Discuss: How to Be a Climate Hero

Dear Audrey,

A while ago--maybe 8 years, maybe 10, I took this writing class at the Cambridge Center. The best part of it was when the instructor (you) had us select a photo from a pile and create a quickie story about them. I still have bits that I worked on during that class, one I’ve recently revived and is on it’s way to becoming a short story. But I digress--I really wanted to say thanks for this topnotch article. This Friday I’m attending a conference to get a sense of what businesses are really doing in the area of green and guess who the keynote speaker is? Jim Gordon of Cape Wind. Bravo on your article and all your books. Best, Lisa

For those with an open mind, take a moment to look at this from a larger perspective.  Climate is always changing with many different cycles influenced by many different variables.  A big factor in this debate is how strong an influence is carbon compared to all the other variables.  Let’s take a look at what would happen from both points of view.
One side says that carbon is a minor influence and will be dominated by the other variables.  If this is true we can expect this interglacial period to behave like all the other ones in the past.  We can expect sea level to go up another 100 feet.  It has been rising steadily for the last 18,000 years and should continue to do so.  It has risen 300 feet since that time, and in every other interglacial period it typically rises about 400 feet, so we should expect about 100 more.  We can also expect another glacial period (the time when the places most humans now live are covered in miles of ice) coming soon.  Interglacials (the time when it’s warm and life friendly) are quite predictable and last about 10,000 to 15,000 years.  We’ve been enjoying ours for about 12,500 years, so we can expect it to end any time now.  The glacials last much longer, more than 100,000 years.
The other side says that carbon is strong enough to overwhelm all the other variables.  If this is true, that 100 foot sea level rise could come more quickly, and we can avoid the pesky glacial period.  Since cold kills way more than heat, and CO2 makes plants grow better and produce more food, I’d say it’s a moral imperative that we produce as much CO2 as possible.  That way, if they’re correct, we can stave off the next glacial period that would kill the vast majority of all humans, animals, and plants.  If they’re wrong, all we’ve done is make it easier to grow food.
By the way, just so everyone understands how the greenhouse effect works, it doesn’t make things hotter, it makes them less cold.  That may sound like the same thing, but it is not.  It works mainly to increase minimum temperatures, rather than maximum temperatures.  What this means is the Artic gets less cold, the tropics don’t get hotter.  The winters get less cold, the summers don’t get hotter.  The nights get less cold, the days don’t get hotter.  That doesn’t sound so bad to me.
What about all the other nasty effects? The sea level is a problem, but we were going to have to deal with that anyway.  The hurricane thing is unlikely.  Weather is generated by temperature differences; by making the artic warmer you reduce the temperature difference between the artic air and the tropical air, therefore you reduce the energy for storms.  Of course there would be negative effects, but there would be positive ones too.  The whole history of the earth shows that warmer is always better than colder.
Of course, I’m inclined to think that carbon is not some special magical variable.  I think it works like every other variable and will encourage negative feedbacks rather than positive ones; that like everything else it will tend to regress to the mean.  Otherwise, in the past, when CO2 concentrations were 20 times higher than they are today, they would have cooked off all life on the planet instead of having periods like the Cambrian explosion of massive biological diversity.

“one side” doesn’t understand that the “other side” has already corrected for all those variables and that’s why the “other side” is scared about what happens next.

sea level rise is additional sea level rise, not related to ordinary planetary process.

there is no such thing as a normal interglacial period. like you said, we’ve left our interglacial and have officially entered the “anthropocene,” where orbit and solar activity are no longer drivers of our climate, but recent research indicates that our interglacial period is especially drawn-out and without our intervention could have lasted another 11,000 years (the real duration of the current period) and then some.

the fact that what we’ve done is so powerful we may have ended the ice age cycle for maybe hundreds of thousands of years, this doesn’t seem to rattle hardcore contrarians. i like that. say one day there’s no effect, say another a rapid change big enough to end glaciation completely is nothing but good news, whatever.

funny thing, though, if you use up all the groundwater, tear up the mountains and streams, overheat the water cycle, overfish and acidify the oceans, and create worldwide growing conditions to which today’s plant life do not have time to adapt, i don’t know how that makes it “easier to grow food.”

as for the rest, do your homework somewhere that tells you something, would you? the average temperature in the cambrian period was more than 44°F (forty-four) hotter than it is now. lucky for us, most of the land was at the south pole and that’s where our ancestors lived, in their own little hothouse paradise at the south pole.

that’s not really the right kind of weather for us....

Quoting hapa:

“funny thing, though, if you use up all the groundwater, tear up the mountains and streams, overheat the water cycle, overfish and acidify the oceans, and create worldwide growing conditions to which today’s plant life do not have time to adapt, i don’t know how that makes it “easier to grow food.” “

Thank you for bringing the discussion back to the full spectrum of destructive changes humans are clarly causing on this planet.
To look at Global Warming as if it were a separate problem which could be addressed simply and separately from all the others, is dangerously myopic.

“The economy” is a fake entity, nothing more than shifting paper and “debt pyrimiding” IF it isn’t based on the robust health and stability of natural resources, because it is healthy natural resources which consititue REAL WEALTH, ie, the REAL ECONOMY .

-100 feet represents the total sea level rise if all ice on earth is melted.  By what magical method does your CO2 create water for additional sea level rise?
-When you site Wikipedia as your source for ‘recent research’ I shudder at the state of education.
-More straw man arguments.  I’m not talking about pollution or over-fishing, etc. I oppose limiting carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide dramatically increases plant growth and crop yields. This is why commercial greenhouses commonly add CO2 at levels 3-4 times higher than our current atmosphere.
-Temperature estimates for the Cambrian explosion are around 70°F.  Current average temperature is around 57°F - 59°F.  (Funny how the estimated temperature rise for the last 100 years is smaller than the estimated measurement error of the current temperature.) Where do you get your 44°F from?
-If you think the Cambrian land mass was centered at the South Pole, then you must think today’s landmass is centered on the North Pole.  Yes most of the land was in the southern hemisphere instead of the northern, but a larger percentage of land was between -45 and 45 than today. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/cambrian/tommotian.gif

hapa

You are attributing statements to me that I did not make.  Go back to the beginning of this discussion.  I said that no physical data indicate that the climate warming is attributable to a significant degree on carbon dioxide.  I also said that the only evidence that IPCC has presented is model output.  I have said that the models that they are using are trash.  If there is no AGW, there is no need for us to try to stop it.  As Borg says, the best course is to prepare and adapt.  There is no known catalyst (I assume you meant carbon dioxide).  If you know of some proof of the AGW hypothesis, other than computer models, let’s hear about it.  Quit trying to introduce evidence by inference. 

Is the climate warming?  Yes.  Is the climate warming a rate that is faster than any time in history?  Absolutely not. 

As for paleoclimatological data, the 2003 ice core data show that historically temperature increases have always preceded increases in carbon dioxide concentration.  It appears that happened this time also.  Glacier recessions apparently began in the first half of the 1800s, long before carbon dioxide concentrations began increasing.  Al Gore is still using the 1993 ice core data, which has a temporal resolution of about 1,000 years and does not show, as the 2003 ice core data (with 100 year resolution) that the temperature increases always precede the carbon dioxide concentrations.  Do you think he is ignorant?  If not, what is the explanation for his using superseded data that support his agendum. 

You speak glibly of pollution externalities, another imaginary harm touted loudly by radical activist groups.

Where did you come up with the statistic that 10% of American households are nearing bankruptcy?  Another of your nightmares?  I understand that approximately 10% of all subprime loans are in trouble, but those are a small proportion of all mortgage loans. 

I am not afraid of changing what we do.  Quite the contrary, I am I favor of doing everything that is economically viable to reduce our dependence on imported oil.  Using coal, building nuclear come to mind.  I would love to be on the fantail of the last oil tanker leaving the Middle East, using my middle finger goodbye wave.  I can see no way that wind, solar, or biofuels can provide a significant portion of our energy needs in the foreseeable future. 

I think that you make things up to make your points.  Do you work for WWF, NRDC, EDF, Greenpeace, FOE, or one of the other radical activist groups?  If not, you should apply for work with one of them.  Your propaganda techniques are quite similar to theirs. 

I will not waste any more time responding to your fantasies.  If you have some solid and verifiable evidence, tell us about it.

Is Lee Iacocca a CLIMATE HERO?

Please consider, now, a point of view to which I subscribe from Lee Iacocca that might be helpful here.

Lee Iacocca Says:

Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, ‘Stay the course’

Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned ‘Titanic’.

You might think I’m getting senile, that I’ve gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up.

These are times that cry out for leadership. But when you look around, you’ve got to ask: ‘Where have all the leaders gone?’ Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage.......... and common sense?

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone’s hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn’t happen again. Now, that’s just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you’re going to do the next time.

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening.

Hey, I’m not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I’m trying to light a fire. I’m speaking out because I have hope...................If I’ve learned one thing, it’s this:

You don’t get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action..... It’s not too late, but it’s getting pretty close.

Sincerely yours,

Steve

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001

BE A STARVATION FIGHTER (See my comment 34) by calling for the end to bioethanol subsidies.  That will also make you a climate hero as recent data are showing that trying to plant corn instead of food crops will be releasing more GHGs than will be contained by bioethanol. Don’t write more cloudy comments here, send e-mails to your Congress persons with copy to Speaker Pelosi at http://www.americanvoices@mail.house.gov, calling for the end of those subsidies to get corn freed up to ship to many countries.
The president claimed recently that bioethanol is necessary for national security, unaware as always, that if all our land could be growing corn for bioethanol, probably the amount of bioethanol obtained would barely fuel all our military operations.  Of course our fighting men might have to make the sacrifice of eating mud cakes as food would be hard to come by.  But hey--- we all have to make sacrifices, except the president, in the battle against terrorists and evildoers.
Dr. J. Singmaster