Global warming and libertarians
Posted: November 5th, 2007 by Thomas L. KnappGuest Column by Dan Karlan
The core of the Global Warming thesis appears to be this:
1. Global Warming is real (not transitory or part of a short-term cycle)
2. Global Warming is anthropogenic (humanity represents the tipping factor)
3. Global Warming is a problem
4. The solution is more control, less freedom, less capitalism, less growth
Many libertarians, concerned about the last point, take the following strategy: Since they reject point #4, they start by rejecting point #1. Failing that, they challenge point #2. Failing that, they dispute point #3. Failing that, they have played themselves out of the debate, and cannot challenge #4 legitimately.
But what if points 1, 2, and 3 ARE correct? How would a libertarian actually propose to solve such a problem? Because most libertarians refuse to think that points 1, 2, and 3 are even remotely correct, they have given no thought to challenging what they perceive as the most problematic point, the proposed solution, #4.
So I ask my fellow libertarians to suspend their disgust at the advocates of point number 4, and take this ride with me. First, I ask all libertarians to consider the implications of the following thesis: humans are now so numerous and powerful that we are capable of fouling our nest (the planet we call home), with no prospect for finding another or cleaning up the mess we’ve made before a crisis hits. (I assume we fully accept the premise that a sufficiently dirty house IS a problem, if only to the extent that that is implicit in the word “sufficiently.”) Don’t dismiss this statement by insisting that we’re not that powerful, or that the earth has some (magical) healing power. We ARE that powerful, or soon will be, and there is no basis for assuming that nature is capable of fixing the damage done by humanity in the kind of time scale that would be needed.
Early civilizations either moved to another base of operations, or simply vanished, when they chopped down all the trees just as a decades-long drought struck, leaving a desert behind. In some of those instances, the desert remains; in others, some recovery has been achieved.
But we’ve reached all the habitable places, and many of the less-habitable places as well. There’s no place left to move TO that is not already occupied, and libertarians resist the temptation to displace people from their homes. That means either moving off-planet – technologically nearly possible, but not economically feasible in the near term (and it leaves untouched the problem for those who remain or are left behind) – or cleaning up our mess at home.
We have made major progress, in some locations, toward the latter. Even the Aral Sea, on the verge of evaporating into salt desert a few years ago, is at least partially on the road to recovery. And in the West, where capitalism affords everybody more wealth and more choices, the results have been quite spectacular.
But there are problems, and we are not going to solve them if we persist in refusing to consider that they are real just because the people who DO believe they are real insist in proposing anti-libertarian solutions. Arguing that these people believe or claim to believe in the first three points because they really want to impose communism on humanity is inappropriate. As a debating tactic, it is a guaranteed loser. (If you can’t address your opponent’s points of fact, attack their motives.)
At the core of these problems is the simple fact that nature ignores national boundaries, so – in the absence of well-defined property rights – the consequences of what one group does are forced on other groups, whether for good or ill. If for good, the exporters have no way to capture the benefit and charge for it, which would encourage more of the same. Where the spillover is for ill, it is a tragedy of the commons writ global, because there is no penalty imposed for producing the injury, which is likely to affect poor people first and hardest. (But rich people must not be complacent on that basis – how many rich tourists were affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami? How many expensive houses built on barrier islands are routinely trashed by a hurricane? How many estates are burnt because a 10-year-long drought left all the surrounding ground covered by dry tinder?)
Some areas with natural boundaries, such as watersheds, can be effectively managed by voluntary cooperative agreements, and this can even extend to coastal waterways. But the atmosphere is another matter entirely. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, the Jet Stream, El Niño – all pay no heed to borders, but affect all – capitalist and socialist, rich and poor – alike.
But before I open the discussion to ways to address the problem, I must meet the challenges to points 1, 2, and 3 above. To repeat, these are
1. Global Warming is real
2. Global Warming is anthropogenic
3. Global Warming is a problem
1. Global Warming is real
There are some measures of warming, and some indicators that the warming is real. Both have been challenged by libertarians. The measures include surface, ocean, and atmospheric temperature studies extending over several decades and, where possible (using ice cores, for example), centuries and millennia. The indicators include retreating glaciers, diminishing polar ice, dwindling numbers of plant and animal species allegedly critically dependent on stable cool conditions, and changing weather patterns. That last could be especially important, because the forecasts anticipate drier conditions (less rain, less frequent rain) precisely where we depend on plant growth to support humanity.
And all that evidence points to a global warming that started several decades ago (perhaps even a century), so far amounts to about 1 degree Fahrenheit, while the factors still in the pipeline will result in another degree Fahrenheit even if a complete cessation of those factors is achieved instantly – and at least a third degree Fahrenheit by the year 2100 if nothing is done.
All by itself, one degree isn’t much. But consider this chain: one degree rise on average means that more of the snow and ice at higher latitudes is exposed to the sun to an extent that pushes it just over the melting temperature, resulting in reduced snow pack and ice cover. This happens both at the daily cycle and the annual cycle: the cooling effect of night is reduced, and the cooling effect of winter is reduced. Arctic Ocean ice pack begins to break apart earlier in the year, and doesn’t reform until later in the year. The bright snow and ice cover reflects more of the sun’s heat back into space than the ocean or land it covers, so if some of it melts, more of the sun’s heat will be absorbed instead of being reflected.
And there’s another matter. Much of the land in arctic areas, primarily Siberia and Canada, is permafrost, in which significant quantities of methane are currently locked up in the frozen ground. To the extent the permafrost melts with global warming, methane will be released into the atmosphere – and methane is a greenhouse gas. The cascade will be amplified.
The shorter season for solid ice pack DOES affect living things, starting with the polar bears, who need the ice pack to search for food. Reducing their numbers increases the size of the herds of seals, their favorite food.
Overall, the polar bear numbers are higher than they were several decades ago. But that is nearly all due to greater protection from hunting. Of the nineteen distinct populations, two of the largest, in eastern Canada, are down significantly in the past few years.
A cascade of alteration in the natural balance ripples through the arctic region. Perhaps no human will be affected – right away. Perhaps polar bears are unrelated to humanity. At some point, however, living things on which humans depend WILL be affected. We have no idea what that point might be. We can protect livestock from the effects of the global warming – but at a cost, and this will divert resources from more productive enterprises.
Staying in the Arctic, the warming is also in the process of shrinking the Greenland ice shelf. The following figures illustrate the dramatic hastening of this meltdown. And recent satellite records have revealed that the melt of 2002 was exceeded in 2005.
2. Global Warming is anthropogenic
Some people insist that nature is far more powerful at producing the triggers of global climate change than humans are, and thus our output is swamped by natural factors. The numbers they produce are not only wrong, they are dangerously wrong, because they make it rational for those people to dismiss all global climate change arguments categorically, insisting on a scientific basis for their rejection.
First, the argument that water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas must be dealt with. Estimates are that about 50% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor, 25% due to clouds, 20% to CO2, and the rest a function of other gases (see figure). So why are the effects of water vapor ignored? Because there’s no buildup in the atmosphere. Water vapor rapidly equilibrates with the ocean and land. There’s no limit to how much rain can fall, but there’s a physical limit on the atmosphere’s ability to absorb CO2 [1]. If industrial sources of CO2 were to cease operation immediately, the lingering effect of what’s already been discharged would be felt in a temperature increase that would continue for decades at least. Indeed, one of the most promising strategies for mitigating the effects of CO2 is to artificially remove it from the atmosphere and segregate it within the earth. Part of its promise is that it heads off the problem at its source, so the possibility of unintended consequences is severely constrained.
Another popular argument, basically, is that all human greenhouse gas emissions are dwarfed by natural sources, of which they insist the most important are volcanoes and other minor sources of outgassing, such as geysers. The numbers are quite simply incorrect. We must look at the numbers – and they are large.
Natural sources of CO2 are large – but they have been substantially in balance with natural sinks, such as the ocean and forests. Nature does evolve, but on time scales on the order of millions of years, while the injection of industrial CO2 has been a factor for only the past 2 centuries. (That additional CO2 has been accompanied, especially in recent years, by removal of substantial forest cover. And a warmer ocean can absorb less CO2 than a cold ocean can. While we have added to the CO2, we have at the same time interfered with nature’s ability to adapt.)
It is argued, repeatedly, that a single volcanic eruption dwarfs human contributions to the greenhouse gas problem, and therefore our own contribution can be ignored. The facts are sobering. Let’s look at just one volcanic eruption.
In 1991, Mount Pinatubo, in the Philippines, erupted. Because this volcano is very close to the equator, its effects were to a considerable extent spread over both hemispheres, unlike, for example, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Etna. The amount of CO2 thrown into the atmosphere by that one eruption is estimated to have been at least 42 Mt (Million tons). Additional estimates of all volcanic contributions to the CO2 loading of the atmosphere put the global figure at about 300 Mt/year (third arrow in the illustration below). To put this in context, the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo was the largest in the entire 20th century. Its contribution to the total, large as it was, represents an extreme outlier.
Compare that to human contributions – on the order of 26 Gigatons (see figure above). Total volcanic, eruptive and continuous, amount to just 1% of the human contribution. So much for ignoring the human contribution in favor of natural sources.
The Pinatubo eruption did have an immediate effect. The injection of 17 Million tons of SO2 into the stratosphere (the largest such SO2 cloud ever detected) set in motion a set of reactions that cooled the planet for several years. But when that cooling wore off, the temperature graphs showed that the warming returned not to where it had been before the eruption, but to where it would have been had there been no eruption. The cooling effect of the sulfate aerosol was completely extinguished within a few years. We are dealing with a baseline that itself continues to rise.
While we’re on the subject of the cooling effect of SO2 aerosols: one thing is worth noting. The slight cooling between 1940 and 1970 was due entirely to the rapid global industrial increase in coal burning (echoing an earlier cooling at the end of the 19th century). When environmental concerns dictated using either cleaner coal or alternate fuels with reduced sulfate emissions, the cooling effect vanished. The following picture, more often with the period before 1940 conveniently but deceptively omitted entirely, shows this temporary effect, and the subsequent rebound to a warming trend.
Recently, a scientist, partly bowing to the reluctance of politicians to admit that the United States is a major contributor to the problem, and partly to introduce an element of surprise into the debate, proposed that we return to the use of dirty coal to counter the warming effect of increasing CO2.
Another argument insists that the global warming is real, but it is a consequence of a natural cycle of variation due to solar and cosmic sources. Scientists have factored these into their models, and the evidence indicates that the global warming is happening simply too fast for those factors to be an issue. There is a solar cycle, and it appears to contribute a very slightly increasing amount of solar radiation to the earth (and the other planets). But that increase is tiny when compared to the retention of heat from all sources (solar, natural, and human) as a consequence of increased CO2 loading in the atmosphere.
This is an important issue. (It confused me until very recently.) The CO2 is not the source of the warming, and pointing to a lag between increased CO2 and increasing temperatures, or to an apparent reversal of cause and effect – with the temperature rise appearing to precede the increase in CO2 – is a favorite misdirection tactic of those who deny the global warming arguments. The CO2 (and other, less significant, greenhouse gases) is simply a blanket, serving to keep more of the planet’s heat from escaping to space. An ordinary blanket makes you feel warm, not because it produces heat but because it traps your own heat. Similarly, the additional CO2 serves to keep infrared radiation from leaving the planet, and it is this trapping effect that is the contributor to global warming. The sources of that heat include: solar radiation, earth’s own internal radiation (nuclear and gravitational, leftover from the formation 4.5 billion years ago), and human fossil fuel combustion and nuclear plants [2]. (All natural sources of heat only release solar energy that was transformed and trapped by an earlier process.)
3. Global Warming is a problem
Some libertarians offer a seemingly-scientific argument that because atmospheric carbon dioxide is an essential nutrient for plants, therefore the rise in this greenhouse gas will turn out to be a net benefit to humanity, facilitating greater crop yields while stimulating the growth of trees that will eliminate the possibility of a runaway effect. There are several problems with this.
First, the most important crops are all grasses of a particular variety, and the ability of these plants to respond to increased CO2 is very limited. After a certain point a new equilibrium will be established, with no more growth with more CO2.
Second, tests with many plants have all yielded the same result: temporary growth spurts followed by a return to the prior growth curve, and additional CO2 had no more positive affect. These tests simply reinforce the biochemical argument concerning the type of grasses grown as crops. This even occurs with some trees, and is likely to be a general feature, that additional CO2 is not a sustained growth promoter. With most if not all plants, the limiting nutrients are water, sunlight, and trace minerals, not CO2.
Meanwhile, some plants will try to shift their growing area to escape a northward push of warm air by retreating to higher latitudes (the retreat to higher altitudes is less feasible). This might be possible – but at the same time, these plants will cease to grow in their prior more-equatorial habitat. Where this process takes the plants completely out of one country’s range, any industry dependent on that plant will move northward, too. With warming, for example, the sugar maple might completely depart the New England states for more tolerable conditions in Canada, and the Vermont maple syrup industry will simply die.
A glance at the temperature zone charts over the past sixteen years, drawn for farmers and gardeners, shows a dramatic northward shift in every zone. The warmest zone has doubled its cover over south Florida, and now also appears in Texas and California, previously not witness to the highest temperatures. At the other end of the scale, the zone of coldest temperatures has practically disappeared from the US, and the next coldest band no longer covers any significant land in Idaho, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, and New Hampshire [3]. Plants in the increasingly warmer areas already show the effects: earlier sprouting, longer growing season, and greater stress from a shorter dormant period. Furthermore, a longer growing season consumes more fresh water – a limiting nutrient for humanity – and reliable global weather predictions forecast reduced rainfall in most of the areas that will also get significantly warmer. (Yes, those models are reliable: they satisfactorily track the past century of temperature changes globally.)
Sure, climate change on a global scale has happened before, and it has even happened within the bounds of humanity’s existence on this planet. That is a very weak argument on which to base a “We don’t have to worry about it” attitude. First, if we have the ability to effect climate change, then we have the ability to limit or undo that change to keep conditions globally at a more or less optimum for humans. And second, if we have the ability to effect climate change, then we have the further ability to make it worse for humanity, and it is not hard to foresee that conditions could become sufficiently bad that a global human disaster would occur. Pointing to the Medieval Warm Period doesn’t help: the solid numbers we have clearly indicate it NEVER was as warm as it has been for the past few decades.
Yes, global climate change has occurred before – but humanity did not exist then, we did not develop industry, transportation, and agriculture that depended on a stable globe, and virtually all the animals that DID thrive during those earlier warm periods have disappeared. Evidence cited from 50 MYA (Million years ago) doesn’t help, especially because at the time, there was much more land mass around the equator, and less at the poles. The fossils of tropical animals we discover in Arctic regions are from the period when that land was much more equatorial. And yes, the entire planet was much warmer then.
In fact, all data point to the conclusion that the earth is warmer now than at any time in the past several million years. And during the previous warm periods, global atmospheric CO2 concentrations were, also, significantly higher than at any time since until very recently. In fact, the following chart shows that temperature and CO2 nearly track each other. (Note also that the straight line indicating increasing solar activity does not track the temperature changes.)
* * *
Libertarians who dismiss points 1, 2, and 3 because they don’t like point 4 are doing themselves, and the rest of humanity, a grave disservice. If we insist that we will not be part of the solution because we believe there is no problem, then we will in fact NOT be part of the solution, and the attempted solutions are likely to be unwelcome to us. By not participating in the debate about the solution, we will have abandoned the territory to the extremists. This would be particularly unfortunate, because I believe that any solution offered by a libertarian will be effective, cheap, and consistent with libertarian principles.
Finally, I invite each of you to consider the Popperian Question: What evidence would impel you to revise your position and admit that the position you have rejected is actually correct?
There are two possible answers:
- There is no evidence you will consider: your mind is made up. If this is your answer, then you intentionally take yourself out of any future discussion and debate.
- You do consider this question and answer honestly, with some evidence you would seriously consider. Again, there are two possibilities:
- You so frame or select the evidence that you believe will never be discovered, so that you can continue to be secure in your position. This perspective is called immunization: you have insulated your mind against persuasion by contrary evidence, even though you don’t want to admit that your mind is really closed.
- You do offer claims that would really cause you to change your mind, and those claims are reasonable.
If that last point is your position, I have a serious warning for you: all that evidence has already been accumulated and organized, and has been presented many times, and all the counter-arguments have been addressed. The facts on which you have based your position have already been refuted, and the evidence in support of points 1, 2, and 3 above has continued to increase, at an alarming pace. The only course left is to participate in the debate, and prove point 4 wrong.
Notes
1. The ability of the ocean to absorb additional CO2 is also limited. A recent proposal to enhance this uptake by seeding the ocean with iron, a limiting nutrient for some oceanic organisms capable of incorporating CO2, was interesting, but the results of the experiment were negative.
2. Actually, fossil fuel combustion is merely the sudden release of solar energy stored and buried millions of years ago, while nuclear power plants greatly accelerate the natural energy released in the decay of radioactive elements. Human contributions, therefore, are highly concentrated injections of natural sources that might take orders of magnitude longer. A third source, tidal energy, is unlikely to be a major factor in the global energy budget.
3. The existence of wide bands of no change in the upper map is an artifact of the digitization of the temperature ranges into decades. If the lowest temperature at a particular location, for example, went from 10 to 14, that would register as no change, but a change of the same magnitude, from 8 to 12, would register on this map. We should not be comforted by the existence of large areas on the upper map that display as no change.
November 5th, 2007 at 6:35 am
[…] Naachgaana.com 2.0 estyle wrote an interesting post today on Global warming and libertariansHere’s a quick excerpt…discussion to ways to address the problem, I must meet the challenges to … It is argued, repeatedly, that a single volcanic eruption dwarfs… […]
November 5th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Good job! Thanks for the clear presentation of the evidence.
November 5th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
As a former Psychological Warfare person, I have to admire your tour de force propaganda attempt to defend the ruminations of the chicken littles of the world. A small list follows:
1. Global warming is real, but, mankind’s contribution to it is miniscule. and amounts to about 1 percent of that due to natural causes. By the way, the earth stopped warming in 1998 the end of a cycle.
2. It is interesting to note that the year 1998 started a cooling cycle since the Club of Rome, using the same historical data in the 1950’s predicted that we would by that time sitting on the edge of the North Polar ice cap in places like Chicago and Cleveland! It is also notable that NASA made a mistake in naming 1998 as the hottest year of the 20′th century. They have since revised the year to 1934 which is prior to the idiocy of the hockey stick. If it was a real data curve, it would show a definite curve rather than a straight line! Oh! the club of Rome is still around and looking for a cause!
3. One cause for some of the panic over average world temperatures is due to the abandonment of all of the Siberian recording stations after the collapse of that collectivist entity known as the Soviet Union. Another cause of the panic is the computer models are all based on static values for their computations. There is no computer existent which could calculate a dynamic model of the weather, much less predict climate change over centuries. Many test of existing models which have been fed historical data have come up with nothing like what really happened.
4. Two of the outer planets of our solar system, Mars and Neptune, have shown heating effects similar to those found on Earth during the last 40 or 50 years. How do you account for that?
5. For real cooling on our planet you have to go back 100,000 years or more to the last Glaciation during which the North Polar ice cap DID reach Cleveland and Chicago. For a REAL warming period, you have to go further back to the previous warming period when the Gulf of Mexico extended to Minneapolis.
6. It is a little known fact that the Sun is a variable star with many warming and cooling cycles, and, is the largest contributor to our planets warming and cooling cycles.
7. Before you go into an economy busting rant about the effects of global warming, you should consult some real Climatologists!
Jack King
November 5th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Since obviously the facts are supportive of anthropogenic global warming, here’s a break for some deserving believer. $125,000! It should be like taking candy from a baby:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBCRStksqL0&eurl=http://www.junkscience.com/
We have to save Al. Will he float or sink like the Titanic?
November 6th, 2007 at 2:40 am
Jack, thanks for putting in your thoughts. I guess that’s why they call it a debate. I’ll go over your points in order.
1. Mankind’s contribution to global warming is an increase in the concentration of CO2 of over 30%. That accounts for all of the 0.7°C temperature rise. As little as that rise is in absolute terms, it is enough to cause serious changes to carefully-balanced ecosystems. What’s more troubling is that the changes are accelerating with no end in sight.
2. If conditions continued as they were in the 1950s, with ever-increasing amounts of particulate and aerosol pollution, we very well could be facing much colder weather. We’d also be dying from pollution even faster than we are. It’s not reassuring to find out that the 1930’s were warmer in the US than the 1990s, since the 1930s were a time of extreme drought and severe economic depression. But local climate anomalies aside, the global temperature has been rising steadily since about 1970.
3. Even if Siberian readings aren’t available, the data is stunningly clear. It doesn’t depend on computer models. The fact is that the temperature has been rising along with CO2 concentration since 1970 with no other explanation.
4. Mars is heating due to a shift in its orbit. Neptune is warming because it has an elliptical orbit and it’s moving closer to the sun. Solar output hasn’t increased.
5. I don’t understand what point you’re making here.
6. No one disputes that solar activity was the main driving force in global temperature before around 1900. When CO2 was essentially constant it wasn’t causing temperature changes.
7. This isn’t an argument.
November 6th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Thanks Jack for bringing sanity to this debate.
November 6th, 2007 at 11:58 am
If you believe in the AGW theory, you should act accordingly and then try to convince others to do the same. Using it as an excuse for violence, thus overthrowing the libertarian point of view, isn’t valid. “I am too freightened to be moral!” is not a valid position.
RobC (above) is wrong:
1. CO2 has an exponetially DECREASING
November 6th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
John Howard, your proposition that CO2 is decreasing is pretty radical; all the published data I’ve seen shows the opposite all the way back to 1850. If you have data to support this proposition, please give us a reference.
November 6th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
If you believe in the AGW theory, you should act accordingly and then try to convince others to do the same. Using it as an excuse for violence, thus overthrowing the libertarian point of view, isn’t valid. “I am too freightened to be moral!” is not a valid position. Neither is “I am too certain to be moral”!
RobC (above) is wrong:
1. CO2 has an exponentially DECREASING effect - the more there is, the less its effect. At this point, doubling the CO2 has almost no effect. It is already “saturated”. CO2 is beneficial to all life - the more there is, the healtier for all.
2. Global temps have not been rising since 1970. They have been flat to declining for the the last 8 years…and counting.
3. Repeats the error of 2 and then says there is no other explanation. Yes, there is. There are several. RobC means that since he doesn’t agree with an explanation, it doesn’t exist.
4. Solar output certainly has increased. It may or may not be effecting the other planets in certain ways, but the increase is well recorded and part of well-known cycles.
5. Both warming and cooling have been far more extensive in the past. The present is perfectly normal. Neither the temperatures, nor the rate of change in temp is abnormal.
6 Co2 does not cause temperature change. It appears that the opposite is the case - temperature changes cause CO2 changes. Thus one of the benefits of natural warming is an increase in CO2. This means that life flourishes. Warm weather and plenty of plant food (CO2). Look forward to it. Unfortunately, there are indicators that we will be moving into a cooling period soon - the current flattening of the temp may indicate that it has peaked - much like the influence of Al Gore’s hysteria.
November 6th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
As for John Howard’s insistence that more CO2 is good for you: there are many people in equatorial west Africa who would disagree with you. They and their neighbors have been victims of CO2 poisoning, a result of saturated lakes suddenly releasing their CO2, which because it’s heavier than air sits close to the ground. Several villages have been practically wiped out by the creeping cloud of CO2.
And as the air temperature rises, most plants close their porees to retain water, and thus are unable to benefit from the higher CO2 concentrations in the air.
The rest of your points have been adequately addressed elsewhere.
Many of the scientists who have contributed to the various reports have in effect pulled their puinches. Their evidence says one thing, but they have deliberately waffled on the magnitude of the effect because they do not want to appear alarmist. If you think their claims are extreme, just be glad they haven’t revealed all the implications of their data. They are far from chicken littles. Just the opposite, they have tried to be a calming influence, by sticking close to the facts. It is the wild claims of the deniers that have been off the charts.
Your argument that I should try to convince others is the basis for my article. I hope that at least some libertarians are open-minded enough to consider the evidence. I made no claims regarding the use of the evidence “as an excuse for violence.” If anything, I intend just the opposite: that libertarians will come forward with non-violent solutions. I make no arguments regarding the morality of the proposed solutions. I cited only two solutions: one that can work, but it is expensive (pumping CO2 into the ground), and one that was cheap but appeared not to work (seeding the ocean with iron). I made no remarks concerning the morality of either of those solutions. If I really was “too frightened to be moral” then I would not have written my article.
So what about the Popperian Challenge: is anyone willing to go out on a limb?
November 6th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
John Howard: what is the scientific reference for your assertion that CO2 has an exponentially decreasing influence?
November 6th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
I was in error to write that CO2 has an exponentially decreasing influence. The relationship is logarithmic, not exponential. The analogy most often offered is that of painting a window to reflect the sunlight. If a single coat of paint blocks 80% of the light, then the second coat of paint (CO2 doubling) will block 80% of the remaining 20% = 16%. Each coat has far less effect. Graphing this will show the effect as a steep curve at the beginning, which then rapidly flattens out to little further change - even with further doubling. The earth’s atmosphere is close to saturation of the CO2 heat-blocking effect and we are all fine. Adding more will have little further heat-blocking effect.
Requesting references for the nature of CO2 and it’s radiation-absorbing qualities is a bit like asking for references that 2+2=4. In all of my reading, I have never come across a single denial that the effect of CO2 doubling decreases with each additional doubling of CO2. It appears to be common knowledge. And it really does not need a reference since it is intuitively obvious. No one is arguing (not even the IPCC) that we are at the far left side of the curve (where the difference between clear glass and the first coat of paint is dramatic). Rather, we are near to the saturation point. Here is a well-written summary of the idea with some clear graphs:
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2007/07/the-60-second-c.html
Perhaps the author can provide you with references to the basic science of CO2 radiation absorbtion, re-radiation, and reflection. JunkScience.com also carries a lengthy article about the basics of the “greenhouse” theory covering the details of CO2 effects.
Pretending that a freaky situation in Africa where there is so much CO2 that it crowds out oxygen is somehow relevant to what I wrote or to the global warming question seems unserious. Even if true, it is wrong to refer to CO2 as a poison. Drowning does not make water a “poison”.
Plants actually thrive better in heat when nurished with extra CO2. One of the Idsos (perhaps Craig Idso) is the source of numerous studies of the effects of CO2 on plants. Among many other conclusions is the one that CO2 actually enhances the heat tolerance of plants. CO2science.com is a great source of recent peer-reviewed studies, especially about CO2/plants and about historic temperature records.
November 6th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
CO2 serves conflicting roles in the environment. For plants, it’s a nutrient. For (most) animals, it’s a waste product, and thus a poison. In Africa, the CO2 didn’t just ‘crowd out oxygen’ it was itself a toxic compound.
Unless you build domes to keep the high CO2 areas separate from the realms visited or lived in by animals, you have a necessary tension between tonic and toxic. And that assumes that what you wrote, about increasing CO2 being beneficial to plants, is the case. I’ve read various reports of scientifically-controlled attempts to test that position, and the results have been at best lukewarm, in some cases downright negative. It might be the case for some trees, especially tropical (rain forest) trees, but it most emphatically has NOT been found to be the case with plants grown for human consumption.
Arguing that doubling CO2 will have a smaller-than-double impact on global warming is irrelevant, because atmospheric CO2 hasn’t doubled yet relative to pre-industrial values. All evidence points to a warming crisis well before that point is reached, partly because the CO2 currently in the air will persist for a very long time (unless we pull it out technologically). The globe will continue to warm even if we cease all use of fossil fuels tomorrow. The least pessmimistic forecast is still founded on the assumption that fossil fuel use will continue to increase.
November 6th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
The terms “toxic”, “poison” and “compound” all have actual definitions, none of which can be applied to CO2 under any circumstances. “Waste product” does not equal “poison”. Our food is often kept cold with melting CO2 (”dry ice”). I think a dictionary might clear up some of these confusions.
The beneficial effects of CO2 on plants is hardly controversial. That plants “inhale” CO2 is universal, not just true of some plants. Commercial Greenhouse growers have been adding CO2 to their buildings to enhance growth of all vegetables and plants for decades. (It is also a favorite trick of indoor marijuana growers).
The argument that atmospheric CO2 hasn’t doubled yet relative to pre-industrial values (it is 75% of the way to that point) is irrelevant to the argument that a doubling of those levels will have a negligible effect since most of the effect of CO2 is already present - and was present pre-industrial. If the window has 3 pre-industrial coats of paint, 3 more (doubling) will have a trivial effect on the amount of light transmitted through the window. And the data shows this to be true. Warming is slight and historically normal and far below that predicted by the government computer models.
The facts remains that human-added CO2 is a trivial percentage of all atmospheric CO2, which is a trivial factor in the greenhouse effect, which is itself a trivial factor in global warming.
November 7th, 2007 at 8:02 am
John,
Just to head off any accusations of censorship: Your comment got caught in QE’s “spam trap” for some reason I can’t figure out, and I approved it as soon as I saw it there. Sorry for the delay.
Now, to content. You write: “The facts remains that human-added CO2 is a trivial percentage of all atmospheric CO2, which is a trivial factor in the greenhouse effect, which is itself a trivial factor in global warming.”
Like the other words you mention, “trivial” has a definition. To paraphrase the generally accepted definitions of it, I’ll go with “unimportant in the scheme of things.” That is a qualitative, rather than quantitative, evaluation.
Even assuming that human-added CO2 is a miniscule percentage of all atomospheric CO2 (not a safe assumption, but one I’ll stipulate to for the sake of argument here), it does not necessarily follow from that that it is a trivial percentage of all atmospheric CO2.
If something costs $1, and you only have 99 cents, the other 1 cent is a miniscule percentage of the overall purchase price, but not a trivial percentage of the overall purchase price — it is quantitatively small, but it is also the difference between whether you get what you want or have to leave it on the shelf.
Similarly, even if human-generated CO2 is only 1% of atmospheric CO2, it is not qualitatively trivial if is the 1% that pushes earth past an undesirable warming threshold that it would not have otherwise passed.
Insofar as the other definitions you bandy, CO2 is most certainly a “compound” (”Composed of two or more elements, ingredients, parts” — Webster’s 1913). A molecule of CO2 is a compound of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. As to whether or not CO2 is “toxic” (”of or pertaining to poison; poisonous” — op.cit.) or a “poison” (”Any agent which, when introduced into the animal organism, is capable of producing a morbid, noxious, or deadly effect upon it” — op.cit) “under any circumstances,” you’re just plain wrong — see Wikipedia’s article on hypercapnia or the Home Inspection and Construction Website’s article on “The Toxicity of Carbon Dioxide.”
Best regards,
Tom Knapp
November 17th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Point 1: Global warming is real — well, yes. Climates fluctuate and if one takes the graph he takes it looks dramatic. Less so if you realize the Little Ice Age covers most of that period until the mid 1800s when it ended. But why look at 1,000 years only? Why not 10,000 or 100,000? If you do that the chart would look very different without the dramatic uptick at the end. Because 8000 years ago it was much warmer than it is today.
Arctic fluctuations are also real. NASA said that wind shifts were responsible for the massive decline of the ice sheet during the normal reduction period in the summer. The winds blew ice into warmer waters increasing melting. NASA said this has been going on for around 8 years. On the other hand the ice flow in the Antarctic reached new record highs. Or is global warming not global?
Pointing to thinning ice in some places is cherry picking if one also ignores growing ice sheets in other places. Ice is melting in some parts of Iceland and growing in other parts. Glaciers around the world are often in retreat while a short distance away another glacier is growing. One cause of glacial melt is pressure. If ice builds up the increased pressure melts off ice underneath it quicker.
The CO2 argument is relatively simplistic because Mr. Karlan looks at water vapor, clouds and CO2. His argument is simplistically naive. If water vapor and clouds are not increasing then only CO2 can be responsible by process of elimination. That argument assumes that all other factors which were excluded from the list are not worth mentioning including the impact of solar fluctuations.
It would seem that with massive and rapid climate change having occurred frequently in the past, long before man even existed, that one would need to explain why those changes took place and exclude all those reason before moving on to the assumption that C02 is responsible. This is especially true as the impact of CO2 is not linear. Doubling CO2 does not double the impact. Each increase has less effect than the previous increase.
We also know that the last major ice age (not the Little Ice Age) ended when the oceans warmed first. CO2 increases followed the warming not preceded them. While humans are releasing C02 is it possible that nature is also releasing more CO2 resulting from the end of the Little Ice Age. Could it be the warming that is responsible for much of the increase in CO2 and not just man?
We also know that for about 10 years now the global temperatures have been stable if not declining. The recent high (which is well below previous natural warming highs) was in 1998 and there has been little since. And a recent study of 600 cities and their temperature increases showed a pattern identical to what the IPCC and others are saying is happening. But when the 15 largest cities were removed from the data the trend was downward temperatures in the others. This would indicate that the adjustments in the climate models to account for the “heat island” effect on temperatures has been too low and needs adjustment.
November 17th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
I should also note that this claim is absolutely false. “In fact, all data point to the conclusion that the earth is warmer now than at any time in the past several million years. ” I have seen scientists who claim it is warmer today than for 400 years and some who say 1,000 years. But Mr. Karlan has wisdom they don’t profess and claims it is warmer now than for several million years! He might then explain the discovery reported by the BBC of “fossilised bones of two ancient hippos… found in Norfolk” “said to be more than 450,000 years old”. The BBC notes the fossiles “open a new window on the UK’s past in the early Middle Pleistocene when average temperatures were about 2C higher.” They report that the animals come from a time “when Norfolk had a landscape populated by an unusual mixture of familiar plants and animals and more exotic species now found only in the African savannah. Clearly, if today is the warmest it has been for several million years somebody neglected to inform the hippos.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3854461.stm
November 23rd, 2007 at 10:31 am
[…] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptSimilarly, the additional CO2 serves to keep infrared radiation from leaving the planet, and it is this trapping effect that is the contributor to global warming. The sources of that heat include: solar radiation, earth’s own internal … […]
November 23rd, 2007 at 2:24 pm
[…] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptSimilarly, the additional CO2 serves to keep infrared radiation from leaving the planet, and it is this trapping effect that is the contributor to global warming. The sources of that heat include: solar radiation, earth’s own internal … […]
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:35 pm
I ask those who are concerned about this controversy to consider the CO2 sequestering effect man can have by practicing Permaculture a variation of organic farming that return more carbon to the soil than comes out. Modern monoculture strips minerals and carbon out of the soil by using commercial fertilizer and pesticides that kill the organisms that build carbon and add to topsoil.
Commercial farming of kelp can also add to oxygen production and alcohol fuel as a by product, while trapping CO2 as a result of man’s intelligent action with nature. The profit motive of people awakening to health concerns will drive more expansion of Permaculture and Organic farming. The death of the FRN will reduce the use of commercial fertilizer. More jobs in the fields, less around DC.
Some Pubs to check out. http://Metrofarm.com/ http://Permaculture.com/ http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/ http://www.acresusa.com/
I also fail to understand why it is not discussed that the people who promote a tax on Carbon are almost all socialists grasping for more control over everyone’s lives, and a CO2 Tax is a very sensible vehicle for draining our lives of even more of our labor.
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:10 am
I will add, if monoculture farmland was treated properly, top soil would build every year and not be in decline. This would be a huge sponge for CO2 and the benefits would far outweigh any global warming considerations, no matter who is correct on this matter of global warming, or cooling. I do know that in Eastern Washington in the 1900s one could grow huge watermelons. County Fair records show this proof, as well, old timers told me of this fact when I was a child, 40 years ago. Today, one cannot grow a watermelon in eastern Washington State. It is too cool.
As for lakes in Africa being too high in CO2, I don’t know. I do know that crops in water like duck weed can fix nitrogen and release oxygen while fixing some carbon and support fish in the lake, and attract ducks. Growing Cattails around the lake perimeter should also fix carbon and the tubers would be a wonderful source of 19% protein, after a fermentation distillation cycle to make local fuel for cooking or transportation. Stripping out the cattails as soon as they are grown and allowing regrowth would remove carbon from the lake.
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:40 am
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July 15th, 2008 at 10:58 am
you suck…. die
July 15th, 2008 at 10:58 am
you suck…. die
July 15th, 2008 at 10:58 am
you suck…. die