GLOBAL WARMING AND WARNING
Introduction
What is Global Warming?
Climate Change Science Landmarks
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Effects of Global Warming
Exhibit A, New Orleans
Kyoto Protocol
Global Warming Policy
Suggested Actions
Energy Sources
Global Wasrming and Family Values
Suggestions for Further Reading
Introduction
Al Gore's movie, slide shows, and book, An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It (2006) have been very effective in focusing attention on global warming. To see The film's trailer, go to An Inconvenient Truth. Gore is not a "Johnny come lately" on global warming. In 1981 he and some House of Representative colleagues held hearings on Reagan's proposed cuts on funding for carbon dioxide studies. This stirred up some media interest in the subject. Gore's book seems to come from the script and graphics for his slide show supplemented by family history. The pictures and graphs are eye-opening and may be worth the price of the book, but for an introductory book on global warming, I prefer some of the more conventional books suggested below.
The second big influence on the media was the 2007 report (cited below) of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is regarded as the most authoritative voice on climate change. This fourth report drove the final nail in the coffin of the global warming deniers.
Public concern about global warming is rising, but it has a long way to go. According to the Pew Research Center in August, 2006, only 47% of Americans thought human activity is causing global warming. Just as we have crossed a social threshold in respect to smoking, we need to cross a social threshold in our concern about global warming well before the Earth passes a climatological threshold where the warming is unstoppable, and that could be sooner than we think.
The Earth has gone through much climate change, both warming and cooling, so what is different about current "global warming?" The term often implies that it is warming that is predominantly man-caused, and that is the difference.
The Earth's surface has always been warmed from solar radiation and the "greenhouse effect." On a cold, sunny day the interior of a greenhouse will heat up. The reason is that the Sun's radiation is mostly short-wave light that easily penetrates the glass and is absorbed by the interior surfaces that re-radiate the heat in the form of long infrared rays, which can't escape through the glass. The atmosphere is like a greenhouse in that it traps the heat, but is does so in a different way. "Greenhouse gases" absorb some of the radiant energy from the Sun and some of the warmth from the Earth and re-radiates some of it out into space and some back to the Earth.
The most important greenhouse gas is water vapor, which can't be directly controlled. The gases associated with man's activities are carbon dioxide (380 parts per million), methane mostly from rice paddies and belching cows (only about 1.8 ppm but absorbs over 20 times as much energy as CO2), near-surface ozone occurring when sunlight attacks other pollutants (0.03 ppm), nitrous oxide (0.3 ppm but absorbs 300 times as much as CO2), and CFCs and HFCs from refrigerants (about 1 ppb). CFCs (choroflourocarbons) play a duel role of being a greenhouse gas and also of destroying stratospheric ozone, which blocks harmful ultraviolet radiation.
We thought that the Montreal Protocol in 1987 was bringing CFCs under control, but the expanding use especially in India and China of the refrigerant HCFC-22, which also destroys ozone but is much less harmful than DFDs, is worrisome. There will be another meeting in Momtreal to tackle the problem. Production of HCFC--22 is to be phased out by 2020 in industrial countries generally but by 2010 in the US, but developing countries including India and China have until 2040. Industrial countries currently must phase out production of HCFC-22 by 2020 and are ahead of schedule, with the United States banning domestic production in 2010.
I have lived in several places such as Ithaca, New York, where I thought a little warming would be a good thing. However, there are often unexpected consequences of global warming, and while some regions may benefit from it, others may be harmed. Earth would be uninhabitable if we didn't have a moderate greenhouse effect, but we are getting too much of a good thing. We don't want to suffer the fate of the planet Venus, which has so much greenhouse gas that the surface is heated to over 800F.
The notion that an increase in "greenhouse gases" may cause global warming was not discovered by Al Gore. As in most scientific research the idea was gradually evolved over time. Here are some of the key scientists and their discoveries.
In the late 1850s John Tyndal, an Irish physicist, studied the absorptive properties of common atmospheric gases. He found that nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen are almost transparent to radiant heat while more complex molecules such as carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor are not. From this landmark finding he deduced the following: "Thus the atmosphere admits of the entrance of the solar heat, but checks its exit; and the result is a tendency to accumulate heat at the surface of the planet." This is the greenhouse effect. See John Tyndall's Research on Trace Gases and Climate.
In 1895 Svante Arrhenius actually calculated what would happen if atmospheric carbon dioxide were doubled and found that the mean alteration of temperature would be between about plus 5 and 6 degrees C, which is remarkably close to current estimates. (See On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.)
In scientific papers starting in 1938 Guy Stewart Callendar linked rising human produced carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to global temperature.
In 1958 Charles D. Keeling started measuring carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere at a base on Mauna Loa in Hawaii and found that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from 315 parts per million (ppm) in 1958 to 380 ppm in 2005. Furthermore, these increases were closely correlated with fossil fuel emissions. He also found seasonal variations caused by plant use of carbon dioxide. (Most of the vegetation is north of the equator.) The curve that can be plotted using his data is well known as the Keeling curve. (See Keeling Curve.) From analyzing the air in bubbles trapped in the fossil ice in Antartica it has been shown that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere never exceeded 300 ppm in the preindustrial period.
In 1988 the UN's Environment Programme along with the World Meteorlogical Association established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that makes consensus assessments based on peer reviewed and published scientific/technical literature. For more on the IPCC go to The IPCC: Who Are They and Why Do Their Climate Reports Matter? This source says, "AR4 (the fourth report that has been released) will be the most comprehensive synthesis of climate change science to date. Experts from more than 130 countries are contributing to this assessment, which represents six years of work. More than 450 lead authors have received input from more than 800 contributing authors, and an additional 2,500 experts reviewed the draft documents."
The IPCC's assessments over the years illustrate how the scientific case connecting human activities to global warming has strengthened. Here are conclusions in several reports:
There are three key findings of these reports: 1) the world is unequivocally warming and 2) most of the warming is very likely due to man-caused greenhouse gases, and 3) the problem must be addressed quickly. We can debate the details, but the general outline of the problem is settled. We now not only have a "preponderance of evidence" indicting man for global warming; we have "clear and convincing evidence" if not evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt."
Here are some major bad effects of global warming:
We should note that climate models can't yet factor in the effects of increasing clouds due to warmer oceans. The clouds cause more heat to be trapped resulting in more warming, which causes more clouds (a positive feedback). It is scary to contemplate what the next IPCC report will say five or six years from now, which will reflect results from improved models and more data especially on ice and snow melting.
We should also note that the present level of greenhouse gases will cause continued warming for over a 1,000 years even if we stop adding gases tomorrow. So, we can't stop global warming in the short run; all we can do is slow it down and reduce the ultimate consequences.
It would be unconscionable folly to rebuild all of New Orleans for reasons of both safety and economics, but most politicians are afraid to admit it or haven't seriously considered the problem. (Dennis Hassert was a notable exception.) Like an unthinking colony of ants we commit ourselves to fixing the damage without consideration of the risk or alternative uses for the funds.
New Orleans is doomed by the rising ocean, subsiding land, vanishing protective wetlands, high river flood crests with or without a storm surge from the Gulf, the prospect of the river changing course, and the prospect of more powerful hurricanes. The enormously expensive levee improvement being contemplated will only delay the inevitable a few years at best, and the levees are very vulnerable to terrorist attacks. See Rebuiding New Orleans, Thoughts on Rebuilding (and Not Rebuilding) New Orleans, and Infeasibility of Rebuilding New Orleans.
It is well to remember that Katrina was not the "big one" since it tamed down from an offshore Category 5 hurricane to a 3 when it made landfall and most of New Orleans was hit by a glancing blow that was down to Category 1 or 2 strength winds. However, the "big one" is coming sooner or later.
The first international treaty on global warming was enacted at the "Earth Summit," in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It was the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which set no mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions and had no provisions for enforcement, but it did call for "updates." It was signed by George H. W. Bush and approved by the U.S. Senate. Developing countries agreed to mitigate climate change and developed countries agreed to aim to reduce them to the 1990 level.
In 1997 the Senate passed the Byrd-Hagel Resolution stating that the U.S. should reject any agreement that committed it to reducing emissions without committing undeveloped countries to reduce theirs. The first update to the Framework was the Kyoto Protocol negotiated in 1997 and became effective in 2005 after 169 countries, finally including Russia, signed on. Only two industrialized nations, the U.S. and Australia, have rejected the treaty. For more on the Kyoto Protocol see Kyoto Protocol.
Instead of being a leader in the forging of the Kyoto Protocol we simply thumbed our nose at the rest of the world and went on driving our SUVs down the road toward climate catastrophe.
Some people supporting the status quo still argue that there is too much uncertainty about global warming to adopt serious policies to slow it and that we need more research. Although there is uncertainty, most of it is about how bad the problem is rather than if it is a problem, and we will always need more research.
Suppose you are considering whether or not to buy fire insurance. What is the probability of your house burning in the coming year? You could say that there is too much uncertainty for you to make a decision, but you do buy insurance because although the probability of loss is small and uncertain, the consequences of a fire are just too great. Decisions should be based on risk, which is determined by both probability and impact. (Another example is that the probability of any one cargo container carrying a WMB is very low, but the impact of one is extremely high. We can not rationally continue to take the risk of not checking all of them either here or at the place of origin.)
With respect to global warming the consensus of climate scientists is that without effective intervention there is both a high probability of much increased global warming and the impact will be very great, so we can't rationally take the risk of doing nothing. (See More Hot Air.)
Some people have finally admitted that there is man-caused global warming, but they only want voluntary efforts to reduce it rather than having mandatory regulations. They say that mandatory carbon capping would adversely effect the economy. That's like saying that we shouldn't have drunk driving laws because they adversely affect our partying. On the plus side the greening of the economy will stimulate some sectors of the economy.
Free market fundamentalists want to let the unfettered market work its magic. The problem is that there is market failure. I discuss the matter in Market Failure. A necessary but not sufficient requirement for the free market to optimize resource allocation is to include all costs including external social costs in product prices. A high external cost of gasoline is that it produces pollutants and greenhouse gas that are social costs not included in the cost of the gasoline or cars. (Another external cost is that the dollars go to Arab countries where some of it winds up in the hands of terrorists.) A truck-based SUV produces more CO2 than regular cars, but we exempt them from the CAFE mileage standard. What kind of a policy is that? It's a policy bought and paid for by special interest groups like the oil and auto industries.
In changing market behavior incentives matter, and there are three approaches to take: 1) Subsidize alternative fuel producers. We are doing a lot of this. 2) Enact a carbon tax, which is dreaded in a country that hates taxes. This approach puts the social cost of greenhouse emissions in the price of the offending product. This is a direct, fair, and efficient way to change behavior. A higher tax on gasoline, for example, is hard on low income people, but that can be offset by lower income taxes for the lower brackets. See Carbon Tax Provides Fairest Incentive For Curbing Global Warming. 3) Adopt a "cap-and-trade" scheme, which uses the market in an ingenious way. The government caps the total emissions allowable, which is allocated to emission producers. Entities exceeding their allowance or credit must buy credits from those with excess credits. The higher the price of credits gets the more the incentive is to reduce emissions becomes. See U.S. Climate Change Policy Recommendations.
In 2006 California enacted legislation for the most extensive carbon dioxide emission controls yet in the United States. The law requires a 25 percent reduction in state carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, but the first major controls don't take effect until 2012. However, the EPA decided to deny California’s application for a waiver of preemption under the Clean Air Act for the state’s greenhouse gas emission controls for new motor vehicles.
The fossil fuel companies need to think of themselves as energy companies rather than just oil or gas companies. If they increased research on alternative fuels by using the money they spend on trying to open sensitive areas for oil exploration and to neutralize initiatives to develop alternative energy, they would no doubt improve their long-term growth. They are acting like buggy makers when cars were invented, but one wagon maker, Studebaker, saw the writing on the wall and switched to making cars and grew tremendously only to finally succumb to poor management.
We need to establish as our goal a quick transition to an environmentally sustainable economy. We should reduce the use of fossil fuels for energy by improving efficiency, by conservation, and by researching, developing, and adopting alternative energy sources. Happily, the same measures are needed for us to become energy independent, to improve air quality for health and quality of life, to reduce long-term energy costs, and to preserve resources for coming generations whether there is global warming or not.
Far more information on policy go to Earth Policy Institute and Sustainable Development.
Here are some specific suggestions for actions to combat global warming:
We shouldn't take wrong turns such as ramping up corn ethanol production, which requires about as much energy in production as it yields. It requires both a lot of petroleum to run the farm machines, to make the fertilizers, and to transport the product. Also, it takes coal or petroleum to do the distilling. Unfortunately, corn ethanol can't be resisted by politicians, especially those from the corn belt. A more promising approach is to make cellulosic ethanol. (See Creating Cellulosic Ethanol: Spinning Straw into Fuel.)
The importation of sugar ethanol from the Brazil and the Caribean should be encouraged, but our domestic special interest groups have bought off Congress and got a $0.54 per gallon import tariff slapped on sugar alcohol. See liberalizing International Trade in Sugar.
Hydrogen has been touted as the fuel of the future, and that is the problem--it's too far in the future. At this time the most economical way to produce it is from crude oil, which is what we want to wean ourselves from. For more information on alternative fuels go to Alternative Fuels Data Center.
Hybrid cars are enjoying popularity, but even the best of them are only an interim solution. Their only basic advantage is that they capture energy from braking, and the engine doesn't idle. "Plug-in hybrids" that can recharge by plugging into home electrical outlets are a much more promising technology, but presently most electricity comes from fossil fuel-powered generators.
Thin-film photovoltaic panels are an exciting development in solar-electric power generation, but more work must be done to get the costs down. We need more wind farms in appropriate locations. We need to work on designs to generate electricity from tidal and wave action.
Family values must include an appropriate consideration for the welfare of our children and future generations. An obligation to pass along to our heirs an Earth that is as good as we found it may be viewed as a religious obligation or a secular moral obligation. Hopefully, there are few people who would dismissively ask, "What has posterity ever done for us?"
Some people need to critically examine their notion of family values. For example, which is the most important family value issue, gay marriage or fossil fuel burning? (Gay marriage is a moral issue, but not in the way most people think. In a pluralistic society is it moral for a government to prevent people doing what they think is in their best interest when it does no harm to anybody else?) In any case the issue of gay marriage is of trivial importance compared to the issue of stewardship of the Earth.
In the 1940s it took Roosevelt's and Churchill's leadership to show us the dangers of totalitarianism and launch a moral crusade to stop it. We just hunkered down and did it. Likewise we need strong visionary leadership to help us recognize the dangers from global warmer and to hunker down and meet the challenge.
Americans, have a special moral responsibility to reduce global warming because with one twentieth of the global population, we have contributed one quarter of the buildup of carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere. Average American per capita production of CO2 in 2003 was 22 tons, 5.5 times the amount that the entire Indian nation of 1.1 billion people did.
There is a growing trend among religious leaders to consider global warming as a moral and spiritual issue. See Religious Group Responds to Global Warming.
Here is an excellent online sites on global warming: The Pew Center on Global Climate Change
Another very good online resource is Professor Stephen Schneider's Web page entitled An Overview of the climate Change Problem. To hear short speech by him, go to the bottom of the page and click on Prsentation on climate Change.
For a very good online essay on global warming with many very effective graphs, see Is There Still Time to Avoid Dangerous 'Anthropogenic Interference' with Global Climate?
Another good overview on climate change from the National Academy of Sciences is Understanding and Responding to Climate Change.
A good ongoing source of global warming information is provided by RealClimate.
There are some good non-technical books on global warming. If you want a good fast read on global warming, I recommend Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (2006) by Elizabeth Kolbert. Her book grew out of a three-part series she wrote for the New Yorker and reads like a good New Yorker article. To read a good interview with Kolbert, go to Field of Nightmares.
Another good comprehensive book is The Rough Guide to Climate Change (2006) by Robert Henson, who is on the communications staff of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. If you would like to hear Henson interviewed, go to Is Mild Winter a Sign of Climate Change?
A good book on the history of climate change research is entitled The Discovery of Global Warming (2004) by physicist Spencer R. Weart. He also has a good Web site on climate change entitled The Discovery of Global Warming, which supplements his much shorter book.
A good non-technical textbook on climate change is Global Warming, The Complete Briefing (3rd Edition, 2004) by Sir John Houghton, who has been a leader in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. To read a speech on global warming that Sir John gave to the National Association of Evangelicals go to Climate Change: A Christian Challenge and Opportunity.