We can only marvel at the disarray. Here we are, 17 years after the signing of the UN framework convention on climate change, two years after the decision in Bali to agree a new climate policy, one year after Barack Obama's election, and days out from the Copenhagen conference. Yet a real global strategy to avoid catastrophe remains elusive.
Yes, there is some progress. The Obama administration has now offered a 2020 and 2050 target on emissions reduction. China and India have stepped forward with commitments to slow the rise of emissions, and Mexico has tabled creative proposals for climate financing. New technologies offer the possibility of low-cost abatement of greenhouse gas emissions. Through the fog of policy speeches, international meetings and domestic debates, one can begin to see a path to a low-carbon economy.
The mayhem, however, is at least as great. Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to mount, and will do so for years or decades to come. The Wall Street Journal, America's biggest circulation paper, rails each day against climate science. Backroom deals in the U.S. Congress with industrial lobbies threaten to eviscerate already watered-down proposals for limiting carbon emissions. A vote on the U.S. legislation has been postponed till next spring at the earliest, and a similar bill has just been defeated in Australia.
The truth is that even if we reach a political agreement, we're not yet on track to achieve practical, significant and sustained progress. Whether it's the U.S. debate that ricochets among activists, deniers and lobbyists, or the global debate -- which veers between empty agreements and bitter finger-pointing -- we've somehow turned a life-and-death challenge into a scrum. After Copenhagen, which probably will be concluded with a patch-up accord, it will be vital to change paths from the one we've been on essentially since before Kyoto in 1997.
We've debated for years about who should control emissions, by how much, when, and according to binding or non-binding commitments. Yet we can't settle these issues without also getting into the details about the deployment of low-carbon technologies, social behaviors and the quantitative realities of energy systems, transport technologies, food production, water scarcity, and population trends. We will continue to go around in circles until we are much more systematic in bringing scientific and engineering realities to the table. Our negotiations need much greater grounding in our true options and their costs.
These issues are tough and complex. Each nation's plausible choices depend on what technologies will be available and when. It's pretty vacuous to spend a couple of years debating whether the emissions target for 2020 should fall by 20%, 30%, or 40% compared with 1990, or perhaps 2005, without knowing how and with what extra costs and disruptions such targets might be achievable.
We will need, in short, a lot more brainstorming than negotiation, at least until the world's plausible options and trade-offs come into view. When can low-carbon power plants truly be brought online? When will electric vehicles be ready for mass sales? Will carbon capture really work and if so, where? Which countries and regions within them have the right kind of geology to store carbon underground, and who is going to monitor it? Dare we advocate a massive revival of the nuclear power industry, in a world fraught with nuclear proliferation? During two years of lead-up to Copenhagen, the official negotiations never gave a place for such questions to be posed, much less answered.
Here, then, is a proposal for the post-Copenhagen attempt to square up national and global policies so they add up to something more than more years of empty promises. Let's start by recognizing that most of the human-made crisis emerges from a few pivotal human activities: how and what we grow to eat; how we mobilize and distribute energy; how we transport ourselves and our freight; and how we build our buildings and lay out our cities. Each related sector requires its own intensive strategy -- to identify the kind of research and development activities, public infrastructure investments and public policy to accompany a positive price on carbon emissions, through permits or taxes. Countries would have a lot to share -- for instance in new technological options -- and a lot that would distinguish them, according to geography, resource base, development level, and more.
We have spent a lot of time debating the merits of tradable permits versus taxation but have failed to understand that operational policies must go far beyond either instrument. The future of nuclear power, for instance, depends not so much on tradable permits as on issues of safety, reliability, and risks of proliferation or terrorism. Similarly emissions trading may eventually spur the use of carbon capture and sequestration, but only after several such plants have been tried on the public expense, to investigate the real engineering and costs of possible technologies, and the real feasibility of safe, long-term storage in geological sites. The scale-up of solar and wind power will depend on land use choices, the future of the power grid, and the ability to store power.
The costs of these approaches can only be judged after more thorough testing and analysis. Thus the side payments that rich countries will have to make to poor ones to adopt such technologies can't yet be determined precisely. When the EU or any country announces their contribution to the poorer countries in Copenhagen, the number will be pulled out of the hat, and probably far too low. It's past time to do any of the real financial homework.
Perhaps it's no surprise we are stuck. Climate change is the most complicated issue the world has faced. Complex -- but not hopeless. It's time to put the expertise at the front table, not to supplant public debate and discussion but finally to inform it. Copenhagen should be the end of negotiation by politicians with technical issues kept in the shadows or ignored. Let's get scientists, engineers and ordinary citizens involved in a true discussion about our common future, and especially the tradeoffs, costs and choices. Together we can prove that our world is still capable of reaching long-range agreements when our children's lives and wellbeing hang in the balance.
This post is part of a continuing series of essays and interviews from Earth Institute experts on the prospects for a global climate-change treaty. Check with our blog State of the Planet daily for news and perspectives, and to make comments, as events unfold throughout the Copenhagen meetings.
This article originally appeared in The Guardian.
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http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/11/20/possible-conspiracy-misreport-temperatures-found-media-mum
I prefer politics, at least we're all represented, poorly, perhaps, but represented.
"End the Politics -- Let Scientists and Engineers Lead"
First, the act of debate isn't leadership? We aren't allowed to discuss the merits of individual proposals? Either we accept carte blanche the findings of HIS experts, we are just playing politics? To so readily discount the purpose and fairness of demaocracy because you don't like the outcome doesn't win over any interest here.
Second, are "Scientists and Engineers" the only people on our planer capable of thought? We need to abandon all intelligence and become drones to the inherent mental superiority of the select self-agrandising few whose club is so special that non else may enter? Get real!
In our world, we elect leaders to represent our viewpoints. We count on them, as part of the political social agreement, to make an informed decision on behalf of the people. Have more faith in the process of OUR society that scientists and engineers have an opportunity to be as important and as intelligent as mothers and lawyers. Or do you think those groups are evil too?
We have an impending--and immediate--crisis to solve, and the waters have been so muddied by special interests--as well as morons like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin--that John Q. Public is in no condition to figure the science out. This has nothing to do with democracy. This has to do with facts.
We need to look to scientists and engineers to tell us what will work--and what will not work--to solve the climate crisis. Check this interview out, and then go buy Hansen's book, Storms of my Grandchildren, due out tomorrow: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerry-cope/storm-front-an-interview_b_375533.html
The participation of attorneys and their niggling about evidence has had some effect on the issue.
http://newparty.co.uk/articles/inaccuracies-gore.html
There are differences in how scientists and attorneys consider evidence and how they regard its essential nature. This will become more evident when The US Senate considers any proposed treaty.
A parked car consumes no fuel, and unless it's absolutely dark, you don't need lights. Food can be served cold, and you can layer up to where you'd be comfortable standing outside at the North pole(especially with global warming. Well, you'd be swimming, but I digress).
You can really only control one pair of hands, one life(yours), and once you've done that, well, there's 6.799 billion other people you've got to convince to do things YOUR way. Good luck with that!
One key part is getting innovations out into the light of day. There are many older technologies that can be adapted to the problem of renewable energy, energy efficiency, or other aspects of sustainability, as well as new ideas. It's worth mentioning just a few to give an idea of the possibilities:
Ocean renewable energy - many people are working on energy from wind far at sea, waves, currents and ocean thermal energy (OTEC) - and, one aspect of OTEC is that it may actually be a means for carbon sequestration as well as an energy source.
Concentrated solar thermal MHD - might allow distributed solar thermal electricity since this system is very efficient with few moving parts.
Steam injected gas turbines might be a perfect match to hybrid cars. They are more efficient, possibly cheaper and can use a wider range of fuel, such as biofuels, though they require filling up with water as well as fuel. Most gas stations already have water, though.
It's worth remarking, though, that no one technology will be a magic bullet, and the answers will require a diversity of technlogies working together. Ocean wind and waves, for example, are seasonably countercyclic (winter/summer) to solar`thermal. There are also a lot of enabling technologies and systems required.
So, it's well time to let us engineers at this problem.
Most of these are emitted from your own car's tailpipe. For this reason these toxins can be found in high concentrations everywhere especially in where we humans live. While some of these compounds break down quick such as ozone, many don't - carbon dioxide being among.
And for these reasons alone, I can only venture to say the real problem isn't global warming, but rather atmospheric degradation.
Whether it's putting the government between a woman and her doctor, or putting the government between a person and their religious organization, or putting the government between scientists and solutions, conservatives are always at the forefront of implimenting a TheoFascist Police State.
BTW... please explain to the rest of the class how Medicare or the VA is getting between a person and their doctor.
Conservative = going through life with blinders on.
I went to college in the deep south in the 70's, most of the science majors there were like most others there at the time, racist. Being scientists didn't make them objective. They are still people. Most had big egos to feed and I could easily see them fudging their figures if it made them richer or better known in their community. The reason most don't is because it's hard to get away with, not because they aren't like the rest of the world. Knowing these people well doesn't make me a flat-earther.
I don't trust Dems or Repubs either.
I was quite interested in a renewable energy technology the US government funded in the late 1960's and early 70's called OTEC; Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion. The idea, which worked of a fashion, was to pump cold water from a depth of 1000', up to the surface and using organic rankine cycle turbines extract useful amounts of energy from the temperature difference between warm surface water in the Pacific Ocean (Hawaii) and the much colder water from lower depths. I would love to tell you how one of the end products of this process sequesters huge amounts of atmospheric carbon, HOWEVER the Huffington Post limits the length of postings.
Thermodynamically, the maximum efficiency is 8.5%; in real systems, the effective efficiency is much lower than 8.5%, likely around 5%. PV efficiency - for ordinary sunlight - is around 15% to 20%.
From http://www.otecnews.org/whatisotec.html :
"This potential is estimated to be about 10^13 watts of baseload power generation..."
I will give a comment that I gave at another blog:
"An analogy: The oceans have 4.0*10^20 Kg of gold, much more than what has been extracted from earth since the beginning of civilization: 1.3*10^8 Kg. So why are we not all running to the beach and extract that gold? Because the gold in ocean water is very dilute and all ocean life will be poisoned in the extraction process."
same with OTEC.
The nutrients from below combined with the surface sunlight produced prodigious amounts of algae and photo plankton. With the base of the aquatic food chain supercharged all manner of sea life flourished. The algae and photo plankton absorb dissolved carbon dioxide out of the water, later replaced by CO-2 from the atmosphere. They die and fall to the ocean floor sequestering carbon as has been the case for eons. Engineers can and should develop inexpensive methods of bringing nutrient rich deep ocean water to the surface, not for OTEC, but for what the OTEC experiments decades ago thought was a charming little side benefit.
So, yeah, anthropogenic or not, there are going to be winners and losers in climate change and we are currently experiencing climate change.
Britain may get their wine industry back for a while. Then they might be covered in ice by the 23rd century.
Nowadays we have the technology to make safe fission reactors. Perhaps in the future the more friendly fusion wil be in use.
Does anyone know what countries the "consensus" scientists are from? What's the ratio of west vs east? How many Chinese scientists vs Russian vs South American? How many from developed industrial nations vs developing nations and poor nations?
And please, if you would, provide a source for those figures....I really would like to know.
It's called CLIMATEGATE. Google it!
then the science is a fraud? Could that be true? Problem is... the
"believers" have their religion and gods and refuse to "see" (understand).
Hence, the point is to recognize the most fundamental type of formatting imposed on graduate people during their studies -- and ever after during their teaching or research work under the mandate of gvt-complicit institutions, lobbies, and corporations -- i.e. the US-gvt policy called AIR SUPERIORITY to ensure total control of the airspace mainly based on supersonic fighter-bombers and nuclear aircraft-carriers, currently used as an ultimate joker for global power enforcement.
As a consequence, the US gvt has exclusively promoted the automobile for personal mobility (since Henry Ford's model T) -- letting General Aviation almost die over the decades!
The automobile, along with its no longer affordable infrastructure, is at the very root of the current crisis!
Gardener, I think you had better read a little more and stop dreaming that the good life can continue forever if you just wish on a star.
Temperature drives CO2, not the other way around.
I would further ask has anyone ruled out that this increase in temperature is not totally a factor of natural occurences and cycles and won't reverse through natural changes? I would also ask why is an economist making the argument for immediate action? And why do we now address the problem as "climate change" not "global warming"?
Has anyone considered what a rapid decrease in carbon emissions could lead to?