Category: Science

New discoveries, the scientific method, and all matters relating to the scientific study of the physical world

Conference on a world more than four degrees warmer

Given our increasingly slim chances of avoiding more than 2˚C of global warming, it makes sense to start thinking about what a world hotter than that could be like.

The University of Oxford recently hosted a conference on the subject: 4degrees International Climate Change Conference: Implications of a Global Climate Change of 4 plus Degrees for People, Ecosystems, and Earth Systems.

32 of the short lectures are available free, via iTunes.

As an aside, posts might be thin here for the next while. Work is busy, and I am concentrating efforts on BuryCoal. If you haven’t had a look at that site yet, please do. Some good discussions on the posts people have already written would be just the thing.

More on Singh and libel

In a development that annoys me as much as one of my favourite novels being banned in some libraries, one of my favourite authors of non-fiction has been bullied out of having time to write columns for The Guardian by the British Chiropractic Association and the awful libel laws of the United Kingdom. It also seems probable that his book projects would be more advanced, if not for this pointless and anti-democratic headache.

Singh has been courageous enough to appeal the painful initial decision against his entirely fair and justified comments, as well as try to kick off a public movement to change the laws in the UK. The need to do so is broadly recognized, with several other jurisdictions having already passed laws to protect their citizens from ‘libel tourists’ who use the UK to file baseless or frivolous claims. Newspapers including the Boston Globe and New York Times have also complained about how British law imposes on them unjustifiably.

Having a free and democratic society depends on being able to express honestly-held and justified opinions without fear that someone will exploit the law to silence you. Hopefully, the lawmakers in the UK will change tack, reform their laws, and apologize to those who have been harmed by them already. We might also hope that people will recognize that the chiropractic view that all disease is caused by ‘subluxations’ in the spine is baseless quackery (a claim far bolder and less exhaustively justified than the one that got Singh in all this trouble).

Why We Disagree About Climate Change

My review of Mike Hulme’s book Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity has been published in the most recent issue of the Saint Antony’s International Review (STAIR). It is the fourth review down, starting on the eighth page of the PDF.

I found the book interesting, but too heavily focused on the psychological ramifications of climate change, compared with the real physical effects. To summarize:

In addition to being an observable physical phenomenon, climate change has taken on a broad range of social, political, and even theological meanings. Mike Hulme’s Why We Disagree About Climate Change seeks to chart out the major lines of argumentation that have emerged around the subject, as well as to consider the implications that flow from them, both in terms of climate policy and in terms of broader matters of ethics and public policy. Ultimately, Hulme argues that “climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape” (p. 326). The range of discourses Hulme considers is restricted to a particular segment of the overall climate change debate—specifically, those contributors to the debate who accept three scientific touchstones: that greenhouse gases affect the climate system, the recorded rise in global temperatures, and the possibility of non-linear responses in the climate system. Restricting the scope of consideration in this way allows Hulme to exclude viewpoints that have no scientific basis. However, doing so also precludes examination of all relevant actors in the global political discussion about climate change policy. While Hulme effectively examines the social, cultural, and political aspects of climate change, he may inappropriately downplay the observed and possible future physical consequences resulting from greenhouse gas emissions.

The book is worthwhile for those with a major interest in the subject area, but I do not consider it to be one of the key texts on the science and policy of climate change.

Previously, STAIR published an article of mine about nuclear power.

The last tree on Easter Island

One section of Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed has been haunting me a bit of late. He refers repeatedly to the person who cut down the last tree on Easter Island, effectively completing the undermining the basis of their society. He ponders what the person thought while doing it – in particular, whether they had a sense of the magnitude of the progression that they were completing.

Up to this point, I have thought it highly probable that worsening climate-related disasters would eventually be sufficient to produce major mitigation effort, on the part of humanity (even if simple discussion of the facts at hand might not). From this perspective, the risk arises from lags in the climate system and feedback effects; by the time we are seeing the consequences of our emissions being manifest in the world to a frightening extent, we may no longer have time to prevent catastrophic or runaway climate change.

The Easter Island scenario presents an alternative possibility: that we might keep accelerating towards the cliff face even long after the full consequences of doing so are blatantly obvious to all but the most deluded. If there is a danger of humanity as a whole replicating that situation, then perhaps even the great majority of climate change campaigners are excessively complacent about the scale of the task before us.

To go a bit ‘meta’ for a minute, I recognize that people are of mixed views about all the recent posts about abrupt and runaway climate change scenarios, both here and on BuryCoal. Some people think they are so far outside the mainstream discussion that they confuse people and put them off, rather than making them more supportive of climate change mitigation. Partly, the increased prominence of these posts is reflective of the dire state of the climate policy debate at the moment. A well organized smear campaign against the science has combined with the paralysis of the Obama administration, ongoing concerns about jobs and the economy, and the failure of the Copenhagen talks. Together, these naturally make one pessimistic about the prospects of getting started on serious mitigation in the next few years, which is deeply troubling given how important the peak date for emissions is, in determining how aggressive a pathway we will need to follow afterward.

The best pathway forward remains unclear. That said, it seems almost tautologically true that it will involve the extension of three tracks: working with the level of public and elite support that exists to enact whatever effective policies that allows, working to build greater public and elite support for more ambitious efforts, and preparing strategies to put in place for when that level of support exists.

Emerging energy related technologies

The Economist’s latest Technology Quarterly contains a number of articles with climatic significance:

These sorts of innovations (aside from the oil and gas extraction story) would surely be driven forward if carbon pricing made people care more about the consequences of their greenhouse gas emissions.

After the Ice

Having already read a great deal about climate change and the Arctic, I expected Alun Anderson’s After the Ice: Life, Death, and Geopolitics in the New Arctic to provide only a moderate quantity of new information. I was quite surprised by just how much novel, relevant, and important content he was able to fit into the 263 pages. The book discusses the historical and current relations between governments and Arctic indigenous peoples; ice flow dynamics and exploration; the changing nature of Arctic ecosystems and species, along with information on what climate change may do to them; international law and the geopolitical implications of a melting Arctic; oil, gas, and other natural resources, and how their availability is likely and unlikely to change in coming decades; the rising tide of Arctic shipping, and the special safety and environmental considerations that accompany it; and the feedback effects that exist between a changing Arctic and a changing climate.

Ecosystems

Some of the best information on the book is about biology and Arctic ecosystems. It describes them from the level of microscopic photosynthetic organisms up to the level of the megafauna that gets so much attention. Anderson argues that most of the large marine mammals (seals, walruses, whales, etc) are threatened to some extent or another by the loss of sea ice. This is for several reasons. First, it could disrupt the lowest levels of the food web they rely upon. Second, it could permit the influx of invasive species that could out-compete, starve, or attack existing Arctic species. Third, the lifecycles of Arctic animals are slow and deliberate, and thus liable to disruption from faster-breeding competitors. Disappearing sea ice off Svalbard has already completely wiped out what was once “one of the best areas for ringed seal reproduction.” Arctic species, argues Anderson, will need to “move, adapt, or die.” Generalists like beluga whales have promise, while the narwhal and polar bear may be the most vulnerable large creature in the ecosystem.

One consequence of the loss of multi-year sea ice that I had not anticipated is the potential for a massive migration of species between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, with invasive species potentially seriously altering the composition of ecosystems on both sides. Melting ice could therefore produce major changes in much of the world’s ocean. Even before that, expanded range for orcas could have a significant effect on life in northern waters. Where ice used to provide safety, by obstructing their pectoral fins, these powerful predators increasingly have free reign.

Resources, shipping, and tourism

Anderson makes an effective argument that most of the oil, gas, and resources in the Arctic will be effectively locked away for some time yet. There will always be ice in the winters, glacial ice calving off Greenland and other Arctic islands poses a significant risk due to its extreme hardness, and very high commodity prices are necessary to justify the risk and capital investment required to operate in the region. (See this post on the the Shtokman gas field.) He expects that, even if there is a boom, it will be short-lived and of limited benefit to those living in the region. In particular, he cautions people living in the north not to abandon traditional ways of life sustained by things other than oil and gas. Living for a couple of rich decades and then being left with nothing would be a tragic outcome.

The book also downplays fears about a scramble for resources and sovereign control. Anderson argues that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) already provides a clear legal framework and that negotiated outcomes are probable. That should provide some comfort to those concerned about diplomatic or even armed conflicts in the changing north. One danger Anderson does highlight is how the risk of collision with ice, increasing shipping and tourist traffic, and the absence of emergency response capabilities could combine. He describes plausible scenarios where major oil spills or massive loss of life could result, due to a problem with a tanker or a cruise ship (disproportionately full of elderly people susceptible to cold, as they are).

While Anderson does an excellent job of explaining some of the risks to species and human beings from a changing Arctic, he doesn’t take seriously the possibility of truly radical or catastrophic change, of the kind highlighted as possible by James Hansen. Anderson also completely fails to describe how the incremental emissions from burning oil and gas in the Arctic would inevitably increase the degree of climate change experienced by humans and natural systems. It is cumulative emissions that matter most, and extracting hydrocarbons from the far north can only increase those.

For anyone with an interest in what is happening to the Arctic and what the medium- and long-term implications of that might be, this book is enthusiastically recommended.

On academic specialization and climate change

I have spent six years in university and taken two degrees: a B.A. with majors in International Relations and Political Science and an M.Phil in International Relations. The logical academic progression, if I were to continue, would be to do a Ph.D or D.Phil. That would take between 2+ (Oxford D.Phil) and 4+ (North American Ph.D) years, but I have my doubts about whether that would be the best use of time. The 2+ is generous for Oxford, given that my thesis was the weakest part of the work I did there. I would need a more solid research project to form the basis of a doctorate.

Doing a doctorate in something like I.R. or PoliSci would certainly involve some new learning: perhaps some more quantatative and qualitative methods, certainly more exposure to theory and a particular subject area for a dissertation. It would increase how much I know about PoliSci/I.R. compared with other people who have studied in those fields.

By contrast, spending 3-4 years studying something like engineering, law, or a pure science would certainly teach me more, relative to what I know now. It would involve whole new methodologies and areas of knowledge. By any objective measure, it would widen my knowledge enormously more than doing more work on PoliSci/I.R.

That said, academia isn’t like trivia; your ranking isn’t based on your relative level of knowledge on a broad range of subjects. Rather, the stature of students is determined by how much they know compared with their peers (and, between real academics, on the basis of publication history).

At this time, I don’t have any interest in trying to rise up in academia. It would surely be a tedious endeavour, full of weird infighting and ever-increasing specialization. My ambition, at this point, is to try to make a difference in how humanity responds to the threat of climate change.

Measured against that objective, the question ceases to be about the relative abstract knowledge value of study in different areas. To me, it seems clear that more PoliSci/I.R. work would be fairly pointless. Some sort of technical study could be useful, depending on how exactly I want to work on climate change. For instance, an engineering degree would give me a better ability to evaluate ideas about energy sources, efficiency, conservation, and so forth.

Despite that, when it comes to lack of action on climate change, I don’t think a lack of technical experts is our problem. We have the knowledge and skills to start building a low-carbon global economy. What we lack is the drive to do so. That drive is unlikely to arise out of academic study, and greater technical knowledge may not provide any insights into how to generate it. Focused on that issue, spending a few more years cloistered in school doesn’t seem like a good way to advance my objective.

Everything about climate change is steeped in uncertainty. Just as we cannot know in advance how the climate system will respond to our actions, we cannot fully anticipate how entrenched human systems will respond to any sort of effort to change them. For now, the best approach seems to be a combination of branching out (to pursue multiple strategies) and determination.

That said, if it ever seems like the world has finally gotten itself off a course towards destruction, it would be nice to go back and study something interesting for the sake of knowledge itself. It would also be around that time that I thought it was fair and potentially sensible to have children. Right now, we would be introducing them into a world fraught with such terrible risk that I question the ethics of doing so.

Black carbon and the Arctic

I have written previously about the climatic importance of black carbon – tiny particles of soot, mostly from burning diesel and biomass, that have a warming effect on the climate. This effect can be most acute when the black carbon falls on snow. It absorbs sunlight and accelerates melting. Andreas Stohl, from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, has tracked pollution from satellite data and identified agricultural burning in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Baltic states as major sources of black carbon that ends up in the Arctic. Stohl and others have also applied trajectory models to determine how pollution from different regions ends up in the Arctic.

As shipping routes become more open, with the vanishing of multi-year sea ice, diesel-burning ships risk becoming a larger source of black carbon in the region. As one paltry step towards slowing the demise of the Arctic as we know it, the coastal states of the Arctic ocean should insist on better particle traps for vessels, both by imposing standards for new construction and requiring retrofits. Germany, Austria, and Switzerland all already have legislation in place requiring such filters. In addition to the climatic benefits, such filters could also benefit human health. Investigations between 1993 and 1998 showed that such filters “can intercept at least 99% of the sub-micron particulates in the range of heightened pulmonary intrusion.”

Governments could also insist on the use of cleaner forms of diesel that generate less black carbon. It is bad enough that oil and gas exploration in the Arctic might accelerate warming – to say nothing of the risks from methane. We don’t need little low-albedo specks of soot making things even worse.

The Lindzen Fallacy

The Lindzen Fallacy is a sub-genre of the fallacy of petitio principii (begging the question) that I have named after MIT Meteorology Professor and climate change delayer Richard Lindzen. I define it as such:

The assumption that fears about catastrophic or runaway climate change are overblown, based on the assumption that climate change can never truly imperil humanity.

Many people have a deep, intuitive sense that the world wil remain as it is. In particular, that it will continue to provide the basic physical requirements of humanity, such as breathable air, acceptable temperatures, and conditions suitable for continued agriculture.

This perspective is clearly a bit of circular logic: climate change cannot be dangerous, because if it were truly dangerous, it would be dangerous. (Repeat as often as you like.)

Negative feedbacks

Lindzen has told the US Coast Guard Academy that: “Extreme weather events are always present. There’s no evidence it’s getting better, or worse, or changing.” He has suggested that there simply must be negative feedbacks that counter the warming effects of greenhouse gases, possibly through the increased radiation of heat into space, caused by columns of tropical cumulus convection carrying large amounts of heat high into the atmosphere. Satellite data from NASA’s Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) mission raises serious doubts about this being a negative climate feedback. His perspective on climate sensitivity appears dubious both in relation to climate models and the paleoclimatic record. Lindzen also argued to the Vice President’s Climate Task Force, in the US under the Bush Administration, that action should not be taken to mitigate climate change. Climatologis James Hansen speculates that: “Lindzen’s perspective on climate sensitivity… stems from an idea of a theological or philosophical perspective that he doggedly adheres to. Lindzen is convinced that nature will find ways to cool itself, that negative feedbacks will diminish the effect of climate forcings.” Back in 1999, Hansen responded to Lindzen’s hypotheses about negative feedbacks by encouraging the scientific community to investigate two things: a) whether water vapour feedbacks can be observed, and b) whether the ocean heat content is increasing in line with the model predictions. In the view of climatologist Gavin Schmidt, subsequent evidence has been supportive of the Hansen view and has drawn into question the Lindzen perspective.

Just showing that negative feedbacks exist is not enough to prove that climate change is dangerous, or that we should do nothing about it. As I argued in a discussion with a different climate denier:

What specific mechanism counteracts the infrared absorbing effect of greenhouse gasses? If such an effect exists, why has it automatically been getting stronger as concentrations rise? Also, what proof is there that even if there were such an effect, it would protect us from any amount of increased GHG concentrations. For instance, continued business-as-usual emissions could push concentrations to over 1000 ppm of CO2 equivalent by 2100, compared to 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution and about 383 ppm now. Even if there were negative feedback effects that significantly reduced the total forcing resulting from increased GHG concentrations (that is, lowered climatic sensitivity), it is possible that they would break down when presented with such a significant change.

It is not enough to show that there are one or more negative feedbacks in the climate system. It is necessary to show that they will be sufficient in magnitude and durability to counter the warming caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases. The fact that concentrations of those and temperatures are still rising suggest that this is not the case in today’s climate, and the existence of massive potential positive feedbacks (Arctic sea ice albedo, permafrost methane, etc) make it dubious for future climates.

Further to that, the point I am raising here is not about the technical means by which Lindzen or anyone else thinks the climate will automatically rebalance in response to changes caused by humanity. Rather, it is to highlight the faulty assumption that such rebalancing can be taken for granted, regardless of the specific means by which it might occur.

The Lindzen Fallacy is dangerous because it offers us false comfort. If mainstream climate science is correct, and a business-as-usual course will produce far more than 2°C of warming by the end of the century, future generations will think back with regret about all those in our time (and before) who falsely believed that the world could never become inhospitable to humans.

A related bit of faulty thinking

The Lindzen fallacy relates to another flawed and potentially dangerous perspective: namely, that humanity is so adaptable that, no matter how much climate changes, humanity will be able to adapt. While it is hard to see how humanity could survive runaway climate change, it is easy to see why someone would think the empirical evidence supports this view. After all, nothing has wiped us out yet. Unfortunately, this logic suffers from the same fault as that of a chicken famously described by Bertrand Russell in The Problems of Philosophy:

And this kind of association is not confined to men; in animals also it is very strong. A horse which has been often driven along a certain road resists the attempt to drive him in a different direction. Domestic animals expect food when they see the person who feeds them. We know that all these rather crude expectations of uniformity are liable to be misleading. The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.

In short, inductive reasoning is dangerous, whenever there is a chance of something truly unprecedented taking place.

There are good scientific reasons to believe that climate change could be just such a dangerous, unprecedented phenomenon in relation to human beings.

Ocean acidification video

Ocean acidification is one of the least appreciated elements of climate change. As the atmosphere fills with carbon dioxide, some of it dissolves into the oceans. That, in turn, makes the water more acidic. This could become a major threat to organisms that depend on being about to draw calcium from the water to make exoskeletons, such as corals and shelled creatures like crabs, lobsters, sea urchins, and shrimp. The latest research from the Carnegie Institution suggests that the world’s coral reefs will begin to disintegrate before the end of the century, if we keep releasing greenhouse gas pollutants at this rate.

Over at A Few Things Ill Considered, there is a link to a good twenty-minute video explaining the problem.

The only way to keep the oceans from getting ever-more acidic is to stop using the atmosphere as a dump for carbon dioxide pollution. The most important means of limiting that is to stop burning coal, as well as unconventional oil and gas.

While the consequences of acidification for corals may be sad, and may offend our aesthetics, it is worth remembering that all life on the planet depends indirectly on ocean life for survival. We cannot know in advance what consequences there will be for humanity, if we continue to use the atmosphere as a dump and turn the oceans to acid.