ericgrimsrud

I hope that you have all listened to Dr. Kevin Anderson’s talk by now – that is, the one you were pointed to in my previous post.  While the data he presented concerning CO2 emission was very clear, the implications of that data is very heavy stuff and listeners are likely to come away with different impressions.  For what it’s worth, the following is what I came away with – all of which, I think, is consistent with what I believe Dr. Anderson is trying to tell us.  Perhaps if he happens to read this, he will add some more thoughts and/or corrections to it.

1)  We are not going to be able to retard warming to less than 2 C, as we have previously hoped.

2)   We are headed, instead, for at least 3 C or warming and more likely, 4 C, with even higher levels possible by the end of this century.

3)   All of this is very bad news.  We are already seeing what a warming of only about 0.8 C has done to our planet.  It is generally agreed that a warming of 4 C would cause changes that are incompatible with existing forms of civilization – and that is where we appear to be presently headed with “business-as-usual”.

4)  The developed nations of the world are largely responsible for existing detrimental conditions on Earth and the emerging countries, such as China and India, are expected to cause the bulk of CO2 emissions in the future.

5)  Nevertheless and because we have so little time left for addressing this problem, all world wide emissions of CO2 must be reduced starting immediately using unprecedented rates of reduction – even if those levels of reduction demand the diminution of financial growth and prosperity throughout the world.  That rate of global emission reduction must be about 10% per year starting now with the goal of eliminating all CO2 emission throughout the world for energy product within the next 20 years (minimal emissions will still be required for food production).

6)  Existing economic theory must take a back seat in planning until that theory matures to a level appropriate for dealing with to a new “quantum age” in which we now live – where large step changes are occurring rather than the smooth, smaller, and more predictable changes of the past.  Just as Newton’s insights cannot tell us anything about subatomic particles, existing economic theories are of little use for addressing the “discontinuities” and environmental uncertainties that will kick in during the coming decades.

7)  A lion’s share of CO2 emissions can be attributed to a small minority of the world’s population.  In general, the lifestyles of the wealthy persons among us cause most of the CO2 emissions. Whether or not this statement is fair does not matter – it is simply a fact that must be recognized and used.  In order to reduce emissions rapidly in the next couple decades, we must focus on reducing emission where the vast majority of them occur – that is, the ongoing activities of the wealthy among us – in all countries of the world whereever wealthy people live.  Of the 7 billion people in the world today, the majority of them are poor and any changes we can encourage in their lifestyles will be of minor importance to total CO2 emissions resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels. The ball is clearly in the courts of the wealthy inhabitants of the Earth if we are to make substantial reductions.

8)  Who are the wealthy ones among us.  Look in the mirror.  I am certainly one as are essentially all of the other scientists and professionals with whom we have daily interactions in the USA.  This includes, for example, everyone who flies in an airplane at least once per year.

9)  If you are either a travel agent or a frequent flyer, for example, you might not like to think about the implications of what I just said in point 8.  So the obvious next question is: would we prefer to deal with  a 4 C hotter world instead?  That is our choice – one or the other.

10)  We like to deceive ourselves with the notion that something in the various fledging fields of BIG TECHNOLOGY is going to come to the rescue at some future time.  Improvements in those areas are actually occurring.  But, unfortunately, the time scale required for the industrial scale implementation of all of these (such as carbon capture and sequestration or the construction of nuclear power plants) is too great to address our critially important and immediate need for reductions in CO2 emissions RIGHT NOW.  Many of these BIG TECH schemes are great ideas that should have been implemented 30 years ago.  I still favor many of them today because they might help a great deal in another 20 years – if we can also do what needs to be done in the next 20 years.  Ours is not so much a “long term” problem as it now is a “short term” problem.  The reason for this was made clear by Dr. Anderson.  CO2 emissions are presently the greatest they have ever been and it is the ACCUMULATIVE  TOTAL emissions that matter.  We can make a significant dent in those cumulative emissions of CO2 only if we act NOW when they are so very great.  What happens 20 or more years from now will be of little consequence if we use too much of our cummulative emission allowance in the present and next decade.

11)  Doing all of this will require an unprecedented amount of both bottom up and top down leadership, sacrifice, and hard work at both the national and global levels. Many Americans will dismiss all of this because of their profound distaste for all things “governmental”, “communal” and especially “global”.  I would not even be surprised if some would prefer that they and their descendents parish in a 4 C world than sacrifice what they believe to be their own personal “freedom”, whatever that is.  On the other hand, perhaps the words of Benjamin Franklin might have some meaning for even the “ideologically pure”.  Upon signing the Declaration of Independence, he is reported to have said “Gentlemen, we must now hang together, lest we hang separately”.

12)  While we do not seem to have attractive choices before us, we still must do the best we can.  Our planet is now a relatively small place and we know of nowhere else in our universe that we can move to.  We should not simply give up, however, and if you saw pictures of my grandchildren, you would know why I say that. On top of that, I have been raised in a religious (Norsk Lutheran) environment in which I was taught that we are obliged to use the gifts we have been given while on this Earth. In the case of human beings, that would include a brain which reportedly is one of the best among the species that have survived, to date.  Being very new arrivals to the planet, however, it is not a all clear that our species will be able solve the problem its very presence has created.  Approaching this problem with unwarrented hubris will be suicidal.  Our species is not yet that smart.

While I have had the distinct feeling that we have lost control of global CO2 emissions, I have not had a very precise impression of where more exactly we are headed and what, if anything, can be done about it.  In searching the scien.tific literature for a better and most convincing understanding of those questions, I have found a scientific presentation which I believe most clearly explains where we are and where we are headed.  This presentation is a lecture with associated graphics recently delivered by Dr. Kevin Anderson, former  head of the Tyndall Centre, Great Britain’s leading center for climate modeling.  It can be viewed in full at  http://vimeo.com/62871951     If you are offered a list from the archives, select December 2011.

The presentation is very easy to follow scientifically. It focuses on the one issue that man has  control over, the cumulative global emissions of carbon dioxide.  Dr. Anderson’s presentation is revolutionary and disquieting in the sense in that it exposes errors and misrepresentations of CO2 emissions that have been made in the recent past and are still being made by various governmental organizations – while most of the world’s climate change scientists, who should know better, sit by quietly.  While I have known that most of the politicians of our country have not had the courage to forcefully address our climate change problem, Dr. Anderson’s analysis suggests that an important segment of our scientific community has also lacked the courage required to level with the public.

This lecture is a “must see” for anyone who takes the AGW issue seriously (I realize that this excludes many of you who tend to accept the “leadership” on this scientific issue you have been provided by many of your political leaders).  Rather than explain the  conclusions of Dr. Anderson’s presentations and their implications for future actions, I’ll first ask you to watch Dr. Anderson’s presentation yourself.  After letting that set in, I will look forward to discussing its implications further with anyone on this post.

During the last several months, I have occasionally posted comments on a website that claims to be the most visited in the world concerning the subject of climate change. This website is called “Watts Up With That” and is run by meteorologist Anthony Watts. Mr. Watts regularly refers to WUWT as being the “Skeptic’s Website” and does not allow the word “Denier” to be used even though that is exactly what most of his contributors appear to be.

From my posting experiences on this site I have learned what happens whenever a bonifide scientist shows up. First, alarms apparently go off at headquarters and a set of in-house “goons” do their best to rough up the intruder. These goons have a name they apply to well-educated and experienced scientists who post at WUWT – they call them “trolls”. The three goons that were apparently assigned to “take care of” me whenever I posted a comment had the website names, Richardscourtney, Davidmhoffer, and D Boehm. From what I could determine (none of these gentlemen could provide a scientific resume), one is a lobbyist for the coal industries, another described himself as a “business man”, and the other, as far as I could tell possesses no scientific or social skills, whatsoever. Indeed, he appears to be a truly professional goon. The quickly demonstrated fact that none of these people seemed to know much about science at all did not appear to diminish their assigned functions at WUWT. They simply embraced a few of the usual outrageous “truths” that one often sees on the Denier’s bloggeries and referred to all scientific evidence to the contrary as constituting “scientific dogma”. Thus, this self-proclaimed subset of “skeptics” hold their own set of “truths” at WUWT to be so dear that Mr. Watts and his goons make sure that no outsiders such as myself are allowed to challenge them. Those who do not hold these truths to be self-evident are called “stupid”, “mentally imbalanced”, and “troublemakers” – the latter label being cause for expulsion from WUWT by Mr. Watts.

My several experiences on a few threads at WUWT usually went as follows. As I increasingly painted the scientifically-illiterate goons into a corner via scientific argument, they “responded” with an increasing amount of personal insults until I would finally respond somewhat in kind with a sharp criticism of their comments. At that point, the overseer of this dialog, Anthony Watts, would generally step in and issue me a “time out” allegedly for my “offensive” comments – thereby rescuing his goons from continued embarrassment as they were getting themselves painted further into that corner. Thus, I was often prevented from throwing the scientific knockout punch they saw coming.

Thus, I learned that the website WUWT is anything but a “Skeptic’s Website”. It is one where only the faithful and unquestioning Deniers of AGW can expect to be allowed to remain and discuss an issue through to satisfaction. Upon nailing a scientific argument on one thread, I was actually declared to be a “thread-breaker” by the moderator on duty and was given another “time out” for that infraction of the “rules” at WUWT.

As a specific example of what I have related above,  I refer any interested party to the very last thread at WUWT in which I was allowed to participate. This thread was initiated by Anthony Watts on Nov. 7, 2012, and  was entitled “Here it comes – a carbon tax”.  As related above, you will note on it that the three goons of WUWT promptly show up upon my arrival  – leading off with gobs of personal abuse and no scientific content.  Unfortunately, you will not be able to see many of my responses. Many were “snipped” as shown on the thread and many are not shown at all –  these were apparently trashed by Mr. Watts and his tightly controlled set of moderators.  While there appeared to be no barriers to instant and abusive comments placed by the goons and other  anti-AGW regulars at WUWT, all of my posts were delayed so they could be inspected, snipped, approved, or rejected by Mr. Watts.  Since this self-imposed task caused Mr. Watts extra work and some angst in the orchestration of his website (his declaration, not mine), I was kicked out – none of my posts appear to make it through even initial screening anymore at WUWT.  If there is any skepticism at all in play at WUWT, it is clearly of the sort that only goes one way.  In my book, that is nothing more than Denial.

While the web site you are now reading  is possibly the least widely read site in the world concerning the subject of climate change, its manager will nevertheless do his best to publish any comments or arguments from any party – as long as the argument is clearly and sincerely presented and that the submitting party understands that all discussions and arguments can go both ways.  Note also that the host of this site prefers to consider information, ideas, and conclusions that have been subjected to at least some form of either historic or modern peer-review.  While being marginally interested in science fiction, I prefer to save my limited brain capacity for understanding those forms of science that have traditionally provided our best indications of what Mother Nature has done in the past and is most likely to do in the future.

One has to look very hard to find Senators or Representatives in Washington or Governors in our states who seem to sufficiently understand and articulate the man-caused global warming problem.  While I suspect than many of them do understand the underlying science, very few share such thoughts with their constituents.  The reason for this is obvious.  The fossil-fuel-based industries have a death grip on essentially all of our elected officials.  That is, all of our politicians know that if they say the obvious – that global warming is being caused primarily by man’s emissions of carbon dioxide and methane – they would very likely be quickly replaced in our money-dominated election processes. For example, in my home state of Montana, even our Democrats do not dare to suggest that we consider reining in the massive exports of our fossil fuels, including the nastiest and most abundant of these, coal, to other regions of the world.

I was therefore most pleased to recently see a clear exception to this disappointing trend in the person of Elizabeth Warren. Warren is presently a Democratic candidate for US Senator in the state of Massachusetts, running against a popular incumbent. Warren is an unlikely candidate.  A Harvard law professor who looks the part, she speaks naturally in well-constructed full paragraphs, rather than sound bites.  Her carefully constructed thoughts have even caused her to cross the forbidden line I described above concerning the issue of climate change.  That is, she is not afraid to state the scientifically obvious – we must do everything we can to reduce and then eliminate the emissions of carbon dioxide and methane.  Note that, in my strong opinion, it is not enough to simply support “all of the above” energy sources, as most Democrats do.  Our support for energy sources based on fossil fuel extraction and combustion must be stopped.

From her prior interactions with the political leaders in Washington DC on other issues, she has shown that she will stand up to entrenched Democratic and Republican power brokers in her perceived quest for doing the right thing.

In short, her recent presence on the national political scene has been like the proverbial breath of fresh air to me and I will be most disappointed if she does not win and be allowed to enter the US Senate.  If we could get a few other national and state leaders of this ilk on board, perhaps you present leaders will progressively dare to stand up to the fossil fuel lobby.

In the meantime, please follow and lend support to the efforts of Elizabeth Warren.  Presently she appears to be our best hope for bridging the now gaping gap between scientific and public thought.

[Comment added by EPG on 11/7/2012:  Horray, she won!!!!}

The following is a letter to the editor that I noted on Aug 23 in the Billing Gazette that I thought provided an excellent and concise way of describing the conflicts that sometimes exist between our Free Market system and the boundary conditions laid out by Mother Nature.  – EPG

“Refusing to tell truth about coal’s harm makes us less able to deal with it

It has been said that communism failed because it wouldn’t tell the market truth, and that capitalism may fail because it will not tell the ecological truth.

An aphorism is not destiny. Still, we see this in Montana with the discussion of increased coal exploitation and export of the coal to Asia.

All of the proponents of this talk about how stripping and shipping coal will generate money. But they never breathe a word about the environmental truth of such coal exploitation.

That is, they never mention that doing so will devastate agricultural lands and destroy water supplies in Eastern Montana. And they never discuss the toxic constituents of coal that will be released in transport and when the coal is burned (pollution from Asia reaches the U.S. in just a few days). Nor do they mention that burning coal accelerates climate change, which is already causing widespread disruption across the globe.

Refusing to tell the truth about the harms of coal will not make them go away. It will only make us less able to deal with them.

Charyn Ayoub, Helena ”

Additional comments by EPG:

I hope that all of our elected officials, and especially our Governor and US Senators and Representative read the above letter (and have it explained to them, if required).  As major cheerleaders for the development of Monana’s Coal and Alberta’s Tar Sands, they have all been either ignorant of the truth (I doubt that) or simply have ignored it for their own personal or political reasons.  Perhaps they envision themselves to be better representatives of our needs than the other, even worse guys who might indeed replace them in the next election if they said boo to the interests of Big Coal.

As a result, the most important issue on the global table is not even being contested in our upcoming elections in Montana.  All we will hear on the energy front is “I am in favor of all the the above” and, therefore, our CO2 levels will continue to rise.  For those who don’t know, our atmospheric CO2 level is the only meaningful indicator of “how we are doing” and, at 393 ppm and rising at an annual rate of 2 ppm, that score card clearly says that a we are loosing this battle, big time.  It is a rout!!.   And the rout will continue until we get more leaders who dare to do the right thing – yes, even possibly at the expense of their own next election.

Scientists pay attention to a very specific score card that most clearly indicates how the battle against man-caused global warming is going.  That score card is the measured level of CO2 in the background atmosphere.  That number is presently 393 parts per million (40% higher than the preindustrial era) and is rising at an alarming rate of 2 ppm per year (the greatest rate of increase observed over the last 800,000 years).  Thus, that score card clearly indicates that the battle is being lost and being lost badly.  Its a rout!!

Another measure of our “progress” is the level of international and national governmental actions being taken to address this problem.  For an excellent assessment of that score card see:  http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/159945795.html.   In short, that report indicates that essentially nothing is being done at the international level.  There apparently is not an “iota of optimism” that the once-promising Earth Summit on sustainability underway in Rio de Janeiro this week will produce any agreement of substance.  So that score card also indicates that a rout is taking place.

One reason for this rout is:  the  world’s best understanding of the science involved is no match for the deep pockets of the fossil fuel lobby.  That lobby controls the thoughts of the public and any politicians who hope to win an election.   Another reason for the rout is that media of our country does not yet get it.  Most forms of our media (including the News-Record) continue to present “both sides” of this issue – as though that stance is virtuous rather than stupid.  It should be noted that Mother Nature does things only one way – Her way.  Thus, there comes a point in all scientific investigations when opinions formed on one side of an issue becomes exceedingly more valid than those on the other – and that has happened in this case.  While the editors of America no longer allow their precious newsprint space to be used to promote the possibility that the world is flat, they do still provide at least half of their space allotted to opinions for scientific non-sense promoting the remote possibility that man-caused global warming is not occurring.  If there was a buck to be made by promoting the flat-Earth concept, I suppose they would be pressured into doing that also.

Perhaps our best hope for change within the next few years will come from another of Mother Nature’s score cards concerning the frequency of extreme weather events – one of the first expected effects of global warming.  As the Earth warms, the atmosphere will hold more water vapor and what goes in, must come out.  So dry places will get drier and wet places will get wetter.  Also, water vapor provides the major means of energy transfer throughout the globe – the process of condensation is accompanied by an enormous release of  energy.  The big question then is:  how many “once-in-hundred-year” catostrophic weather events will have to occur in the next few years before the public and their cowardly and/or scientifically illiterate elected officials dare to throw off  the death grip that the fossil fuel interests have on them?

We presently have a national “energy policy” by which the government throws money at all sources of energy — both the so-called “green” sources, such as wind and solar as well as at the traditional fossil-fuel-based sources. That policy is a poor one because the government is not good at selecting viable businesses.

We need a national energy policy in which the private sector will be the main player. We will get that only if we drop all handouts and tax breaks to all energy producers and begin charging the full costs associated with all of our sources of energy. This must include the costs associated with waste disposal, of course, as we already do, for example, in the case of nuclear power. That would mean that a “carbon fee” would have to be imposed on all fossil fuel production in order to recover the huge costs we are about to incur for the removal of carbon dioxide from our atmosphere.

Then we could let the free-market system, alone, do the rest. The best sources of energy would then rise to the top. The only argument against this national energy policy is to deny that our increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 will causes serious environmental damage.  This argument is analogous to one might make on behalf of the nuclear industry – that is, it is OK to dispose of our nuclear wastes from power plants simply by speading them over our landscapes or throwing them into the oceans.

The fossil fuel industries have been using the Earth’s atmosphere as a garbage dump for more that a century and are unwilling to start paying for that service now. The main reason for this stance, of course,  is that a continuously increasing carbon fee would, indeed, probably put the fossil fuel industries out of business by the end of this century. That outcome, however, might be essential if we expect to arrest the damage being done by CO2 emissions.  In order to stay in business, the fossil fuel industries would then have to come up with carbon capture and storage technologies that would prevent fossil-fuel-based emissions and they know too well what a “pipe dream” that one is for large industrial scale implementation throughout the world.

Yes, we need jobs, jobs, jobs, but only those that will be sustainable and not contribute to the further degradation of our planet.  We also need a global energy policy that is understandable to the public and is more than a big influence games being played out by lobbyists in the world’s capitals.  A simple fee or tax of carbon would provide this.  The only game to be played would be to set a continuously increasing fee or tax on carbon use each year until emissions are essentially eliminated.  Via its influence in the global market place, the USA and other countries in agreement could cause all others to come on line via the implementation of import duties on all goods and services for which a carbon tax was not paid in the country of origin.

As a former scientist, one of the most frustrating aspects of the climate change debate is that facts and clear scientific logic do not seem to make much of an impression on many exceptionally smart and well-educated people  who embrace a “bottom line” opinion that is based on other non-scientific factors.   And I am not referring only to the hard-core deniers of man-caused global warming who typically come from the far right wing of the political spectrum.  I am also referring to many from the left who, for example, are not open to the development of nuclear technologies for providing future sources of base-line power.  I will refer to both of these groups as constituting “smart idiots” meaning that they are generally smart people who intentionally remain in the dark with respect to scientific developments that they find “inconvenient” relative to their personal preferences.  While such people are smart in most respects, they intentionally choose to remain scientific “idiots” in selected areas.

Concerning the first group, a 2008 Pew report showed that among the politically conservative, those who have achieved higher levels of education are more likely to doubt the notion of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) than conservatives with less education.  As a scientist, I find this to be most disappointing, of course.  The most credible scientific communities of our country have made their own opinions and recommendations on this topic very clear in the numerous position statements they have issued.  Nevertheless, it appears that the very smart and well-educated people of this politically conservative group are no more likely to accept the advice of their acknowledged scientific experts than poorly educated people.

Concerning the second group from the more liberal side of the political spectrum, there is enormous resistance to even considering the future development of nuclear power plants in spite of their endorsements by our scientific experts in that field.  That resistance seems to have emerged largely out of a stance developed in mid-20th century when nuclear technologies were not nearly as advanced as they are now.  While all of the nuclear accidents of the past involved Class I or Class II reactors built several decades ago, the Class III reactors of today and the Class IV reactors of the near future are far safer, will produce far less radioactive waste, and will be capable of burning a wider set of heavy nuclides for which there is an almost endless supply.

My main point in offering this post at the onset of this blog is to demonstrate that the topics to be discussed here must go well beyond one’s political ideology.  What Mother Nature does in the future in response to the impacts of Man will have nothing to do with our personal preferences.  What She does do has historically been shown to be best described and predicted by the science involved.  Thus, we all should try as hard as we can to get the science right first and not just ignore it or make up our own preferred versions. Note also that the field of science differs from other endeavors of Man, such as economics or politics, in that there really is just one correct answer to any specific question.  That is, Mother Nature does things one way – Her way.  So even though Man can never know what that way is with absolute certainty, we must agree that our best chance of getting a useful estimate of that truth is likely to come through science.  Upon getting that part right, sure, then it is entirely appropriate to inject one’s political or economic preferences which, I totally agree are also relevant to any adjustments we might have to make.

My name is Eric Grimsrud and welcome to my website and blog!   Its purpose  is to carry on discussions of  the most important issue of our times – which is, whether you know it yet or not,  CLIMATE CHANGE.  I am a retired scientist who did a lot of teaching and research in this area and also recently became a grandparent – five times in the last four years!  Therefore,  upon my retirement from full time employment, I become even more interested in the subject of climate change and the possible effects these changes might have on future generations.  As a result, I have written a book on the subject called Thoughts of a Scientist, Citizen, and Grandpa on Climate Change, the second edition (released in May of 2012) of which is described on this website.

Also on ericgrimsrud.org a “science basics” tap provides the scientific basics of climate change from which I hope the general public will learn still more.  If you have any questions or comments concerning this short course or the contents of my blog, I will be pleased to address them via my email address, ericgrimsrud@gmail.com.