Global warming becoming irreversible?

There’s been a little flurry of activity about this article in The Washington Post on global warming:

Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or reverse the trend.

This “tipping point” scenario has begun to consume many prominent researchers in the United States and abroad, because the answer could determine how drastically countries need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years. While scientists remain uncertain when such a point might occur, many say it is urgent that policymakers cut global carbon dioxide emissions in half over the next 50 years or risk the triggering of changes that would be irreversible.

There are three specific events that these scientists describe as especially worrisome and potentially imminent, although the time frames are a matter of dispute: widespread coral bleaching that could damage the world’s fisheries within three decades; dramatic sea level rise by the end of the century that would take tens of thousands of years to reverse; and, within 200 years, a shutdown of the ocean current that moderates temperatures in northern Europe.

The debate has been intensifying because Earth is warming much faster than some researchers had predicted. James E. Hansen, who directs NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, last week confirmed that 2005 was the warmest year on record, surpassing 1998. Earth’s average temperature has risen nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 30 years, he noted, and another increase of about 4 degrees over the next century would “imply changes that constitute practically a different planet.”

“It’s not something you can adapt to,” Hansen said in an interview. “We can’t let it go on another 10 years like this. We’ve got to do something.”

I haven’t written much (possibly at all) on the subject of global warming. My own opinion is that, yes, global warming is happening and, yes, human activity is contributing to it.

I don’t think that those are the most important questions, however. I think that more important questions are

1. Will the measures that have been proposed have any meaningful impact on the situation?
2. Can we do anything to have a meaningful impact on the situation?

I don’t believe that the measures that have been proposed e.g. the Kyoto Protocol are a meaningful response to the issue. If they work as projected, in the near term—the period under discussion—the impact of compliance by all signatories is likely to be minimal and, even in the long term and under the conditions of the most stringent compliance by all the signatories including those which have not ratified the Protocol like the United States it’s having the desired impact is very unlikely for two simple reasons: China and India. Both countries are specifically exempted from the emissions-reducing requirements. And current Chinese policy seems to be completely negating any impact the Protocol might have.

There are other problems as well. Few of the ratifying nations have actually satisfied their commitments, those who have have done so mostly by “emissions trading” and it’s unclear to me how emissions trading actually eliminates any emissions.

China and India aren’t poor relations: both are middle class countries now and should be living up to their responsibilities on the world scene. And part of the way that China and India have become middle class is by Europe and the United States offloading their own polluting industries to those countries. Obviously, that’s not a sustainable policy: the sky over China has become 2% darker over just the last 50 years. That will have an impact on the lives and health of the Chinese people and, at some point, may have a seriously deleterious influence over agricultural production there (if that hasn’t already happened).

Well, why not give it a try, anyway? (I hear somebody say.) I’m open to the case that Americans should participate fully in an international agreement that will really do something about the problem. I’m pretty skeptical about the idea that Americans should be poorer, sicker, or more poorly educated or housed so that the point of irreversibility will come in 2026 rather than 2025.

Beating up on George Bush isn’t enough of a policy. Which is the better practice: signing a treaty that you know doesn’t have a chance in hell of being ratified (as the Clinton Administration did) or acknowledging the fact?

China continues to be the linchpin on world environmental issues as it is on so many international issues today; we’re not willing to negotiate meaningfully with the Chinese. Until we do so or Chinese policies miraculously change (there’s some evidence that that’s happening but it may be too little, too late), global warming is probably a reality, we won’t do much about it, and, consequently, if you live within 50 miles of the sea coast (as more than half of Americans do), you might think about moving to higher ground.