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.

6 comments… add one
  • I still have no reasonable response to why Mars is showing evidence of global warming from advocates of the view that humans cause global warming. If Mars is warming about as much as we are warming, it’s pretty sure that humans are not the major cause of warming and we should maximize economic growth in order to pay for all the structural adjustments necessary for the natural warming that is happening.

  • I certainly don’t believe that human activity is the sole factor in global warming or even the main source. I think it’s self-evident that it’s at least a marginal factor. The question IMO is whether a change in human behavior will have a marginal impact on the change and on that I come down in a place similar to yours.

  • > Will the measures that have been proposed have any
    > meaningful impact on the situation?
    > Can we do anything to have a meaningful impact
    > on the situation?

    I don’t think those are the most important questions, and here is why. Most scientists have seen enough evidence to support the hypothesis that global warming is occuring as a result of human interaction with the environment. It seems to me that global warming will have its most negative effect on the oceans. I have blogged about how measures to abate global pollution actually harm the environment worse:

    http://quarksblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/c02-trapping-in-oceans.html

    Thomas Gale Moore of the Hoover Institute argues that global warming is overall a good thing, except for its impact to the oceans (he is closely tied to the Repulican party, though).

    I personally am most concered with the effects to ocean environments. My most important questions would be the following:

    1) Could global warming really be beneficial, as argued by some? Where is global warming the most danger (e.g., oceans, agriculture, etc.)?

    2) What steps can we take to help reduce its targeted effects on these areas?

  • Fred K Link

    Here are the key questions to be pondered:

    * How much of global warming is unrelated to human activity?

    * Is global warming a net positive or negative? Show your work.

    * Why are the proposed solutions to global warming based upon failed socialist ideals?

    * What would be the cost of simply adapting to a different climate?

  • Ron Link

    I am very impressed with the acute powers of analysis of the people at Climate Audit Blog.

    A lot of the true believers in the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming have tried to paint them as Exxon employees. That is pretty amusing, and makes the true believers look like inarticulate and innumerate fools.

    The reflexive urge to “do something even if it’s wrong” that typifies the Kyoto crowd does a discredit to thinking people.

    How long before the next ice age hits? An ice age is a true catastrophe for all human civilizations. Can we slow it down somehow? That bears thinking about.

    If current trends of warming continue, in a thousand years much of the ice cap of Greenland will melt, and coastal cities will have to be evacuated. If Kyoto and its kindred suicidal policies are adopted, in a thousand years a lot of people will refuse to evacuate and let the waves take them.

  • Sylvie LG Pollard Link

    I’m more worried about people’s apathy than global warming. The reason the planet is so polluted & animal extinctions are at an all time high and that humans are walking around full of contaminants that cause cancer along with other life threatening ailments, is due to this apathy. This has been the century of SELF. We will never learn to live in harmony with the earth, I just can’t see it myself! This is more than global warming, but happily, the climate will become more and more violent, until vast numbers of humans are culled. Then, and only then, will we learn the valuable lesson of living in harmony and only taking what you can easily put back. Of course, for those who perish, it will be too late & your only legacy will be the polluting vehicles, planes etc., power stations, oil rigs, chemical plants and dead children surrounded by extinct animal carcasses!!

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