A lot of the current debate seems to center around cost. So what will it cost?
A lot of people go around saying this isn't going to cost us anything. This is cheap. It's not.
We just are going to have to stop thinking of investment in the environment and climate change as being opposed to economic growth. [For] economic growth in the future, a prerequisite is that we stop treating the planet like a subprime loan. In that sense, the economic crisis we have at the moment is useful in terms of analyzing what's going on with the planet.
We don't take into account the resources that we are moving around. One of the things that will be argued is that solar is more important as a long-term fix than many have argued. I think the figure is the sun bathes the Earth in 120,000 terawatt-hours of energy and the global community only uses 12 to 15 terawatt-hours. And all the renewable energies are derived from the sun in some way. [A terawatt equals one trillion watts.]
The plants [collect] energy from the sun [that] is the equivalent of 32,000 hydrogen bombs. It's amazing the amount of energy they suck out of the sun.
So what more do we know now?
This 2-degree [Celsius, or 3.6-degree Fahrenheit] change that everybody talks about [as a limit on warming], which is probably unattainable, has some serious ramifications for oceans. It's not just two degrees and we all take off a sweater. Changes that are occurring may accelerate [carbon dioxide] coming out of the ocean.
I have two abstracts myself: One of them is that we know a lot about the ocean as a sink. It takes up half the extra CO2 that we put out. It takes it up by biological and physical processes, like the material gets caught in plants and then sinks to the bottom when they die. Bacteria break this material down much more quickly when it is warmer and less of it falls. We are measuring the effect of temperature on this breakdown and it's quite substantial. So this much of a temperature increase will mean that the oceans will take up this much less and that provokes the problem even more. You can make much better models out of this of what's going to happen than you've gotten out of the IPCC.
Is it too late?
I'm not at all depressed. This is an exciting time in Earth's history. Twelve thousand years ago our ancestors discovered agriculture. When they did that they broke the rules about the number of people the Earth could hold. And now that there are even more people, there have to be some rules.
Over the last 50 years, we've thought the oceans and atmosphere are big enough that we don't need any rules. But we're smarter now, we do need some rules.
We've been regulating on the basis of the different subcomponents of Earth: land, air, water. But the doctor doesn't give you medicine for your head if he knows it will hurt your feet. You need to treat the body as a body and we need to treat the Earth as an Earth. We have to manage not by segment but by the planet as a whole.
Subscription Center
See what we're tweeting about
22 Comments
Add CommentHow much do worldwide insurance companies think they will have to pay for climate change claims against agricultural crop failures? These figures should surely be accessible to governments and the IPCC...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi like to be active in this field
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thischeckout "cosmoclimatology"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo far, no evidence that changes in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have a detectable influence on the climate has ever been presented. It will be interesting to hear whether somebody has found some.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey don't need evidence Vince, because they have computer models. Science used to mean a theory was tested by evidence. Climate science tests theories against computer models, which embody that theory. This is easier than looking for evidence. It ilso easy to get a consensus when you only invite people who agree with you, as the IPCC does. Nice of them to tell us in advance that this so-called Congress will be more of the same.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid Wojick, Ph.D.
http://www.climatechangedebate.org
It is more complicated than that. There is indeed evidence, but it is still circumstantial in that there is no way to gather evidence for something on this scale without doing an experiment. We are already doing the experiment. On the other hand, that CO2 is a greenhouse gas is not up for debate. That the concentrations of CO2 are growing in the atmosphere is not debatable. That the concentrations are sufficient to cause a temperature increase is also not debatable. So, what more evidence does a person need? Clearly what people want shows an unrealistic attitude about what science or evidence can supply. There are many things out there for which no evidence, not even circumstantial, exists but that which have many believers....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt certainly is debateable whether the CO2 increase is sufficient to cause a discernable temperature increase. That is precisely what the scientific debate is about. Moreover, the fact that CO2 has risen significantly during the last decade, while temperature has not, is prima facie falsification of the theory that a CO2 rise caused the warming from 1975-1998, the only warming in the last 70 years. We have a 70 year period of steady CO2 increase with just a 20 year warming spurt. The physical evidence is just not there, only the selfserving evidence of the models.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid Wojick, Ph.D.
http://www.climatechangedebate.org
thank God we won't be working from the completly out of date figures of the IPCC
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswe are dangerously close to the tipping point ; every northern summer more permafrost is melting and we are racing towards a hothouse climate
got another planet you can go to???
Shouldn't our best efforts be put into generating diversities of manners by which we can capture photons from the sun and then transfer their energy to electrons?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHigh tech research centers, garages, kitchen, Silicon Valley, Medicon Valley, science fairs. The places and forums abound. The minds even more so.
We've done it in the past.
There was a wonderful diversity of design during our attempts to build heavier than air machines. We only needed one that worked.
New York in the twenties had a wide variety of vehicle designs. One third ran on gasoline, one third on electricity and one third on steam.
Let's find ways to grow diversity and have it flourish.
So-called "tipping points" are a convenient way to ignore all the data. The temperature has not risen for a decade, but we are told a tipping point is magically near and we are racing toward it, so everything is suddenly going to change. There is no evidence to support this speculation, except the fact that a computer model can be made to do it. This is all simply wild speculation artfully disguised as settled science by the UN IPCC. The Congress of Speculation described in this article is just another attempt to keep the hype going. But as Vince Gray points out, there is no physical evidence for any of this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid Wojick, Ph.D.
http://www.climatechangedebate.org
David Wojick, haven't you figured out that they don't care about the facts. It is all a scam, the sea is not rising and the temperature is not increasing but no one cares...it doesn't fit the agenda. It all presented as this could happen, this may happen. We got loads of data on CO2 and temperature from the past but they won't show "them" what is wanted, so just ignore it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for trying.
Lon
How can the public have any confidence in the predictions made by the likes of Hansen when it is clear he's "cooking the books"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/14/the-evolution-of-the-giss-temperature-product/
As the World Congress described in this article shows, public confidence in dangerous warming is not based on Hansen alone. It is due to a network of several hundred activist scientists, backed by numerous environmental groups with many thousands of supporters, and adopted by many political groups. This is an idelogical movement, not just a scientific debate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid Wojick
http://www.climatechangedebate.org
Reply to David Wojick...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou appear to be an intelligent guy, state you have a Ph.D, claim a lot of your "facts", and refer us to your website on this climate debate. But yet I cannot find one peer-reviewed journal, accredited article, or paper that you have written on climate change. Why is that?
All I can find on you are links to a now-defunct coal industry group called the Greening Earth Society. Oh yeah, and you appear to sell used books at: www.bydesign.com/blackcatbooks
If your attempt is to get people to join your "right-wing" band wagon, you should be able to backup your facts with your own research and findings. Myself, I try to keep an open mind and listen to the other side, but when the scientific evidence doesn't balance out, it's hard to take your side seriously.
Question for you... how long would you last if you tried to breathe the exhaust from your car's tailpipe? A minute? Less than a minute?? Where exactly do you think these green-house gases are going? Again, references to your own peer-reviewed journal would be nice!
-Jeff
The increase in World average temperature is but .5°C theses last 50 years. Yet we cannot even feel one half a degree of difference on our skin. So what is all the climatic fuss about, say the skeptics...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut just realise that the inrease in World average temperature from the height of the last glaciation 18,000 years ago was just 2°C. So half a degree in fifty years is real cause for concern. No need for computer models here...
Either the cause of global warming (greenhouse gases or sun activity), it is a fact. And the remarkable thing of this meetings is the emergence of a new paradigma where we realized that this planet is our home and none else.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not saying global warming is a hoax, but citing computer models as evidence is not sufficient.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA computer model is only as reliable as the people who wrote it. The systems being discussed here are indescribably complex, and any model will be a product of which parameters are included and the initial state that is specified by the authors. Ten teams could create ten models and you will most likely get ten different results.
Where modeling is most useful is in comparing a hypothesis against an actual event, such as how is a star formed... create a model, then compare how close you come to actual observed results. To think that you can then extrapolate what will happen to the star next is just plain cocky.
Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas - provable...
Carbon Dioxide levels are higher now than before - provable...
We should be careful about what we release to the atmosphere - debatable, but I would agree
But saying we know what will happen with the strength of hurricanes in 2020 or the climate in the American southwest in 2050, or that a "tipping point is close" based on a computer model is just naive.
Unverified or unverifiable computer models are utterly irrelevant. A case in point: A number of years ago, while taking my MBA, one of our finance assignments was to write a computer program that would historically mimic the movement of the stock market. It was not all that difficult. However it was a complete and utter failure at any sort of prediction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother case in point, several years ago, while taking my M.Sc., part of my research involved building a computer model for analyzing geological systems. Again, the best that the model could say was that the hypothesized effects could not be dis-included, but the five variables (it was a simple model) each contained enough variability that I quickly realized that discrete outcomes impossible to project. Furthermore, even a range of outcomes with a high level of confidence to be useful were also impossible to predict.
Computer models such as those used in sciences such as sub-atomic particle physics are only validated AFTER experimental verification and have no standing prior to that. To put it into perspective, the $10 thermometer in my backyard (-20C this a.m.) has more scientific validity than any untested and unverified computer program yet devised by man.
If you want facts, look here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=-4123082535546754758
If you want facts, look here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=-4123082535546754758
Global Warming (or should I say Climate Change) is taken very seriously by Insurance Companies, who have to pay out huge sums of money whenever major meteorological catastrophies such as Katrina occur. They pay great attention to all the climate data being collected by scientists worldwide. And so do the IPCC, who have to advise governments on policymaking, despite the sabotage efforts of the powerful AGW energy company lobbies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishmmmm...i have survived the bomb, another ice age, famine, drought, hurricane devastation, tornado ruin, population bomb and what really keeps me nervous....that guy on the corner with the sign "Repent!! The End Is Near".....when will the 12th Imam arrive??? OMG!!! Help!!! save us!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this