Climate Change: A Concise Assessment of What we are Risking.

The text below is a translation of a post that I published in the Italian newspaper "Il Fatto Quotidiano" about two months ago. The idea was to provide a concise statement on the climate situation (no more than 650 words allowed).  I tried to emphasize the risks involved with the "climate tipping points" and criticize the common idea that, since "the Earth's climate has always been changing,"  there follows that "human activities can't affect climate". I can't really say what impact this article may have had -- normally my posts on "Il Fatto" score a few thousand clicks. But, if you have the time to read the comments (78 in total), you may notice that many commenters were not even vaguely touched by my arguments and continued repeating their typical statements, "where is the proof?" "These are just models," "Nobody knows exactly what's the climate sensitivity factor," "The Club of Rome made wrong predictions," etc.  And so it goes....

The failure of the Madrid climate negotiations, the Cop25, was not really unexpected. Even today, very few people, be they politicians or citizens, understand the risks of what's happening, and those who do are accused of "alarmism". But how long can we carry on as if nothing is happening? What do we risk if we do nothing?

The answer is that we risk much more than we can afford. Many studies tell us this, among others also a recent article published in Nature titled "Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against." Even without going into the details, the title is clear enough to understand that the matter is becoming dramatic. But why so much concern among scientists?

We can summarize the problem in one short sentence: the Earth's climate is unstable. It is something that is emerging with ever greater force from all studies in climate science. Of course, the fact that the climate always changes is a favorite argument of those who deny climate science. Their reasoning is: "the climate has always changed, therefore man has nothing to do with it." Wrong, very wrong: what we learn from past climate changes is instead that the Earth's climate changes easily and, therefore, is not so difficult to change it. And that's where the risk is.

Today the climate seems stable to us because human civilization has developed over a period of about 10,000 years of modest changes in temperature. Some people enjoy speculating about these small variations, for instance discussing how Hannibal's elephants could cross the Alps. Maybe, at the time, it was a bit warmer than today, but they must have had quite some problems with freezing trunks.

But, if we go further back in time, we see that the Earth's climate has seen real, strong, and dramatic changes. In the past, over a span of about a million years, our planet has seen episodes of intense glaciation interspersed with relatively warm periods, such as the one we live in today. In the more distant past, the Earth saw much more radical and catastrophic changes.

To push the Earth from a glacial period to an interglacial one does not take much: small perturbations are enough, the so-called "Milankovitch cycles", related to asymmetries of the movement of the earth around the sun. But what humans are causing with their greenhouse gas emissions and other factors is a much stronger perturbation that drives us to a warmer, much warmer, planet.

What could happen then? There is talk of temperatures high enough to destabilize the ice caps at the poles and make them disappear. It would not be the first time that the Earth has no ice at the poles, on the contrary, it is a condition that has occurred commonly in the distant past. But, if the biosphere can live even without ice, our civilization has developed with icecaps at the poles, in climatic conditions that have made possible agriculture, trade, maritime transport, and more.

To create enormous damage to us, we don't even need that the icecaps disappear completely. It is enough to lose an important fraction of the ice to change everything: the sea level would rise to submerge existing ports, then we would see acidification and oceanic anoxia, desertification, mass extinctions and a few more effects that would imperil the survival of human civilization difficult, if not actually of our species.

This is the reason for the great concern: it is not so much the fact that the temperature increases, it is that we face the risk of jumping sharply from one climatic state to another without knowing where we will end up. However, we continue to discuss without taking action: few realize that we risk much more than we can afford.

The great chemical reaction: life and death of Gaia

 "This text is a written version of a talk that I gave in Desio (near Milano, Italy) at a meeting organized by the Centro Culturale Lazzati on Jan 30th 2012. It is much shortened with respect to the actual talk, but it tries to maintain the spirit and the rhythm of that presentation. 

You know, ladies and gentlemen, every time I give a talk I try to say  something different - otherwise it would be boring for me and, perhaps, for you, too. So, this time I thought I could do something closer to what's my job. After all, I teach chemistry. So, shouldn't I teach you a little bit of chemistry? Then, I thought that I could start by presenting to you a chemical reaction. Here it is:

Well, after you give speeches for a while, you become somewhat telepathic. So, I know what you are thinking. Yes: I can read your minds and I know that this slide is making you happy; isn't it? By the way,  the exit door is down there. Maybe you can scream something like "I forgot to turn off the gas stove!" as you run away.

Well, nobody is running away and that's nice. I said that I know what you are thinking and it is true - without exaggerating, of course! You are thinking that chemical reactions are boring. And I agree with you: chemical reactions are very boring. I can tell you that: I studied chemistry, I teach chemistry, I've been working in chemistry for all my life. I should know!

So, why do chemists like the things that they hate - so to say? Are they masochist or what? Well, no. Maybe I am asking you to believe something a little too extreme, but let me tell you something: chemistry is not boring! Chemistry is fascinating, it is interesting, it is even fun. And chemical reactions are not what chemistry is about. Chemical reactions are just a shorthand that hides the really interesting things. If you look at the symbols, well, it is boring. If you look at what the symbols describe, if you look inside, well it is not the same. It may be an interesting story, as I was saying it may be fun, it may be fascinating. You know, when I was a freshman in chemistry, I had to attend chemistry labs. There were many nice girls in my class and they were all wearing lab coats in the lab - not exactly sexy as garments. But that was just the outside: what was fascinating was the inside!

So, I hope today that I could show you that the specific reaction that I am showing to you today is hiding something hugely interesting. It is called "silicate weathering" and is the basis of life on Earth. The way I have written it, it is very simplified - it is much more complex than that. But we can take it in this form in order to understand it. If that reaction were not running all the time on our planet, I wouldn't be here, you wouldn't be here and not even those nice looking girls that I met during my time as a student would ever have existed. Nothing alive on this planet would exist. The entity we call "Gaia" would not exist.

Let me explain. What do we mean exactly with "Gaia"? I think the best I can do is to show you an image.

I am sure you recognize what this is; it is "Pandora" from the film "Avatar." Now, we can say that Pandora is a sort of an Earth on steroids. It is lush, it is full of life, full of creatures: dragons, monsters, waterfalls, trees, mountains, clouds; all that. Of course, Pandora is a fantasy world; but we are discovering plenty of new words in the Galaxy; many are about the same size of our Earth and at the right distance from their suns; so they could well host organic life similar to ours - like Pandora does in the Avatar movie. We can't say for sure if such words exist, but one thing we can say is that - if they exist - the reaction I was showing to you before must be running on there. A world without that silicate weathering reaction running is like Mars or Venus. No silicate weathering reaction, no life.

Let me explain: in order for life to exist, there have to be some materials that make it exist. And the most important material that makes life exist is a special molecule that we call carbon dioxide and that we write as CO2, pronounced see-oh-two. You know that carbon dioxide is what plants use to carry on photosynthesis, which is what keeps alive everything on this planet. If Pandora is so lush and beautiful, it has to have CO2 in the atmosphere, just as our Earth does. Plants make CO2 react with hydrogen extracted from water and out of this reaction they create all organic matter which is then be used to make living beings. In a sense, CO2 is Gaia's food, it is also Gaia's blood, Gaia's lymph and more.

But, then, if CO2 is Gaia's food, there is a problem. CO2 is a reactive molecule and here is where the reaction I wrote kicks in:

You see that this reaction contains carbon dioxide; CO2, on the left side. And you see that this CO2 reacts with something written as "CaSiO3" which I can read as "calcium silicate". Now, the reaction (keep in mind that it is very simplified) says that carbon dioxide reacts with the silicates of the crust to create carbonates (CaCO3) and silica (SiO2). So, a gas, carbon dioxide, reacts with rocks to create more rocks - those carbonates are what we commonly call "limestone". So the carbon which once formed CO2 becomes carbonate, which is solid. Let me show you:

This is a weathered rock somewhere. See? CO2 reacts with the rock and corrodes it. In doing so, CO2 disappears. Clearly, it is a very slow process. You don't see rocks being washed away by rain, unless you are willing to wait for a very, very long time. How long? Well, we are talking of geological times; millions of years, but that's not what we are worried about. The question is; if CO2 is consumed by the reaction, how long would it take for the atmosphere to lose all of it? (and note that plants would start dying much before CO2 were to disappear completely).

On this point, there is an answer that you can find in Robert Berner's 2001 book which has a rather impressive title "The carbon cycle of the phanerozoic". Berner says that all the CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere would be consumed by the weathering reaction in about ten thousand years. In part, it would be replaced by CO2 degassing from the oceans, but even that source would be exhausted in about 300,000 years. These numbers are, of course, just orders of magnitude but for what we are concerned here, the uncertainty doesn't matter much. Life on Earth has been going on for more than three billion years and there must have been CO2 in the atmosphere all this time. No CO2, no life. There is no escape to that. So, CO2 was not consumed by the weathering reaction, nor by the formation of fossil fuels and coal, which also removes it from the atmosphere.

So, you see that we arrived to a paradox. The weathering reaction should have consumed all the CO2 in the atmosphere long ago but there is still plenty of it; enough, at least, to keep photosynthesis going and with it all life on Earth. But paradoxes are almost always pathways to understanding deeper truths and this one is no exception. Let's go back (once more!) to the weathering reaction:

 

You probably remember from what you studied in high school that chemical reactions never go fully in one direction. They can go both ways and often they are in an equilibrium condition in which reactants and products remain in constant concentrations. And you may remember that there are conditions that can shift the equilibrium from one direction to another. About the weathering reaction, we said that it goes from left to right, as you can see from the picture of the weathered rock seen before. But, if we could make the reaction go from right to left, then the carbonates (limestone) decompose and become a source of CO2. If that were possible, we'd have a way to bring CO2 back in the atmosphere. We need, therefore, to close the "geological cycle" of CO2 (something different than the well known biological cycle - that wouldn't be enough by itself to keep CO2 in the atmosphere).

How could that happen? Well, another thing that you surely learned in high school is that the equilibrium of a chemical reaction depends on temperature. There are good reasons based on thermodynamics that say that a solid compound decomposes at high temperatures. That's what happens to carbonates, provided that you can reach temperatures of the order of several hundred degrees Celsius - possibly over a thousand. Now, where can you find these temperatures on Earth?

Very easy: look at your feet. Think of making a hole of a few tens of kilometers and there you are. You find an area of the Earth called the "mantle" which is semi-molten rock composed mainly of  silicates, but also carbonates. Here is the structure of the inside of our planet as we know it today.

You have to go deep down, but eventually you reach temperatures where carbonates are decomposed into CO2 that would then be degassed out by volcanoes, geysers, hot springs, all that. That's exactly what happens in the great CO2 cycle that goes under the name of "plate tectonics". Here is it:

Let me explain a little this image. It shows how the ocean floor moves and is gradually pushed inside the depths of the Earth in a process called "subduction". Everything that stands on the ocean floor is destined, eventually, to disappear into the mantle. But this is also a cycle, you can see in the figure how material from the mantle is pushed up to the surface to form new ocean floor at those regions which are called "mid-ocean ridges". A very slow process, it takes tens of millions of years for a piece of rock that surfaces at the mid ocean ridge to go back to the mantle. But it does occur.

Now, this is also the CO2 cycle. You see, we said that the reaction of carbon dioxides with silicates produces carbonates. These carbonates end up on the ocean floor, often in the form of the shells of dead marine organisms. And the final result is that this carbonate is pushed into the mantle - where it is hot enough to decompose it into oxide and CO2. Then, the CO2 returns to the atmosphere in the form of volcanic eruptions.

The beautiful thing of all this is that the cycle is that it is the "control knob" of the Earth's surface temperature. Really, the CO2 cycle is a thermostat that keeps the Earth not too warm and not too cold; just right. It has been doing that for billions of years. As a thermostat, it must be said that it has not always functioned so well: we have had ice ages and those hot periods called sometimes "planetary hothouses". But, on the whole, the Earth's temperature has always remained within the limits that make life possible. Otherwise, we won't be here.

So, how does the thermostat work?  First of all, you know that CO2 is a "greenhouse gas". It traps the heat emitted by the Earth's surface acting a little like a blanket that keeps the planet warm. So, the more CO2 there is, the more we expect the Earth to be warm. As a consequence, the temperature can be regulated by controlling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. But how can that be done? Well, there is the trick: the speed of chemical reactions depends on temperature. It is true also for the silicate weathering reaction:

High temperatures make the reaction go faster. So, if the Earth's becomes warmer, then there is more CO2 consumed and that reduces the temperature because the concentration of CO2 goes down - and remember that it is a greenhouse gas! The opposite takes place if the Earth becomes cooler - the reaction slows down, the CO2 concentration increases because of all those volcanoes emit it and, in the end, the temperature returns to the previous values. See? Simple and effective.

Of course, as I said, the control is far from perfect. It involves times of the order of millions of years, so it takes a huge time lapse for the planet to recover from a perturbation. For instance, a very large volcanic eruption took place some 250 million years ago in Siberia. It emitted so much CO2 that the resulting increase in temperatures almost killed all life on Earth. The silicate weathering reaction, eventually, absorbed all that CO2 and brought temperatures back to more acceptable values for the biosphere. But it took millions of years. So, if we look at the temperature record, we see that it oscillates and that shouldn't surprise us too much. Here are the data we have for the past 550 million years or so, the period we call "Phanerozoic":

As I said, the regulation is not perfect, but the fact that temperatures oscillate around a constant value tells us that there is a regulation ongoing. You see, the point is that the planet badly needs that regulation, because the sun's irradiation is far from being constant. It increases of about 10% every billion years because of reasons that have to do with the evolution of stars. So, in a period of half a billion years, as the Phanerozoic, we'd expect the planetary temperature to go up as the result of the sun becoming more and more bright. Instead, we don't see it. What we see, instead, is a gradual reduction of the concentration of CO2, as we see here (these data are, again, from the work of Berner):

Yes, it is irregular, but there is no doubt that the concentration of CO2 has gone down, on the average, during the past half billion years. And if we make a little calculation that takes into account the increase in solar luminosity (you can find it in Berner's book) we can see that the numbers do click together. The variation of CO2 concentration is what has kept the Earth not too warm and not too cold, just right, during the geological past.

Now, I guess you are asking yourselves what's going to happen in the future. As you surely noted, the CO2 concentration has been going down and continues to do so (apart from human intervention in terms of burning fossil fuels, but that's not part of the regulation system). Something that could happen is that the Earth's core cools down so much that it will stop the tectonic movement that decomposes the carbonates and closes the CO2 cycle. In that case, the CO2 concentration would go to zero and kill the biosphere. But, according to the data we have, that will not be the cause of the death of the biosphere which, instead, will be destroyed by the increasing solar irradation. Eventually, we'll arrive to a point where the system can't reduce the concentration any more. Yes, and before we arrive to that point, there won't be enough CO2 for plant photosynthesis. And without photosynthesis, there can't be any life on Earth - everything must die.

That's indeed the ultimate destiny of the Earth's biosphere. Of Gaia, if you like. If Gaia is a living being then, as all living beings, it must die. It will be a slow process - very slow by human standards. But it is going to happen. In the simulation below, by Franck and others, you can see the slow winding down of the biosphere which should become extinct a billion and a half years from now. You see also that vertebrates should disappear much earlier, perhaps in less than a billion years

And here is an image of the ultimate destiny of the Earth. To be sterilized by the sun as it becomes more and more bright. The oceans will evaporate and - eventually - the surface will melt under the tremendous heat.

That is, clearly, a far away future. Maybe, by then, our descendants, if there will be any, will have found another place to live, around another star or somewhere in the galaxy. But our main concerns are not about such a remote future. Our main concern is that even the near future may give to our close descendants, a lot of problems with the Earth's temperature.

The problem is that we have been tinkering with the thermostat without understanding exactly what we were doing. And we have been emitting into the atmosphere a large amount of gases which had been removed from the atmosphere as part of the regulating mechanism. Gases which had been stored underground in the form of what we call "fossil fuels": coal, oil, and natural gas. The perturbation made to the system is very large and extremely rapid if compared with anything that has occurred in the past history of Earth.

You probably have seen this picture and it is very, very worrisome. The fact is that such high CO2 concentrations have never occurred on Earth during the past few millions of years. When we had such concentrations, tens or hundreds of millions of years ago, the sun was less hot than it is now and, nevertheless, the Earth was a much warmer place than it is today. We might be able to adapt to a much warmer planet, but the process wouldn't be painless. Just think that the melting of the continental icecaps would submerge all of our coastal cities.

We can't hope that the silicate thermostat will save us from CO2 caused warming. This reaction

 

is damn slow by our standards. It will, eventually, remove from the atmosphere the CO2 we have emitted, but it will take tens of thousands of years, at the very least. Look at these simulations by Dave Archer and you see what the problem is:

See? part of the CO2 we have emitted in the atmosphere will still be there in 40,000 years from now. Actually, it will stay there much longer. So, you see how important it is the reaction that I showed to you. The silicate weathering reaction is what keeps "Gaia" alive - better said, it is Gaia. And don't make the mistake of thinking that Gaia is a goddess and that, somehow, she cares about us. No, it is more correct to say that Gaia doesn't give a damn about us - which is what you'd expect from a chemical reaction, after all. It is us who have been tampering with this chemical reaction and it will be us who will have to face the consequences.

In the end, we can't hope to force the planet to do what we want it to do. So, we must learn to live with the flow of the Earth's cycles. For that, we must know a little chemistry my idea today was to show to you a bit of this chemistry. But more than chemistry, we must learn our limits, otherwise we won't survive for long.

This is our Earth, not a fantasy planet, let's try to keep it the way we found it:

The climate conundrum

Jo Abbess summarizes very nicely the climate communication conundrum on her blog. Here is an excerpt, to which I have added an extra paragraph (image from Tumeke)

By Jo Abbess

The Evangelist : “Climate change is so serious, we need to tell everybody about it. Everybody needs to wake up about it.” The Audience “We have heard this all before. Do pipe down.”

The Social Engineer : “Everybody should be playing their part in acting on climate change.” The Audience : “This story is too heavy – you’re trying to make us feel guilty. You’re damaging your message by accusing people of being responsible for causing climate change.”

The Social Psychologist : “By making such a big deal out of climate change, by using Apocalyptic language, audiences feel there is no hope.” The Audience : “Climate change is clearly not a big deal, otherwise the newspapers and TV would be full of it all the time.”

The Post-Economist : “Climate change is caused by consumption. We need to reduce our consumption.” The Audience : “We don’t want to be told to live in cold caves, eating raw vegetables by candlelight, thanks.”

The Defeatist : “It’s already too late. There’s nothing we can do about it. All I can do is sit back and watch it happen.” The Audience : “Isn’t that being a little too negative ? If you think there’s nothing that can be done, what hope have we got ?”


The Scientist (extra paragraph by Ugo Bardi): "We have clear proof that climate change is occurring and that it will cause immense damage if we don't do something to stop it."  The Audience: "We like you scientists when you bring us solutions. We hate you when you bring us problems."

Read the rest of Jo Abbess's post here.

The "anti-Cassandra" curse: being always believed

It is well known that Cassandra was cursed so that her prophecies would never be believed. But there exists also an opposite curse affecting charismatic leaders who are always believed by their followers. In the long run, leaders are deluded into believing themselves infallible and the results are often disastrous. We could call that the "anti-Cassandra" curse.

People are easily duped into following charismatic leaders, as it is well known. But, while the psychology of adepts is not so difficult to understand (we all may fall in the trap, at least occasionally), it is less clear what passes in the minds of leaders. Do they really believe that they are as smart and powerful as they present themselves to their followers? Or are they consciously misleading their adepts for personal gains? Of course, both possibilities may be true in different circumstances, but a recent posting by Sam Harris convinced me that, in many cases, the leader is even more deluded than his/her followers.

Let me explain this point. First of all, give a look to this clip, taken from Sam Harris's blog. (No need to watch it all, just the first minute or so)

Now, I think you'll agree with me that what we are seeing looks very much like a staged fight. It is hard to say what exactly these guys are doing: maybe it is a show or maybe they are training as actors for some Chinese Kung-Fu movie. For sure, it seems unthinkable that their black-clad leader, Mr. Yanagi Ryuken, would believe that he can really defeat people in this way; without even touching them.

Really? Well, then give a look to this clip where we see again "master" Ryuken, but in a very different situation: fighting against a tough opponent who doesn't accept to be intimidated by Ryuken's alleged power. (note: be careful because it is really disturbing.)

How was that Master Ryuken agreed to submit himself to this punishment? The only explanation I can think of is that he really believed in his magic chi power.  This is also the opinion of Sam Harris, who states:

Master Ryuken apparently believed himself capable of defeating multiple attackers without deigning to touch them. Rather, he could rely upon the magic power of chi. Video of him demonstrating his devastating abilities shows that his students were grotesquely complicit in what must have been a long and colorful process of self-deception. Did these young athletes actually think that they were being hurled to the ground against their will? It is hard to know. What seems certain, however, is that Master Ryuken came to believe that he was invincible; otherwise he wouldn’t have invited a martial artist from another school to come test his powers.

I think this is a very general principle: leaders are easily subjected to this kind of self-delusion that we could call the "anti-Cassandra" curse. Whereas Cassandra was cursed so that she was never believed, charismatic leaders are cursed so that they are continuously believed and praised by their followers. Apparently, at some point something goes short-circuit in their minds and they start thinking that they really are invincible geniuses able to perform miraculous feats. Mr. Ryuken gives us an especially impressive example in the area of martial arts.

But the anti-Cassandra effect is active in many fields and it may be especially common in politics. Think of Benito Mussolini; Italy's charismatic leader for more than 20 years. During those times, a common political slogan in Italy was "Mussolini is always right."  In the end, it backfired, affecting Mussolini's mind and the disastrous results are well known. From Hitler's invasion of Russia to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, country leaders consistently overestimate their power, most likely being misled by the aura of power that their own propaganda creates. 

Science is not immune to the anti-Cassandra curse. Think of the recent case of the "Energy Catalyser" or "E-Cat," the miracle nuclear device invented by Mr. Andrea Rossi. The lack of evidence on the powers of the E-Cat is rapidly consigning the device to the depths of "pathological science", where it belongs. Nevertheless, Rossi still claims that his invention is a nuclear reactor and he maintains a number of faithful followers who heap lavish praise on him (see here - in Italian). Does Mr. Rossi actually believe in the E-Cat power, just as Mr. Ryuken believed in his own chi power? Of course, we can't say for sure, but there are hints that Rossi may be a believer, not a scammer. If he had been consciously cheating, he could easily have used tricks to make his device appear to produce plenty of energy. Instead, what we see in the purported "demonstrations" of the E-Cat operation is simply a poor set-up that can't demonstrate anything. That, of course, leaves space for the believers to keep their faith intact. That's a group which may well include Mr. Rossi himself.

There are many more examples of the Anti-Cassandra effect at work, but at this point the mechanism should be clear. It is the result of a feedback which occurs between the leader and his (rarely her) followers. It is self-sustaining: as leaders are praised by their followers, they become more convinced of their own powers. This makes them very sure of themselves and that affects their followers who believe more and more in the power of their leaders. The end result can only be disaster. We could use the term "Ryuken effect", to define the sad fate of a lone deluded leader. But, more often, the disaster strikes also followers and innocent bystanders.

In the end, perhaps it is better to be a regular Cassandra. Nobody believes you, of course, but, at least, you don't overestimate your powers!

William Nordhaus on climate change: the wisdom of economics

The Stern Review (2006) is a good example of the attitude of economists towards climate change. Economists may not be familiar with climate modeling, but they can notice a trend when they see one and they didn't miss that the ongoing rapid rise in the world's temperature is leading us to no good.

"Economist bashing" is rather fashionable nowadays (for a particularly scathing example, see here). I must confess that, occasionally, I have indulged in this habit, too. However, on the whole I agree with Lou that it is not a good idea.

True, economics as a science has a lot of problems and it is rarely able to come up with good models that take into account resource depletion. But there is a redeeming grace in the approach of economists to science: it is their nearly religious respect for the data.  Economists may not be familiar with climate models, but their respect for data makes them able to understand that the temperature record shows a robust warming trend. They also understand that global warming is leading us to no good. The consequence is that several economists are actively supporting real science in the debate on climate change. One needs only to mention the role of Nicholas Stern, with his "Stern Report."

Now, William Nordhaus, professor of economics at Yale University, comes up strongly in defense of science after having been misquoted in an article published on the Wall Street journal. Nordhaus does very well in highlighting the contradictions and the falsities of the global warming "skeptics" in this article. There is wisdom in economic sciences!

____________________________________________

Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong

March 22, 2012

William D. Nordhaus

The threat of climate change is an increasingly important environmental issue for the globe. Because the economic questions involved have received relatively little attention, I have been writing a nontechnical book for people who would like to see how market-based approaches could be used to formulate policy on climate change. When I showed an early draft to colleagues, their response was that I had left out the arguments of skeptics about climate change, and I accordingly addressed this at length.

But one of the difficulties I found in examining the views of climate skeptics is that they are scattered widely in blogs, talks, and pamphlets. Then, I saw an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal of January 27, 2012, by a group of sixteen scientists, entitled “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” This is useful because it contains many of the standard criticisms in a succinct statement. The basic message of the article is that the globe is not warming, that dissident voices are being suppressed, and that delaying policies to slow climate change for fifty years will have no serious economic or environment consequences.

My response is primarily designed to correct their misleading description of my own research; but it also is directed more broadly at their attempt to discredit scientists and scientific research on climate change.1 I have identified six key issues that are raised in the article, and I provide commentary about their substance and accuracy. They are:

    • Is the planet in fact warming?

    • Are human influences an important contributor to warming?

    • Is carbon dioxide a pollutant?

    • Are we seeing a regime of fear for skeptical climate scientists?

    • Are the views of mainstream climate scientists driven primarily by the desire for financial gain?

    • Is it true that more carbon dioxide and additional warming will be beneficial?

As I will indicate below, on each of these questions, the sixteen scientists provide incorrect or misleading answers. At a time when we need to clarify public confusions about the science and economics of climate change, they have muddied the waters. I will describe their mistakes and explain the findings of current climate science and economics.



Read the rest of this article on "The New York Times"

Peak? What peak? King coal is coming back!

King Coal may be coming back to save us from peak oil, but condemning us to a worse fate in terms of global warming (image from the National Media Museum) 

Recently, Rembrandt Koppelaar has published on the Oil Drum a summary of the world's trends in energy production. The report tells us that the oil industry is struggling to maintain the present levels of production. It may not have peaked yet, but clearly it can't resume the past trends of increase. That's not surprising, it had been foreseen already in 1998 by Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere (link). What's striking, instead, is the leap forward of coal. The world's total energy production is not peaking and that's because of the rapid growth of coal, as you can see here, from Koppelaar's report:

Coal seemed to have peaked in 1990, but it was an illusion. The growth of coal production during the first decade of the 21st century has been impressive; never seen before in history. So, King Coal is coming back and he may soon reclaim the title of ruler of the energy world that it had lost to crude oil in the 1960s.

We are not seeing anything like a tendency to peak for coal and that, unfortunately, is not good for climate. We can see that from the "other side" of the chemical reaction that sees fossil fuels transformed into carbon dioxide, CO2, whose concentration in the atmosphere is increasing faster in recent times. (the figure below is from "think progress," see also this previous post).

We cannot say that the burst of carbon dioxide that we are seeing is due to coal alone, but it corresponds well to the spike in coal production and it is surely related to it. The global climate situation seems to be rapidly going out of control and this rapid increase in CO2 concentrations doesn't bode well for the future. Bowing down our heads again to King Coal may turn out to be the worst choice we ever made in history.

Defending good science: Michael Mann speaks out

Michael Mann is the author of the "hockey stick" reconstruction that shows how the past decades have been anomalously hot as the result of global warming. In this video, he tells us of his experience, of the ordeal he has gone through, and that he is still experiencing, attacked by professionals of public relations who have unleashed a full propaganda campaign against him. Mann has been harassed and denigrated in all possible ways, including death threats to him and to his family. We need to resist against the forces who are trying to destroy climate science and science in general. Michael Mann, defined "Battle Hardened" in this clip, is doing that, and he is succeeding, but he needs all the help and support we can give to him. We all need to speak out against the forces of anti-science!

(See also a previous post of mine: "long live the hockey stick!"). 

Methane hydrates: the next communication bomb in the climate change debate

Methane released from ice is a spectacular and dangerous phenomenon. It is not so just because methane can catch fire, but because, on a large scale, the release it could generate a rapid and devastating global warming. We cannot say much about the time scale of such an event and not even if it could take place at all, but the perception of the possible danger ahead could be a true communication bomb in the climate debate. (the video shows Katey Walter from University of Alaska at Fairbanks experimenting with this methane trapped in ice)

As greenhouse gas, methane is more powerful than carbon dioxide, but there is a much more important difference between these two gases. Carbon dioxide emissions are something that we create and that we can control, at least in principle. If we stop burning fossil fuels, then we stop generating CO2. But, with methane, it is another matter. We have no direct control on the huge amounts of methane buried in ice in the permafrost and at the bottom of oceans in the form of "hydrates" or "clathrates."

Methane hydrates are a true climate bomb that could go off by itself as the result of a relatively small trigger in the form of a global warming. Sufficient warming would cause the decomposition of some hydrates to release methane to the atmosphere. This methane would create more warming and that would generate more decomposition of the hydrates. The process would go on by itself at increasing rates until the reservoirs run out of methane. That means pumping in the atmosphere truly a lot of methane. There are different estimates of the amount stored in hydrates, but it is surely large - most likely larger than the total amount of carbon present today in the atmosphere as CO2. The effects of the rapid release of so much methane would be devastating: an abrupt climate change that could bring a true planetary catastrophe. It is a scenario aptly called the "clathrate gun" and the target is us.

Now, there are plenty of uncertainties about this scenario, and we cannot say much about its timescale or even whether it would happen at all. But uncertainty is something that may make the scenario even more worrisome. People are scared of things they don't completely understand and that they know they can't control. That's surely the case of methane hydrates. We don't know how likely the worst scenarios are, we only know that methane is being released from hydrates right now and that the concentration of methane in the atmosphere is going up. We can't say if that's the start of the clathrate gun going off, but it is enough to be scared. I don't know about you, but I can tell you that I am scared.

The timescale of the clathrate gun may be long enough that we don't have to be worried in the short term. But another explosion seems to be going off much faster, this one in the media. The trend has started with scientific papers. Before 1999, there was not a single paper on the subject in the "sciencedirect" database. In 2011, 49 papers were published and the trend may be exponential. On the Web, Google Trends still doesn't generate a significant increase in the number of searches for terms such as "hydrate" or "clathrate". But we find about 40,000 pages dealing with the combination "climate change", "methane release" and hydrates. Even the mainstream press is starting to report about the subject. So far, the problem of methane hydrates has been largely absent from the debate on climate change. But that may be rapidly changing.

The methane release scenario has all the characteristics needed to catch the public's attention. It is spectacular, gigantic, biblical, and also rapid. It even has an evil sounding name: the "clathrate gun." It is nothing like the tame scenarios of the IPCC that plod on, slowly, up to the end of the 21st century. The IPCC scenario are not meant to be scary: nobody cares about slowly boiling frogs. But do you remember the 2004 movie "The day after tomorrow"? What scares us, mostly, are sudden catastrophic events. Now, think of a blockbuster movie from Hollywood about the clathrate gun. We would see giant hurricanes, biblical droughts, deadly heat waves, devastating floods..... No matter how the story is told, it is a true communication bomb.

Before continuing, let me hasten with a disclaimer. Let me state that I am NOT saying that we (scientists, activists, journalists or whoever) should exaggerate the dangers ahead in order to scare people with the methane story. Absolutely NOT - on the contrary, my point is that a scared public is NOT a good thing for reasons that I will explain in a moment. Let me also state that this post is NOT meant to claim that the clathrate gun is going off, it is meant to discuss how the public would react to the perception that it may be going off. This said, let me go on.


So, let's assume that the clathrate story becomes widely known, how's the public going to react? According to James Schlesinger, "People have only two modes of operation: complacency and panic". The clathrate communication bomb may well lead to a paradigm shift about climate and push the public opinion all of a sudden to the other side of the Goldilock dilemma: from complacency to panic.

Some people could see that as a welcome event: we would finally see an effort to do something to avoid climate change. But it is not obvious at all that this outcome would be positive. Things done in haste are not necessarily done well. Likely, we would see a frantic effort to "do something," no matter what, no matter how. If the past experience with the energy crisis is a guide, the chances to pick up the best solutions are small (see, for instance, the hype on biofuels). It is probable that we would seek for miracle solutions in large scale geoengineering. Carbon sequestration, sulphate particles in the upper atmosphere, mirrors in space, painting roofs white, what you have.


Would those actions work? Perhaps yes, but we would be moving into a totally uncharted territory. We don't know which could be the best solutions and we can't be sure of the side effects of most of them. Then, wouldn't the energy needed for geoengineering lead to more fossil fuels being consumed and, consequently, more greenhouse gases produced? And, then, suppose that geoengineering works in cooling the planet, wouldn't people revert to complacency and declare that the clathrate gun was a hoax from the beginning? As we move into the future, the problems we have created seem to become bigger just as it becomes evident that we, as a species, are just not equipped with the tools needed to solve them.

Things would have been much simpler if we had been able to find an agreement to tackle the climate problem at its roots, reducing greenhouse emissions. That would have provided a clear target to achieve and little room for wild swings in public perception. But it may well be too late for a strategy based on gradual changes. Things keep changing, and the only sure thing is that we can't stay idle in front of changes. So, get ready for the next big change: the clathrate communication bomb going off!

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Some recent articles and posts about methane release from hydrates. This list is not meant to be complete or representative, it is here just to give some idea of how the debate is heating up (a very appropriate metaphor, in this case)

Much ado about methane - David Archer on RealClimate 

An online model of methane in the atmosphere, by David Archer, RealClimate

Dave Archer wrong to dismiss concern about potential methane runaway in Arctic, by Gary Houser on "Climate change, the next generation"

How much time is there left to act? By Sam Carana on Geoengineering

Methane: a worse worst-case scenario, by "The Tracker", theidiottracker 

Wetting the stratosphere, boiling the oceans, Eli Rabett, RabettRun