… persuade them to stop being rightwingers[1]
I have a piece in Inside Story arguing that the various efforts to “frame” the evidence on climate change, and the policy implications, in a way that will appeal to those on the political right are all doomed. Whether or not it was historically inevitable, anti-science denialism is now a core component of rightwing tribal identity in both Australia and the US. The only hope for sustained progress on climate policy is a combination of demography and defection that will create a pro-science majority.
With my characteristic optimism, I extract a bright side from all of this. This has three components
(a) The intellectual collapse of the right has already proved politically costly, and these costs will increase over time
(b) The cost of climate stabilization has turned out to be so low that even a delay of 5-10 years won’t render it unmanageable.
(c) The benefits in terms of the possibility of implementing progressive policies such as redistribution away from the 1 per cent will more than offset the extra costs of the delay in dealing with climate change.
I expect lots of commenters here will disagree with one or more of these, so feel free to have your say. Please avoid personal attacks (or me or each other), suggestions that only a stupid person would advance the position you want to criticise and so on.
fn1. Or, in the case of young people, not to start.
John Quiggin 
@Watkin Tench
I would add that your attempt to divert attention from your apparent sock-puppetting by again baiting Megan is utterly unconvincing. She has you bang to rights on this matter.
I don’t get to take a break, do I?
Midrash/Yuri and Watkin/Mel, please take an indefinite break. If either of you wants to deny sockpuppetry, you can get in touch with me by email.
You’ll stay on moderation as long as you continue putting up anti-science nonsense on climate change. I’m not interested in debating this stuff.
There are many distinguished and erudite people who believe in man-made climate change and many who don’t.
So I just look at people’s actions since they speak louder than words.
So, to answer the question what would it take for me to believe in man-made climate change, if Prof. Quiggin (or any other of the very learned believers who have posted here so far) were to promise not to fly in an aeroplane or travel in a car for five years, and deliver on the promise, that would help.
Well, you did ask.
@john
Hi john,
You’re new here, aren’t you?
How would it help you to “believe in man made climate change” (the question was “accept” not “believe”, but anyway) if someone didn’t fly or use a car for five years?
And can you name a couple of dozen of the “many distinguished and erudite people” who don’t “believe in man-made climate change”?
Here’s a gem I found on the blogosphere. I think it’s brilliant.
“Australian Governments of all persuasions have only 2 policies, mine more coal and inflate housing prices.”
It amazing how the date of the Harmagedon keeps getting pushed back. The prophets of doom have always been with us. Thomas Malthus, Paul Ehrlich, Jay Forrester, etc etc ….but the clock keeps ticking and as yet, the sky has not fallen.
@john
The reliability of a conclusion does not depend on how many people believe in it, or what kind of people they are. If you think that the way to determine the truth of a statement is to check on who believes it, you are labouring under a fundamental misconception.
I have shown before how easy it is to demonstrate that the majority of humans have false beliefs.
The demographic numbers indicate no doctrinally discrete religion/anti-religion represents a majority, hence if any belief system is right then the majority of humans are wrong. Humanity en masse “proceeds” – if that is the right term – largely on the basis of false beliefs.
@john
This response simply underlines the cultural rather than scientific character of climate science rejectionism. That this is even proferred is a commentary on the completely delusional or dishonest chracter of those opposing public policy in this area.
> The reliability of a conclusion does not depend on how many people believe in it, or what kind of people they are.
They do, however, correlate pretty highly. If you’re a person with mental habits and predilections that predispose you to error, it’ll show across all the decisions you make.
The real problem is auditing: there are strong mechanisms that push people to overestimate their success and that of those they agree with.
[which is why evidence that a person’s aware of and taking steps to correct for that lets you hold much more confidence in their conclusions: opinions held dogmatically are pretty unreliable, because people prone to dogmatism are prone to sustained error.]
Cultural reasoning is a pretty solid heuristic for situations where coming to a decision gets you the bulk of the benefit and the differences between the best and the worst decisions are not huge. Which actually covers a lot of real-world problems. Just not, you know, the big ones… because the big problems are the ones that can’t be solved “simply”, or they’d be solved already.
If only people who where in favour of reducing their emissions lived up to their beliefs and stopped flying and driving. Just like everyone who was in favour of invading Iraq put on a tin hat, picked up a gun, and went over there. And I have to say, the tone of the place improved considerably while they were away.
@Ronald Brak
Well we could have a long list of this type:
– People who were in favour of private health insurance didn’t use the state health system
– People who were in favour of mandated minimum jail sentences donated extra money of their own to pay for this indulgence
– People who weren’t in unions didn’t benefit from enterprise bargaining outcomes
– Exclusive private schools didn’t sponge money from the working poor
And if people do stop their use of fossil fuels entirely – they will be taken seriously? Seriously?
Even if it were possible for individuals to step entirely outside of the constraints of the society in which we live, it generally gains those who attempt to do so only ridicule. Climate is not a problem that can be fixed by individual ‘free’ choice; it’s a broad structural failure to include the full and true costs of how we make and use energy into energy policy and pricing. The ‘free’ choice to pretend those externalised costs don’t count is post-modernist nihilism, not responsible rationalism.
A large part of why it’s so hard to deal with the climate problem in a rational way has been several decades of dedicated effort by those who see denial, doubt and delay on climate as financially and politically advantageous to frame the problem as a deliberate, ideology based distortion of science and those who seek an adequate response to it as extremists deserving of ridicule.
The reality is that it is a large science based body of knowledge of how our climate system works – from multiple independent lines of research – that underpins revelations and alarm that we have a serious problem; rejection of the seriousness or existence of a serious climate problem is not rejection of any irrational extremist ideology, it’s rejection of mainstream science from every sober, responsible and respected institution that has the science based study of climate as it’s purpose.
I don’t know how we get broad acceptance of mainstream climate science out of people who have already made up their minds to reject it. I tend to see the most significant failures in those people who hold positions of power, trust and responsibility, who treat acceptance of the scientific advice on anthropogenic climate change as a choice rather than an obligation, and who’s choices to reject it sustain a broad community misapprehension that there is significant scientific doubt that there’s anything to be alarmed about.
@Ken Fabian +1
@Ken Fabian
Yes, our system has chosen to be maladaptive. Maladaptive systems and entities disintegrate and die. Sure, adaptive systems and entities disintegrate and die too but not as quickly and they often manage to replicate.
@Jack King
You seem to have missed the point entirely. The fact that the problem can be fixed cheaply does not mean it isn’t real
Jack is sadly right, though, to say that there are many “distinguished and erudite” people who don’t believe in science.
On the first of these characteristics, examples like Maurice Newman show that you can achieve lots of distinctions and still be a total fool.
On the second, there are plenty of highly educated people (though very few highly educated in science) who reject both climate science and evolution. Erudition does not protect you against error. At its worst it produces a belief that your knowledge of one field makes you an instant expert on everything.
John,
“So, to answer the question what would it take for me to believe in man-made climate change, if Prof. Quiggin (or any other of the very learned believers who have posted here so far) were to promise not to fly in an aeroplane or travel in a car for five years, and deliver on the promise, that would help.”
I would not say I was very learned, but I agree it is important people try to make what changes they can to decrease their GHG emissions in this period of having irresponsible derelict governments. If enough people cut down voluntarily individually this might help get emissions lower and give us a bit more time. Also it is good practice to get used to lower GHG emitting ways of living, and you learn more about where issuing come from. There are books and articles and blogs that outline some key changes, and record people’s experiences if you want to try John.
I am happy to promise not to fly in the next five years. I think flying should be banned except for flying doctors and rescue operations and the like. I have only flown overseas once though, so it is not a great adjustment to me as it would be to people who have gotten used to it or who rely on it for work.
I do not drive and mostly walk, or take trains and busses for longer distances, and sometimes bike ride. I live in the country so sometimes people give me lifts in their cars for places inaccessible by public transport or at times not serviced by public transport, and sometimes I take taxis. I do not rely very often on (other people’s kindly assisting) car transport, but at the moment I would find it hard to cut it out 100% , although I could try to minimize it more (eg sometimes I get a taxi if I am running late which if I did not run late I could avoid).
I do not eat animal products, I am happy to recommend good vegan cookbooks to you, there are some really good ones these days. Animal farming contributes a lot to emissions and takes up land that could be better used plant farming or in reforestation.
I try to buy organically grown foods because they do not cause so much nitrous oxide to be released. This is really just a portion though, as I find it hard to afford 100% on a low income. I think I have room for improvement here though, by planning more in advance what to buy etc In my small town we are quite fortunate for our size because we gave several places to buy organic and bulk without packaging. I am studying urban planning so I know this can be much less convenient for people who live in further out suburbs, or towns with fewer alternative living people or less gentrified demographics.
I try to buy mostly second hand goods. Some said in a class we are still using the good even if it’s acquired second hand, so it’s not the same as not buying anything – but at least it prolongs the use if goods already in existence. I also try not to buy too many things, although I could still buy fewer. I think this is bit such a big change for me because I already liked second hand things and haven’t ever especially bought lots of new things. It would be quite a big change for people who are used to buying quite a lot of new things.
I compost food scraps, recycle what can be recycled, and try to cut down on packaged things. I have not managed to get to zero landfill rubbish, so there is a good deal of improvement to make. There are lots of blogs and books on this.
I definitely have more improvements to make, but it us better to try and keep getting better than not try. One problem I read about is called the “behavior impact gap” where people often measure the results of their actions by the effort they put into them. Quantification is helpful in this regard – you might think you’ve helped climate change by 70% in your personal choices, but quantified it might only be 5%.
@Ken Fabian
Quite right. While one can certainly admire those who make an individual choice to avoid being part of the problem, the demand that people should do this as a precondition to having standing to assert the need for public policy is not structurally different from asserting that inequality should be addressed by individual generosity rather than changes in system provision. It’s a classically rightwing libertarian proposition — which privileges individual over collective action. It’s not merely certain to be grossly unequal to the task of resolving any problem consequent upon the structures of property and privilege, but itself a denial of the problem’s source in system failure.
One gets this kind of challenge all the time. Hearing my pleading for humane dealing on asylum seekers, right-wingers ask how many I am prepared to board in my home. Given that asylum seeking is a consequence of failures of governance and the brutality with which they are dealt a further instance of that, the question ought to be ludicrous, but it is repeatedly put. This tells us that the problem is one of cultural contest.
Those of us who want equity and ethics in public policy are making a demand on the polity rather than on individuals. We want to get the macro settings right. If in addition, individuals want to make personal contributions, then that is most welcome, and commends them greatly, but it is in no way a substitute for the public policy so urgently needed.
I would add that the proponents of such individualistic policies for those of us seeking decarbonisation aren’t talking to us but over our heads to those they fancy might be conflicted, they invariably deride US as proponents of asceticism, puritanism, sneering at our ‘hair shirt’ impulses which underlines why their arguments ought be seen as cant.
In the case of driving cars and flying in planes, it’s our view of course that the full cost of the externalities imposed by such usage be borne by the beneficiaries of the usage precisely so that apt remediation, adaptation or compensation can be made and the costs of these usages are not settled arbitrarily onto the shoulders of others. A person who uses aircraft but pays a charge commensurate with the ecosystem cost into a fund that is doing commensurate abatement or remediation can use that aircraft in good conscience. Right now, these systems are not in place, but that is not the fault of those using aircraft. That is a system failure.
Shorter Fran: I’m not giving up anything!
@chrisl
Oh I have definitely modified some of my cultural practices. I just don’t regard these modifications as anything more than an attempt at a warm inner glow, and certainly, I don’t badger others into following my lead.
I’ve been a vegetarian since 1982, though that predated my awareness of the need for abatement and was based on concern over animal cruelty. I don’t drive much but there’s little need for me to do so. I have solar panels and water tanks, but they came with the house hubby and I bought. I compost and avoid products with excessive packaging and buy organic. I am replacing CFLs progressively with LEDs. These were driven by a desire for better ecology. I discourage resource waste at work on the same grounds.
I haven’t been on an aircraft since 2011 when I flew to Brisbane for a conference.
Pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things though.
It all helps though Fran. You can show by example.During the recent drought in Melbourne people were implored to change their behavior , direct action if you like, and stop hosing their driveways,plant natives,stop watering lawns, buy side-loading washing machines,install water tanks. And it worked! Water consumption went down and stayed down.
So why can’t it work for CO2? Stop driving, stop flying, you could even turn your heating down.
You may think it is trivial but if everybody did it….
I agree personal efforts are not at all sufficient, and there needs to be a coordinated plan as soon as possible to implement needed changes without the dangers of causing recessions etc that would mean people worry about the economy and employment more than the environment, as happened after the gfc.
The more efforts people make while we have a derelict government though, the more emissions we save – if everyone in Australia cut say 5 tonnes co2e this year from last year through personal efforts (which should be doable for most people except those in already very straitened circumstance) then that would cut 100million tonnes from the national ghg emissions , which would be quite good, would be a sign of good faith to people in other countries who might also be suffering under derelict governments, and it’s a good practical learning experience about where ghg emissions come from in our daily practices (often embedded in goods and food), and what sort of changes need to be made practically to get our ghg emissions to zero then negative by extensive reforestation.
I think there is no scalable solution to airplanes, so except for some emergency uses they need to be banned. You could have non-necessary airplane travel for very rich people who could afford airplanes run on bio-fuel – but not much because biofuel has environmental impacts and impacts on how much food can be grown and reforestation to draw down emissions carried out. I think it would be unfair if only very rich people went joy flying by biofuel – so I favour bans with exceptions for genuine need. People can holiday closer to home or take trains or boats to more distant places. Airplanes have meant people live farther from loved ones than happened regularly in the past because they can fly to see them, and also impacted on work – lots of people have work now that involves flying. But I think we will have to adapt back to not flying, so either living closer to loved ones, or only seeing them very rarely by boat or long distance train travel. This seems a bit heartless, but it is more heartless to cause climate change.
ZM I like your enthusiasm but I think banning flying is a bit harsh! What about if people asked themselves “Do I really need to fly?” Could I email,skype,twitter, teleconference etc?These things are all available so why do people fly?
@chrisl
Residential demand is a fairly minor component of emissions. Throw in transport and it gets larger, but emissions in manufacturing, mining and agriculture are more significant.
Good on the people who do make reducing their carbon footprint an important consideration in their lifestyle choices, but effective solutions require that, if everyone does not do it, enough do to render the impacts of those who don’t inconsequential. Chris, I’d like to believe that’s a realistic possibility arising from ethical people making informed choices rather than policy makers making informed policy but, sorry, I don’t. That said, sufficient public sentiment, brokered by mainstream media that chooses to pull heads out of wherever they’ve been putting them could break the hold that self interested denial has on energy policy.
There’s much to be said for informed people setting an example but meanwhile we have a broken energy market, where real consequences and future costs of emissions are ignored as a matter of ‘free choice’, high emissions energy remains cheaper than low and this keeps delivering long lived high emissions infrastructure as well as high emissions.
In the marketplace of political policy the urge to free-ride, cheat or otherwise avoid the costs of being ethically responsible looks pretty strong – Ikonoclast’s maladaptive system will remain very maladaptive as long as dodging the inconvenient costs of being ethical is as easy as a ‘free’ choice to believe the climate problem is a consequence of “bad” science – with all the steps required to justify that self interested choice made widely available and given credible legitimacy by influential people who should know better.
I doubt if Maurice Newman – or Tony Abbott that appointed him – have sought to be informed beyond sources that support and justify their preconceptions. Even their choices of who they see as spokespersons for the mainstream scientific view are probably skewed away from respected, credentialed and credible experts towards the less rational, least credible politicised advocates of climate action. I doubt they have ever taken their eagerly swallowed misunderstandings, misgivings and objections on climate science to Australia’s Chief Scientist, or CSIRO, BoM or Academy of Sciences for clarification.
@chrisl
As a general rule, I’m against banning stuff. There are circumstances where it is unavoidable, but if we can avoid it we should.
Providing something ill can be remediated, I see no problem. In the case of air travel, it would be possible, at some cost to offset using algae-based bio-sequestration. If, for argument’s sake, a passenger’s air miles added 2 tonnes of CO2e then that person could buy 2 tonnes of CO2e bio-sequestration. Let’s say that cost $100 tCO2e. The passenger surrenders the certificates he or she purchased from the broker to the airline which in turn presents them to the regulatory body. Simple.
Some people might choose to video-conference instead of course, or do their sight-seeing vicariously, on the web.
Fran Yeah that’s gonna work! Can’t see a single problem with it!
Chrisl
“I think banning flying is a bit harsh! What about if people asked themselves “Do I really need to fly?” Could I email,skype,twitter, teleconference etc?These things are all available so why do people fly?”
People can ask themselves that now – but they still like to fly. Thus is why banning is better – air travel is too great a temptation for those who can afford it, because they would like to visit places quickly – videoconferencing you do not get to visit places, trains and boats are slower. Banning with exceptions for emergencies is the best solution.
Air travel is not reducing because of people’s concern for climate change causing them to think twice , it is growing and projected to grow more.
Sequestration is not researched enough (in terms of environmental impacts and other things) or practicable or scalable at the extent necessary for allowing air travel. Reforestation has limits faustusnotes pointed to earlier. Bio-char has limits.
“In a 2008 presentation[6] and paper [27] Professor Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research showed how continued aviation growth in the UK threatens the ability of that nation to meet CO2 emission reduction goals necessary to contain the century-end temperature increase to even 4 or 6C°. (See also: the 4 Degrees and Beyond International Climate Conference (2009)[28] and its proceedings.)[29] His charts show the projected domestic aviation carbon emission increase for the UK as growing from 11 MT in 2006 to 17 MT in 2012, at the UK’s historic annual emission growth rate of 7%. Beyond 2012 if the growth rate were reduced to 3% yearly, carbon emissions in 2030 would be 28 MT, which is 70% of the UK’s entire carbon emissions budget that year for all sectors of society. This work also suggests the foreseeable future which confronts many other nations that have high dependency on aviation. “Hypermobile Travelers,”[30] an academic study by Stefan Gössling et al. (2009) in the book “Climate Change and Aviation,”[31] also points to the dilemma caused by the increasing hypermobility of air travelers both in particular nations and globally.”
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviation#Future_emission_levels
Passengers in air travel apparently generate about 0.2kg per passenger mile. So a trip of about 12000 miles ought to generate about 2.4 tCO2e.
In theory, about 250ml of water spread over 1 m2 ought to be able to take up 50g of CO2 per day. So 2.4t CO2e would require about 48 ha of algae spread at that depth for 1 day — about the length of a flight from Sydney to London. An algae crop running all year on that space could displace a whole planeload.
Fairly obviously, 250 mls over 1 M2 is very shallow and not technically feasible. You’d use tanks at least 1 metre deep and build them to generate light in the spectrum needed (using PV or some other non FHC energy source) through the entire depth.
That planeload of passengers paying $100 a ton would generate a carbon bill of $87,400. Could you build and maintain an algae site of sufficient volume and sequester all the waste inside a budget of $87,400 per day? Maybe. I’d like to see a study done, but it sounds plausible on the face of it.
But 48 hectares of land given over for a whole year for every plane that flies is a lot of land. There are 93,000 plane flights a day. So for one day’s worth of flights at the current amount (flights are projected to increase unless banning is implemented) you would need 4,464,000 hectares of land put aside for algae. You wound need lots of materials that would come from other land, so the land use would be even bigger, and then the materials would get old and go to landfill, requiring even more land. Plus you need people working on the algae and resource getting and industrial production. This is too much for one days’ air flights, let alone a years’. Banning is much better.
I have not looked into the limits of algae as a ghg sequestration technique. I will look into it more to see what extent is stated to be feasible, I have not heard much about it, so I doubt it is thought to be very scalable.
@chrisl
> These things are all available so why do people fly?
Because… look, example.
In the old days, before mobiles:
+ people made plans days in advance
+ there were payphones everywhere
+ there was a lot of waiting around
Society — expectations — were adapted around it being impossible to communicate under certain situations. We managed, because we restricted our own actions to fit.
However, development of the mobile changed that. The old ways of doing things were still technically possible — there are still pay-phones, occasionally — but because the human element has changed [people don’t leave a person home to take messages etc] they don’t work.
If it turned out that mobiles caused a 20% increase in triffid attacks, individual uncoordinated action wouldn’t be effective, because uncoordinated individuals can’t effect society-wide change. You need a society-wide structure to do that, and we’ve got a rather nice one called “government”.
You could demand that every social change be implemented by an individual ad-hoc social movement that bootstrapped its own organisational structure, but pardon me if I think that’s silly. We have a government [for good and proper reason, too], the government gives us a well-sorted coordination framework… why shouldn’t we use what we’ve already got rather than building it from scratch every time?
@ZM
That’s a square with sides roughly 650km long, so yes, a substantial area.
Of course, that assumes we had algae layers only 1-2 mm deep, which we obviously wouldn’t, given the evaporative losses and the technical difficulties of keeping nutrient up to the medium and harvesting. We would probably have tanks 1-2m deep, to maximise collections and facilitate nutrient supply as much as anything. So our required square shrinks by three orders of magnitude to a square with 650m sides We are definitely going to need some ancillary space for processing the algae, storing and supplying nutrient and to accommodate employees and machines, so let’s triple that to 3 * 650 metre sided squares. That’s not a lot. It’s about three times the size of the school I teach at, and a lot smaller than most airports.
And of course, not all flights are 12,000 miles long. I chose that distance because of its iconic status here but the most common are likely to be fewer than about 600 miles — or a travel time of about 90 minutes. That’s certainly the case in Australia. Admittedly, the carbon cost goes up slightly for shorter flights but only by about 10%.
So in principle, it is doable. Let’s say my BOTE costing is out by an order of magnitude, and that in practice, raising and disposing permanently of algae would cost $1000 per tonne of CO2e. That would mean the trip to London would cost an extra $2000 each way, and the trip to Melbourne or Brisbane roughly $110 extra each way. That would discourage a good many wearing the passenger miles and nudge people in the direction of video-conferencing or other arrangements. So the required land would shrink.
@chrisl
There really truly are people who don’t like to fly. I hate it, and could adopt a holier than thou attitude toward my friends who do like to fly and do choose to fly just for their own enjoyment, knowing that this self-indulgence contributes toward the climate change that they accept. But…they really truly feel guilty about their behaviour.
Well at times they feel guilty but then they rationalise that themselves into believing that their choice to fly is justified/rational/necessary – the particular form of the motivated cognitive process is particular and often peculiar to the individual but rely on the ‘coordination’ framework – thanks Collin Street – of the government, or the ‘other’ government.
But for you personal development, I have found and the research backs this up that it is not a good look to adopt a critical attitude toward other people when the choice is easy for me and difficult for them. Do you find that your attitude toward those who do not live up to your requirements brings you peace of mind and an inner glow?
There actually are quite a number of people like me, who do not want the things that people like you want.
You seem to believe that there is only one way that humans can ‘be’ and you seem to believe that the behaviours that you find ‘natural’ are a manifestation of a natural, normal human nature. You seem to believe that it will help people like me who behave badly and don’t want to live like you, to be criticised and forced into behaving in the way that you judge to be the right way.
You are wrong about all of these things and if you want evidence of the fact that you are not the ‘default’ human being come out to a country town where those of us who dislike ‘your’ selfish and greedy ways are beginning to congregate and build any number of alternative economies and societies, that will not be sufficient to bring about the substantial behaviour changes we need but will be a contributing or even a significant factor.
Fran, I always find much to agree with in your comments – we don’t need to ban individual choices but we absolutely need to eliminate the cheating component (pretending the external costs don’t count or should only be paid by others) embedded in the pricing of the options available.
I’m dubious of tree planting as sequestration although there are lots of other good reasons to re-vegetate where possible – it isn’t going to ever recover more than the emissions lost as a consequence of the initial de-vegetation, let alone keep up with a Gallilee Basin’s worth of coal. And the best soil/climate combinations for drawing CO2 into vegetation are going to remain agricultural.
I don’t think any means that doesn’t lock away CO2 with geological type permanence can be more than an illusion of sequestration. CCS as it currently exists – if “currently exists” isn’t a gross exaggeration – really doesn’t pass muster either, yet having some means of sequestering that allows offsetting seems to be something well worth having, even essential.
Prevention is always better than cure. CO2 sequestration by artificial methods will never work as the energy costs, technical difficulties and dangers of out-gassing are all prohibitive. CO2 sequestration by reforestation is a very slow process which proceeds over several human generations (and tree generations probably). Yet reforestation is still highly worthwhile for many shorter term benefits too as Ken Fabian points out.
But the big solution to CO2 emissions will turn out to be prevention. That is, don’t emit them in the first place. Don’t burn fossil fuels fullstop. We must aggressively phase out ALL fossil fuels from NOW. We particularly have to watch a variant of Jevons Paradox if it can be said to be a variant of said paradox. That is, our economy will prove so energy hungry that it will do everything ie. harvest as much solar and wind power as it can but still burn all available fossil fuels as well. That is a very real danger. Only dirigist action with punitive emissions taxes and bans on coal mines, oil wells, gas wells and IC vehicles along with mandating solar and wind power, can solve our climate crisis.
I used to think we could solve it by killing all the climate-change deniers, but I don’t think that offers enough scope for emissions reduction any more.
So, yes.
[“think we can solve it this way” is not “think we should solve it this way”.]
Some may recall the US academic whose name I forget saying on NITV Awaken last night saying he fears we could throw everything at low carbon energy be it CCS, nukes, renewables and it still won’t be enough to meet the expectations of a growing world population. People must grasp the magnitude of the task; coal and gas supply most of our electricity here while oil powers the fast bulk of the world’s transport and food distribution system.
The official figure for PV’s share of Australia’s electricity is 1.6%. See ThisIsPower for 28 August. I envy the bliss of those who think this can be easily turned around.
@Hermit
“I envy the bliss of those who think this can be easily turned around.”
But life was not meant to be easy.
@ikonoclast:
Yes, it is, ceteris paribus. Regrettably, it’s way too late for prevention to be an adequate solution. According to the scientists, we have committed the planet to the loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Even if all new warming were to stop now, the collapse of the WAIS into the sea will occur over the next three centuries. Maybe the humans of 2100 will be clever enough to find a way of rebuilding the pins on which the ice sheet sat but that won’t be through prevention but some awesome piece of terraforming or geoengineering. In the meantime, we will have destoyed something that has been around for at least 120,000 years — a timespan that makes human history as significant as the last 6 years of the life of a man who lives to 100.
With respect Ikono, you don’t and just can’t know that. I believe it can be done and provided the energy costs are mostly non-FHC the EROEI isn’t that important. It’s the footprint we ought to keep in mind.
They arlready have been, so at best, we are merely talking about new emissions. That’s important because there is already a huge mess and we would like to clear it up as soon as possible rather than burnden ourselves with clearing up a new mess as well. If we can avoid adding to the mess, that will be a lot easier, so that’s great, but let nobody be fooled into thinking that would be enough. It isn’t.
Also, it’s unlikely we will even avoid exceeding 450ppm by 2050. We may be lucky to peak at 500ppm. Pre-industrial + 3degC is very likely, and entirely plausible even if, improbably, we halt at 450ppm. The IPCC says that 450ppm gives us only a 50-50 chance of Pre-industrial + 2degC, and at less than Pre-industrial + 1degC we have already determined the fate of the WAIS, are slowing down the MOC (meriodional overturning current) and much else. We need to go into reverse with atmospheric concentrations, right now.
This is not like one of those fake budget emergencies that the boss class likes to talk about when it suits them. This one is real. Basic physics doesn’t care about our opinions or social justice.
If we don’t wrench control of human affairs out of the hands of the wreckers, fools, spivs, misanthropes and assorted psychopaths, they will steer humanity into a world of barbarism and misery.
It’s as simple as that.
@John Quiggin
I doubt even if you confiscate all the wealth of the 1%ers that it will even make a slight dent in a world wide issue. But I question it is even necessary. This chicken little situation is mostly based on models projecting scenerios years into the future. For example in your recent book you point out how ineffective DSGE models were in acting as an econometric crystal ball. To try and model the global climate years in advance is factors of ten more complex. There are so many variables that are left out….the fertilizer effect (plants love CO2 and expand to meet the supply), the albedo effect…increasing clouds from warming reflect more sunlight, melting glaciers from warming, cool the oceans, etc, etc…
“With respect Ikono, you don’t and just can’t know that. I believe it can be done and provided the energy costs are mostly non-FHC the EROEI isn’t that important.”
It is not a matter of belief. At present there is no practicable scalable technology that can draw down ghg emissions to a great extent. That us the state of the science. It is unfair to future generations to think that science will be able to provide something it currently can’t, so present conservation of ghg emissions and banning is best. You shouldn’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched.
Reforestation is typically said to be the best way, but as Faustusnotes cited, it has limits. I looked into the carbon bio-char Ronald Brak proposed, it has limits. I looked into the plastic trees John Quiggin proposed it had limits and is not practicable. I have only looked at one csiro report on algae sequestration so far and it says it has limits –
plus you have to capture the carbon at the coal power plant then truck it to an algae sequestration plant – How could you capture the airplane’s emissions while it’s flying and truck them to an algae plant? If you tried I wager the plane would fall out of the sky, it doesn’t sound like an aero engineering possibility to me.
“If scaling up is required to sequester all emissions of a power station or ammonia plant, a very large amount of land will be necessary. For example, in the case of Gladstone in Queensland 35000 hectares would be needed, or 11000 for Port Augusta in South Australia (assuming the relatively high algae production rate previously mentioned). Much more piping infrastructure would also be required since flue gas or pure CO2 would need to be pumped 50 km on average to feed such a development. In the case of Port Augusta most of the suitable land available is 135 km away.
When dealing with this amount of land, pipes and roads it is likely that, regardless of the crop producing capability of the area, there will be a significant amount of native flora and fauna affected, especially as remote areas close to shore are often the breeding ground for many marine mammals and birds. As such the impacts on site-specific ecologies would need to be carefully assessed. This would also be required for the ideal cases, of course.
There is also the issue of CO2 storage. For the case of a nearby power station or ammonia plant nearby this has been ignored. However, if the stated purpose of the algae farm is to sequester the industrial carbon dioxide outputs one needs to recognize the fact that during the night (and in poor weather) the algae slow down their rate of reproduction dramatically and thus take up less CO2. This would require the installation of thousands of cubic metres of gas storage facilities onsite to cope with the influx of CO2 during the night, with the associated environmental and economic costs. Te economic costs alone would render this infeasible for the flue gas case (which is only 15% CO2), thereby reducing the ability of the algae to capture at most 50% of the CO2 production of the facility, and probably closer to 40% or less once the influence of poor weather (cloudy days, etc) is taken into account.”
Click to access 0903_CSIRO_-_Greenhouse_gas_sequestration_by_algae.pdf
@ZM
Pardon me. Why would one do that? CO2 is CO2. It doesn’t matter where you take it from. It’s a well mixed gas. Some strains of algae like elevated CO2 — which is another reason you would probably site algae sequestration in major cities, where concentrations can be a little higher, but there would be basically zero advantage in piping CO2 to an open raceway tank.
@Fran Barlow
I tend to agree with you on most points. To summarise views we would agree on I think.
(1) Prevention is better than cure.
(2) But we have already emitted dangerous unprevented amounts of CO2.
(3) Therefore both further prevention and cure of the existing ill are important.
Let me clarify, when I wrote “sequestration by artificial methods is not feasible” I meant CCS essentially, although plastic trees would qualify as artificial too. I did not write “sequestration by natural methods is not feasible”. It is feasible but only over the long haul. So reforestation and getting the oceans healthy again would re-sequester what we have released over the very long haul.
There is no total prevention now and no quick solution to the problem we have unleashed so all or most of the world’s ice cover will disappear over the next few millenia. Unfortunately that is baked into the cake.
Yes, we could and should experiment with and test artificial sequestration methods but I would shy away from hubristic geo-engineering projects especially, but not only, under a capitalist system. I mean projects like seeding the ocean with iron filings to promote algae bloom or purposely emitting aerosol particles to reduce insolation. There are likely to be too many unforeseen and catastrphic side-effects to such actions. Carbon sequestration via CO2 mineralisation might be the safest non-biological course to supplement things like reforestation.
The CSIRO report I read says to get enough carbon to the algae to make the process worthwhile you need to capture it and pipe or truck it to the algae plant. This would not work for airplanes.
@Jack King
Except that they haven’t since there has been a continuing steady increase in atmospheric concentrations. Part of the problem is that while plants can hold CO2, they eventually release it. Also, decreasingly alkaline oceans tend to kill off marine plants, which also absorb CO2.
You might consider as well that plants that are efficient at taking up CO2 have an advantage in environments where CO2 is scarce, but lose it in environments where it is abundant. CO2 take up should fall, per m2 of vegetation in a CO2-rich world.
Actually it’s more complex than that. It depends on the height of the clouds and the types of clouds we’re talking about. Dessler has refuted Lindzen on this claim. Albedo is working against us, because the loss of Arctic sea ice during summer and the loss of snowcap is decreasing albedo.
They do but that simply moves heat around. The deposition of masses of cold low saline water from glacial melt is slowing (and may stop the MOC). This could cause heat to pool near the equator with disastrous consequences for coastal communities. Equally, a part of the defence of glaciers against warming is their elevation — since thinner air holds less heat — so collapsing claciers are likely to warm more quickly than elevated ones.
Be assured that both negative and positive feedbacks have been considered in the modelling — these are hydrologists and atmospheric physicists we’re discussing — and they are cautious in making predictions 50 years hence.
On the other hand we do know quite about the climate during periods of glaciation and deglaciation and the relevant temperatures so we do have a precedent in which prevaling temperatures are known. We know which lands were inundated — and that over time periods much longer than human history.
@ZM
That’s because their modelling was for the feasibility of a bio-electricity and biodiesel plant, using some by product as fertiliser. I’m talking purely about offsets and sequestration. They were for recycling the algal mass as oil, in co-firing with coal and in secondary products.
This is an area I’ve spent significant time examining. I was once enthusiastic about algal biodiesel. I’m now doubtful of the marginal utility and scaleability of the process. Algae might well be a good substitute as a fertiliser, and could be used in food products or for polymers (which would otherwise demand petroleum oil) but in this case I would be looking only at yield and CO2 take up and uninterested in lipid content (which is the main heating value component for energy systems (along secondarily with sugars).
Closed tanks are very expensive (though yields of the preferred lipid-content algae are obviously going to be much higher than open raceway style enclosures). We have plenty of marginal land we could use so the precise yield per square metre is not critical. What we need to do is to keep costs down and total yield up.