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by Peter A. Belmont / 2009-01-27
© 2009 Peter Belmont
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Most people in the US have a rather laid-back attitude about global warming. “Oh, don’t worry,” they seem to say, “we’ve got lots of time to reduce greenhouse gases.” Like, you know, we can wait until 2100 and suffer nothing worse than a bit hotter summer. If you believe that, I’ve got a (Brooklyn) bridge I could sell you.
But what if they are wrong? What then? And, if you are not sure about a gargantuan threat, such as global warming, isn’t a mistake of acting too fast better than a mistake of acting too late?
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President Obama seems to think that we have until 2050 to reduce our greenhouse emissions to 80% below the levels of 1990. But, can it be prudent to wait so long? And—please note—the lead-off money for reducing greenhouse gases comes under an “Economic Stimulus” bill? Would it be too much, too abrupt, or too hurried, to have a “Global Warming Avoidance Act” ? Global warming is a real problem. Couldn’t we, please, discuss it and call it by its name?
Let’s suppose that reducing world-wide CO(((SB₂SB))), [1] methane, [2] and other greenhouse emissions[3] to “80 percent below 1990 levels” would prevent further additions to the atmosphere’s store of greenhouse gases, presumably on the theory that the earth’s natural “cleanup” processes will remove gases added at and below those lower levels.
But for the US to wait until 2050 to reduce emissions to that level means that the US—the world’s biggest polluter—will continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at unsafe rates for another 40 years. And those greenhouse gases will increase the warming and the resulting climate changes. So we shouldn’t be confident that the target year of 2050 is a safe one. And this 2050 goal ignores emissions from countries other than the US.
(The year 2050 was probably arrived at as a result of political and economic considerations rather than scientific considerations based on the most current knowledge. It seems likely that the year 2050 was chosen because it was far off in the future and appeared palatable rather than because it was prudent. I would suggest that an earlier target year be settled upon. More important, as new information becomes available, the target year and target levels should be re-evaluated. Generally, prudence demands that we keep our eyes open.)
We should be worried about three things. First, the injurious effects of global warming are already occurring and are clearly documented. Contrary to the apparent general thinking and the claims of the few remaining deniers, [4] the effects of global warming are neither speculative nor imaginary nor all in the future.
Second, many present-day effects of global warming act as accelerators, themselves causing further warming. Global warming acts, in such cases, like a snowball getting bigger as it rolls down a snowy slope. These accelerations are another reason to worry about the target-year of 2050.[5]
Third, the accumulation of greenhouse gases (at least of CO(((SB₂SB)))) are irreversible.[6]
What are the present-day, visible effects of man-made climate change?
For one thing, the Antarctic ice-shelf is collapsing. Are you surprised to learn that temperatures have risen by 5oF in the polar regions? And what do you think is the threat of melting ice-caps in the Arctic, Antarctic, and Greenland? Is it just rising sea-levels or are there other, possibly worse, threats?[7]
If you don’t know all the answers about what the threats of global warming are, and what the time-tables are for the threatened changes, don’t feel embarrassed. No-one does. Not for sure. President Obama is as ignorant as the rest of us because, as I said, no-one knows. Not for sure.
And that is the problem.
Why is the US holding back on dealing with global warming? In global warming, we have a threat (you know, like the “threat” that Iraq had WMDs, but the threat of global warming is both real and dangerous). The US was willing to go to war, a $1T war—or is it a $3T war?—on the slender basis of warnings of the Iraq “threat” even though no-one explained what the danger of those notional Iraqi WMDs was to US’s security. It was all just scare talk, and no-one was more scared than our Congress, whose members feared to appear as “wimps” and voted to authorize this costly and destructive war with hardly any information or thought or care for collateral consequences (such as the impact of the war on Iran’s leap to prominence in the region or the US’s decline in power world-wide).
Well, as to global warming, the threat is not “notional” but real, and Congress and the rest of us should be very frightened indeed.
We should be frightened, but we don’t seem to be.
It is almost as if the Congressional fear of appearing to be “wimps” when war with Iraq was being discussed operates in reverse when global warming is being discussed. Where the alleged enemy was a distant and foreign (and by some a despised) country, our US Congress could scarcely contain itself in its eager readiness to join expensive battle.
But with global warming, the “enemy” is (in very large part) ourselves, for our own activities—transportation, energy production, farming—are producing the injuries, and our Congress is less eager to prevent a tragedy (even though it be a tragedy to ourselves as well as to others) which arises from our own normal activities.
To deal adequately with global warming is very close to calling ourselves villains, and this Congress is loath to do. To deal adequately with global warming will require changes to the way we live, and although Congress is more than willing to subject Americans to the destructive and rapacious attentions of greedy capitalist speculators (and indeed elevates speculative capitalism to the most important position, the sine qua non of our economy) and has thereby willingly subjected Americans to dreadful changes in the way we live, it is not willing to switch away from the oil-and-coal-and-gas energy economy toward a solar-power and wind-power economy, perhaps from fear of the political power of the oil-and-coal-and-gas moguls.
Why was Congress ready to spend trillions for a useless war in Iraq but will not spend trillions to avoid the worst calamities brought on by global warming? Apart from apathy and ignorance, the reason may be simply that there was much money to be made from the war (by the military-industrial complex and by Halliburton and Blackwater and the other war-profiteers), but money only to be lost (or so it might seem to those likely to do the losing) in switching away from coal-oil-gas.
The possibility that money is there to be made by alternative-energy industries not yet born in the US seems of no interest to our Congress. The fact that some parts of the world have already made most of the switch to solar/wind energy and will be the world leaders in these novel industries seems a “ho-hum” to the US Congress.
Like so much else connected with global warming, the US’s lackadaisical response to these industrial opportunities seems to arise from our money-driven political system. We have the best Congress money can buy. Will Rogers.
Pity the world, and pity ourselves, if we do not fix our broken political system. And pity the world, and pity ourselves, if we do not do something, and quickly, to back away from on-rushing global warming.
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[1] Burning of fossil fuels and deforestation lead to higher carbon dioxide concentrations. Land use change (mainly deforestation in the tropics) account for up to one third of total anthropogenic CO(((SB₂SB))) emissions. See here. and here
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[2] Livestock enteric fermentation and manure management,[22] paddy rice farming, land use and wetland changes, pipeline losses, and covered vented landfill emissions lead to higher methane atmospheric concentrations. Many of the newer style fully vented septic systems that enhance and target the fermentation process also are sources of atmospheric methane. Ibid.
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[3] Use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in refrigeration systems, and use of CFCs and halons in fire suppression systems and manufacturing processes release greenhouse gases.
Agricultural activities, including the use of fertilizers, release nitrous oxide (N(((SB₂SB)))O).Ibid.
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[4] By “deniers” I mean the people who deny that global warming is man-made or preventable or even happening at all. They are like “Holocaust deniers” except that the harm of global warming is in the future whereas the harm of the Holocaust was in the past (except for the Israel/Palestine conflict which seems a late-occurring harm of the Holocaust)—and except that the harm of unchecked global warming will be far worse.
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[5] As a first example, the polar ice-sheets are already melting faster than was anticipated. As they melt, the heat-reflective white surface of ice (“albedo”) is replaced by the heat-absorptive surface of ice-free ocean water. This speeds polar warming. This much has been well-known for a long time.
As a second example, the gradual heating of winters in the American West has led to an enormous efflorescence of pine-bark beetles—the reproductive cycle of which had hitherto been seriously hurt by cold weather. With warmer winters, the beetles have flourished and the pine and some other forests are dying suddenly, massively, and quickly in places like Colorado and Montana. The death of forests is itself a disastrous current effect of global warming. However, after the trees have died, they begin to decay and this releases the carbon stored in the trees, accelerating global warming.
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[6] SeeIrreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions
by Susan Solomona,1, Gian-Kasper Plattnerb, Reto Knuttic, and Pierre Friedlingsteind.
Discussion: Some Policy Implications
It is sometimes imagined that slow processes such as climate
changes pose small risks, on the basis of the assumption that a
choice can always be made to quickly reduce emissions and
thereby reverse any harm within a few years or decades. We have
shown that this assumption is incorrect for carbon dioxide
emissions, because of the longevity of the atmospheric CO2
perturbation and ocean warming. Irreversible climate changes
due to carbon dioxide emissions have already taken place, and
future carbon dioxide emissions would imply further irreversible
effects on the planet, with attendant long legacies for choices
made by contemporary society. Discount rates used in some
estimates of economic trade-offs assume that more efficient
climate mitigation can occur in a future richer world, but neglect
the irreversibility shown here. Similarly, understanding of irre-
versibility reveals limitations in trading of greenhouse gases on
the basis of 100-year estimated climate changes (global warming
potentials, GWPs), because this metric neglects carbon dioxide’s
unique long-term effects. In this paper we have quantified how
societal decisions regarding carbon dioxide concentrations that
have already occurred or could occur in the coming century
imply irreversible dangers relating to climate change for some
illustrative populations and regions. These and other dangers
pose substantial challenges to humanity and nature, with a
magnitude that is directly linked to the peak level of carbon
dioxide reached.
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[7] As polar ice melts, both the saltiness and the coldness of the northern Atlantic are reduced, threatening the speed and even the existence of the ocean conveyor. This disruption can lead either gradually or abruptly to far colder temperatures in Europe and North America. Knowledge that global warming is generally heating the earth would be of slight solace to New Yorkers and Parisians if the normal temperatures fell to 5oF.
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