Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Changing the Global Warming Metaphor (Revised) |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2015-01-17
An earlier version of this essay was published by CounterPunch.com as Changing the Global Warming Metaphor. Changing The Metaphor Those who preach global warming and climate change relate these processes to the super-accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the earth’s atmosphere chiefly due to mankind’s burning of fossil fuels and various consequences thereof. And it is said that mankind has nearly broken planet earth. But how has the accumulation of GHGs contributed to this breaking? The global warming aspect of climate change is often explained by a metaphor: people explain that the layer of greenhouses gases (GHGs) that envelops the earth acts as a sort of blanket. This blanket, it is suggested, governs the temperature of the earth (land and oceans). One way to interpret this metaphor is that the more GHGs the higher the temperature. This suggests, falsely, that if and when we stop adding to the GHGs then the temperature of the earth-ocean system will stop increasing. But the earth-ocean system will continue to absorb heat and get hotter because all the GHGs already in the atmosphere will remain there for many years, even after we stop emitting them. See: Atmospheric Lifetimes and Time-Scales published by IPCC and the longer Atmospheric Chemistry and Greenhouse Gases, § 4.1.2 (p.7) and § 4.1.4 (p.9). The temperature and continued warming attributable to CO2 alone (CO2 is only one of the GHGs) is irreversible and would continue for 1000 years after complete cessation of emissions of CO2.[1] The climate change that takes place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. Though some GHGs in the atmosphere do decay over time, CO2 does not decay. What it does do is get dissolved in ocean water and absorbed in earth and in growing plants. This process of removal of CO2 from the atmosphere would take CO2 35 years to remove 50% of the CO2, meaning that a “cold turkey” stop to new GHG emissions would leave quite a bit of CO2 (and other GHGs) to trap more heat for many years. And, of course, we are not about to quit “cold turkey”. And the greatest remover of CO2 from the atmosphere, dissolution in sea water, is acidifying the oceans and making life increasingly hard or impossible for much life in the sea which cannot accept the new acidification. The GHGs as blanket metaphor and this conclusion are quite misleading. In fact, dangerously misleading. Because they make the need to cease accumulating and, indeed, to begin reducing, the earth’s layers of GHGs seem far less urgent than it in fact is. Other Factors of Note This essay is not about the entire theory of global warming/climate change. There are many factors to be concerned about besides the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere. One may be concerned with the melting of Arctic and Greenland ice and of Antarctic ice. When (white) ice floating on water melts, it uncovers the (black) sea water below. Since white reflects sunlight and black absorbs it, the on-going melting of ice, especially floating Arctic sea ice, speeds up warming even if GHGs remained constant. A similar concern is about the melting and release to the atmosphere of frozen methane when permafrost and frozen seabeds thaw due to warming. Methane is a much more potent GHG than CO2 and so the melting of frozen methane threatens to speed up global warming at an alarming rate. I will mention the human over-population at the end of this essay. Let it suffice here to say that human over population will continue to contribute to GHG production and other causes of GW/CC (such as cutting of tropical forests, removal of farm-land for housing tracts, etc.) and will result also in horrible starvation and other problems if and when GW/CC causes disruptions and reductions in food production and distribution. Nevertheless, though there are other things to be worried about, the increase in the GHG concentration in the atmosphere is my concern in the present essay. A More Revealing Metaphor If the metaphor of GHGs as a blanket is misleading, what metaphor would be more accurate? A more realistic metaphor is to say that the GHGs in the atmosphere are like a fire under a pot of water. The water in the pot represents the earth-system (land and water). The height of the flame under the pot represents the concentration of GHGs. The more GHGs, the hotter the flame. For hundreds of thousands of years, the flame under this pot has been turned off. Generally, it has neither raised nor lowered the temperature of the water in the pot, and thus a steady (or fairly steady) temperature regime has prevailed on earth which has allowed the animal and plant life on earth to adjust to and thrive in that steady temperature regime. Mankind has come into its own during and because of this essentially steady temperature regime. Now, however, due to mankind’s increasing burning of fossil fuels since the beginning of the industrial revolution (say 1800), GHGs have surged in the atmosphere and the flame under the pot has not only been turned on but has grown higher (and hotter). The real-world result has been higher temperatures for the earth-ocean system. And the flame under the pot is running every day, and every day the temperature of the water in the pot is growing. The more the atmospheric GHGs, the higher the flame, not only raising the temperature of the water in the pot, but raising the temperature of the water in the pot faster. This is why the need to cease emitting GHGs is urgent. If the atmospheric GHGs could be reduced, the flame under the pot would begin to be reduced and the water in the pot would still be being heated, but at a slower rate. The heat which provides the earth’s temperature is supplied by the sun. The work of the GHGs (flame under the pot) is to govern how much of the heat thus provided to the earth by the sun is retained by the earth. In the climate’s essentially steady temperature regime over thousands of recent years, the sun’s daily delivery of heat to the earth has been matched by an equivalent loss of heat back into space. There’s been no net gain or loss of heat, day in and day out. Now, however, with the enormous increase in GHGs in the atmosphere, the daily energy received has slightly exceeded the daily energy emitted, and the earth (land and oceans) has warmed. It has warmed a little bit only, but it has warmed that little bit every day. The temperature has been increasing enough to be measured. The temperature gain has been sufficient to cause many effects which are already apparent. Warming Every Day, Rain or Shine Global warming is a name for the fact that every day, more heat is being retained then ejected. Every day, the earth is warming. Every day. And if we cut down the man-made production of GHGs to zero today, which we are of course very far from doing, the accumulated GHGs would assure that the earth would continue to warm, a little bit, every day. Every day. Rain or shine, There are natural processes for removing GHGs from the atmosphere, but they act very slowly. And mankind has put a lot of GHGs up there. Suppose it would take 1000 years for natural processes to remove all the GHGs that mankind has sent into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution started. The earth will be quite a warm place by then. This is so because the daily increment of heat (and thus of temperature) goes on every day, so long as there are more GHGs in the atmosphere than were there before the industrial revolution began. But, of course, if we add to the GHGs, as we are doing, we increase the heat under the pot. The daily increase in retained heat is a bit more, the daily increment to earth’s temperature is a bit greater. The Unheated Pot of the Past For thousands of years, the earth’s thermostat has been essentially set to a single point. The flame under the pot has not been lighted. Or if it has been lighted, it has not been lighted much, and in consequence, the earth’s temperature has remained remarkably stable. Most of the heat sent to earth by the sun every day has been reflected or radiated out into space and the temperature has therefore remained stable. The thermostat has called for a single average temperature over thousands of years. Oh, yes, there’ve been variations—ice ages and so on—but the earth’s temperature has been kind to mankind and to other creatures (animals and plants) which need to live in a narrow range of temperatures. And when there’ve been variations of average temperatures, they’ve come along slowly enough that natural variation has allowed the creatures to adjust to the temperature changes before they became extinct. The changes to the earth’s temperature regime is now moving so swiftly that the only creatures that will be able to adjust in the long run by mutation—to avoid extinction due to major temperature changes—will be whichever animals and plants are able to reproduce so rapidly (say, with life-cycles measured in days or weeks rather than in years) that mutation will offer a way to adjust as temperatures rise. What Prudence Demands Prudence demands three separate reactions to climate change. Step One. We (mankind) must strive to reduce the emission of GHGs, and as soon as possible to zero, so that the flame under the pot will not be made higher than it already is. This step will require taking a close look at our social arrangements to see which “aid and abet” climate change and need to be changed. A powerful argument is made by Naomi Klein in her book “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate” that the chief villain, today, is the economic and legal system known variously as “free trade”, “globalization”, “neoliberalism, and “the Washington Consensus” and comprising the WTO, the World Bank, The International Monetary Fund. To her arguments (through p. 82) I’d add another villain: the method of governance in the USA which I call “oligarchy” whereby great corporations and very wealthy individuals virtually control governance through political contributions, issuance of propaganda, etc. Step Two. We must discover how to neutralize (remove from the atmosphere) the GHGs that are already in the atmosphere. We must be prepared to learn that neutralization will be much slower than we might hope. Hence the importance of Step One. Neutralizing GHGs (removing them) would lower the “flame under the pot”. Step Three. We must make adjustments to provide for continuing human (and other) life during the time between today and the full neutralization of the GHGs. The almost casual “What, me worry?” attitude of most major national governments until today suggests either total ignorance of the nature of global warming or else a fatalistic decision that nothing can be done. Step Four. Yes, I said “three”, but there is one more thing to be done. To make the problems as small as possible, we should reduce the size of mankind—reduce the global human population—by as much as we can, say to 50% of today’s population. Because the process of neutralizing GHGs is likely to require the use of natural lands—unbuilt and presently non-agricultural lands—to serve as “engines” for neutralization, through the growth of new forests for example. And at present, our over-the-top human population is carrying us in the other direction, the direction of clearing the Amazonian forests and other forests in the pursuit of land for cattle raising and building-products, and both of these and other similar reasons all arise from over-population. Reducing the population voluntarily will not be easy, as China’s attempt at 1-child families has shown. But if we do not find a way to do it voluntarily, be sure that nature will find a way to do it otherwise. Famines have already struck in Africa, drought in California, ground-water depletion in part of Texas, etc. Water shortages, heat, cold, flood, changes in snow fall, and changing agricultural productivity will all play a role in reducing human population. So too will such human reactions to these things as crime, terrorism, and war. Two generations of one-child families (or some equivalent involving childless families) might bring down the world population in a useful fashion. ----------- [1] ”Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions”, Susan Solomon, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Reto Knutti, and Pierre Friedlingstein. PNAS ͉ February 10, 2009 ͉ vol. 106 ͉ no. 6 pp. 1704 –1709. |
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