Climate Change update

I think the argument over climate change is fascinating. Each camp purports to have it figured out, and neither do. The press fuels this debate ad nauseum. In Washington. it's just another item split down the center aisle of congress.

But this issue is different. Mainly because we don't really have much past history to go on...how do we deal with the possibility of real havoc and disruption to our way of life, caused by weather? Dinasaurs know what can happen when the climate goes haywire, but we don't. We did see fascism, Communism and terrorism as real threats to our way of life but only when we were slapped in the face with it...we can't seem to wrap our head around climate weirdness.

Is part of the problem that Bush (Cheney) told us that Saddam was a real global threat and then he turned out not to be? But that was just the US right, not the whole world. The whole world says the threat is real or possibly real, but nothing is really being done. CO2 concentration are going up and will continue to go up.

Cap and Trade you say? That system has already proven to be too cumbersome politically. It might be a good idea until "fine tuned" by state-by-state partisanship. But the reason why it will be ineffective is congressmen don't believe their constituents (special interest groups) will stomach change in the name of climate change. (It may serve them right that they all won their office telling voters to "vote for change".)

It may be obvious that I am very pessimistic about our government's ability to lead on this particular fight. I think this one is up to the populace. We are the ones that will have to drive climate change change. Because deep down no one wants dirty air from coal, unfriendly foreign oil, expensive to operate gas guzzlers, or to toy around with our climate.

Bottom Line - We want a clean healthy environment, no resource wars (oil), stable climate with renewable resources to grow and provide opportunity for generations to come.

We need a common enemy to call out and focus on, ie...Fascism, Communism, terrorism...climate-ism? Resource-ism? Depletion-ism?

What Pogo said was true; "We have met the enemy and he is us." Us-ism?

Climate Change update #2

It's been an interesting few weeks in the Climate Change arena politically. Legislation for Cap and Trade and the G-8 talks have roused both sides of the issue into a frenzy.

If you have read my previous posts on the topic, I have come down solidly on the side of no one. The realities of our planet overheating in the future may or may not be exist but...it's the two sides that now bother me...

Warmers, the people who fully believe that the planet is being warmed by man, are called alarmists. People who believe the science is wrong or rigged are called deniers. Alarmist are usually Democrats and deniers are usually Republican. Typically the deniers are described as the minority in the science world.

However, in polls of the American people there seems to be some fence sitting by many and legions for both sides who are sure their brand of religion is best and they KNOW it.

It surprises me in this day and age we can't take more moderated views and be a little more humble about what we think we KNOW. I include both sides in that concern. An AGW alarmist is just as know-it-all as a denier. Both claim the "science is on their side". Engaging in any discussion on the topic will evoke serious "know" statements from either side about the clarity of the science or the lack of clarity about the science.

The media loves a good fight so they fuel this debate for as long as they can. So, why should we care?

Because we have to take action now if we hope to forestall what is possible if all the "alarmists" are right. Man is causing the world to warm and the pace is increasing. A warming climate could cause disruption to all living things on the planet because the pace of warming is too fast for adaptation to it's subsequent climate changes.

The action required is a lot more simple than Cap and Trade and G-8 wrangling would lead you to believe. We just need to drastically reduce fossil fuel use. Don't get too caught up in discussions about deforestation, cow farts, cement plants etc. They have an impact, in fact a large one, but they aren't the real issue. The real issue is we take ancient carbon in coal and oil and turn it into atmospheric carbon in an instant, by burning it. And, our economy is totally dependant on this process.

In addition, there are very large company's and countries around the world that depend on the need for this to continue.

So all the wrangling is about changing the world's economy from a fossil fuel based one to alternative energy. The benefits of which will be enormous. The dream of running the earth on clean energy not controlled by unfriendly countries is worthy in it self. The heath and stability benefits would be an amazing boon to societies rich and poor. The world would be a better place.

And that's without the concerns about Climate Change.

The specter of rapid warming is really ugly. It's clear the effects would be significant but, what and where they are, isn't clear. So alarmists are quick to point out the latest hurricane or pine borer. And denialists are quick to point out the lack of anomaly or cause for concern. But that's not the real issue. The real issue is whether we can afford to play this out with a fossil fuel based economy? Can we wait and see who's right?

The answer is no. A rapid change in our global temperatures would threaten our way of life much more than a shift away from fossil fuel. We can't gamble and hope that the denialists are right. We are going to have to change our energy sources and while we do that, we are going to have to emit less carbon into the atmosphere by using less fossil fuel and cleaning the emissions as much as possible.

Bottom Line - The question isn't who's side is right. The question is, who's side can we afford to be wrong? That answer is clear in my view. One position protects us from calamity and improves our world. One maintains the status quo and hopes for the best.

But, back to the sides. If the sides keep arguing about "if" there is a problem then when we have a vote for cap and trade for example, how much of it is still about "if" instead of how. Does the rhetoric. or votes, reflect a senator or congressman's concerns about whether this is the best way, or if we should be doing anything at all?

I am very concerned we will end up with partisan positions, entrenched and immovable, when we can't really risk doing this wrong. It's the only thing worse than doing nothing.

Climate Change update

One area where I spend the most reading time is Climate Change. If you have read my prior posts on this topic, you know I haven't been fully convinced we (the world) have a real handle on the issue.

An area I recently needed to better understand was CO2 in the atmosphere. We generally hear pundits, scientists etc. all point to the idea that CO2 is put into the atmosphere where it resides for hundreds of years. Every day we compound this problem with another car, cow or human.

But that isn't really true. CO2 is a natural part of our global system of air, water, land, plants and animals. We are carbon based life forms. So in reality, carbon is a big system cycling from air to land or water etc every day. Limestone is the result of carbon trapped in sediment and shells. Trees are 50% carbon. Water dissolves carbon, even in the air, so rain washes carbon from the atmosphere.

So what's all the fuss about? We humans take a lot of long-term carbon like trees, oil, coal, natural gas and we burn them. Taking hundreds to millions of years of stored carbon and releasing it into the air to start the cycle over. Another example is making cement, it takes limestone and heats it releasing lots of carbon stored millions of years ago.

So what we (you and I) do is take long term carbon and turn it into very short term carbon in our atmosphere. There it blocks the sun's earth-reflected radiation from escaping back into space.

But it is rained out, deposited into the water and onto the land as part of the natural cycle. So, the good news is it isn't up there forever, the bad news is, the earth can't deal with it all as quickly as we can make it.

Bottom Line 1 - Atmospheric CO2 is part of a natural cycle. Some of that cycle is long term, and some is short. What's at issue is that we take too much long term CO2 and turn too much of it into short term (atmospheric) CO2.

One has to remember that our earth is a closed system. The only things that leave or enter our environment is solar radiation and the odd meteor. We, including Mother Nature, don't create any matter or elements, we just convert them. The amount of CO2 is fixed, the only question is the form it takes.

Bottom Line #2 - The older the carbon is and the longer it takes to make it into a given form, (oil is old) the more we are artificially changing the CO2 cycle.

Carbon Cap and Trade

In my very first post here I mentioned cap and trade. The idea is we define how much carbon we agree to release into the air (the cap). Then we sell a share (credit) of that to businesses that produce carbon. They can then sell those "credits" creating a trading market. Like stock trades, you have carbon credit trades.

President Obama has already built revenue into his budget from the initial sale of these credits. (646 billion). Every carbon producer will have to pay for the amount of carbon they produce by buying sufficient credits to offset the carbon produced. If you produce less emissions later you can sell your extra credits. If your business grows and you need more credits to cover your additional emissions, you must buy them in the market at market price.

Europe started theirs in 2005 and they gave all the credits away initially. Right now prices for credits are depressed due to the recession. (There are more credits than carbon being produced.)

Bottom Line #1 - Cap and trade is already integral to a budget long before its been vetted by congress. It is a market created from the ground up to price carbon emissions and limit or reduce the amount produced. Europe would like us to join their system so there will eventually be a global cap and trade market.

Taxes are the alternative. Simply tax every ton of carbon produced. Some would argue it's all a tax but "cap and trade" is just another way of saying it. Either way, industry will be faced with a cost to putting carbon in our air. Boulder Colorado already has a carbon tax and other states have implemented programs as well.

Bottom Line #2 - The opportunity to argue whether carbon is a real problem or not has mostly passed. It's now down to how to build a market mechanism to reduce the amount, rather than just hand it to the EPA, call it a pollutant, and regulate it through fines etc.

AGW update

In my second post, I was challenged by one reader to try and sort out the argument for and against global warming being man made. (See comments under Anthropogenic Global Warming).

As pointed out, there was time when we were very concerned about global cooling. This was in large a media driven concern with very little scientific support. Volcanoes spewed enough particulate to in theory block the sun. Nothing like impending Apocalypse to get the media stirred up...

This concern wasn't really supported by scientists like AGW. It pales in comparison to the peer reviewed research and publications supporting the position that man is indeed affecting our climate. If one edits out the media, in all forms, which must include Al Gore, the climate scientists are pretty much in agreement. Man does have an effect.

I don't normally post a link but this is the list of those that support the research and the conclusion, http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm (don't read the darn thing because next you will have to read the IPCC report etc etc....my advice, steer clear.)

Once you remove the media naysayers and non-climate scientists from the mix on the non-man made global warming camp, it gets kinda thin...

But here is the current argument against man made global warming: They, the climate scientists, are all wrong. They are victims of their own research mistakes and economic/governmental pressures. They are drinking their own bath water. They can't show the effects definitively so therefore it's deemed supposition. Care for a swine flu shot? Worried about Y2K? Comet Kohoutek?

Largely the argument is, if it can't be proved definitively, it's hard to hang your hat (or economy) on fluctuating science.

Back to the media. One of the largest mistakes by everyone in the pro-AGW camp is trying to contribute yesterday's storm to global warming. Katrina? Remember how they said the next year would be even worse for hurricanes? If they find a dead polar bear it's because he ran out of ice to live on...scientists don't jump to those conclusions, at least most of them.

We are talking about parts per million of CO2. The change is very small. It's not going to sneak up on the polar bears overnight. The world won't go haywire in one news cycle.

Bottom Line - The only problem with the science is the projections into the future. As you can imagine, they aren't sure because of the huge number of variables. So they have hedged their bets by offering different AGW scenarios. When revisited, they adjust these scenarios (these days into more dire forecasts of acceleration). How do you get the world to act, based on these changing conclusions?

Some may have noted the loss of our new CO2 measuring satellite this week. If we still can't launch a satellite successfully, how should we expect the climate scientist to hit the nail on the head?

Anthropogenic Global Warming

The insiders just call it AGW. I still can't believe I am using anthropogenic in any sentence. It essentially means man made.

For anybody spending time looking into green issues you can't help but be affected by the 800 lb gorilla in environmental news, literature, science etc....global warming. But the argument is still about, if man is causing the warming.

Al Gore took the subject and made it mainstream, but his famous hockey stick graph has since been proven false. I was at one time pretty sure that man made global warming was real, and the evidence and science had finally come to agreement. But of course, it's never that simple.

So lets look at the issue and see what we can conclude. First, the reason we focus on the Arctic and Antarctic is because the effects of global warming are magnified in those areas. But anyone watching can easily get mired down in debates about what ice is disappearing, what is growing larger and how will polar bears survive?

In addition there are ice core records going back 800,000 years. Scientists look at these for signs of past warming and increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And frankly, 800 thousand years is a pretty good data slice for mankind, but it’s woefully inadequate for the history of the earth.

So we know that there are natural warming and cooling periods in history including recent time. There is a lot of good data that says we are warming. There's also some pretty good data that says we are cooling??? Earth orbit, sun spots, El Ninos etc all contribute as does water vapor, particulate matter (volcanoes) and yes carbon. Oh and there's much more, because we are talking about a hugely complex system we call global climate.

Bottom Line 1 - So first, you have to know that no-one knows. Second, you have to realize that many advocates on both sides of the issue all have an agenda. There are many holes in the data and much "projecting" (including Al's graph) that assumes we know enough to project our climate future. In my view, that's hubris on our part, we couldn't even figure out if Iraq had WMD's. And Al's graph was the victim of a "miscalculation".

So continuing the issue, once you wade through the cooling/warming arguments you get the man made or anthropogenic argument. Is it our fault? How much is our fault? Now we are really on thin ice (pun intended) when we look at the data. How are we supposed to take all of these factors that are natural into account along with our measly few hundred years of temperature data?

One then has to decide what the effect will be of more rapid warming caused by us if in fact its caused by both nature and man!? Can nature adjust to such a global double whammy? Will we be able to grow corn in Iowa or is that our next desert? Are your driving habits the principle cause of it all?

Bottom Line 2- The bad news is I really don't know if AGW is a real problem or not. But, and its a big but...can we afford to be wrong if it is? It will cost the globe trillions to fix the man made problem and it will cost trillions if we don't do anything and the man made warming continues unabated and accelerating.

There's also the idea that this planet has been warmer before and will be again and that isn't a bad thing. In fact, it has shown to be much better for the plants and animals on earth when its warm and steamy. Growing seasons are extended, plants thrive and the animals follow suit and you get Jurassic Park.

There is also a camp that says racing against our own emissions build up, to prevent the catastrophic effects projected, is fools play. We should in fact be preparing to mitigate or remediate the effects. Move people away from the coasts, prepare to modify or move crops etc etc. Some say it would be cheaper.

It’s also worth noting that our newly elected wordsmith President Obama, used the words "roll back the specter of a warming planet" in his inauguration speech. Specter is an interesting word choice dont you think?

Bottom Line 3- There is very little that we do day to day that adds carbon to the air that also doesn't have other deleterious effects on us and our environment. So the easy choice for us is to minimize these activities. When called to vote on or support a specific Carbon Tax or Carbon Cap and Trade we aren't going to be sure, but we can't afford to be wrong if in fact we are artificially heating our planet. Like buying fire insurance, you don't buy it because you will have a fire, you buy it in case you have a fire. Rapid global warming caused by us would be a terrible legacy to leave to future generations.