCC only projects based on emissions that are known or can be projected. How much methane and CO2 will be emitted from thawed permafrost? No one knows, so the IPCC assumes it is zero.
According to Wikipedia:
"Climate model projections are summarized in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They indicate that during the 21st century the global surface temperature is likely to rise a further 1.1 to 2.9 °C (2 to 5.2 °F) for their lowest emissions scenario and 2.4 to 6.4 °C (4.3 to 11.5 °F) for their highest."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
As distruptive as this can be, it's nowhere near the 12 °C average temperature increase you were talking about.