PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet CLIMATE SCARES & CLIMATE CHANGE, 12 October 2001
------------------------------------------------------
"Geologists exploring the rugged Continental Divide say they
discovered more than 100 additional glaciers here in a single
summer,
a surprising find since glaciers around the world are shrinking
in
warmer temperatures. [...] Park officials say comparisons with
historical
photos suggest that at least some of the glaciers are expanding.
Glaciers
are barometers of climate change, and researchers said the survey
results here contradict global warming trends."
--Joseph B. Verrengia, The Associated Press, 4 October 2001
"Climate forecasts are blowing hot and cold again. US
researchers
have shown that plants and bacteria in prairie soil cut their
production of
greenhouse gas as they adapt to rising heat. So current
predictions of
global warming could be over-estimates."
--Helen Pearson, Nature, 11 October 2001
(1) SCIENTISTS SURPRISED TO FIND NEW GLACIERS
Associated Press, 4 October 2001
(2) LITTLE HEAT ON THE PRAIRIE: GRASSLANDS ACCLIMATIZE TO CLIMATE
CHANGE
Nature Science Update, 11 October 2001
(3) MUSHROOMS MAY SLOW GLOBAL WARMING
Christian Science Monitor, 10 October 2001
(4) NOAA'S SATELLITES REVEAL DROUGHT CONDITIONS IN 20 PERCENT OF
THE WORLD
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(5) IS EARTH'S WEATHER GETTING MORE EXTREME ?
CO2 Science Magazine, 10 October 2001
(6) A TALE OF TWO TEMPERATURE TRENDS: TEMPERATURE CHANGES IN THE
US DURING
THE 20TH CENTURY
CO2 Science Magazine, 10 October 2001
(7) WINTER IN THE NORTHERN BALTIC SEA
CO2 Science Magazine, 10 October 2001
(8) YET ANOTHER BIOPHYSICAL FEEDBACK MECHANISM THAT MAY HELP TO
PROTECT THE
PLANET AGAINST DELETERIOUS CO2-INDUCED GLOBAL WARMING
CO2 Science Magazine, 10 October 2001
(9) DISSENT IN THE MAELSTROM
Scientific American, November 2001
(10) THE ENVIRONMENT: GETTING BETTER, NOT WORSE
Tech Central Station, 10 October 2001
(11) AMERICAN INDIANS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Michael Paine <mpaine@tpgi.com.au>
===========
(1) SCIENTISTS SURPRISED TO FIND NEW GLACIERS
>From Associated Press, 4 October 2001
http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSScience0110/04_glaciers-ap.html
By JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA-- The Associated Press
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, Colo. (AP) -- Geologists exploring
the rugged
Continental Divide say they discovered more than 100 additional
glaciers
here in a single summer, a surprising find since glaciers around
the world
are shrinking in warmer temperatures.
The results dramatically change the map of one of the nation's
oldest and
best-known national parks, along with the knowledge of weather
and water
cycles at high elevations.
Previously, officials believed the park 60 miles northwest of
Denver
included 20 permanent ice and snow features, including six named
glaciers.
The new survey by geologist Jonathan Achuff shows there are as
many as 120
features. Most are located in cold, north-facing pockets on the
east side of
the Divide at elevations above 12,000 feet.
Most of the newly discovered glaciers are covered with rocky
debris;
continuous freezing and thawing splinters the brittle granite
that forms
some of the park's majestic peaks. Park officials say comparisons
with
historical photos suggest that at least some of the glaciers are
expanding.
Glaciers are barometers of climate change, and researchers said
the survey
results here contradict global warming trends.
In Antarctica, the Pine Island Glacier thinned by 36 feet in
eight years;
the rate of ice-thinning is 10 times greater than the rate of
snowfall
there.
In Africa, the famous white mantle of Mount Kilimanjaro has
shrunk by 82
percent since 1912. A survey by Ohio State researcher Lonnie G.
Thompson
predicts the equator-straddling glacier will vanish entirely by
2015.
Already, some rivers in Tanzania have dried up as a result, he
said.
Similar icy retreats have been measured in the Andes of Peru and
the
Himalayas of Tibet. Aerial photos over the past three decades
show the
number of named glaciers in Montana's Glacier National Park has
dropped from
83 to fewer than 65.
Perhaps the only major glacial system that is increasing in size
today is in
Norway. Coastal glaciers are more complicated, and some global
warming
models predict increased snowfall there as precipitation patterns
change.
In Colorado, park officials said subtle climate changes may be
helping the
formation of glaciers or at least reducing their retreat.
The Divide already funnels snow from the West up and over ridges,
where it
settles in eastern basins just below the tallest peaks.
Also, expanding development near Denver is sending hot air that
helps to
form additional cloud cover over the mountains in the summer.
While
precipitation hasn't changed much, temperatures have been
slightly cooler in
the past several years.
"We're not running quite in synch with global warming
here," park
spokeswoman Judy Visty said.
Achuff and others are preparing expanded studies that would begin
next
summer, including the possibility of drilling core samples to the
bottom of
large ice features, using satellites to measure the glaciers'
movements and
seismic testing to determine how much ice and rock the features
contain.
Perhaps the most significant of the newly discovered glaciers is
located
beneath a boulder field near the 14,255-foot summit of Long's
Peak, one of
the West's most popular climbs. The glacier, it turns out, has
been skirted
by thousands of visitors annually.
Previously, some geologists speculated that the boulder field was
a "rock
glacier" -- a catchall term for thick mixtures of debris and
ice. But the
granite may actually cover up a thick ice slab, insulating it
from the sun.
"There could be a large chunk of ice under there, perhaps
several hundred
feet thick and a mile long," Visty said.
Copyright 2001, AP
=========
(2) LITTLE HEAT ON THE PRAIRIE: GRASSLANDS ACCLIMATIZE TO CLIMATE
CHANGE
>From Nature Science Update, 11 October 2001
http://www.nature.com/nsu/011011/011011-11.html
HELEN PEARSON
Climate forecasts are blowing hot and cold again. US researchers
have shown
that plants and bacteria in prairie soil cut their production of
greenhouse
gas as they adapt to rising heat1. So current predictions of
global warming
could be over-estimates.
Climate-change models assume that soil microbes accelerate global
warming.
Rising temperatures are expected to speed the bacteria's
respiration, which
burns food and releases the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2).
In fact, grassland soil acclimatizes to heat. In climes such as
those on the
prairie, CO2 release "is not going to be as much as
feared", says Linda
Wallace of the University of Oklahoma in Norman. This could slow
climate
change.
Soil respiration contributes up to 100 billion metric tonnes of
carbon a
year to the global carbon cycle. "If we tweak it by 10-15%
it's equivalent
to all our emissions combined," says Lindsey Rustad, who
studies soil
respiration with the US Department of Agriculture's Forest
Service in
Durham, New Hampshire. Man-made emissions total a mere 7 tonnes.
The idea that CO2 release would escalate came from earlier,
short-term
studies of heated soil. "We have to be very careful about
making long-term
predictions on the basis of short-term experiments,"
cautions Rustad.
The heat is on
Wallace's team warmed Oklahoma grassland plots using infrared
heaters.
Respiration rose, but not as fast as climate models assume.
"This assumption
is critical," says climate modeller Peter Cox of the
Meteorological Office
in London.
The Earth's average temperature has risen by 0.6 ºC over the
past century.
Cox recently predicted a 5.5 ºC hike in global temperatures by
2100. Taking
soil respiration feedback out of the equation cuts the rise to
4.5 ºC, he
works out.
This more conservative estimate would only hold true if
respiration
continues to drop off at higher temperatures, Cox warns. That
depends on
what is causing it in the soil, where plant roots, bacteria and
fungi all
play a part.
One possibility is that when the heat is on, microbes burn up
their supply
of sugars quickly; then running out of fuel reigns in their
respiration. In
this case, the respiration slowdown would not sustain its initial
pace.
Longer studies are needed: "We might not get the answer
until after climate
change has happened," says Cox.
References
Luo, Y., Wan, S., Hui, D. & Wallace, L. L. Acclimatization of
soil
respiration to warming in a tall grass prairie. Nature, 413, 622
- 625,
(2001).
© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2001
============
(3) MUSHROOMS MAY SLOW GLOBAL WARMING
>From Christian Science Monitor, 10 October 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1011/p18s1-sten.html
By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science
Monitor
Saved by fungi?
In forecasting the effect of carbon dioxide emissions on Earth's
climate,
scientists may be misjudging the response to global warming from
some of the
planet's tiniest terrestrial inhabitants.
As a result, researchers could be overestimating the average
warming the
planet might experience.
That is the implication of a growing body of studies focusing on
the release
back into the atmosphere of carbon in soil, a process known as
soil
respiration. Respiration from plants and soils sits opposite
plant
absorption of CO2 on the terrestrial carbon-cycle teeter-totter.
The latest piece in the respiration puzzle comes from a team at
the
University of Oklahoma in Norman, where scientists spent a year
artificially
warming prairie test plots at a fixed level above the ambient air
and
comparing the results with unheated plots.
All plots released carbon dioxide at higher rates in the summer
than in the
winter, as expected.
But over the course of the year, the rate at which CO2 was
released through
roots and the activity of fungi and tiny soil organisms was no
greater in
the warmed plots than in the unheated soils.
This runs counter to a longstanding notion - embraced in
textbooks as well
as climate models - that the hotter it gets, the faster soils
pump out CO2.
For every 10 degrees C that temperatures rise, CO2 emissions from
soils were
thought to double.
By contrast, the team concluded that the soils' organisms quickly
adjust to
higher temperatures. Like Northeastern "snowbirds"
moving to Florida and
facing warmer temperatures year-round, they "just get used
to it."
Combined with additional data suggesting that the prairie grasses
in the
heated plots thrived under the additional warmth, the study also
suggests
that the world's grasslands may soak up more CO2 than they emit,
according
to Linda Wallace, a plant ecologist at the University of Oklahoma
and a
member of the team, which is reporting its results in the today's
edition of
the journal Nature.
"This is good news on a global basis," Dr. Wallace
says. "Grasslands cover a
such a huge proportion of the terrestrial portion of globe. We'd
been kind
of discounting them, saying that as things warm up, they would
become carbon
sources. But in reality, these grasslands could become carbon
sinks."
The concept of acclimatization is important in understanding how
terrestrial
ecosystems could respond to global change, researchers say.
Long-term experiments already have shown that, faced with
increased
concentrations of CO2, trees go through a relatively short
"growth spurt,"
and then their growth rate slows as they become acclimatized to
higher CO2
levels, notes Lindsey Rustad, a soil ecologist with the US Forest
Service
office in Durham, N.H.
Thus, relying on them as "sinks" for the CO2 that
humans are pumping into
the atmosphere may be a short-term approach at best for trying to
meet
emissions targets set out in the 1997 Kyoto Protocols.
Down at the root level, soil respiration pumps up to 14 times as
much CO2
into the atmosphere each year as human activity currently does.
Thus, with human-induced warming, soils might be expected to
increase their
CO2 output as temperatures rise, adding atmospheric insult to
injury.
Climate modelers use a representation of that rate in their
computer
simulations of global warming.
This relationship was based primarily on the physiology of the
various
organisms themselves, Wallace notes, as opposed to detailed
measurement of
changes in the respiration rate driven by different temperature
regimes.
Other studies in different ecosystems have documented an initial
spike in
soil CO2 emissions when the soil is heated.
But those emissions quickly fall as the organisms use up other
resources.
These studies, combined with the Oklahoma team's results, lead
Dr. Rustad to
conclude:
"The biggest take-home message is the idea that we really
have to reexamine
what sort of inputs we have in our models and how we derive
those."
Copyright © 2001 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights
reserved.
===========
(4) NOAA'S SATELLITES REVEAL DROUGHT CONDITIONS IN 20 PERCENT OF
THE WORLD
>From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
NOAA
Contact:
Patricia Viets, NOAA's Satellite Service
(301) 457-5005, Patricia.Viets@noaa.gov
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 10/1/01
NOAA 2001-102
NOAA's SATELLITES REVEAL DROUGHT CONDITIONS IN 20 PERCENT OF THE
WORLD
A new satellite-based method for early detection, monitoring and
analysis of
drought shows that nearly 20 percent of the world's landmass has
been
stricken by drought over the past two years, according to
scientists at the
Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.
Scientists at NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and
Information
Service in Camp Springs, Md., used solar radiation detected from
an
instrument onboard NOAA's polar orbiting satellites, called the
Advanced
Very High Resolution Radiometer. The solar radiation was observed
in three wavelengths of the solar spectrum -- visible, near
infrared and
thermal -- to study vegetation health, moisture, and thermal
conditions.
"Satellite data are important to our understanding of the
world's climate,
particularly in regions of the world where routine surface
measurements are
sometimes difficult to obtain," said Felix Kogan, the NOAA
scientist who
developed the new drought detection methodology. "This
method has been
tested worldwide for eight years and has proven to be an
excellent vehicle
for early drought detection and monitoring, as well as for
assessing the
impacts of droughts."
NOAA is providing information on drought to customers around the
world. Many
countries in Africa, Asia and North America experienced the
effects of
two-year droughts.
Long, intensive spring and summer dryness developed in the
southern and
western United States (and neighboring regions of Canada) during
2000 and
2001 with Texas experiencing severe droughts. Satellite data
identified
large areas in the Northwest that were vulnerable to intensive
fire
activity. During the two-year period, active fires consumed large
areas of
forested land.
In the Horn of Africa, early drought signs were recorded in
January 2000.
Over the next four months, the drought expanded and intensified,
creating
food shortages and outbreak of disease that affected millions of
inhabitants
in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and other regions.
In Asia, crop producing regions and rangelands of Afghanistan,
Pakistan,
Iran, India, Mongolia and China were severely hit by spring and
summer
dryness during 2000 and 2001. The worst situation was observed in
Afghanistan and Pakistan where approximately 60 and 40 percent of
these
countries, respectively, suffer from intensive drought in 2001.
Unusual
summer dryness also affected countries in the Caspian Sea region.
The new method of drought detection and monitoring has been
recognized by
the global scientific and operational community and has been
publicized by
the American Meteorological Society, UN-based organizations and
international remote sensing publications. NOAA's data are widely
distributed to the United States and global institutions provided
through
the NOAA Web site:
http://orbit-net.nesdis.noaa.gov/crad/sat/surf/vci
NESDIS is the nation's primary source of space-based
meteorological and
climate data. NESDIS operates the nation's environmental
satellites, which
are used for weather forecasting, climate monitoring, and other
environmental applications such as fire detection, ozone
monitoring, and sea
surface temperature measurements. NESDIS also operates three data
centers,
which house global data bases in climatology, oceanography, solid
earth
geophysics, marine geology and geophysics, solar-terrestrial
physics and
paleoclimatology.
To learn more about NESDIS, please visit
http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov
Relevant Web Sites
* NOAA's Vegetation and Temperature Condition Index
http://orbit-net.nesdis.noaa.gov/crad/sat/surf/vci/
* NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information
Service
http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/
* NOAA's Polar-orbiting Satellites
http://www.oso.noaa.gov/poes/
* NOAA's Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer
http://www.geo.mtu.edu/volcanoes/research/avhrr/
IMAGE CAPTION:
[ http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/images/worlddrought093001.gif
(187KB)]
World moisture and thermal conditions taken on September 30,
2001.
==========
(5) IS EARTH'S WEATHER GETTING MORE EXTREME ?
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 10 October 2001
http://www.co2science.org/subject/w/summaries/weatherex.htm
Is earth's weather getting more extreme in response to the
warming that has
rescued the planet from the chilly grip of the Little Ice
Age? Climate
alarmists say that it should be; and in a review of this
question,
Easterling et al. (2000) go even further, saying that data in
support of
this proposition "would add to the body of evidence that
there is a
discernable human affect on the climate." Of course,
the finding of such
data would do nothing of the sort; but if they truly believe that
it would,
they should be equally willing to accept the opposite conclusion,
i.e., that
lack of such data would call this claim into question, although,
of course,
it really wouldn't. It would only refute the climate
alarmist claim that
warmer weather breeds more extreme weather events.
So what did Easterling et al. discover in their review of the
pertinent
scientific literature? In their own words, "in some areas of
the world
increases in extreme events are apparent, while in others there
appears to
be a decline." Overall, therefore, they could see no
real trend, although
they did acknowledge that "the number of intense and
landfalling Atlantic
hurricanes has declined." Iskenderian and Rosen (2000)
also took up the
challenge of the search for change, analyzing two
mid-tropospheric
temperature data sets of the last half-century for day-to-day
variability
within each month, season and year. However, they too could find
no
clear-cut evidence of any significant change in temperature
variability for
either the Northern Hemisphere or the United States.
But what about the fact that most measures of the economic
impacts of
weather and climate extremes over the past several decades reveal
increasing
losses? In reviewing this question, Kunkel et al. (1999)
concluded that
"increasing losses are primarily due to increasing
vulnerability arising
from a variety of societal changes, including a growing
population in higher
risk coastal areas and large cities, more property subject to
damage, and
lifestyle and demographic changes subjecting lives and property
to greater
exposure," particularly since "trends in most related
weather and climate
extremes do not show comparable increases with time."
Specifically, they
found that "increasing property losses due to
thunderstorm-related phenomena
(winds, hail, tornadoes) are explained entirely by changes in
societal
factors," and that "when changes in population,
inflation, and wealth are
considered," there is a downward trend in hurricane
losses. In addition,
they report "no apparent trend in climatic drought
frequency" and "no
evidence of changes in the frequency of intense heat or
cold."
Similar conclusions have been reached by van der Vink et al.
(1998), who say
"we are becoming more vulnerable to natural disasters
because of the trends
of our society rather than those of nature," as well as
Changnon et al.
(2000), who say "population growth and demographic shifts
are the major
factors behind the increasing losses from weather-climate
extremes." The
latter authors also conclude "it is reasonable to predict
ever-increasing
losses even without any detrimental climate changes."
Longer histories of climate provide an even better perspective on
the issue.
In a massive tree-ring study conducted in Spain, for example,
Manrique and
Fernandez-Cancio (2000) developed thousand-year chronologies of
both
temperature and precipitation, finding that the greatest
concentration of
extreme climatic excursions was located between 1400 and 1600,
with a
maximum frequency centered at about 1500. In fact, they
refer to these
extreme climatic excursions as "the outstanding oscillations
of the Little
Ice Age," for which there is no comparable analogue in the
entire past
millennium.
In view of these several real-world observations, it was
interesting to note
(see Extreme Weather Events) that on 10 August 1998, the Office
of the Vice
President of the United States of America issued an official
press release,
stating that "we are warming the planet and, unless we act,
we can expect
even more extreme weather - more heat waves, more flooding, more
powerful
storms, and more drought." This same message was purveyed to
the public
about a year later in a series of HOTEARTH advertisements (see
"Noticed the
Weather Lately?") that specifically mentioned heat waves,
droughts,
hurricanes and floods. However, as we noted in responding to the
claims of
the Vice President, even the IPCC documents of the day were
renouncing such
outlandish predictions. Indeed, the organization's 1996
report bluntly
states "there is no evidence that extreme weather events, or
climate
variability, has increased, in a global sense, through the 20th
century."
And in our reply to the HOTEARTH ads, we cited several studies
that
contradict their contentions with respect to each of the weather
events they
claim to be getting worse.
In conclusion, the climate alarmists are clearly way off base
with respect
to their predictions of rising air temperatures increasing the
frequency and
severity of extreme weather events, which is really a very
straightforward
question. And if they can't even get this simple concept right,
there's
little reason to believe they are correct on the much more
complex question
of man's potential impact on the planet's climate. Why anyone
would continue
to believe them is beyond our comprehension.
References
Changnon, S.A., Pielke Jr., R.A., Changnon, D., Sylves, R.T. and
Pulwarty,
R. 2000. Human factors explain the increased losses
from weather and
climate extremes. Bulletin of the American Meteorological
Society 81:
437-442.
Easterling, D.R., Evans, J.L., Groisman, P.Ya., Karl, T.R.,
Kunkel, K.E.,
and Ambenje, P. 2000. Observed variability and trends
in extreme climate
events: A brief review. Bulletin of the American
Meteorological Society 81:
417-425.
Iskenderian, H. and Rosen, R.D. 2000. Low-frequency
signals in
midtropospheric submonthly temperature variance. Journal of
Climate 13:
2323-2333.
Kunkel, K.E., Pielke Jr., R.A. and Changnon, S.A.
1999. Temporal
fluctuations in weather and climate extremes that cause economic
and human
health impacts: A review. Bulletin of the American
Meteorological Society
80: 1077-1098.
Manrique, E. and Fernandez-Cancio, A. 2000. Extreme
climatic events in
dendroclimatic reconstructions from Spain. Climatic Change
44: 123-138.
van der Vink, G., Allen, R.M., Chapin, J., Crooks, M., Fraley,
W., Krantz,
J., Lavigne, A.M., LeCuyer, A., MacColl, E.K., Morgan, W.J.,
Ries, B.,
Robinson, E., Rodriquez, K., Smith, M. and Sponberg, K.
1998. Why the
United States is becoming more vulnerable to natural
disasters. EOS,
Transactions, American Geophysical Union 79: 533, 537.
Copyright © 2001. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
==========
(6) A TALE OF TWO TEMPERATURE TRENDS: TEMPERATURE CHANGES IN THE
US DURING
THE 20TH CENTURY
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 10 October 2001
http://www.co2science.org/journal/2001/v4n41c2.htm
Reference
Knappenberger, P.C., Michaels, P.J. and Davis, R.E. 2001. Nature
of observed
temperature changes across the United States during the 20th
century.
Climate Research 17: 45-53.
What was done
Based on annual temperature data for the USA's 48 contiguous
states, which
were obtained from the U.S. Historical Climate Network database,
the authors
plotted the history of the country's mean annual temperature from
1910 to
1997. This presentation revealed the existence of three distinct
periods of
climate change: a warming from 1910 to 1939, a cooling from 1940
to 1969,
and another warming from 1970 to 1997. For each of these periods,
the
authors eliminated all stations with more than 10% missing data,
location
moves of more than 0.1' of latitude or longitude, elevation
changes of more
than six meters, and time of observation changes of more than one
hour, as
well as all stations where liquid-in-glass thermometers in Cotton
Region
Shelters were replaced with newer thermistor-based temperature
observing
systems, which changeover was begun in the mid-1980s.
For each of the surviving stations of each of the three periods,
all days of
the year were ranked from coldest to warmest. Linear regressions
were then
run on each station's maximum and minimum temperature for the 730
resulting
time series. The first two (maximum and minimum temperature) were
for each
year's coldest day, the second two were for each year's second
coldest day,
and so forth on up to each year's hottest day. Finally, the
resulting
maximum temperature trends for all stations within each of seven
roughly
equal-area regions of the country were averaged, as were the
resulting
minimum temperature trends, after which national trends were
calculated.
What was learned
The primary objective of this unique study was to compare the
warmings of
the first and third periods of the record, since the first period
was more
"natural," exhibiting a mean atmospheric CO2
concentration increase of about
0.32 ppm/year (an absolute increase of 9.3 ppm), while the last
period was
more anthropogenically-influenced, having a mean CO2 rate of rise
of
approximately 1.4 ppm/year (an absolute increase of 38.3 ppm),
which is
nearly 4.4 times greater (4.1 times on an absolute basis) than
that of the
first period.
In the case of the first or more natural period, the greatest
rise in
temperature occurred during the hottest days of the year. By
contrast, the
warming of the last period - where the fingerprint of man would
be expected
to be more prominent, if it were detectable at all - occurred
predominantly
during the coolest days of the year, while days with the highest
temperatures exhibited far less of an increase in temperature.
Hence, in the
words of the authors, "the surface air temperature change
that has occurred
during the period of the greatest human influence on the climate
is one in
which increases of extremely low temperatures have dominated over
those of
high temperatures - a climate tending toward moderation rather
than the
extreme."
What it means
Political climatologists are always predicting greater extremes
of weather
as a consequence of rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. In
analyzing the
two periods of warming in this study, however, the period of time
most
likely to depict a CO2-induced increase in temperature extremes
exhibited
just the opposite behavior. Hence, it would appear that this
favorite claim
of the climate alarmists is without basis in observational fact
in the best
temperature record currently available to scientists.
Copyright © 2001. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
==============
(7) WINTER IN THE NORTHERN BALTIC SEA
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 10 October 2001
http://www.co2science.org/journal/2001/v4n41c1.htm
Reference
Jevrejeva, S. 2001. Severity of winter seasons in the northern
Baltic Sea
between 1529 and 1990: reconstruction and analysis. Climate
Research 17:
55-62.
What was done
Based on a wealth of historical data, the author reconstructed
the severity
of winter seasons in the northern Baltic Sea on the basis of
observed times
of ice break-up between 1529 and 1990 at the port of Riga,
Latvia.
What was learned
The long date-of-ice-break-up time series was best described by a
fifth-order polynomial, which identified four distinct periods of
climatic
transition: (1) 1530-1640, warming with a tendency toward early
break-up of
9 days/century, (2) 1640-1770, cooling with a tendency toward
late break-up
of 5 days/century, (3) 1770-1920, warming with a tendency toward
early
break-up of 15 days/century, and (4) 1920-1990, cooling with a
tendency
toward late break-up of 12 days/century.
What it means
Over the 390 years from 1530 to 1920 that comprise the sum of the
first
three climate change periods identified in this analysis, the
atmosphere's
CO2 concentration rose by approximately 16 ppm; while over the 70
years of
the last period it rose by about 54 ppm. Hence, with respect to
potential
impacts of the historical rise in the air's CO2 content, the last
of the
four periods would be the one most likely to depict what climate
alarmists
want us to believe, i.e., that rising CO2 levels are bringing
unprecedented
warming to the planet, especially in high-latitude regions. As
this study
clearly shows, however, this latter period exhibits the greatest
rate of
warming of the entire record, which is not exactly what the
climate
alarmists are predicting should have happened. In fact, it is
quite the
opposite, with the last year of the time series posting the
longest-lasting
presence of ice of the entire 460-year period.
Copyright © 2001. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and
Global Change
============
(8) YET ANOTHER BIOPHYSICAL FEEDBACK MECHANISM THAT MAY HELP TO
PROTECT THE
PLANET AGAINST DELETERIOUS CO2-INDUCED GLOBAL WARMING
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 10 October 2001
http://www.co2science.org/edit/v4_edit/v4n41edit.htm
Several years ago, Charlson et al. (1987) described a biophysical
feedback
mechanism that tends to stabilize earth's surface air temperature
against
the effects of both natural and anthropogenic-induced
perturbations in
various climate forcing factors (see Dimethyl Sulfide in our
Subject Index).
Very briefly, the negative feedback loop they proposed begins
with an
impetus for warming that induces an increase in sea surface
temperature,
which stimulates the productivity of oceanic phytoplankton, which
leads (via
a few intermediate steps) to an enhanced surface-to-air flux of
dimethyl
sulfide, which leads via a few other steps to the creation of
more cloud
condensation nuclei, which leads to the creation of more and
smaller cloud
droplets, which leads to the creation of more and longer-lasting
clouds of
greater albedo, which leads to the reflection of more incoming
solar
radiation, which finally tends to counteract the initial impetus
for
warming.
The various links in this complex chain of events have all been
thoroughly
investigated and determined to be sound by literally hundreds of
experimental studies. Consequently, we here proceed in
similar fashion -
based upon a number of other well-established biophysical
phenomena - to
describe a second temperature-stabilizing feedback loop that
appears to be
equally well supported by a solid base of evidence. Whereas
almost anything
could serve as a stimulus for warming in the scenario elucidated
by Charlson
et al., however, the initial impetus for the increase in surface
air
temperature in the negative feedback loop we describe here
focuses
exclusively on the incremental enhancement of the atmosphere's
greenhouse
effect that is produced by an increase in the air's CO2 content;
and from
this starting point, we identify a chain of events that
ultimately
counteracts this impetus for warming by the incremental
enhancement of the
planet's natural rate of CO2 removal from the air.
The first of the linkages of this negative feedback loop is the
proven
propensity for higher levels of atmospheric CO2 to enhance
vegetative
productivity (see Plant Growth Data on our sidebar for
verification) and
plant water use efficiency (see Water Use Efficiency in our
Subject Index
for verification), which phenomena are themselves powerful
negative feedback
mechanisms of the type we envision. Greater CO2-enhanced
photosynthetic
rates, for example, enable plants to remove considerably more CO2
from the
air than they do under current conditions; while CO2-induced
increases in
plant water use efficiency allow plants to grow where it was
previously too
dry for them. This latter consequence of atmospheric CO2
enrichment
establishes a potential for more CO2 to be removed from the
atmosphere by
increasing the abundance of earth's plants, whereas the former
phenomenon
does so by increasing their robustness. Both limbs of this
one-linkage-long
double-barreled negative feedback loop are extremely powerful, as
Idso
(1991a,b) has demonstrated how just the first of them may be
capable of
stabilizing the air's CO2 concentration at less than a doubling
of its
pre-industrial value. Nevertheless, these tremendous
"side-effects"
comprise but the first link of the more extended negative
feedback loop that
is the subject of this essay.
The second of the linkages of the new feedback loop is the
ability of plants
to emit gases to the atmosphere that are ultimately converted
into
"biosols," i.e., aerosols that owe their existence to
the biological
activities of earth's vegetation (Duce et al., 1983; Mooney et
al., 1987),
many of which function as cloud condensation nuclei (Went, 1966;
Meszaros,
1988; Kavouras et al., 1998; Hopke et al., 1999). It takes
little
imagination to realize that since the existence of these
atmospheric
particles is dependent upon the physiological activities of
plants and their
associated soil biota (Idso, 1990), the CO2-induced presence of
more and
more-highly-productive plants will lead to the production of more
of these
cloud-mediating particles, which can then act as described by
Charlson et
al. to cool the planet. But this two-linkage-long negative
feedback effect,
like the one-linkage-long dual cooling mechanism described in the
previous
paragraph, is still not the endpoint of the new feedback loop we
are
describing.
The third linkage of the new scenario is the observed propensity
for
increases in aerosols and cloud particles to enhance the amount
of diffuse
solar radiation reaching the earth's surface (Suraqui et al.,
1974;
Abakumova et al., 1996). The fourth linkage is the ability
of enhanced
diffuse lighting to reduce the volume of shade within vegetative
canopies
(Roderick et al., 2001). The fifth linkage is the tendency
for less
internal canopy shading to enhance whole-canopy photosynthesis
(Healey et
al., 1998), which finally produces the end result: a greater
biological
extraction of CO2 from the air and subsequent sequestration of
its carbon,
compliments of the intensified diffuse-light-driven increase in
total canopy
photosynthesis and subsequent transfers of the extra fixed carbon
to plant
and soil storage reservoirs.
How significant is the process? Roderick et al. provide a
good estimate
based on one of our favorite approaches to questions of this
type: the
utilization of a unique "natural experiment," a
technique that has been used
extensively by Idso (1998) to evaluate the climatic sensitivity
of the
entire planet. Specifically, Roderick and his colleagues
consider the
volcanic eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in June of 1991. This
event ejected
enough gases and fine materials into the atmosphere that it
produced
sufficient aerosol particles to greatly increase the diffuse
component of
the solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth from that
point in
time through much of 1993, while only slightly reducing the
receipt of total
solar radiation.
Based on a set of lengthy calculations, Roderick et al. conclude
that the
Mt. Pinatubo eruption may well have resulted in the removal of an
extra 2.5
Gt of carbon from the atmosphere due to its
diffuse-light-enhancing
stimulation of terrestrial vegetation in the year following the
eruption,
which would have reduced the ongoing rise in the air's CO2
concentration
that year by about 1.2 ppm. Interestingly, this reduction
is about the
magnitude of the real-world perturbation that was actually
observed
(Sarmiento, 1993). What makes this observation even more
impressive is the
fact that the CO2 reduction was coincident with an El Niño
event; because,
in the words of the authors, "previous and subsequent such
events have been
associated with increases in atmospheric CO2." In
addition, the observed
reduction in total solar radiation received at the earth's
surface during
this period would have had a tendency to reduce the amount of
photosynthetically active radiation incident upon earth's plants,
which
would also have had a tendency to cause the air's CO2 content to
rise, as it
would tend to lessen global photosynthetic activity.
Clearly, as we probe ever deeper into the secrets of nature, the
story that
emerges is one of amazingly complex cross-linkages between the
physical and
biological worlds. This web of interconnectedness wields
great power to
maintain the climate of the earth within bounds that are suitable
for the
continued existence of life in all its variety. We would do
well to better
learn the lessons these subtle but powerful negative feedback
loops have to
tell us before we lunge forward in our hubris and make a massive
misstep in
regulating anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Although deemed to
be good by many
conscientious and concerned people, this course might ultimately
prove our
undoing ... and that of the rest of the biosphere as well (see
our Editorial
of 4 July 2001).
Dr. Sherwood B. Idso, President
Dr. Keith E. Idso, Vice President
References
Abakumova, G.M., Feigelson, E.M., Russak, V. and Stadnik,
V.V. 1996.
Evaluation of long-term changes in radiation, cloudiness, and
surface
temperature on the territory of the former Soviet Union.
Journal of
Climatology 9: 1319-1327.
Charlson, R.J., Lovelock, J.E., Andrea, M.O. and Sarren,
S.G. 1987.
Oceanic phytoplankton, atmospheric sulfur, cloud albedo and
climate. Nature
326: 655-661.
Duce, R.A., Mohnen, V.A., Zimmerman, P.R., Grosjean, D.,
Cautreels, W.,
Chatfield, R., Jaenicke, R., Ogsen, J.A., Pillizzari, E.D. and
Wallace, G.T.
1983. Organic material in the global troposphere.
Reviews of Geophysics
and Space Physics 21: 921-952.
Healey, K.D., Rickert, K.G., Hammer, G.L. and Bange, M.P.
1998. Radiation
use efficiency increases when the diffuse component of incident
radiation is
enhanced under shade. Australian Journal of Agricultural
Research 49:
665-672.
Hopke, P.K., Xie, Y. and Paatero, P. 1999. Mixed
multiway analysis of
airborne particle composition data. Journal of Chemometrics
13: 343-352.
Idso, S.B. 1990. A role for soil microbes in
moderating the carbon dioxide
greenhouse effect? Soil Science 149: 179-180.
Idso, S.B. 1991a. The aerial fertilization effect of
CO2 and its
implications for global carbon cycling and maximum greenhouse
warming.
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 72: 962-965.
Idso, S.B. 1991b. Reply to comments of L.D. Danny
Harvey, Bert Bolin, and
P. Lehmann. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
72: 1910-1914.
Idso, S.B. 1998. CO2-induced global warming: a
skeptic's view of potential
climate change. Climate Research 10: 69-82.
Kavouras, I.G., Mihalopoulos, N. and Stephanou, E.G.
1998. Formation of
atmospheric particles from organic acids produced by
forests. Nature 395:
683-686.
Meszaros, E. 1988. On the possible role of the biosphere in
the control of
atmospheric clouds and precipitation. Atmospheric Environment 22:
423-424.
Mooney, H.A., Vitousek, P.M. and Matson, P.A. 1987.
Exchange of materials
between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. Science 238:
926-932.
Roderick, M.L., Farquhar, G.D., Berry, S.L. and Noble, I.R.
2001. On the
direct effect of clouds and atmospheric particles on the
productivity and
structure of vegetation. Oecologia 129: 21-30.
Sarmiento, J.L. 1993. Atmospheric CO2 stalled. Nature 365:
697-698.
Suraqui, S., Tabor, H., Klein, W.H. and Goldberg, B. 1974. Solar
radiation
changes at Mt. St. Katherine after forty years. Solar
Energy 16: 155-158.
Went, F.W. 1966. On the nature of Aitken condensation nuclei.
Tellus 18:
549-555.
Copyright © 2001. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and
Global Change
=============
(9) DISSENT IN THE MAELSTROM
>From Scientific American, November 2001
http://www.sciam.com/2001/1101issue/1101profile.html
Maverick meteorologist Richard S. Lindzen keeps right on arguing
that
human-induced global warming isn't a problem
Adviser to senators, think tanks and at least some of the
president's men,
Richard S. Lindzen holds a special place in today's heated debate
about
global warming. An award-winning scientist and a member of the
National
Academy of Sciences, he holds an endowed chair at the
Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and is the nation's most prominent and
vocal
scientist in doubting whether human activities pose any threat at
all to the
climate. Blunt and acerbic, Lindzen ill-tolerates naïveté. So
it was with
considerable trepidation recently that I parked in the driveway
of his
suburban home.
A portly man with a bushy beard and a receding hairline, Lindzen
ushered me
into his living room. Using a succession of cigarettes for
emphasis, he
explains that he never intended to be outspoken on climate
change. It all
began in the searing summer of 1988. At a high-profile
congressional
hearing, physicist James E. Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute
for Space
Studies went public with his view: that scientists knew,
"with a high degree
of confidence," that human activities such as burning fossil
fuel were
warming the world. Lindzen was shocked by the media accounts that
followed.
"I thought it was important," he recalls, "to make
it clear that the science
was at an early and primitive stage and that there was little
basis for
consensus and much reason for skepticism." What he thought
would be a couple
of months in the public eye has turned into more than a decade of
climate
skepticism. "I did feel a moral obligation," he remarks
of the early days,
"although now it is more a matter of being stuck with a
role."
It may be just a role, but Lindzen still plays it with gusto. His
wide-ranging attack touches on computer modeling, atmospheric
physics and
research on past climate. His views appear in a steady stream of
congressional testimonies, newspaper op-eds and public
appearances. Earlier
this year he gave a tutorial on climate change to President
George W. Bush's
cabinet.
It's difficult to untangle how Lindzen's views differ from those
of other
scientists because he questions so much of what many others
regard as
settled. He fiercely disputes the conclusions of this past
spring's report
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)--largely
considered
to be the definitive scientific assessment of climate change--and
those of a
recent NAS report that reviewed the panel's work. (Lindzen was a
lead author
of one chapter of the IPCC report and was an author of the NAS
report.) But,
according to him, the country's leading scientists (who, he says,
concur
with him) prefer not to wade into the troubled waters of climate
change:
"It's the kind of pressure that the average scientist
doesn't need." Tom M.
L. Wigley, a prominent climate scientist at the National Center
for
Atmospheric Research, says it is "demonstrably
incorrect" that top
researchers are keeping quiet. "The best people in the
world," he observes,
have contributed to the IPCC report.
Lindzen agrees with the IPCC and most other climate scientists
that the
world has warmed about 0.5 degree Celsius over the past 100 years
or so. He
agrees that human activities have increased the amount of carbon
dioxide in
the atmosphere by about 30 percent. He parts company with the
others when it
comes to whether these facts are related. It's not that humans
have no
effect at all on climate. "They do," he admits, though
with as much impact
on the environment as when "a butterfly shuts its
wings."
The IPCC report states that "most of the observed warming
over the last 50
years" is of human origin. It says that late 20th-century
temperatures shot
up above anything the earth had experienced in the previous 1,000
years.
Michael E. Mann, a geologist at the University of Virginia and a
lead author
of the IPCC's past-climate chapter, calls the spike "a
change that is
inconsistent with natural variability." Lindzen dismisses
this analysis by
questioning the method for determining historical temperatures.
For the
first 600 years of the 1,000-year chronology, he claims,
researchers used
tree rings alone to gauge temperature and only those from four
separate
locations. He calls the method used to turn tree-ring width into
temperature
hopelessly flawed.
Mann was flabbergasted when I questioned him about Lindzen's
critique, which
he called "nonsense" and "hogwash." A close
examination of the IPCC report
itself shows, for instance, that trees weren't the sole source of
data--ice
cores helped to reconstruct the temperatures of the first 600
years, too.
And trees were sampled from 34 independent sites in a dozen
distinct regions
scattered around the globe, not four.
Past climate isn't the only point of divergence. Lindzen also
says there is
little cause for concern in the future. The key to his optimism
is a
parameter called "climate sensitivity." This variable
represents the
increase in global temperature expected if the amount of carbon
dioxide in
the air doubles over preindustrial levels--a level the earth is
already one
third of the way toward reaching. Whereas the IPCC and the NAS
calculate
climate sensitivity to be somewhere between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees
C, Lindzen
insists that it is in the neighborhood of 0.4 degree.
The IPCC and the NAS derived the higher range after incorporating
positive
feedback mechanisms. For instance, warmer temperatures will most
likely
shrink the earth's snow and ice cover, making the planet less
reflective and
thus hastening warming, and will also probably increase
evaporation of
water. Water vapor, in fact, is the main absorber of heat in the
atmosphere.
But such positive feedbacks "have neither empirical nor
theoretical
foundations," Lindzen told the U.S. Senate commerce
committee this past May.
The scientist says negative, not positive, feedback rules the
day. One
hypothesis he has postulated is that increased warming actually
dries out
certain parts of the upper atmosphere. Decreased water vapor
would in turn
temper warming. Goddard's Hansen says that by raising this
possibility
Lindzen "has done a lot of good for the climate
discussion." He hastens to
add, however, "I'm very confident his basic criticism--that
climate models
overestimate climate sensitivity--is wrong."
In March, Lindzen published what he calls "potentially the
most important"
paper he's written about negative feedback from water vapor. In
it, he
concludes that warming would decrease tropical cloud cover. Cloud
cover is a
complicated subject. Depending on factors that change by the
minute, clouds
can cool (by reflecting sunlight back into space) or warm (by
trapping heat
from the earth). Lindzen states that a reduction in tropical
cloudiness
would produce a marked cooling effect overall and thus serve as a
stabilizing negative feedback.
But three research teams say Lindzen's paper is flawed. For
example, his
research was based on data collected from satellite images of
tropical
clouds. Bruce A. Wielicki of the NASA Langley Research Center
believes that
the images were not representative of the entire tropics. Using
data from a
different satellite, Wielicki and his group conclude, in a paper
to appear
in the Journal of Climate, that, on balance, warmer tropical
clouds would
have a slight heating, not a cooling, effect.
Looking back at the past decade of climate science, many
researchers say
computer models have improved, estimates of past climate are more
accurate,
and uncertainty is being reduced. Lindzen is not nearly so
sanguine. In his
mind the case for global warming is as poor as it was when his
crusade
began, in 1988. Climate research is, he insists, "heavily
polluted by
political rhetoric, with evidence remaining extremely weak."
To Lindzen,
apparently, the earth will take care of itself.
By DANIEL GROSSMAN
Daniel Grossman is a freelance writer in Watertown, Mass.
==============
(10) THE ENVIRONMENT: GETTING BETTER, NOT WORSE
>From Tech Central Station, 10 October 2001
http://www.techcentralstation.com/EnviroExtra.asp?id=81
AEI-Brookings Joint Center For Regulatory Study Event on Oct. 3,
2001, with
Professor Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist
Moderator: James Glassman of Tech Central Station
Panelists: David Sandelow of the World Wildlife Fund and Alan
Hammond of the
World Resources Institute
Robert Hahn, co-director of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for
Regulatory
Studies: There have been hundreds of books written about the
environment
over the last 20 or 30 years. Many of those books are of the doom
and gloom
variety with titles like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, Toxic
Terror, and
Dead Heat. There are a few on the other side, the "don't
worry, be happy"
category, which say that markets will solve everything. The
Skeptical
Environmentalist by our featured speaker today, Professor (Bjorn)
Lomborg,
has a bit of yin and yang in it, and that's perhaps why I like
it. It points
out that things are getting better for the most part, but we
still have lots
of work to do. Not only in addressing environmental problems, but
also in
addressing problems of poverty. It points out that we can't solve
all
environmental problems, nor can we solve all social problems. So
therefore
we have to introduce a dirty word into the lexicon, prioritize.
And indeed,
dare I say it, we need to begin to weigh the costs and benefits
of different
policies so we can better allocate resources to their highest
value. Now
this is music to the ears of people like my colleague, Randy
Lutter and
myself and others at the Joint Center, but on the other hand,
this music may
not be so melodious to members of Greenpeace. Maybe Bjorn can
tell us a
little bit more about that.
This book develops its conclusions the old-fashioned way, through
a
judicious application of science, economics and common sense.
Professor
Lomborg's book is at the top of my environmental hit parade for
three
reasons. First, because he puts the former law review editors in
this
audience to shame. For those of you who don't have the book there
are about
2,900 footnotes in this book that support his well-reasoned
argument, and I
confess Bjorn that I didn't read them all, though I did read the
text of the
book. But I did note two footnotes where you cited my work
[laughter] and I
might mention in that regard that there are free copies of that
book
downstairs in my office which I'm trying to get rid of in
anticipation of my
office move.
The second reason I think this book will be of great interest to
you is
because it provides lots of pictures. Now for those of you who
are thinking
of waterfalls or trees or majestic mountains those are the kind
of pictures
I'm talking about. I'm talking about the over 100 figures which
are
essential graphs for understanding the state of the environment
and the
state of the world and that Professor Lomborg very ably explains
in his
eloquent exposition.
The third reason I think that this book deserves very serious
consideration
is it provides one of the best overviews I've ever read of the
politics,
economics and science of environmental problems, and I'd like to
just give
you a disclaimer. I'm not being paid by Cambridge University
Press, nor have
I met Professor Lomborg prior to today. Also, one advertisement.
If you
would like to learn more about the Joint Center you can view our
website
which has all our publications written there in their entirety,
and if you
so choose you can also fill out a blue card in your pamphlet
today which
would put you on our e-mail mailing list so you can get news of
events like
this.
I'm very delighted that my colleague from AEI, who also I believe
is the
founder of Tech Central Station, Jim Glassman, agreed to moderate
this panel
today. Jim is also a distinguished author in his own right and,
Jim, I'll
turn it over to you now.
James Glassman: Thanks, Bob. I'm just going to sit here. I just
want to say
a few words. It's just a great, great pleasure to me. ... I first
began to
hear of Bjorn Lomborg whom I just met maybe ten or fifteen
minutes ago for
the first time probably about two months ago from my colleagues
at Tech
Central Station, which is a website that focuses on technology
and public
policy, and Charles Francis who's sitting here managed to get
hold of Bjorn,
called him up, which is . . . you can do that, you know? You can
call
Denmark. [laughter]
And we talked to Bob Hahn and to Chris Demuth and here we all are
today.
It's quite remarkable. I think all of us who are old enough to
remember the
limits to growth craze during the early 1970s with Paul Ehrlich
and others
predicting famine and the depletion of resources, the scourge of
worse and
worse environmental catastrophe, now have something . . . have a
very
important anecdote.
I think the most important thing about this book as far as I'm
concerned is
that it began with a premise that was just the opposite of its
conclusion.
Bjorn Lomborg, who is a professor of statistics at the University
of Arnhaus
... in Denmark was leafing through a copy of Wired magazine in
1997 on a
newsstand in Denmark and came across an interview with ... the
late
(libertarian economist) Julian Simon, and Simon was talking about
how the
state of the world was not as dire as many had thought, which is
essentially
that the song that Julian had been singing for decades and not
that many
people were listening. ... What he suspected was that Simon was
spouting,
and these are Bjorn's words from his book, "simple American
right-wing
propaganda." So Bjorn went to his students and said,
"Here's an interesting
project for the next semester. Let's take a look very carefully
at the
things that Julian Simon is saying and the things that people
like Paul
Ehrlich is saying and look at the actual numbers and find out
where the
truth lies." And the result is this truly remarkable book.
Bjorn calls the
set of beliefs that Julian Simon attacked the litany. And I just
want to
quote to you from ... his book. He says that "Even children
are told the
Litany," which he capitalizes. Here from the Oxford
University Press' Young
Oxford Books, this is a quote, "The balance of nature is
delicate but
essential for life. Humans have upset that balance, stripping the
land of
its green cover, choking the air and poisoning the seas." I
think you all
know what this Litany is." So this is a remarkable book. The
Economist has
called it a triumph, one of the most valuable books on public
policy to have
been written for the intelligent general reader in the past 10
years.
We're going to hear for about a half an hour from Professor
Lomborg. Before
he begins I want to introduce the two other distinguished members
of our
panel. Directly to my left is David Sandelow who is Executive
Vice President
of the World Wildlife Fund and before joining WWF, which in the
rest of the
word is called something else, right? World ...
David Sandelow: Worldwide Fund for Nature. Glassman: ...Worldwide
Fund for
Nature. He served as assistant secretary of state for Oceans,
Environment
and Science and has held many important jobs in government. And
to my far
left is Alan Hammond, whom I've known for, gosh, probably more
than 20 years
when he was the charismatic editor of a publication called
Science 80. He is
now the chief information officer and senior scientist for the
World
Resources Institute and before that he created the research news
section of
the journal, Science, and has had a distinguished career in
journalism and,
to some extent, scholarship. He and I are kind of similar in that
sense. I
don't know how distinguished my career has been, but we sort of
bridge
journalism and science. So, Professor Lomborg is going to talk
for a half an
hour, and then David and Alan will each have about fifteen
minutes and then
we will probably have a little bit of discussion among ourselves
and then
we'll hear from you.
So, Bjorn Lomborg? Please. ...
Lomborg: Thank you very much. You've pretty much already given
away the
book, right? [laughter] But I think it is important though to say
that this
is not my primary area. I teach statistics, as you said, to 250
students
each year in the University of Aarhus. I have to make them think
that
statistics is not deadly boring. That's not an easy task, and the
only real
trick I have is walking forth and back to keep them falling
asleep.
[laughter] And I'm going to be doing that again today. But the
real point
that I always try to make to my students is to say listen, you
have a lot of
myths about how the world works, but it doesn't necessarily be
true just
because you've heard it from your uncle or because you've seen it
on the
news. And you have to actually go check the data.
Now obviously, I'm also selling a course here, but I've always
tried to take
a lot of different myths and say these are actually not true. I
never did
that with the environment because I was a committed Greenpeace
person, and I
really thought just like I think pretty much everyone else, at
least in big
cities, that everything's going the wrong way when we were
talking about the
environment. And that was why I got so upset about the comments
that Julian
Simon made. But also, of course, because he said, well, go check
the data,
and I felt like, "Oh, that's like me talking to my
students." So I felt like
I had to check it out and I really thought we were going to
debunk Simon.
As it turned out we were mostly debunked. I mean there are some
things that
Simon really was right-wing American propaganda, but a lot of it
was true,
and that is the important point to get out. And what I'd like to
do, I mean
given the fact that this is a long book I realize that a lot of
you don't
have time or will not be able to read the book. So I would like
to sort of
give you a quick tour through the book. Of course in that sense I
have
thirty minutes. I'm going to basically try to cover the whole
world, all the
things that have happened and all the things that will happen.
[laughter]
That's a tall task, and in that sense of course I can only say,
which I'm
sure Cambridge University Press will love, you've got to buy the
book if you
want to know more. But I'm going to try and give you a feel for
what are the
basic points and why I make some of those conclusions.
Basically I want to make two points and these are very
inter-related and you
really need to the one to get to the other. First of all,
Doomsday is not
neigh. Actually, things are not going the wrong direction. Things
are
generally moving in the right direction. Things are getting
better and
better. And I notice, and I'm going to say this a lot of times,
that does
not mean that everything is fine. That would be a very
unscientific thing to
say to you. I'm merely saying things are going better and not
worse. And
that also means that we don't have to act in desperation.
Basically, the whole idea here is to say if we can start saying,
"OK, we're
moving in the right direction," then we will become much
more likely to be
able to say, OK, we need to prioritize." We simply need to
attack worse
things first. And then deal with the other things later on. We
should start
saying where do we spend our money the best. That's an obvious
consequence
in an economic sense, but it only works if we don't feel that
we're
cornered. Basically, if we feel we're cornered, if we feel
everything is
going to help, if we feel the environment is somehow doomed, then
we're
willing to spend whatever it takes to try to get out of there.
That's really
equivalent to somebody coming up and putting a gun to your head
and saying
give me your wallet. You know, you don't stand around and think,
"Ummm.
Would I rather buy a toaster?" [laughter] You just simply
hand over the
money.
But the idea here is to say so if the data, and that's what I'm
going to
spend much of the time trying to show you some of the many graphs
in the
book, the massive data that I present in the book, if that
actually
indicates things are going better then we can start saying,
"OK, we need to
prioritize." And that is, of course, the other point here to
say then we can
start saying, "We've only got one bag of money, but we have
lots of good
things we'd like to do. What of all those things would be the
best to do?"
And that's the other thing that I'll try to get back to at the
end, and then
just to give you sort of an outline of both the book and my
lecture here.
First, I want to talk about how have things been going for
humans. What are
they likely to do in the future? What about the things that
support our
future progress, resources and all kinds? What about the
pollution that
we're experiencing? And what about the future problems of the
globe and I'll
specifically talk about global warming because that's probably
the biggest
issue that we are talking about right now. And then finally also
what is the
cost of us worrying and especially worrying too much? That's a
lot of ground
to cover, so in that sense I hope you'll also forgive me if
everything sort
of seems . . . somebody yesterday said some of these facts are
uncontextualized. Yes, that's true. I mean if you want to go
through the
whole thing in 30y minutes you'd sort of have to assume a lot of
things. And
I do know the fact that we ought to put a lot more words around
this, but
I'm trying to give you a broad picture of what is happening here.
So let me just give you the short overview of the second part of
the book,
basically, so, how have things been going? And that is, things
have been
getting better and better on pretty much all accounts. We have
more leisure
time, greater security, fewer accidents, more education, more
amenities,
high incomes, fewer starving, more food, and a healthier and
longer life.
And this goes both for the industrialized world and, perhaps much
more
importantly, for the developing world.
Now notice this, and I'll just show you one of those graphs to
say we have
more food. This is not to say that there are no problems. Let me
show you
this one graph and this is how much food we have per person in
the world and
in developing countries. I'm going to show you a lot of these
graphs, right?
I'm sorry. I'm a statistician. I think these kinds of things are
sexy.
[laughter] It doesn't necessarily mean that everybody else thinks
so, right?
But it's a good way of actually getting a feeling for what does
our world
look like.
And so in that sense what I'm saying is, and you can also see
down here I'll
always put the quotation where do I get these numbers from. It's
not that
I'm making them up or something here. They basically show all the
important
areas from the best data that we have. This is from the U.N. Food
and
Agricultural Organization, their latest prediction and numbers
from ... 1961
until 2030 -- it's a prediction from 1999 and onwards -- per
capita, per day
of calories. ... and the important point here of course is to
say, the
developing world here we actually have a situation where they've
gone from
1,932 calories per day, that's almost starvation level, in 1961
up to about
2,650 calories per day in 1998 and they're expected to rise above
3,000 by
2030. That is the point of saying things are getting better.
And notice what I'm saying is slowly things are getting better.
That's a
scientific judgment saying this graph is going up, not down. But
I'm not
saying it's good enough. I'm not saying, "Hey, they don't
need more than
2,650 calories. That's enough for them." That's not what I'm
saying. We can
still say they ought to have more food, but it's important to say
it's a lot
better to have 2,650 calories than 1,932 calories. Of course, and
this is
also one of the places where you can take, "Yeah, well,
statistics -- you
all know the quote - 'lies, damn lies, statistics,' " right?
Of course what
we really tried to teach our students and the reason why we say
statistics
is important because it's really our only way of looking into the
social
world and making actual scientific judgments. Yes, it is possible
to lie
with statistics. That's only because you don't know how to read
statistics
properly. What we really try to teach our students, and, of
course, also
what I try to present to you today, is that there are right ways
of showing
what statistics are. And yes, there are also false ways or ways
that you
sort of slip in something that unsuspecting people may actually
pick up on.
One of the issues that you always say is, "Well, this is
just an average."
Right? This could actually hide the fact that we get more and
more calories
per person, it's probably unlikely it's one person eating all of
it, right?
But it could be the middle class that's actually eating some of
this. So it
still could mask the fact that ever more people were going
hungry, but
that's not the case either.
Actually the U.N., in its latest reports, estimates that in 1970
35% of the
entire developing world was starving. That's more than one in
three persons
were starving in 1970. In 1998, the number was down to 18%. It is
expected
to drop to about 6% in 2030. That again points out the fact it's
a lot
better that we just have 6% starving than we have 35% starving.
But it does
still mean that in 2030 there'll be about 400 million people
without enough
food. There's still a problem, but it's a smaller problem. And so
both (sets
of) information are important. Things are getting better, but it
doesn't
mean that there are no problems.
Let me just again say when I point all these things and say we
have gotten
all these things, you might say, "Oh, hey, Bjorn just made
up a list of all
the things that he could find that went the right way." So
my friends say
there are two graphs in the book, one going up when that's good
and one
going down when that's good, right? But of course the point here
is to say,
No, this is what the U.N. tells us is the good life. This is what
U.N. says,
and I would also imagine most of us would expect, this is what
constitutes
the good life.
So I'm actually trying typically to take the good definition, the
definitions that we all agree on, and then say so, how are things
going?
But, you could also still say, "Yeah, well, but what about
all the other
issue areas?" On the environmental areas -- I'll also get
into that -- many
of those areas have actually improved when we talk about air and
water
quality. And when we look at some of the costs in the bad years
and our
general fears and the ones that we have in the future, we then
have to start
thinking about -- what's the idea I said before? -- we have to
start
thinking about prioritizing. We have to start asking the hard
questions of:
How important is this? How much can we do? And how much is it
going to cost
because we really have lots of different things we'd like to do?
There are lots of good things to do in the world. We need to do
the ones
that do the most good and so we both have to look at, for
instance, chemical
fears, pesticides, that's one of the big chapters in the book,
and global
warming which is the one I'm going to come back to shortly. So
let me just
give you a feeling for it. If you then accept the idea of saying
okay, it
has been getting better and better on all major accounts. We have
more food,
we have more income, we have fewer people starving, and so on.
But then what about the future? Is that actually likely to go on?
Well, on a
lot of counts this really matters, and then to each and every
resource and
say, "Well, will we be able to handle that? Will there be
enough food? Will
there be enough forests? Will there be enough water?" And so
on. Again, I
try to go through all of these different issues in the book. I'm
just going
to show you one thing, namely the question of resource in the
very narrow
sense.
The question of, do we have enough resources, as in fossil fuels,
and do we
have enough resources in non-fossil fuel resources? I'll just
show you two
graphs, the idea here being oil. I mean, we're an energy-based
civilization
and we need energy. But on the other hand, the energy that we use
right now,
fossil fuel, we've always been told we're going to run out of it.
This old
professor at Princeton, a couple of years ago, said we've been
running out
of oil ever since I was a kid. And, you know, we have to actually
then take
a look at the data and say, "Well, is that true? Are we
actually running
out?" Well, actually it's a fairly simple question. ... In
1920 we know how
much oil we used. We also know how much oil we thought was left
over in
1920. So if we divide these two numbers we get an estimate of how
many years
we have left over at the consumption of 1920. The answer was 10
years. So in
10 years' time it had been a natural conclusion we're going to
run out. That
was actually also what the Department of the Interior said: We're
going to
run out in 10 years' time. Now so if you go to 1930 you'd be
tempted to say,
"Well, then it should be down to zero." No. In 1930, it
was still 10 years,
but now at the new higher level in 1930. And, mind you, we'd also
used 10
years' worth of oil resources. OK,, well at least then in 1940 we
should be
down. All right? That was what the Department of the Interior
said. But, no,
there is still about eight years left over at the even higher
rate of
consumption in 1940, and despite the fact that we used 20 years'
worth of
oil. And so the conclusion actually here, we have used more and
more oil. We
have used that oil, too. And we have a higher consumption each
year. Despite
that fact, we have had pretty much the highest level of years
left over. So
the confusing conclusion here is actually that the more we use,
the more we
actually have left over.
Now notice this does not mean ... that the earth is not round. I
mean
there's only so much oil in here. But it means that we have been
looking at
the wrong parameter in the sense of saying, "Oh, then we're
going to run out
when we empty the stock that we already know about."
Because, basically,
what we do is we find more oil; we get better at exploiting it,
and we get
better at substituting when that's necessary. So the idea here is
to say,
"Yes, we may only have 50 years' left over right now. But,
first of all
we're probably likely to find more. We also know that within 25
years we can
probably at competitive prices have anywhere from two to five
times the
amount of oil that we know in conventional terms in shale
oil." Actually ...
the total, what do you call it, reserves of shale oil is probably
at the
level of saying that we could cover the present not only oil
consumption,
but the present energy consumption for the next 5,000 years.
The point here is, of course, to say what will happen is that we
are not
going to stop using oil because we run out of it, but simply
because we get
better alternatives. This is also one of the typical quotes by
Sheik Yamani
, the guy who founded OPEC. He basically says, you know,
"The oil age is not
going to come to an end because we ran out of oil, just as the
Stone Age
didn't come to an end because of lack of stone." [laughter]
The idea here is to say we just simply found better alternatives.
And we
know, and this is going to be important when we talk about global
warming,
we know that renewable energy resources have been dropping in
price about
50% per decade over the last three decades. This is likely to
continue even
if it just continues at about 30%. This means that by
mid-century, or a
little after, they'll become competitive or even out-compete
fossil fuels.
So in that sense, it's unlikely that we'll continue to sue vast
amounts of
fossil fuel by the end of the century. This, of course, has great
bearing on
the global warming issue.
Let me also just give you a feel for what is our actual energy
consumption.
With the current technology in solar cells actually enables us to
cover the
entire world consumption of energy by just putting out solar
panels and what
would be the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of (the) Sahara. I
mean nobody's
actually suggesting that, but the debate in Denmark has been
pretty heated.
So, despite the fact that I say this, as just an example, people
say,
"That's totally unrealistic. Just think about all the cords,
all the wires."
[laughter]
But, you know, the idea here is to say this is actually not a
question of we
can't do it. It's a question; of course, we wouldn't want to do
it because
it'd be like five times as expensive right now. But we will be
doing that --
either renewable energy resources or fusion age or something we
haven't even
thought of right now. So the idea here is to say this curve
actually shows
that, no, we're not going to run out of resources. we're actually
going to
get more and more, which is very counter-intuitive.
Now you may also say well, yeah, yeah, Bjorn you're showing this
graph again
because it goes the right way. No. I'm showing this graph because
that's
exactly the same way it also looks for the other two important
fossil fuels,
namely coal and gas, and it's also the way it looks for all the
other
important non-fossil fuels. I go through all the major areas of
non-fossil
fuel resources, the four major ones, apart from cement, which
nobody worries
about our running out of. We have aluminum, iron, copper and zinc
in that
order. And all four of them, despite (the fact that) we have
increased our
consumption in the last 50 years by about two to 10 times, we
have seen
increasing use of consumption just like here, and not decreasing
use of
consumption, which is why we've seen a general decrease in prices
of raw
material over the last 150 years.
This is the Economist's Raw Material Price Index, and what we
basically see
is that it's a drop, this is an index up here, where today (it)
is equal to
one, and basically what we are seeing is a drop about 80% in raw
material
prices. If the Economist is accurate, that would be to say, if
prices drop,
it's an indicator that things are actually getting less scarce,
not more
scarce. That's an important point to make basically because what
it shows is
that not only have things been going better, but they are likely
to continue
to go better simply because the resources that support our future
progress
are not diminishing, are not actually falling out. The
underpinnings of our
future progress is not collapsing, but actually seems to get ever
better in
the sense (that) ... we leave a world where resources will be
cheaper for
our children and grandchildren.
Notice I've only looked at one issue area. There ... (are) lots
of different
area(s). We'll probably take some of them up, then probably some
of my
opponents will also bring up some of them, and then we'll have to
discuss
those when we get there, of course. But again, this is to give
you a feel
for why this might actually be true -- that things will get
better also into
the future.
But then, of course, you could say, "Yeah, sure, Bjorn, but
Bjorn is really
just talking money, right? What about pollution? Pollution could
be
undercutting our welfare, our future welfare. What does it help
if we get a
lot of money if we're coughing all the way over to the
bank?" So the idea
here, of course, is to say, "Well, let's try and look at
some of the
important pollution areas." And I'm going to show you the
most important
area. The U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) estimates
that about
anywhere from 83 to 96% of all social benefits from regulating
pollution
comes from regulating air pollution and especially particulate
pollution. So
this is by far the most important pollutant, and I'm just going
to show you
this one graph. We have all an idea of air pollution as a fairly
recent
phenomenon, and it's getting better and better. I'll show you the
graph from
London, which is the only place that we have data very far back.
This is
from 1585 until today. ... Now we don't actually have measurement
and we'd
love if somebody had been out measuring in 1585. They didn't do
that. This
is based on a model from coal imports, and since that was a very
well
regulated thing in London there is high confidence in this model,
and then
it's been correlated to the models, to the measurements that we
have
beginning in the early 1920s and until today. And what we
basically see is
the air pollution has increased since 1585 up to about 1890, and
from then
on it's declined dramatically, so that now in London the air is
cleaner,
when we talk about the most important air pollutant, then it's
ever been
since 1585. The air has never been cleaner in London since the
medieval
times. Now that's an important point to make, but it does not
mean -- and
that's actually one of the arguments I make in the book -- it
doesn't mean
that this might not actually be a good investment to cut it even
further.
But the idea is we should cut it because it's a good idea, not
because we're
worried that we're going to get overwhelmed somehow by particles,
particle
pollution or pollution in general.
No, pollution has gone down, but it might actually be a good idea
to cut it
even further. That makes good sense certainly in the case of
Britain and
Denmark, and Britain about half of all particulate pollution is
passed by
just 6% of the cars, namely diesel cars, because they put out
much more.
It'd be very costly to put a special catalytic converters on
diesel cars to
cut down particle emissions, but it seems that that would
actually be a
very, very good deal, all in all. So the idea here is to say,
"Yes, we can
still do good things for the environment, but we shouldn't do it
because we
worry, because we're saying, 'Oh, everything is going to hell,'
but because
simply it's a good idea." So the idea here again is to say
this shows us
generally that, at least to the developed world, things are not
getting
worse, but they're actually getting better.
But we can still make a good argument that at some point, and
certainly when
we talk about particulate pollution it'd actually be a good idea
to do even
better. ... Yesterday my opponent also said, "Well, Bjorn
just took London
because it's also one of the dirtiest cities in the world."
Well, yes,
London was a very dirty city. It's not really clear whether it
was the
dirtiest. ... We certainly also have data from Pittsburgh and
several other
places that I also show in the book. But it is also because
that's where we
have the data from. Naturally, we would like to have data from
other places,
but it's the only place that we have a model that goes all the
way back to
1585. I don't pick these out just to make bad cases. I just
simply pick them
out because that's where we have the data.
But everybody agrees, and this is pretty much the picture that we
have seen
for all developed countries, that we've seen dramatic declines
over the last
hundred years in most of the developed world. Now, that is not
happening if
you live in Beijing or in Mexico City. Things are actually
getting worse and
worse. But that's also in a sense obvious -- this is one of the
World Bank
analyses -- ... basically, what we see is if we see income per
capita this
way (Editor's note: income per capita increasing) and, for
instance,
particles and concentration, well, first things get worse and
then they get
better (Editor's note: particulate concentration first rises then
declines).
That's no big surprise in the sense that this is exactly the
pattern we saw
for London and that is also likely to be the pattern that we'll
see for all
the developing world. Basically, they say first, "Cool, we
can get
industrialized, we can actually get money enough to buy ourselves
food, give
our kids a college education, and maybe buy things for
ourselves." And only
when you get sufficiently rich do you start saying, "Hmmm?
Now it'd also be
nice to cough a little less." And then you find some
environmental
improvement. That's what we did in the developed world, and it's
also likely
to happen in the developing world. So, it's important to say,
"Yes, things
are getting worse when you talk about air pollution in the
developing world,
but maybe they're just making exactly the same tradeoff because
they're poor
as we did a hundred years ago or certainly we saw that they did
in London a
hundred years ago."
Now, so let me get to the idea of saying what I tried to show you
here very
quickly is basically things have been getting better in the past.
They are
likely to do so into the future. It's not likely that pollution
is going to
undercut future progress in the sense that the most important
pollutant, and
by far the most important particulate pollution, has been
declining
dramatically in the developed world, there's still a good case to
be made to
make it decline even further. And there's a good argument to say
that that
will also happen to the developing world.
So, what should we then do about the things that we worry about
in the
future? And then I'm just going to talk very shortly about global
warming
because that is obviously, in a sense, probably the biggest issue
of the
day. That is the word that most people hear right now. Well I'm
not going to
get into at all the discussion about the science of global
warming. There's
a lot of discussion about the uncertainty there. It seems to me
that what we
really need to know more about is to what extent is global
warming going to
harm us? We're still talking about 25 years of research. We
basically have
the same doubling of carbon dioxide, the sensitivity, and it's
still the
same range, 1.5 degrees Celsius up to 4.5 degrees Celsius. The
one thing
would not harm us very much, the other thing would harm us
dramatically and
we'd really like to know which is true. We still don't know, and
it doesn't
seem like we've gotten much closer to saying that.
But it seems incontrovertible that carbon dioxide is warming the
planet. Now
we need to realize that, since it's likely that we will stop
using fossil
fuels in a massive scale by the end of the century simply because
... we are
going to see that renewable energy resources definitely will
become
competitive or even out-compete fossil fuels by around
mid-century and it is
also likely that there will be all other technologies, then it
seems likely
that we will see a temperature increase given the IPCC (the
United Nation's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report of about two to
three
degrees warming. Now that is not a trivial amount. That will mean
great
disruption in many places. However, it's also important to
realize this will
mainly impact on the Third World. In the technical summary of the
IPCC that
I quoted, the scientists did write out; the politicians changed
that for
obvious reasons. They just simply deleted it or blurred the
paragraph. But
basically what they (Editor's note: the scientists) said was
(that) up to
two to three degrees warming, this is not going to harm the
developed world.
Basically on average, it's both going to be positive and
negative, and it's
basically going to be around zero or maybe even positive to the
developed
world. What it will do is that it will harm the developing world.
And that's
an important point, in the sense of saying when we talk about
global warming
and being sensitive about global warming if what we're looking at
is two to
three degrees temperature increase it's primarily about helping
the Third
World, avoiding some of those consequences that will come from
two to three
degrees warming. Naturally we could do this in either way of
saying we'll
help them in other areas or that we will help them in avoiding
some of that
temperature increase basically by cutting back carbon dioxide
emissions.
Let's just take a look at the primary thing that we're talking
about right
now, namely Kyoto, and say okay, we're trying to do something
about global
warming by cutting back on carbon dioxide. That seems a sensible
idea,
right? We're saying basically we have a huge problem here. I'm
going to show
you in a little while it has about the total scare, economists
just like to
make up these numbers, but basically say it has a consequence of
about $5
trillion, global warming. That's a lot of money. I mean we'd love
... that
there was no global warming. We can't really wish it away, right?
But we'd
love if it wasn't there. So to that extent there is a big problem
here. The
question, of course, is the cure then actually going to be more
expensive
than the original disease? That is the question we need to ask.
It does not
make sense to say we have to do something about a problem if what
we can do
is actually very marginal or even counterproductive in the sense
of using
vast amounts of resources and doing almost no good.
Now let's just take a look at what can we do when we talk about
the Kyoto
Treaty (Editor's note: The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997
but has
been enacted in only one developed nation. It calls for reducing
worldwide
emissions of greenhouse gases by 5% below 1990 levels). This is
one of the
... lead models of the 1996 IPCC report, but this is what all
models come up
with in qualitative terms. Obviously they have different
predictions, but
it's the same amount pretty much that they come up with. If we
don't do
anything, if we just do business as usual, this model predicts a
temperature
increase of about 2.1 degrees (C) in 2100. Now that is a
substantial amount
and we'd definitely like that not to happen.
Now if we do Kyoto, which is basically cutting back carbon
emissions about
30%nt for the industrialized countries compared to what it would
otherwise
have been in 2010. If we do that it's not like we're going to
stop global
warming. We're just simply going to make it less quick. What we
will do is
it basically means that we'll get a temperature increase of 1.8
degrees. Now
notice these are the exact models that the IPCC used. So there's
no question
about these in the sense of that is our best prediction of what
will happen.
What we're basically saying here is the temperature increase that
we would
have in 2094, we've now postponed until 2100. So to put it a
different way,
what Kyoto does is it does not stop global warming. It simply
postpones the
problems for about six years. So, to take the Bangladesh who has
to move
because his house gets inundated, it's not like we're saving him
or his
house by doing Kyoto. We're just simply buying him six more years
to move in
2100.
That's of course better than nothing, but we have to ask
ourselves is it
worth the cost. And the cost on the other hand by all the major
models, and
this is also what is referred in the IPCC, is anywhere from $150
to $350
billion a year for the globe. Just to give you a context feeling
of that,
our total global aid to the Third World is estimated at about $50
billion a
year. So what we're talking about is to spend three to seven
times the
amount of global development aid every year into the 21st Century
to help
the developed world postpone their problems for six years. Is
that a good
idea? Well, to give you another feel of that is to say for the
cost of Kyoto
for just one year we could solve the single biggest problem in
the world. We
could give clean drinking water and sanitation to every single
being on
earth. That would save about two million lives from being lost
every year.
It would save about half a billion people from getting seriously
ill every
year.
So the idea here is to say would we be able to spend that money
better and
help the developing world better by spending that money
elsewhere, which is
really what a cost-benefit analysis does. It goes in and says
(to) ask the
essential questions, and say just because there is a problem
here, if we can
only act on the margins -- mainly what we do is Kyoto, but it'll
do very
little good very far into the future, and on the other hand it'll
be
incredibly costly - now, is that a good idea? And actually that
is the
answer.
I'm just going to show you one of the cost-benefit analyses -
there've been
14 to 21 depending a little bit how you count them, but all of
them come to
the substantially same conclusion, namely that Kyoto or anything
close to
that just does not pay. The point here is to say the total cost
of global
warming if we don't do anything is likely to be around $5
trillion. Notice
there's way too many numbers here. It's just simply because
that's our
central estimate right here. I mean there's nobody who knows it's
$4.82
trillion, I mean it's in that ballpark area, but the idea of
course is to
say what we're trying to do is to compare different numbers here.
And that
comparison is broadly true, although of course it varies from
different
models. ... This is the Nordhaus model from 2000. If we do
something about
global warming in the sense of saying ... there are places where
we can cut
carbon dioxide emissions fairly cheaply we should do that --
that's about 4
to 11% over the century -- then we will save a little bit of
money.
Basically we can cut down the cost of global warming slightly in
the sense
of incurring some costs now and avoiding some costs down the
road. That's
$0.3 trillion dollars we can save. The important point, of
course, is to say
if we do Kyoto or something even worse -- and some say we want to
do
stabilization of emissions on the entire planet, that is also
getting the
developing world in on it -- then the cost almost doubles. The
idea here is
to say we'll incur a great cost right now, but we will still get
most of the
problems down the line. We'll just be postponing them a little
bit. And in
that sense it's just saying it doesn't pay.
And this is not a consequence of the economist tweaking the
models. It just
simply comes from the very basic fact of saying is it worth an
enormous
amount of money now to only postpone the problems for about six
years, but
still having to pay all of it only six years later. In that sense
it comes
out even no matter how you tweak the model, you really have to
change the
parameters very, very dramatically in order to make that come out
as
anything else. But, no, it does not pay off. ... If we want to
limit
temperature growth at 1.5 degrees for instance, then we can end
up having
even higher costs. And in that sense it's also important that ...
what
people will typically say is "Well, Kyoto is just the first
step." That's
probably true in what most people actually think of in that
process. But, of
course, if the first step is a bad step it does not necessarily
follow that
a lot of those steps will be a good idea. ... What cost-benefit
analyses
have shown ... the cost will actually be even higher if we try to
do more
than Kyoto. So in that sense the idea here is to say it's just
simply a bad
way of helping the Third World. We end up spending an enormous
amount of
money doing almost no good. And my argument is again to say that
we have as
scientists a responsibility to point out, I think, that we could
spend that
money much, much better, do much more good, for instance giving
clean
drinking water ...and sanitation to the entire planet. And that's
(spending)
only ... the cost of Kyoto in 2010. In 2011 we can do something
almost as
good again.
So the idea here is why don't we do that instead? And that's one
of the
central arguments I would really like to press on David
(Sandelow) to
comment about. ... So I'd really like to hear why isn't it we do
this kind
of thing? That's an important question to ask. And the idea here
is also ...
basically to say let's just get a feel for what are the important
issue
areas here.
Global warming is going to cost about $5 trillion. Just to give
you a feel
of it. The total worth of the 21st Century by the IPCC's
estimates is about
$900 trillion. So global warming is not a trivial issue. That's a
fair
proportion of the total worth of the 21st Century. But it's
important to say
by the IPCC's own admission the cost of not, for instance, making
sure that
world trade organizations work -- that we don't get free trade;
that we end
up in a regionalized economy (because) ... we end up worrying a
lot about
the environment may actually be a cost of anywhere from $107 to
$240
trillion. This could actually leave the average person in the
developing
world with about 75% less income than he would otherwise have
had. And we
have to ask ourselves isn't that a much more important issue?
So the idea here is to say yes, $5 trillion dollars is a great
deal of
money. We'd love that not to be there, but basically what we can
do about it
is about $0.3 trillion dollars. We should do that. That's a lot
of money. We
should certainly do that. But we should also realize this is not
at all
where the major issue of the 21st Century stands. It is actually
by the
IPCC's own scenarios, it's the cost of saying if we do not ensure
a global
and economically focused economy we could end up losing $107 to
$240
trillion. That's upwards of 25% of the total worth of the 21st
Century. That
is the much bigger challenge for the 21st Century. It's just as
important.
This is basically an environmental discussion, so obviously
that's what I'm
going to focus on, but it's important to say that there's just
simply much,
much more important areas.
Now, so, if this is actually true -- things have been getting
better,
they're likely to go better in the future, it's not like they're
going to be
undercut by pollution, and (as) we look ahead to the problems,
there it's
not like global warming is going to kick the legs away under us
-- it's
going to be a problem that we need to address in the sense of how
do we
solve the world's problem the best? And we also have to ask
ourselves what
is the cost of our extra worry. And I just want to show you that
last study
from the Harvard University, their risk analysis study, where
they went in
and looked at the official cost estimates of saving human lives,
where this
was the primary policy goal.
Now notice a lot of environmental legislation does not have as a
primary
purpose to save human lives. If we're talking about saving the
Bengal tiger,
it probably has the opposite effect, right? [laughter] But the
idea here is
to say a lot of issue areas we do have as the primary stated
public policy
goal (is) to save human lives. And then we can go in and say,
"OK, how well
do we do that?" When we talk about environment and when we
talk about a lot
of other issue areas -- this is as far as I know by far the
largest study
that we have in the world and probably reputable for most parts
of the
Western world -- what is the cost efficiency of saving human
lives? That is
the stated purpose in different working areas.
Now I'm going to summarize eleven people's work for three years
-- it's
several thousands of pages of reports -- I'm just going to show
you one
picture, right? [laughter] But it's actually true in the sense
that the
background distributions are fair in the sense that we're just
presenting
the median cost of what does it cost to save one human life in
one year in
these different areas. And what they come up with is that in the
health area
it costs about $19,000 to save one human life one year. Whether
that is
cheap or not, whether we should do it or not, is obviously a
policy
decision. Do we want to do that or do we want to buy something
else for that
money? That's a policy decision. But, what we can say is that's a
typical
cost of saving one human life one year in the health area. For
the
residential areas it's about $36,000. For transport area it's
$56,000. For
work-related areas it's $350,000. And for the environment it's
$4.2 million
to save one human life one year. What we could also call this
graph is: Spot
the bad decision here. [laughter] ... Notice this does not mean
that there
are not good things to be done in the environment. It just means
that on
average or in the typical case is that we actually end up
spending an
enormous amount more to save human lives here than saving them
over there
when that is the stated purpose.
Why is it that we choose to save a human life two hundred times
more here in
the health area, or to put it differently why is it we choose to
sacrifice
199 people in the health area for saving one person in the
environmental
area? And this does actually have consequences. They can
calculate for about
300 of these interventions, they could calculate what was the
total cost. It
was about $21 billion saving about 60,000 human lives. ... Had
these been
spent optimally you could have saved about 120,000 people.
So the point is to say you could have saved 60,000 people for
free, or if
you want to put it a little more sharply, the current
prioritization
actually commits 60,000 statistical murders every year. This is
not a
frivolous point. It's to point out that the current
prioritization has
dramatic consequences, and we have to face up to the fact that
just only
saying we do good, a lot of green movements will tell you hey,
yeah, (but at
least we're helping people. That's true. But). I mean can you
imagine
spending a billion dollars and not make somebody happy?
[laughter] I mean
the idea here is to say it does not make sense to just say,
"Sure, we spent
a billion dollars and we made somebody happy." What the
argument should be
is: "We spent a billion dollars and we made as many people
as possible
happy." And that is what this indicates we're not doing
right now. And that
I would surmise is partly because we have that litany of worry
that we
actually do believe that the earth is coming to an end. We feel
that we have
the gun to our heads and that means that we end up spending
unwisely.
And so this is my conclusion and then I'll end. This is why it's
important
to know the real state of the world. Basically things are getting
better and
better and they're likely to do so in the future. This does not
mean that
there are no problems, there are no worries, just go ahead,
pollute the
environment. That's not, emphatically not, what it means. But it
does mean
that we should realize that the problems are getting fewer and
smaller and
that we need to prioritize correctly. And this also, of course,
means that I
would like to ask my critics to focus not just on specific issues
where
things are going worse.
Yes, this is a large world. There are lots of problems out there.
There are
lots of places where things are not going well. There are lots of
stupid
decisions made around the world every day probably. But the idea
here is to
say on average in the total for all the relevant regions, all the
relevant
places, you can say on average things are actually improving. And
then we
have to ask ourselves so where are the critical issues where we
can point to
the general negative trends that will undercut this or, on the
other hand,
say if this is actually true, then. first of all, we have to
point out
things are in general getting better. And then we also have to
start getting
much, much better at prioritizing correctly, because that is
actually what
will make it possible for us not only to hand over a better
world, but to
hand over the best possible world to our kids and grandkids in
the sense
that we are giving them even more opportunities, that we are
giving them an
even better world. This does not mean there are no problems, but
it does
mean that we can do even better if we have the real state of the
planet.
Copyright 2001, Tech Central Station
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(11) AMERICAN INDIANS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
>From Michael Paine <mpaine@tpgi.com.au>
Dear Benny
See Scientific American
Climate Changes Coincide with Cultural Shifts in Ancient American
Southwest
http://www.sciam.com/news/100501/2.html
Also (on a lighter note) the 2001 IgNobel Awards:
http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig2001
regards
Mike
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