I have a confession to make. I've been lying about global warming for years. You see, I have known for over a decade that we were long past the "tipping point" for preventing catastrophic climate change. But I also believed, and still do, that it is a moral imperative to act as though we have a chance, just in case the data is wrong. And so when people asked if there was anything we could do to prevent global warming, I would lie.
Because of my involvement with certain environmental organizations, I was exposed to the science of climate change pretty early. We didn't call it global warming back then. We called it the greenhouse effect. But the truth is, all the way back in the late 70s and early 80s, the facts about global warming were very well established (a very important point I'll get to in my next diary). And way back then, scientists, like modern day prophets, were already predicting what we're witnessing right now - extreme weather events, melting at the poles, droughts, fires and floods. It's almost spooky now, to remember back when these predictions were only abstract notions of a seemingly uncertain future. But facts they were then, just as they are now.
There is one fact that I've never written about or even discussed with close friends until recently. It's the kind of fact that makes people want to give up (We can never give up). But I now believe that circumstances require us to confront the truth of our situation, no matter how painful or scary it may be.
Residence Time
Let me tell you a secret. Or at least it might as well be a secret because hardly anyone talks about it. It's called residence time. This is the measure of how long a gas stays in the atmosphere before being reabsorbed. And the residence time for CO2 has grave consequences for our planet and our future - which is why I suspect no one wants to talk about it. It wasn't in Al Gore's movie. But if you're one of the overwhelming majority of people who has never even heard of this term, let that be an indication of just how far we are from having even a remotely serious discussion about global warming.
This figure shows the degree to which carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions persist in the atmosphere over time. The lifetime of a gas in the atmosphere is generally known as its "residence time", but unlike other greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide does not undergo a simple decline over a single predictable timescale. Instead, the excess carbon is first diluted by the carbon cycle as it mixes into the oceans and biosphere (e.g. plants) over a period of a few hundred years, and then it is slowly removed over hundreds of thousands of years as it is gradually incorporated into carbonate rocks.
The dilution of carbon is such that only 15-30% is expected to remain in the atmosphere after 200 years, with most of the rest being either incorporated into plants or dissolved into the oceans. This leads to a new equilibrium being established; however, the total amount of carbon in the ocean-atmosphere-biosphere system remains elevated. To restore the system to a normal level, the excess carbon must be incorporated into carbonate rocks through geologic processes that progress exceedingly slowly. As a result, it is estimated that between 3 and 7% of carbon added to the atmosphere today will still be in the atmosphere after 100,000 years (Archer 2005, Lenton & Britton 2006). This is supported by studies of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a large naturally occurring release of carbon 55 million years ago that apparently took ~200,000 years to fully return to pre-event conditions (Zachos et al. 2001). (Source)
Image by Robert A. Rohde and courtesy of Global Warming Art.
What this means is, if humans stopped the engine of the entire world today, shut down every coal fired power plant from here to China, turned off every single automobile, stopped burning any carbon based substances from natural gas to firewood, and miraculously reduced global greenhouse emissions to exactly zero, we could not stop what is happening, and about to happen to our planet.
And because we have entered what I call runaway climate change, with numerous feedback loops kicking in, even if we stopped the engine of the world, not only will global warming continue, but it will continue to get worse.
The global warming we're seeing now is not the result of decades of CO2 emissions. It is the accumulative result of centuries of emissions. All that CO2 that went up George Washington's chimney, and all that CO2 that came out of Henry Ford's Model-T is still up there, suffocating our planet. And all the CO2 that we have been emitting over the last 50 years, billions of tons, will still be suffocating our planet in the year 2200. Some of it will even be around in the year 202,000 A.D.
We have permanently altered our atmosphere, and our climate.
Our New Moral Imperative
It's time to face reality. We can't "fix" global warming. And we can't prevent it. We don't have seven years. We don't have five.
Al Gore and Richard Branson have offered a reward if someone can figure out a way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. I pray some one wins that prize. But when you really think about what that will take, it seems unlikely it can happen in time to reverse what has already begun.
But this contest at least confirms to me that Mr. Gore is familiar with the residence time of CO2 – not that I had any doubt. I suspect he has been operating under the same moral imperative I have – pretend we can fix this just in case, by some fluke, we can.
But we now have a new moral imperative - we must prepare the people of the world for catastrophic global climate change, and take measures to minimize the inevitable suffering that will result.
Mr. Gore has called for a Global Marshall Plan, based on the initiative after WWII to rebuild Europe, to move the world toward environmental sustainability. I strongly support that effort. But our Global Marshall Plan must also include mobilizing our resources to deal with global water shortages, mass migrations, the crashing global economy, and the threat of numerous wars.
We cannot continue to walk blindly into this future hoping that some miracle will rescue us from peril. Our moral imperative now is to survive that peril.
Foreshadowing
Yesterday, a new report was released called "The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change".
This report is similar to the Pentagon study released in 2003 called An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United
Both reports address the implications of global warming from a national security perspective. And both reports read like a geopolitical horror story.
It's almost funny. We've gotten to see a little microcosm of the kind of world conflict envisioned in both reports play out right here in the US. Georgia, Alabama and Florida are in a spat over water rights as the long drought diminishes supplies. Lawsuits have been threatened.
Now imagine if Georgia, Alabama, and Florida all had their own armies, even nuclear weapons. This is what we're looking at. Water wars, mass migrations, famine and severe political turmoil.
We can take steps now to help mitigate the social and geopolitical disaster that is every bit the threat posed by the climate disaster. But we have to acknowledge it first.
A Civilization Policy
I want us to work to fix global warming. But we haven't even begun to think seriously about what is involved. Our entire civilization has been designed around fossil fuels. Cheap oil is written into the blueprints of modern civilization in ways we don't even realize, from suburban sprawl, to global trade. Five years? Try two hundred. We're talking about reinventing our entire society, infrastructure, economy.
For over a century we've been designing our civilization around cheap fossil energy. Where once communities sprung up in walking distance, now you most likely have to drive miles just to get a loaf of bread.
And let's not even mention business and trade. It takes a lot of oil to get all that wheat gluten from China. And yet the oligarchs are dead set on fulfilling David Rockefeller's dream of a one world economy.
Then we have Ted Steven's bridge to nowhere. I really wish we would let him build it. What a fine monument to a failed idea. A failed civilization.
We can change civilization. But let's not delude ourselves that this is merely an energy problem. We have to restructure our entire way of life, from the way we trade and distribute goods, to where we work and live. I believe what we lack in a replacement for cheap energy, we can make up for in efficiency and restructuring. Did you know we waste as much as 80% of the energy we use? And yet almost every estimate on how much solar energy we would need to replace fossil fuels uses current consumption levels. If we even approach 50% efficiency, solar energy becomes much more feasible.
But we have to get serious. Our energy policy needs to become a home and office insulation policy. A civil engineering policy. A trade policy. An electric car policy. It needs to be a restructuring of Western civilization policy.
There is hope
Having the residence time of CO2 out in the open is not just to plan for the worst. It also informs our strategies for planning a solution.
The Gore/Branson initiative for example. I think we should put everything we have into carbon sequestration technology - which is what their contest is going for. It may not bear fruit for decades. But it does offer the promise of correcting our mistake.
Massive reforestation is a potent form of carbon sequestration. But we also must develop technology to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
Granted, it's a long shot. But it is by no means impossible. And until the carbon cycle becomes a serious part of the debate, not only will we not prepare for the worst, we will greatly diminish our chances for a possible solution. We must change the nature of the discussion.
But our political leaders, the media, and even our fellow citizens are living in a fantasy world. I won't even honor the proposals by the Democratic candidates for president by mentioning them. And the Republicans. Well, they'll be one of the first extinct species. They're almost there now.
Runaway Global Warming Has Begun
Meanwhile, back in reality land, something is occurring that I've been fearing for a long time. That something is runaway climate change.
'Carbon Sinks' Lose Ability To Soak Up Emissions
A dramatic decline in the ability of the Earth to soak up man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, and a corresponding acceleration in the rate of increase of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, have been detected for the first time by scientists.
This little news item effectively says that that chart above is wrong. Turns out the residence time for CO2 just got an extended stay.
We've known all along that when global warming really kicked in, it would snowball. This is because the atmosphere is a nonlinear thermodynamic system. The slightest, even linear change in input will most probably result in a dramatic, exponential change in output. And when you factor in that the input, CO2 emission rates, is also nonlinear, and the many feedback loops at play - deforestation, co2 sink rates, arctic reflectivity, and melting permafrost, just to name a few - you see what I believe we are clearly seeing now - not just a change in global weather patterns, but an exponential change.
The thing to understand about science is it often lags behind knowledge. For example, it was over a decade after Einstein first conceived of his General Principle of Relativity before he was able to publish on it. While he had firmly formulated the concept, incontrovertibly so in my opinion, he didn't know of a mathematical formalism to represent it. He had to consult a mathematician friend who suggested Reiman's work in non-euclidean geometry.
Climate science is similar in that you can see patterns clearly, know they're occurring, and yet spend years putting together the necessary data to actually prove what you already know. Of course, this is the way it should be. And the measured, conservative projections of climate models are the only way to ensure accuracy.
But because of the exponential, extraordinary rate of change we're seeing in global climate patterns, and the extreme complexity of the data, the science just can't keep up. This is why of late, we are also seeing an exponential increase in the number of studies claiming 'We were wrong, it's much worse than we thought.'
Again, our problem is not just energy or greenhouse gas emissions. It is our entire global way of life. Feedback loops are a consequence of warming, feeding back to create even more warming. But other severe contributors, like wiping out half of the South American rainforest, are not. And this double whammy has yet to be fully included in climate models. So over the next decade, we are going to see a switch from scientists trying to predict what is going to happen to scientists trying to explain what is already happening.
OK, I'm Depressed
You may be reading this and thinking, OK, even if I buy all this residence time crap, and accept that the world is going to tank, what can I do about it. This is just to big for little old me.
Well, you would be right. It's too big for any individual. But the amazing thing about this internet thing is it allows individuals to become groups. And as a group, we can do what we do best, raise awareness.
I have a one year old daughter. I know she's not going to grow up in the world that I did. But I believe that she can grow up in a world that is sustainable, peaceful, and happy.
Just as we have a model for how to proceed with Mr. Gore's Marshall Plan, we also have a model for how not to proceed. We can call it the Katrina plan. Katrina was a disaster. But it didn't compare to the man made disaster that followed.
So it is with global warming. If we don't plan for the worst, the greatest disaster will not be climate change itself, it will be our response.
