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THE VINE JANUARY 27, 2009

Climate Effects "largely Irreversible For 1,000 Years"

BY AUTHOR INFO NEEDED

Sigh. Today brings yet more cheerless news on the climate-science front. At this point I might start reading James Inhofe's press releases just to preserve my sanity. Or else post cute puppy pics. Here's the Los Angeles Times write-up:


Even if by some miracle the nations of the world could bring carbon dioxide levels back to those of the pre-industrial era, it would still take 1,000 years or longer for the climate changes already triggered to be reversed, scientists said Monday.

The gas already here and the heat that has been absorbed by the ocean will exert their effects for centuries, according to an analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Over the long haul, the warming will melt the polar icecaps more than had previously been estimated, raising ocean levels substantially, the report said. And changes in rainfall patterns will bring droughts to the American Southwest, southern Europe, northern Africa and western Australia comparable to those that caused the 1930s Dust Bowl in the U.S. ...

"The policy relevance is clear: We need to act sooner, even if there is some doubt about exactly what will happen, because by the time the public and policymakers really realize the changes are here, it is far too late to do anything about it," [UC Colorado climatologist Kevin] Trenberth said.

Here's the study. That first sentence in the Times write-up isn't quite accurate: The study doesn't mention anything about returning to pre-industrial levels, which would entail somehow sucking carbon out of the air. What the report says is that even if we phased out all fossil-fuel emissions today, some negative effects—rising sea levels, drought—would still occur, since the changes already wrought by carbon in the air and ocean willl linger on for a thousand years. (If we did find a way to take carbon out of the air, some of the atmospheric effects might get reversed, though the changes to ocean temperature and chemistry might still prove irreversible.)

More to the point, as the study notes, pushing atmospheric carbon concentrations up even further, from their current level of 385 parts per million (ppm) to something like 450 to 600 ppm, will exacerbate the situation considerably—further altering rainfall patterns and boosting the likelihood of large Dust Bowl-like conditions in places like the U.S. Southwest and southern Europe, lasting for millennia rather than a decade or two. (By the way, the world's on track to hit about 1,000 ppm by century's end.)

As Joe Romm points out, the paper's authors make an astute criticism of some of the economic models used to figure out the costs and benefits of acting on climate change: "Discount rates... assume that more efficient climate mitigation can occur in a future richer world, but neglect the irreversibility shown here." Right. Sometimes you hear it argued that we should postpone action on greenhouse gases until we have snazzier technologies to help us out. But as we pump carbon into the air, we're "locking in" future impacts on the climate system—effects that later cuts won't be able to reverse.

But wait, one could fairly ask, won't curtailing emissions be even more crushing? Won't it just be easier and cheaper for us to adapt, somehow, to large irreversible dust bowls? Not likely. Tom Laskawy reminds us of one way to consider all this, citing a McKinsey Global Institute study on the costs of gliding below 450 ppm: "The macroeconomic costs of this carbon revolution are likely to be manageable, being in the order of 0.6–1.4 percent of global GDP by 2030. To put this figure in perspective, if one were to view this spending as a form of insurance against potential damage due to climate change, it might be relevant to compare it to global spending on insurance, which was 3.3 percent of GDP in 2005." Thinking of mitigation as a form of insurance strikes me as a useful way to frame the issue, and at that, it starts to look like quite the bargain.

--Bradford Plumer

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Which discount rates are they using? Did they just pluck them from the air, or are these tied to real economic rates of return available to investments today? We're fast approaching deflation. Real interest rates are tending toward zero, and may stay there for a decade if Japanese-style stagnation occurs, as is increasingly likely.

- teplukhin2you

January 27, 2009 at 2:34pm

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Brad, before you resort to pulling apart your puppy collages to get at the remaining sniffable glue, do keep in mind that the system models used to predict darn near everything in the modern world, from climate to radioactive decay to water pollution to post-volcanic habitat recovery, are usually and consistently slow. Which is to say, just like natural systems are easier to throw off-balance, and bad consequences are faster to accrue, than generally predicted; so also are natural systems generally faster to recover than generally predicted.

Mt. St. Helens and Chernobyl were both supposed to be moonscape-like dead zones today, but both are teeming with life far ahead of schedule. The denuded Chesapeake Bay is said by some of its closest students to be nearing a tipping point where habitat and species recovery could take place in years, not decades. Many American rivers and forests are cleaner today than experts predicted thirty years ago that they would be in a century. The freakin' Canada Goose was nearly extinct two generations ago, at a time when deer were rare in American cities and suburbs. Just 40 years later, we don't just have more deer than we can handle; we have foxes, coyotes and bears reaching nuisance levels in some of our largest cities.

So while the downside of this is that the climate has consistently warmed more and faster than models have predicted since the 1980s, the odds are good that the climate could recover some semblance of cooling equilibrium much faster than predicted if the human species gets its act together.

- rhubarbs

January 27, 2009 at 2:55pm

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v. low discount rates would HELP the investment case for spending now to control climate change, mind you... there really aren't very many good investment opptys available now

- teplukhin2you

January 27, 2009 at 2:57pm

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We talked of the end of the world, and then

We'd sing a song an' then sing it again.

We'd sit for an hour an' not say a word,

And then these words would be heard:

So long, it's been good to know yuh;

So long, it's been good to know yuh;

So long, it's been good to know yuh.

This dusty old dust is a-gettin' my home,

And I got to be driftin' along.

--Woody Guthrie

- aeromonas

January 27, 2009 at 5:51pm

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Brad.

I'd love to read a column or article by you on WHAT WE CAN DO or the way forward. Or how all of these solutions can have this much impact, which will save us from the worst of these impending changes, etc.

Maybe, even a main article. (God knows, a change from the 24/7, intellectually watertight, eloquent rationalizations of Israel's occupation would be nice).

A call to arms. I know you post bits on this technology vs that. But how about a comprehensive round up, a manifesto or something to that affect?

- The Ignorant Populist

January 27, 2009 at 6:18pm

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That's a good idea. In the meantime, here's a rough guide from Joe Romm that's pretty good:

climateprogress.org/.../is-450-ppm-or-less-politically-possible-part-2-the-solution

- Brad Plumer

January 27, 2009 at 6:36pm

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1 wedge of vehicle efficiency — all cars 60 mpg, with no increase in miles traveled per vehicle.

1 of wind for power — one million large (2 MW peak) wind turbines

1 of wind for vehicles –another 2000 GW wind. Most cars must be plug-in hybrids or pure electric vehicles.

3 of concentrated solar thermal – ~5000 GW peak.

3 of efficiency — one each for buildings, industry, and cogeneration/heat-recovery for a total of 15 to 20 million GW-hrs.

1 of coal with carbon capture and storage — 800 GW of coal with CCS

1 of nuclear power — 700 GW plus 10 Yucca mountains for storage

1 of solar photovoltaics — 2000 GW peak [or less PV and some geothermal, tidal, and ocean thermal]

1 of cellulosic biofuels — using one-sixth of the world’s cropland [or less land if yields significantly increase or algae-to-biofuels proves commercial at large scale].

2 of forestry — End all tropical deforestation. Plant new trees over an area the size of the continental U.S.

1 of soils — Apply no-till farming to all existing croplands.

I can understand there is unimaginable complexity and scale to all  of the above. But from a laymans pespective - nothing strikes me as impossible there. In fact, it looks quite doable. Vehicle efficiency, building efficiency, soils and forestry certainly look like low hanging fruit to me. Well, maybe soils and forestry would be problematic.

Regardless, I feel better all ready.

- The Ignorant Populist

January 27, 2009 at 7:27pm

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Yeah, that's always been my belief: Keeping under 400-450 ppm and averting drastic climate change will be difficult--politically more than anything else--but it's certainly technically possible, and it's not going to bankrupt us by any stretch. McKinsey's saying it'll cost 1.6 percent of global GDP by 2030 (and that's not a *reduction* in GDP, it's the cost). That's an unbelievable amount of money, yes, and some industries won't like the adjustment, but on a macro level, it's not going to send us back to the Dark Ages.

- Brad Plumer

January 27, 2009 at 7:53pm

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I hate this shit.  Will there be any will to do enough fast enough?  If it's going to take more convincing for *me* -- a good enviro-friendly liberal -- then what's it going to take to convince everyone else?  And what about f-ing China and India?  Or should we all plan on moving to the floating city of New Chicago?  There's an episode of the BBC 24-ish spy show called MI-5 (Spooks in the UK) in which it's revealed that members of the government and others are engaged in a secret conspiracy to prepare for rather than reverse climate change.  The bad guys in the show now suddenly don't seem like total assholes.

- jhildner

January 27, 2009 at 8:37pm

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That's probably less than what the world's males will be spending on porn in 2030.

- teplukhin2you

January 27, 2009 at 8:45pm

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teplukhin2you, the Stern Review applied a Ramsey formulation of discount rates to the IAM it used to conduct the climate mitigation cost benefit analysis. In it, economic growth (per capita) is a major determinative of both damages and the discount rate, so that part is not controversial. The taste parameters he employed which also figure into that equation, in particular the pure rate of social time preference but also the risk aversion parameter, were quite controversial. Weitzman discounting is, as I understand it, more of a standard for these things, which uses a declining discount rate (which itself is well supported by theory). The thing is, classic IAM's done with Weitzman discounting offer tepid support for mitigation, or at least not a full blown heavy handed carbon tax. However, Weitzman has shown that this is largely because they assume away the uncertainty of the equilibrium climate sensitivity to CO2 concentrations. When that is included, the very possibility of extremely high potential damages makes the case for significant measures to reduce emissions very strong. He's called this the 'Dismal Theorem', and it is very much turning that little corner of academia on its head.

- I Majorajam

January 28, 2009 at 11:31am

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thanks, Majorajam. if you have a link I'd appreciate learning more

t

- teplukhin2you

January 28, 2009 at 12:30pm

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tep, here are Weitzman's papers (the top one especially):

www.economics.harvard.edu/.../papers_weitzman

Here are three discussions by liberal economists, though I'm sure there may be a better summary out there:

krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/.../economics-of-catastrophe

delong.typepad.com/.../global-climate.html

johnquiggin.com/.../discounting-the-future-yet-again

- Brad Plumer

January 28, 2009 at 1:20pm

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thx, brad

- teplukhin2you

January 28, 2009 at 1:55pm

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Where does extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere fit in the discussions about future warming?  I'm aware that currently the only method for doing so is having more trees, and then somehow preventing the wood from rotting, but that does not mean that we will always have such limitations.

- sighthnd

January 28, 2009 at 3:00pm

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Rhubarbs, your lumping together of Mt. St. Helens and Chernobyl passes over two big differences between the two.  Few people lived within, say, 50 miles of the former; many thousands lived within 50 miles of the latter.  The forces of nature caused the one; the indifference of men caused the other.  Of course life will go on after climate change, even if it means good news for the  jellyfish and bad news for the polar bears.  The question is how much needless human suffering can we avoid?      

- Runciman

January 28, 2009 at 9:58pm

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Are we doomed already? It’s hard not to get that impression reading Brad’s post on the recent NOAA study

- Anonymous

January 29, 2009 at 5:10pm

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From the department of ominous ledes : "State officials reported a Sierra Nevada snowpack smaller

- Anonymous

February 2, 2009 at 4:58pm

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