“We’re going to defend first and foremost existing federal greenhouse gas standards. We’re defending them because they’re good for the entire nation. No one should think it’s easy to undo something that’s been not just good for the country, but good for the planet.”
-Xavier Becerra, Attorney General of California, indicating to The New York Times his state’s determination to defend its right to maintain the current federal auto emission targets within its borders, in the face of the EPA’s impending plans to roll back those emission standards
According to reporting by The New York Times, my buddy Scott Pruitt’s EPA is planning to announce in the next few days its plans to significantly roll back the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards adopted in 2012 under an agreement, at the time, with Ford, GM, Chrysler, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar/Land Rover, Kia, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyota, and Volvo, as well as the United Auto Workers (UAW). The regulations adopted at that time in agreement with these automakers — which account for over 90% of vehicle sales in the U.S. — require automakers to nearly double the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.
It is also a goal that is achievable. This EPA website (live link, saved image in case it gets deleted) summarizes technologies available now or nearly developed that could meet this goal. It’s not as if all new cars would need to be Tesla’s by 2025. The enabling technologies include (for a standard gasoline engine car):
Variable valve timing and lift, cylinder deactivation, and turbocharging;
Electric power steering;
Turning off the engine when the car is stopped;
Fuel-efficient tires and aerodynamics;
Weight reduction materials;
8-speed transmissions.
As an engineer, I assess that the implementation of these technologies by 2025 would be butter. The fully electrified, fully hybrid cars we normally identify with environmental friendliness would be icing on the cake.
The EPA assesses (right now) that the above technologies could increase average fleet fuel economy from around 35 mpg now to around 53 mpg in 2025, reducing oil consumption by about 12 billion barrels and reducing CO2 pollution by about six billion tons over the lifetime of all the cars affected by the regulations, while the average vehicle cost would rise from about $25,000 to about $27,000 (an increase of less than 10%).
Right now, only Canada and the U.S. have committed themselves to such aggressive fuel efficiency standards by 2025. Presumably, since the goals appear achievable, this would be a great way for Canada and the U.S. to place themselves in a technological leadership position in a world in which all nations except three have committed themselves to the Paris climate agreement.
In March, 2017, at a Detroit auto research facility, President Trump said, “I’m sure you’ve all heard the big news that we’re going to work on the CAFE standards so you can make cars in America again.” What is he talking about? We are the people who put astronauts on the moon! As a professional engineer, I guarantee you engineers at Ford, GM, Chrysler, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar/Land Rover, Kia, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyota, and Volvo are not shrinking from the challenge of implementing valve timing and lift, cylinder deactivation, turbocharging, electric power steering, turning off the engine when the car is stopped, and 8-speed transmissions by 2025.
Today’s future requires vehicles that enable our rapid movement without destroying our atmosphere. Perhaps our federal legislature should offer a financial award for the first to produce a practical substitute for gas guzzling, CO2 spouting, global warming, inefficient internal combustion engines. Oh, except wait, we already have them!
California argues it should be able to maintain the current standards. It has a special waiver under the 1970 Clean Air Act empowering it to enforce stronger air pollution standards than those set by the federal government. And it means to exercise that waiver in all of our interest. 12 other states including New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania have historically followed its lead, making up together more than one-third of the U.S. auto market.
Federalism may save us from the worst, as these 13 states could force automakers to choose between dividing their product offerings between two separate markets or simply doing the right thing. To my friends and family in California, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, THANK YOU for your leadership!
I submit it would be the height of hypocrisy for the GOP, the party of small government and states’ rights, to argue that California should not be allowed to define tighter emission standards within its own borders.
Image credit: Modern Mechanix. Image of a short article that appeared in the August, 1953 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine.
This article, which appeared in the August, 1953 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine, references the work of Dr. Gilbert Plass, a Canadian physicist who had just begun using some of the world’s first high-speed computers to perform accurate calculations of infrared absorption of sun radiation in all layers of our Earth’s atmosphere. The many calculations required could not have been accomplished by hand. The layer-by-layer atmospheric radiation model Dr. Plass constructed provided the first decisive proof that carbon dioxide additions to the atmosphere could be expected to increase our Earth’s surface temperature. (This had been suspected since the 1800’s, but reasonable scientists disagreed and the dispute could not be settled without more accurate data or computations.)
I have tried to find out what computers Dr. Plass used, but I can’t find that information published anywhere. The IBM 701, pictured below, was the first mass produced computer and was introduced just a few months before the above article.
Image credit: ComputerHope.com. Photograph of an IBM 701 computer, the first mass produced computer, introduced on April 7, 1953. It had 1.28 kB of memory and could perform 2,200 multiplications per second. 19,701 computers were sold.
Dr. Plass’ predictions in the above article, later refined in a series of scientific papers he published in 1956, have proven remarkably accurate. If you want to learn more about how Dr. Plass’ work fits into our knowledge of climate change, check out Episode 3 of my Brief History of Climate Change Evidence. To see just how well Dr. Plass’ predictions held up, check out Episode 7, where we look at modern temperature measurements and grade his work.
Spoiler alert: It’s been 65 years since the above article; lots of accurate measurements have been made by scientists all over the world, and the article was pretty much right on.
Every week since April, 2012, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has delivered a speech on the Senate floor, imploring the U.S. Senate and federal government to take substantive action on global climate change. His speeches have often referenced readily observable effects of climate change in his home state of Rhode Island and elsewhere in the world. They have often referenced detailed data from peer-reviewed scientific studies. They have often been delivered to an empty Senate chamber. They have added up to over 500 hours of remarks on climate change in the U.S. Senate.
On Tuesday, March 13, 2018, Senator Whitehouse delivered his 200th such weekly address. It being the 200th, it was attended by 16 fellow Senators, all of them Democrats or Independents.
One might think, after some 500 hours talking on the Senate floor, sometimes to nobody but C-Span, Senator Whitehouse would be exhausted. Perhaps he is. In any case, exhaustion doesn’t show in his 200th speech, which I think is passionate, accurate, and superb. The full text of his speech, as prepared for delivery on the Senate floor, follows. It doesn’t take too long to read, and it basically sums up our problem. Links in his comments to related content on this website have been added by me.
“By any measure, Mr./Madam President, Americans are dissatisfied. Opinion surveys tell us that only 35 percent of Americans believe that the country is headed in the right direction.
Why this alarming dissatisfaction? We don’t have to guess: popular opinion tells us quite plainly. In a survey taken after the 2016 election, 85 percent of voters agreed that the wealthy and big corporations are the ones really running the country. That includes 80 percent of voters who supported Trump.
It’s not just opinion: academic studies have looked at Congress and confirmed that the views of the general public have statistically near zero influence here; that we listen to big, corporate special interests, and their various front groups.
Even the Supreme Court is not immune. In a 2014 poll, more respondents believed, by 9 to 1, that our Supreme Court favors corporations over individuals, rather than vice versa. Among self-identified conservative Republicans, it was still a 4-to-1 margin.
So hold that thought: the wealthy, and powerful corporations, control Congress, and people know it.
As I give my 200th “Time To Wake Up” speech, the most obvious fact standing plainly before me is not the measured sea level rise at Naval Station Newport, is not the 400 ppm carbon dioxide barrier we have broken through in the atmosphere, is not the new flooding maps coastal communities like Rhode Island must face, nor is it the West aflame.
It is not even the uniform consensus about climate change across universities, national laboratories, scientific societies, and even across our military and intelligence services, who warn us that climate change is fueling economic and social disruption around the world.
The fact that stands out for me, here at number 200, is the persistent failure of Congress to even take up the issue of climate change. One party won’t even talk about it! One party is gagging America’s scientists and civil servants, and striking even the term “climate change” off government websites.
In the real world, in actual reality, we are long past any question as to the reality of climate change. The fact of that forces us to confront the question: what stymies Congress from legislating, or even having hearings, about climate change? What impels certain executive agencies to forbid even the words?
Before the Citizens United decision was delivered up by the five Republican appointees on the Supreme Court—a decision, by the way, that deserves to rot on the trash heap of judicial history—we were actually doing quite a lot in the Senate about climate change.
There were bipartisan hearings. There were bipartisan bills. There were bipartisan negotiations. Senator McCain campaigned for president under the Republican banner on a strong climate platform.
What happened?
Here’s what I saw happen: the fossil fuel industry went over and importuned the Supreme Court for the Citizens United decision; the five Republican-appointed corporatists on the Court delivered the Citizens United decision; and the fossil fuel industry was ready and set at the mark when that decision came down.
Since the moment of that Citizens United decision, not one Republican in this body has joined one serious piece of legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Our heartbeat of bipartisan activity was killed dead by the political weaponry unleashed for big special interests by those five judges.
The fossil fuel industry then made a clever play: they determined to control one party on this question; they determined to silence or punish or remove any dissent in one political party. This created for the fossil fuel industry two advantages.
First, they got to use that party as their tool to stop climate legislation. And they have. Remember the movie ‘Men in Black’? Today’s Republican Party bears the same relation to the fossil fuel industry, as to this issue, that the unfortunate farmer in ‘Men in Black’ bore to the alien who killed him and occupied his skin for the rest of the movie: complete occupation, with nothing left but the skin.
The second advantage for the fossil fuel industry is that they could camouflage their own special-interest special pleading as partisanship, and not just the muscle and greed of one very big industry wanting to have its way.
That is why we are where we are. That is why talking to Republicans about climate change is like talking to prisoners about escape. They may want out, but they can’t have their fossil-fuel wardens find out.
Climate change is a prime example of how our institutions are failing in plain view of the public. Small wonder the public holds Congress in low esteem, and thinks we don’t listen to them. Frankly, it’s amazing that there is any shred of esteem remaining, given our behavior.
Congress remains a democratic body on the surface, with all the procedural veneer and trappings of democracy: we hold votes, and there are caucuses and hearings and voting. But on the issues that most concern the biggest special interests, Congress no longer provides America a functioning democracy.
Underneath the illusory democratic surface run subterranean rivers of dark money. Massive infrastructures have been erected to hide that dark-money flow from the sunlight of public scrutiny, to carve out subterranean caverns through which the dark money flows.
If you want to understand why we do nothing on climate, you have to look down into those subterranean chambers, understand the dark money, and not be fooled by the surface spectacle.
It’s not just the dark money spending that’s the problem.
When you let unlimited money loose in politics, particularly once you let unlimited dark money loose in politics, you empower something even more sinister than massive anonymous political expenditures; you empower the threat of massive anonymous political expenditures—the sinister, whispered threat. Once you let a special interest spend unlimited dark money, you necessarily let it threaten or promise to spend that money.
Those sinister threats and promises will be harder to detect even than well-obscured dark-money expenditures. You may not know who’s behind a big dark-money expenditure, but you’ll at least see the smear ads. You may not know what’s up, but you’ll know something’s up.
But a threat? Two people, a back room, and a silent handshake are enough. Give a thug a big enough club, and he doesn’t even have to use it to get his way.
This is the great, insidious evil of Citizens United. And this, I believe, is why we are where we are.
The Senate was legendarily corrupt in the Gilded Age. One writer described senators not as representing states, but ‘principalities and powers in business. One Senator represents the Union Pacific Railway system; another the New York Central; still another the insurance interests of New York and New Jersey.’ We cannot pretend it is impossible for the United States Senate to be corrupted; our history refutes that happy thought.
So we need to keep our guard up, as Americans, against corrupting forces; and this unlimited, dark flow of money into our politics is a corrupting force.
Congress’s embarrassing and culpable failure to act on climate change is one face of a coin. Turn it over, and the obverse of that coin is corruption, exactly as the Founding Fathers knew it—the public good ignored, for special interests wielding power; in this case, the power of money. Climate failure; dark money. Dark money; climate failure. Two sides of the same evil coin.
And if that’s not cheerful enough, wait, there’s more! There’s the phony science operation that gives rhetorical cover to the dark-money political muscle operation.
This phony science operation is a big effort, with dozens of well-funded front groups participating, supported by bogus think tanks, well described as the ‘think tank as disguised political weapon.’
This fossil-fuel-funded science denial apparatus has big advantages over real science.
First, the science denial apparatus has unlimited money behind it. The IMF has put the subsidy of the fossil fuel industry at $700 billion per year in the U.S. alone. To defend a $700 billion annual subsidy, you can spend enormous amounts of money; so money is no object.
Second, the science denial apparatus doesn’t waste time with peer review, the touchstone of real science. Slap a lab coat on a hack and send him to the talk shows. The science denial apparatus is public relations dressed up as science, so it behaves like public relations and goes straight to its market, an inexpert public, to work its mischief.
Third, they have the advantage of Madison Avenue tacticians to shape their phony message into appealing soundbites for the public. Read a scientific journal lately?
Fourth, the science denial apparatus doesn’t need to stop lying when it’s caught. As long as they are getting their propaganda out, the truth doesn’t matter. This is not a contest for truth, it’s a contest for public opinion; so debunked, zombie arguments rise from the earth and walk again.
And finally, they don’t have to win the argument, they just have to create the illusion, the false illusion, that there is a legitimate argument.
Then the political muscle those five Justices gave this industry can go to work.
I would like to suggest, 200 speeches in, that it’s time we stopped listening to the industry that comes to us bearing one of the most flagrant conflicts of interest in history. It’s time we stopped listening to their fraudulent science denial operation. It’s time we put the light of day on their creepy dark-money operation, and stopped listening to its threats and promises.
How about Pope Francis, who called climate change ‘one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.’
How about the scientists whom we pay, hundreds of them across the government, whose salaries our appropriators are funding right now; and who under President Trump released this report, saying there is ‘no convincing alternative explanation’ for ‘global, long-term, and unambiguous warming’ and ‘record-breaking, climate-related weather extremes’ — it’s our human activity.
How about our intelligence services, whose National Threat Assessment, issued under President Trump, signed by our former colleague Dan Coats, has a chapter titled ‘Environment and Climate Change.’ Here are the identified consequences: ‘humanitarian disasters, conflict, water and food shortages, population migration, labor shortfalls, price shocks and power outages,’ and, most dangerously, the prospect of ‘tipping points in climate-linked earth systems’ that create ‘abrupt climate change.’
How about listening to Donald Trump, and Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump and the Trump Organization in 2009, when they took out this full-page ad in the New York Times saying the science of climate change was ‘irrefutable,’ and its consequences would be ‘catastrophic and irreversible.’ Where’d that guy go . . . ?
How about our own home state universities? Every one of us can go home to Ole Miss or Ohio State, to the University of Alaska or LSU, to Utah State or West Virginia University or Texas A&M. We can each go home to our home state’s state university, and they don’t just accept climate change, they teach it. They teach it.
Or, if you can listen quietly, you can listen to the oceans.
The oceans are speaking to us, if we will just listen. They speak to us through thermometers, and they say, ‘We’re warming.’ And they speak to us through tide gauges, and they say, ‘We’re rising, along your shores.’ They speak to us through the howl of hurricanes powered up by their warmer sea surfaces. They speak to us through the quiet flight of fish species from their traditional grounds as the seawater warms beyond their tolerance.
If we know how to listen, through simple pH tests, the oceans will tell us that they are acidifying, and beginning to kill their own corals and oysters and pteropods. Or we could go out and check, and see the corals and the oysters and the pteropods corrode and die before our eyes. It’s happening.
The fishermen who plow the oceans’ surface can speak for the oceans: as one Rhode Islander said to me, ‘Sheldon, it’s getting weird out there.’
‘This is not my grandfather’s ocean,’ said another. He’d grown up trawling with his granddad on those waters.
It’s not just oceans: I went out on Lake Erie with seasoned professional fishermen who told me everything they’d learned in a lifetime on the lake was useless, because the lake was changing on them so unknowably fast.
We choose here in Congress to whom we’re going to listen, and it’s time we started to listen to the honest voices and the true voices. If you don’t like environmentalists or scientists, listen to your ski industry, listen to your fishermen and lumbermen, listen to your gardeners and birders and hunters. Listen to those who speak for the earth and for the oceans.
It is an evil mess that we are in, and if there is any justice in this world, there will one day be a terrible price to pay if we keep listening to evil voices.
The climate change problems we are causing by failing to act are a sin, as Pope Francis has flatly declared. But that’s not the only sin.
To jam Congress up, fossil fuel interests are corrupting American democracy; and to corrupt American democracy is a second and a grave sin.
The science denial apparatus—to mount a fraudulent challenge to the very enterprise of science, that is a third grave sin.
And perhaps the worst of all is that the world is watching. It is watching us as the fossil fuel industry, its creepy billionaires, its front groups, its bogus think tanks, all gang up and debauch our democracy.
From John Winthrop to Ronald Reagan, we have held America up as a city on a hill, with the eyes of the world upon us. From Daniel Webster to Bill Clinton, we have spoken of the power of our American example as greater in the world than any example of our power. Lady Liberty in New York Harbor holds her lamp up to the world, representing our American beacon of truth, justice and democracy.”
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute. Our Earth appears as a pale blue dot in this photo taken by the Cassini spacecraft on July 19, 2013, orbiting Saturn at a distance of 898 million miles from Earth. Just as we like to imagine American democracy as a “city on a hill,” our Earth is such a planet. Seen here as a tiny, fragile dot in the enormity of space, it is the only beacon we’ve discovered proven to support even basic life, let alone life sophisticated enough to ask the question, “why are we here?” Does life exist outside of that pale blue dot? Given that there are billions of stars in our galaxy, each a potential host of life, it would seem likely that intelligent life has occurred elsewhere, even producing civilizations millions of years older than our own. But we haven’t observed any evidence of it despite concerted effort, a problem described by physicist Enrico Fermi and known as the Fermi paradox. One potential solution to the paradox which has been put forward is that intelligent life occurs fairly frequently but invariably destroys itself shortly after learning to intensively harvest and use large amounts of energy (through nuclear holocaust or climate change, for example). If this were the case, the pale blue dot above would be one beacon among many that flicker on briefly and then wink out before any of the beacons get a chance to see one another. Can it be that we humans are intelligent enough to snap a photo of our home planet from a distance of 898 million miles; intelligent enough to conceive a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”; intelligent enough to develop materials and technology capable of sustainably harvesting solar energy from our sun; yet not smart enough to escape some of our most destructive behaviors in time to prevent self-annihilation through climate change? I hope we will prove not. Doing so may require addressing not only our planetary “city on a hill,” but (first) the state of our American governmental “city on a hill,” as Senator Whitehouse suggests.
“I have a distinct memory, traveling with John McCain to Manila, and waking up early to go visit the American military cemetery. The sun coming up over the rows of white gravestones standing over our dead. The massive, gleaming marble arcade of names, carved on walls stretching high over my head, of Americans whose bodies were never recovered—over 17,000 in all, remembered in that cemetery.
After their sacrifice, can we not do better than to sell our democracy to the fossil fuel industry? What do you suppose a monument to that would look like, I wonder?
America deserves better; and the world is watching us; we, this city on a hill.
I yield the floor.”
-Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), on the U.S. Senate floor, March 13, 2018
“We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible.
… Climate change is one of the greatest dangers we face, and it’s one we can prevent if we act now. By denying the evidence for climate change, and pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Donald Trump will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children.”
-Professor Stephen William HawkingCHCBEFRSFRSA (1942-2018), English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, recipient of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States, who elucidated both for experts and the lay public new discoveries about the origins and nature of the universe, even while battling Lou Gehrig’s disease since the age of 21, by all accounts among humanity’s greatest minds, commenting on July 2, 2017
Image credit: NASA, Wikimedia commons. Concept drawing by NASA showing accretion lines from a black hole. In collaboration with physicist Roger Penrose, Stephen Hawking was notable for (among other discoveries) combining the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics to describe the nature of black holes, including the prediction that they could slowly shrink over time (even while gobbling up matter) by emitting electromagnetic radiation that has come to be known as Hawking radiation. This theoretical prediction has since been proven experimentally.
Eliot Hester, a new age instrumentalist, has conceived The Beauty Lost Project, his effort to bring attention and contemplation to beauty in danger of being lost from the world, irreversibly, due to climate change. Each original composition incorporates, interwoven with contemplative melodies produced by a unique blend of instrumentation (cello, bassoon, clarinet, guitar, keyboards) natural sounds of an environment in peril.
In advance of the upcoming release of his The Beauty Lost album, Eliot and The 5th Records are releasing TODAY a single from the album, “Tranquility (The Amazon).” Look for it on iTunes or wherever you go for digital music. Eliot is donating 20% of the proceeds from sales related to The Beauty Lost Project to scientific research and political action to stop climate change. The Beauty Lost album will be released on Earth Day, April 22, 2018. See Eliot’s blog for more information.
Eliot is right to bring attention to the Amazon rainforest. A 2013 study by an international research team led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory analyzed detailed satellite data collected over the Amazon between 2000 and 2009. This study linked rainfall data with spacecraft measurements of the moisture content and structural changes in the rainforest’s canopy, finding that the Amazon suffered a severe drought around 2005. The 2005 drought was directly attributed to long-term warming of the tropical Atlantic sea surface.
“In effect, the same climate phenomenon that helped form hurricanes Katrina and Rita along U.S. southern coasts in 2005 also likely caused the severe drought in southwest Amazonia.” -Sassan Saatchi, researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and lead author of the 2013 study
Before the Amazon could recover from the 2005 drought, the rainforest suffered a second megadrought around 2010. A 2009 study of the drought effects concluded that repeated cyclical droughts could be expected to destroy 20-40% of the Amazon, converting it irreversibly to savanna within 100 years, if global warming could be limited to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (the current goal of the Paris Climate Agreement). If global temperatures increased as much as 4 degrees Celsius, the authors projected up to an 85% loss of the Amazon.
This is also a classic example of a positive feedback (“positive” meaning “negative” for humanity). Loss of the Amazon would turn one of the Earth’s greatest carbon sinks into a carbon contributor as dead trees rot.
“Ecologically it would be a catastrophe and it would be taking a huge chance with our own climate. The tropics are drivers of the world’s weather systems and killing the Amazon is likely to change them forever. We don’t know exactly what would happen but we could expect more extreme weather.” -Peter Cox, professor of climate system dynamics at the University of Exeter and co-author of the 2009 study
A new study published last month documents the most recent Amazon megadrought in 2015, which was worse than the previous two and affected an area of the rainforest doubled in size compared with the 2005 event.
There is still time to prevent the worst of it, but time is running out.
“Many aspects of climate change and its associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped. The risks of abrupt or irreversible changes increase as the magnitude of the warming increases.
…Surface temperatures will remain approximately constant at elevated levels for many centuries after a complete cessation of net anthropogenic CO2 emissions … A large fraction of anthropogenic climate change resulting from CO2 emissions is irreversible on a multi-century to millennial timescale, except in the case of a large net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere over a sustained period…
Shifting biomes, re-equilibrating soil carbon, ice sheets, ocean temperatures and associated sea level rise all have their own intrinsic long timescales that will result in ongoing changes for hundreds to thousands of years after global surface temperature has been stabilized.”
Image credit: NASA. Earthrise, an iconic photograph of our Earth taken from lunar orbit by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders on December 24, 1968. The image was turned into a U.S. postage stamp in 1969 and has been called “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.” It’s thought-provoking in that it provides a perspective on our Earth from the furthest away from it we humans have been. The moon in the foreground, and all other worlds in our solar system we have explored robotically, are interesting to study but display a striking lack of all the things we need to live when compared to our Earth. The nearest location of candidate worlds thought to have a chance at being suitable for civilization-scale life (without extensive geo-engineering) is over 4 light years away. (Meaning, according to our best understanding of physics, we could not possibly travel there in anything less than over 4 years, and that’s if we had the technology to travel the speed of light, which we don’t remotely.) Since it will likely take us at least hundreds of years to develop either the geo-engineering technology or the space travelling technology to provide a “Plan B” to our Earth, our planning for Earth’s continued ability to support our civilization must extend hundreds of years into the future. The text of this post describes the consensus scientific understanding that our actions right now will largely determine Earth’s ability to support us over that time frame. This is because we are applying a significant forcing (increasing atmospheric CO2) very quickly, geologically speaking, and our Earth’s systems are slow to fully respond. Forcing we apply now, even while the immediate effects may appear mild, will be irreversible and the effects will grow over time. With higher forcings, there are ever greater risks of encountering irreversible “tipping points” that could dramatically change our Earth’s climate in ways that are difficult or impossible to predict.
“Ocean acidification will continue for centuries if CO2 emissions continue, it will strongly affect marine ecosystems (high confidence), and the impact will be exacerbated by rising temperature extremes…
Global mean sea level rise will continue for many centuries beyond 2100 (virtually certain). The few available analyses that go beyond 2100 indicate sea level rise to be less than 1 m above the pre-industrial level by 2300 for [greenhouse gas] concentrations that peak and decline and remain below 500 ppm CO2-eq[uivalent]… For a radiative forcing that corresponds to a CO2-eq[uivalent] concentration in 2100 that is above 700 ppm but below 1500 ppm, … the projected rise is 1 m to more than 3 m by 2300 (medium confidence)… There is low confidence in the available models’ ability to project solid ice discharge from the Antarctic ice sheet. Hence, these models likely underestimate the Antarctica ice sheet contribution, resulting in an underestimation of projected sea level rise beyond 2100.
Sustained mass loss by ice sheets would cause larger sea level rise, and part of the mass loss might be irreversible. There is high confidence that sustained global mean warming greater than a threshold would lead to the near-complete loss of the Greenland ice sheet over a millennium or more, causing a sea level rise of up to 7 m. Current estimates indicate that the threshold is greater than about 1°C (low confidence) but less than about 4°C (medium confidence) of global warming with respect to pre-industrial temperatures. Abrupt and irreversible ice loss from a potential instability of marine-based sectors of the Antarctic ice sheet in response to climate forcing is possible, but current evidence and understanding is insufficient to make a quantitative assessment.
Within the 21st century, magnitudes and rates of climate change associated with medium to high emission scenarios … pose a high risk of abrupt and irreversible regional-scale change in the composition, structure and function of marine, terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, including wetlands (medium confidence), as well as warm water coral reefs (high confidence). Examples that could substantially amplify climate change are the boreal-tundra Arctic system (medium confidence) and the Amazon forest (low confidence). …A reduction in permafrost extent is virtually certain with continued rise in global temperatures.”
-Rajendra K. Pachauri (Chair), Myles R. Allen (United Kingdom), Vicente R. Barros (Argentina), John Broome (United Kingdom), Wolfgang Cramer (Germany/France), Renate Christ (Austria/WMO), John A. Church (Australia), Leon Clarke (USA), Qin Dahe (China), Purnamita Dasgupta (India), Navroz K. Dubash (India), Ottmar Edenhofer (Germany), Ismail Elgizouli (Sudan), Christopher B. Field (USA), Piers Forster (United Kingdom), Pierre Friedlingstein (United Kingdom/Belgium), Jan Fuglestvedt (Norway), Luis Gomez-Echeverri (Colombia), Stephane Hallegatte (France/World Bank), Gabriele Hegerl (United Kingdom/Germany), Mark Howden (Australia), Kejun Jiang (China), Blanca Jimenez Cisneros (Mexico/UNESCO), Vladimir Kattsov (Russian Federation), Hoesung Lee (Republic of Korea), Katharine J. Mach (USA), Jochem Marotzke (Germany), Michael D. Mastrandrea (USA), Leo Meyer (The Netherlands), Jan Minx (Germany), Yacob Mulugetta (Ethiopia), Karen O’Brien (Norway), Michael Oppenheimer (USA), Joy J. Pereira (Malaysia), Ramón Pichs-Madruga (Cuba), Gian-Kasper Plattner (Switzerland), Hans-Otto Pörtner (Germany), Scott B. Power (Australia), Benjamin Preston (USA), N.H. Ravindranath (India), Andy Reisinger (New Zealand), Keywan Riahi (Austria), Matilde Rusticucci (Argentina), Robert Scholes (South Africa), Kristin Seyboth (USA), Youba Sokona (Mali), Robert Stavins (USA), Thomas F. Stocker (Switzerland), Petra Tschakert (USA), Detlef van Vuuren (The Netherlands), Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (Belgium), Core Writing Team of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis Report, 2014.
“Dear President Obama & The United States Congress,
Tomorrow leaders from 192 countries will gather at The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to determine the fate of our planet.”
Credit: NASA/NOAA. Series of images taken by the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVER), which was launched on Feb. 11, 2015 and placed in a special orbit about 1,000,000 miles from Earth, where the gravitational attraction by the sun and Earth are perfectly balanced. This gives the EPIC camera an uninterrupted view of the fully sunlit side of the Earth, where it snaps full-Earth pictures about every 2 hours that are uploaded to the mission’s gorgeous website. Besides full color images, the EPIC camera snaps images in non-visible wavelengths enabling climate scientists to monitor the Earth’s energy balance by observing ozone and aerosol levels, cloud dynamics, and changes in vegetation and the solar reflectivity of land masses. All of us are rotating together in this series of images, protected by a fragile atmosphere mostly concentrated in a layer only about 10 miles thick.
“As business leaders we are optimistic that President Obama is attending Copenhagen with emissions targets. Additionally, we urge you, our government, to strengthen and pass United States legislation, and lead the world by example. We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today. Please don’t postpone the earth.
If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.
We recognize the key role that American innovation and leadership play in stimulating the worldwide economy. Investing in a Clean Energy Economy will drive state-of-the-art technologies that will spur economic growth, create new energy jobs, and increase our energy security all while reducing the harmful emissions that are putting our planet at risk. We have the ability and the know-how to lead the world in clean energy technology to thrive in a global market and economy. But we must embrace the challenge today to ensure that future generations are left with a safe planet and a strong economy.
Please allow us, the United States of America, to serve in modeling the change necessary to protect humanity and our planet.”
“Burning all fossil fuels would produce a different, practically uninhabitable, planet. …Our calculated global warming in this case is 16◦C, with warming at the poles approximately 30◦C. Calculated warming over land areas averages approximately 20◦C. Such temperatures would eliminate grain production in almost all agricultural regions in the world.”
The Blue Marble, an image of Earth made on Dec 7, 1972 by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, travelling toward the moon at a distance of 18,000 miles above the Earth’s surface. All of humanity (with the exception of Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, and Ronald Evans of the Apollo 17 crew) is in this image.
“…More ominously, global warming of that magnitude would make most of the planet uninhabitable by humans. The human body generates about 100 W of metabolic heat that must be carried away to maintain a core body temperature near 37◦C, which implies that sustained wet bulb temperatures above 35◦C can result in lethal hyperthermia. Today, the summer temperature varies widely over the Earth’s surface, but wet bulb temperature is more narrowly confined by the effect of humidity, with the most common value of approximately 26–27◦C and the highest approximately of 31◦C. A warming of 10–12◦C would put most of today’s world population in regions with wet a bulb temperature above 35◦C.
…We conclude that the large climate change from burning all fossil fuels would threaten the biological health and survival of humanity, making policies that rely substantially on adaptation inadequate.
…Most of the remaining fossil fuel carbon is in coal and unconventional oil and gas. Thus, it seems, humanity stands at a fork in the road. As conventional oil and gas are depleted, will we move to carbon-free energy and efficiency—or to unconventional fossil fuels and coal? If fossil fuels were made to pay their costs to society, costs of pollution and climate change, carbon-free alternatives might supplant fossil fuels over a period of decades. However, if governments force the public to bear the external costs and even subsidize fossil fuels, carbon emissions are likely to continue to grow, with deleterious consequences for young people and future generations.
It seems implausible that humanity will not alter its energy course as consequences of burning all fossil fuels become clearer. Yet strong evidence about the dangers of human-made climate change have so far had little effect. Whether governments continue to be so foolhardy as to allow or encourage development of all fossil fuels may determine the fate of humanity.”
This “news story” is a work of satire. All linked quotes, however, are 100% real.
14 February 2018
AP – Hours after a troubled teen packing an AR-15 military style firearm killed at least 17 adults and schoolchildren in a Parkland, Florida high school, a handful of months after a gunman killed at least 26 church-goers in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and in the wake of a string of national tragedies over earlier weeks including the depraved massacre of 58 people by a “lone wolf” gunman in Las Vegas only 35 days before that and the Puerto Rican landfall of Hurricane Maria around the same time, Americans widely acknowledged on Wednesday they had entered a new Great American Mourning Episode (GAME) observed by tradition following any such travesty on U.S. soil. Variously held for a period of weeks or months, the GAME features, by mutual agreement of all patriotic American citizens and in respectful observance of the suffering of the victims of the tragedy, a usually unspoken moratorium on any insensitive public discourse related to possible root causes of the disaster or potential methods of preventing similar travesties in the future.
These exemplary demonstrations of patriotism epitomized the vital principle of the GAME, that any misguided efforts to identify and discuss the merits of potential policy adjustments to prevent future calamities would only serve as distractions from the proper acknowledgement and consideration of the suffering of fellow Americans.
Indeed, the GAME demands, for all who love America, that terrestrial considerations of practical human action should rather be transcended by prayer, in the form of devout appeals to any of various higher deities to ease the suffering of the afflicted and grant relief from such tragedies in the future. Americans widely admit no documented evidence of any of the major deities obviously meddling significantly in natural events or the collective fortunes of large groups of people for thousands of years. Even in those ancient times, literary evidence suggests interference of deities only in the context of vigorous efforts on the part of a human population to improve its own fortunes. Nevertheless, the documented power wielded by the deities in those times was unquestionably awesome, so the Strategy of Prayer is widely considered a “Hail Mary play” that might eliminate future human tragedies without resorting to the sorts of terrestrial human actions forbidden by proper observation of the GAME.
External observers have questioned the wisdom of the GAME, saying it might delay sorely needed actions that could prevent future horrific events. Foreign analysts have often referenced the apparent incongruity of the GAME with pragmatic American reactions to other types of problems. Aidan O’Sullivan of Limerick, Ireland pointed out, “If’n a baseball cums crashin’ through yisser picture windy, Oi’m juicy sure yer open de door roi away ter see wha’ wee kid did it, even as you’re also mournin’ de loss of yisser windy.” While true, Aidan’s example misses the point of the GAME, which has to do with the sheer size and depth of tragedy that can result only from a category 5 Atlantic hurricane or a crazy loner wielding an AR-15 legally enhanced with an ARMATAC SAW-MAG 150 round dual drum magazine, a Slide Fire bump stock, a Black Rain silencer, and a Vortex Optics Crossfire II Riflescope purchased on Amazon Prime with free overnight shipping.
Immediate, pragmatic action is entirely appropriate for day-to-day setbacks like busted picture windows. A hurricane landfall on a major city or a gunman in an elevated firing position menacing a dense crowd of T-shirt and sandal clad concert-goers with 20 or more military grade firearms, however, is uniquely capable of generating a scale of mayhem – scores of dead and hundreds or thousands of human lives forever altered – that can only be properly observed by strict adherence to the GAME.
In private moments, several citizens quietly confessed some trepidation about the limits the GAME might place on Americans’ ability to engage in the collective discourse necessary to develop robust solutions to some of the nation’s most pressing problems. “It had been a full month since the Las Vegas shooting, and I‘d just gotten back to starting to think about whether some type of common-sense gun legislation might help reduce the body count when some nut becomes unhinged and decides to kill a bunch of innocent people in a school or at a concert,” explained Larry Swingvoater of Green Bay, Wisconsin. “Now, another maniac decided to open fire in a church, so of course I can’t think about policy while those poor people are suffering. But what I worry about is, if these hurricanes and mass shootings keep happening so close together, when WILL I think about that stuff? Anyway, I’m back to praying now – maybe that will eventually pay off.”
Others wondered aloud what the solutions from a supernatural deity might look like, should the Strategy of Prayer prove successful. Would future tragedies from climate change ultimately be averted by solutions resembling the “solar technology,” “wind technology,” or “battery technology” rumored to have been developed by human scientists and engineers? Or, might a deity prove capable of providing sustainable bioenergy derived from multitudes of burning bushes? Or, tidal energy afforded by repetitive parting of the earth’s seas? Might an entity akin to the Holy Spirit provide a bullet-proof energy field around the nation’s innocent civilians, enabling Americans to maintain casual public availability of thrilling, adrenaline-pumping battlefield style firearms without risk to young schoolchildren?
A handful of fringe citizens, who made their controversial remarks on condition of anonymity so as not to be identified as GAME-violators, expressed the cynical opinion that the GAME poorly serves American politics and is actually the result of a “cruel and selfish conspiracy” by a few well-funded special interests with outsized influence on U.S. legislative policy. “This is not patriotism, but simply a transparent political delay tactic,” claimed Jon Faiknaim, whose name has been changed in this article at his request. “Every time a hurricane or a gun-toting madman kills a bunch of people, politicians in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry and the National Rifle Association call it ‘insensitive’ to talk about policy changes that would solve some of our most urgent public problems but harm the narrow interests of those minority stakeholders. Then, everybody forgets about the problem the moment another issue of critical national interest demands consideration. Like the linguistic etymology of the word, ‘covfefe,’ or how football players arrange their limbs during pre-game performances of the National Anthem. Then, the next time one of these tragedies occurs, the irrational cycle repeats itself.” Fortunately, these cynical expressions of doubt were rare.
But our national leader’s statements were most inspirational as he bravely defended the sanctity of the GAME when questioned by an unruly member of the press pool about whether “we have a gun violence problem.”
Scott Pruitt is the current administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a federal agency that was proposed by Republican President Nixon and established in 1970. Its mission then was the same as its stated mission now. That mission is written succinctly on its website: “Our mission is to protect human health and the environment.” So far, so good.
The EPA website further elaborates on various elements of accomplishing that mission, second among them being to ensure that, “National efforts to reduce environmental risks are based on the best available scientific information.” It’s here I think we have a problem with Scott.
Prior to his appointment to the office on Feb 17, 2017, Scott Pruitt had sued the EPA 14 times as Attorney General of Oklahoma, and declared himself a “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.” Based on my own experience interviewing prospective new hires, a professed and demonstrated opposition to the mission of the job in question would be a practically disqualifying consideration. But I just work for a technology company that routinely develops and commercializes new and useful products based on science, not a government that successfully declines to take much substantive action despite decades of accumulating scientific knowledge. So what would I know about hiring in government?
The problem is, despite almost exactly a year in his position, at the head of an organization replete with expert climate scientists and with complete access to any manner of scientific evidence, Scott’s actions and statements have demonstrated a remarkable immunity to even the most basic scientific knowledge.
The latest case in point — his remarks this past Tuesday, explaining how, in direct contradiction of all scientific evidence, climate change (which Scott conceded humans have caused “to a certain degree”) might just be good for us!
“Is it an existential threat? Is it something that is unsustainable, or what kind of effect or harm is this going to have? I mean, we know that humans have most flourished during times of what? Warming trends . . . I think there’s assumptions made that because the climate is warming, that that necessarily is a bad thing. Do we really know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100? In the year 2018? I mean it’s fairly arrogant for us to think that we know exactly what it should be in 2100.” -Scott Pruitt in an interview with KSNV TV in Las Vegas, Feb 6, 2018
This is a type of climate denial argument that seems to be growing in popularity recently, as increasing scientific evidence, a virtually unanimous and well-publicized scientific consensus, and easily observable natural events force even staunch deniers to admit the Earth appears to be warming. It just shifts the willful ignorance one logical step further: “OK, maybe the Earth is warming a bit, and maybe humans are responsible at least a little bit, but how do we know that’s bad? Maybe it’s good!”
Scott said it Tuesday, but other deniers are also employing this argument:
In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!
It’s an argument that thrives when the public is not well educated about the climate. It’s also a seductive argument, particularly in winter. You’re thinking, “Yeah, all this snow is a pain in the butt; maybe we could do with a little less of it!”
Let’s be super clear. Based on the evidence, there is absolutely no reason to expect that global climate change is likely to be a good thing for humanity. To fight this argument, we need to be armed with some basic scientific evidence. Fortunately, the evidence is publicly available and pretty simple to understand.
First, yes, we know the Earth has been warming since the Industrial Revolutions in the middle of the 1800’s, and this has been the result primarily of rising atmospheric CO2, which also started at that time. 2015, 2016, and 2017 were the three hottest years in recorded human history.
Graph of global average temperature as measured by 4 independent groups of scientists (orange, pink, red, and purple lines) on top of atmospheric CO2 concentration (circles). For more information, see my article here.
“Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era, driven largely by economic and population growth, and are now higher than ever. This has led to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide that are unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Their effects, together with those of other anthropogenic drivers, have been detected throughout the climate system and are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”
Translation: Practically speaking, you can bet essentially all of the warming has occurred because we’ve been burning fossil fuels.
This consensus is derived from a detailed accounting of the amount of CO2 that has been produced from fossil fuels and where it has gone. Based on this accounting, we now know that about exactly 57% of the CO2 we release stays in the atmosphere, the remaining 43% being absorbed by the oceans (which are acidified as a result) and soil.
Image credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Black line: Atmospheric CO2 concentration as measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii (for details, see my article here). Red line: Expected concentration if 57% of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion and the cement industries stay airborne.
“I mean, we know that humans have most flourished during times of what? Warming trends . . .” -Scott Pruitt, speaking like an ignoramus
I don’t know what he means by that last part about “warming trends.” In terms of the global average temperature, the last 3 years have been the warmest years since measurements began in 1850-1880, so that “warming trend” would be now. Are we “flourishing?” Personally, I’m doing fine, though I’m not sure I would chalk it up to global warming. It’s hard to argue that folks currently on the front lines of global climate change effects — in Shishmaref, Kiribati, or Fiji, for example — are “flourishing.” And things aren’t exactly looking up for coastal real estate owners in Miami, either.
But we can, with scientific certainty, say something about under what conditions humans have historically flourished. Specifically, humans since Biblical times have been flourishing (until very recently) with a CO2 concentration between the black lines:
Atmospheric CO2 concentration since the year 0 A.D. Pre-industrial maximum, minimum, and average concentrations are indicated by the solid and dashed black lines, respectively. For more details, see my article here.
The species Homo sapiens has been flourishing, since around 200,000 years ago, with an atmospheric CO2 concentration ranging from 184 to 287 ppm.
Atmospheric CO2 concentration since 800,000 years ago. The first anatomically modern humans appeared about 200,000 years ago. Until very recently in our history, our species never experienced a CO2 level above 287 ppm. For more details, see my article here.
Ultimately, how we regulate our body temperature. The 2012 Global Energy Assessmentestimated that there remain 15,000 gigatons of fossil carbon in the Earth’s crust. According to a 2011 peer reviewed analysis by four current and former scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the burning of 10,000 gigatons of carbon on a “business as usual” trajectory would result in a global average temperature increase of 29 degrees Fahrenheit. This would result in an estimated most common wet bulb temperature over the Earth’s surface of 109 degrees Fahrenheit. Above a sustained wet bulb temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the human body cannot maintain its body temperature of 98.6 degrees.
Partaking in Scott Pruitt’s blissful ignorance could, literally, cook us.
“Do we really know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100? In the year 2018? I mean it’s fairly arrogant for us to think that we know exactly what it should be in 2100.” -Scott Pruitt, worrying aloud over the arrogant hubris of human observation and reason
Is it “arrogant” to employ systematic observation and reason to plan for the future? Perhaps, but I’d say we’re guilty as charged! Observation, reason, and planning are humans’ differentiating features. 200,000 years ago, they enabled us to survive in a world populated by natural hazards and fearsome predators. Later, they empowered us to practice agriculture, develop technologies, and build civilizations. We’ve accomplished everything, as a species, in the comfortable and stable environment created by a rather narrow range of atmospheric CO2 levels. Where the CO2 level is currently headed, all bets are off. Why would we abandon observation, reason, and planning now, especially when those strengths have also enabled us to develop sustainable energy solutions to the problem?
Because Scott Pruitt has a hunch that climate change, just maybe, could be good for us?
