Who’s calling who an “alarmist”?

One of the more common memes heard from the self-styled “skeptics” is that we should not “wreck the economy” by attempting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through programs like cap and trade or a carbon tax, based on “alarmist” predictions. Implicit in this assertion is that there is solid economic justification or at least a consensus among economists that a cap and trade solution should not be pursued.

A consensus among economists does, in fact, exist. Just not the consensus the denialosphere would like people to believe.  Earlier this week, J. Scott Holladay, Jonathan Horne, and Jason A Schwartz from NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity published a survey of economists on climate change entitled “Economists & Climate Change: Consensus and Open Questions.” Their findings support an under-reported piece by Eric Pooley from early this year about the failure of the media to accurately convey the economic position on mitigation.

Key findings:

The survey found consensus on several key questions:

• Climate change poses risks to the U.S. and global economies;
• Several domestic economic sectors, most notably agriculture, will be negatively affected;
• Uncertainty about climate change increases the value of action;
• The United States should adopt market‐based mechanisms for reducing emissions, those mechanisms will create incentives for efficiency and clean energy, and allowances should be auctioned rather than given away; and
• The United States should join a global regime to reduce emissions, with a majority of economists saying the United States should commit to emissions reductions regardless of other countries’ actions.

The survey also found that there is no consensus that the future costs and benefits of climate change policy should be discounted at a constant rate, with an equal number saying that alternative discount methodologies should be used, and a significant percentage stating that alternative moral inquires were the most appropriate way to approach intergenerational questions.

That last bit is striking. There are those who fancy themselves non-denialists who oppose mitigation on economic grounds based upon narrow readings of economists like Nordhaus- Jim Manzi comes to mind. Manzi and others’ argument against action essentially hinges on the discount rates assumed, portraying their analyses’ choices as mainstream. This survey reveals that rather than being mainstream, there is no consensus on Nordhausian let alone constant discount rates, and those favoring non-constant rates discounted the cost of climate change at a substantially lower rate (i.e. more heavily favoring expenditure now rather than passing the costs off to future generations).

The third finding listed above, though, is the one that needs to be driven home to policy makers. Politicians are fond of stating that they need more certainty before they are willing to get on board with mitigation efforts, while economists overwhelmingly conclude the opposite- uncertainty increases, rather than decreases, the value of mitigating now.

So the next time someone accuses you of being an “alarmist” who is willing to destroy the economy over emissions reductions, feel free to direct them to this report. And while you do so, let them know that they’re the real “alarmists”.

Videobreak: Carbon trading to prevent deforestation in Madagascar

Deforestation’s contribution may be revised downward (~12% from ~20%) somewhat making such programs that much more difficult to implement, but one can always hope.

[Via Climate Feedback]

The Freakonomics solution to finding yourself in a hole

Or: Levitt and Dubner Keep Digging, Part One

You’d think that the authors of a pop-econ best seller would be familiar with the sunk cost effect. You’d be wrong.

Criticism of Levitt and Dubner’s (L&D from here on) atrocious chapter on climate has been swift and remarkably in-depth. L&D have been shown to have misrepresented everything from the position of their main expert Ken Caldeira to alleged global warming caused by solar panels.

Rather than acknowledge that they’ve massively screwed up,  L&D have gone on the attack- they’re trying to dismiss the substantive and largely unanswered critiques of their shoddy work as little more than the response of religious zealots, and refocus media attention to their ‘unconventional, counter-intuitive, boy aren’t we more clever than the conventional wisdom’ trademark insights.

L&D want you to know that this whole climate change problem could be solved at a mere pittance if it weren’t for those in the thrall of Political Correctness and Big Government, not to mention the dirty fucking hippies and the climate “science” community- those flat earthers. Oh, you think I’m joking:

Faced with these two options [emissions reductions and geo-engineering], most people would aggressively explore the latter solution (while possibly also investing in the first if the threat were deadly enough).

Unless, of course, the threat we were talking about was global warming. On that issue, a lethal combination of political correctness and entrenched special interests has convinced the chattering classes that the costly, slow and difficult path is the only option, stifling any discussion of cheap, easy and reversible solutions that might be available…

Why, then, are so few people willing to talk about such “geoengineering” solutions? There could be a fear of unintended environmental consequences, although the lack of significant side effects from Pinatubo is encouraging. It might be that this solution just seems too good to be true. Could it really be so simple and cheap? Modern society is in love with costly, complicated solutions. (Governments in particular seem to like them.)…

Devoted environmentalists, meanwhile, as well as some members of the tight-knit climate-science community, find this sort of idea repugnant. Using sulfur dioxide to solve an environmental problem? It just doesn’t feel right to them. Of course, the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun didn’t initially feel right either. Nor did the assertion that the Earth might in fact be round and not flat.

L&D would have you believe that a certain group of people (liberals the Politically Correct, Big Government worshiping, environmentalist, climate science-supporting “chattering classes”) are standing between honest discussion of the merits of the no-brainer geo-engineering fix and the colossal boondoggle of mitigation. L&D- brave, counter-intuitive visionaries that they are- have ridden forth on white steeds to rescue everyone else from the tyranny of those who support reducing greenhouse gas emissions (which is virtually every relevant scientific organization on the planet) and would keep this miracle cure secret.

The only problem with this scenario is that, like much of L&D’s work of late, it’s complete bullshit. It’s a flashy narrative obscuring a much longer, much more complex, much less revolutionary reality in which the real work and discovery is performed not by venture capitalists and their credulous stenographers, but actual scientists doing actual science.

Serious discussion on geo-engineering has gone on for more than a decade (in fact, entire reviews of the history of geo-engineering were published nearly ten years ago):

• US Department of Energy (Technical Fixes for the climatic effects of CO2. Workshop on the Global Effects of Carbon Dioxide from Fossil Fuels, 1977)
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Geoengineering the Climate, Report: UCRL-JC-108014, 1991)
• American Geophysical Union (A Serious Look at Geoengineering, EOS, 1992)
• The National Academies of Science (Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming: Mitigation, Adaptation, and the Science Base, 1992)
• The IPCC Third Assessment Report (Biological Uptake in Oceans and Freshwater Reservoirs, and Geo-engineering, 2001)

And geo-engineering isn’t some obscure concept kept alive only by Intellectual Ventures, L&D, and a handful of “scientists outside Seattle”, despite what L&D would have people believe. To the contrary, it’s being discussed now more than ever at the highest levels of the scientific and political communities [all refs published within the last year or so, before the publication of Superfreakonomics and L&D's claims]:

• The National Academies of Science (Geoengineering Options to Respond to Climate Change)
• The American Meteorological Society (Policy Statement on Geoengineering the Climate System)
• Advisor to President Barack Obama for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Holdren (interview with the Associated Press)
• The World Bank (Beyond Mitigation)
• The Royal Society (Geoengineering the Climate)

Moreover, it’s not as though geo-engineering has gone undiscussed in the media. Here is just a sample of recent, in-depth discussions of geo-engineering in major media outlets [again, all recent and published prior to Superfreakonomics and L&D's claims]:

• The Los Angeles Times (Resetting Earth’s thermostat)
• Foreign Affairs (The Geoengineering Option)
• The Wall Street Journal (It’s Time to Cool the Planet)
• The Atlantic Monthly (Re-Engineering the Earth)
• The New York Times (too many to count)
• National Public Radio (Scientists Debate Shading Earth As Climate Fix)

There are some very good reasons to be wary of engaging in L&D’s vision of geo-engineering. Even if it works flawlessly, it doesn’t address ocean acidification, hydrological cycle disruption , centuries-long commitment or face the built up warming in a matter of decades, etc. And even those who L&D tout as their scientific endorsements like Ken Caldeira and Paul Crutzen believe that geo-engineering is an emergency solution only to be considered after/concomitant with aggressively pursuing mitigation

The truth of the matter is that this is a complex issue demanding more than attending an investment pitch session and calling it done. And rather than presenting a fresh or unconventional take on the subject, L&D are just repackaging the result of decades of research already being considered at the top political and scientific levels as something “new”.

The idea that a cheap, effective, fast solution to the climate problem which doesn’t depend on greenhouse gas reductions is just sitting out there unexamined is absurd on its face, which is why L&D had to invent their tinfoil narrative of geo-engineering somehow being kept from public discourse by the mighty Political Correctness/Greenie Lobby. I’m almost embarrassed for L&D. They could have just admitted that they shot their mouths off about something they were clearly ignorant of and issued an update or correction to their book. It might be a blow to their perceived credibility, such as it is, but at least they’d show themselves to be serious writers who are more interested in getting things right than giving others the impression they’re in possession of some unconventional wisdom everyone else lacks.

Apparently L&D have decided against the sane, honorable path, and are instead engaging in a media blitz that is an unstable blend of careful walk-back (note their present denial of their book’s cooling claims) and attack on those who had the temerity to suggest they said anything wrong in the first place- all the while still maintaining that geo-engineering is every bit as Awesome as they wrote about in Superfreakonomics.

In Part Two, I plan on addressing the actual scientific merits of L&D’s favored geo-engineering solution, as well as its drawbacks.

Oceans and Freshwater Reservoirs, and Geo-engineering

Reductions in US GHG emissions through household actions

Amongst discussions of US emissions regulation and the viability of individual action as a response to the climate problem, a recent study caught my eye which is both relevant and encouraging.

Deitz et al. have an open access paper in PNAS entitled Household actions can provide a behavioral wedge to rapidly reduce U.S. carbon emissions. They employ a conceptual model developed by Pacala and Socolow called stabilization wedges, and examine what reductions can be achieved through relatively simple and low-cost changes in US household behavior.

They break these changes into five broad categories:

W (home weatherization and upgrades of heating and cooling equipment); E (more efficient vehicles and nonheating and cooling home equipment); M (equipment maintenance); A (equipment adjustments), and D (daily use behaviors).

Click to embiggen

These actions represent gains in efficiency and/or reduced energy consumption (vs. the adoption of supplemental solar or wind energy, for example).  These are arguably the lowest hanging fruit of all in terms of emissions cuts as they not only reduce GHGs, but end up saving the consumer money in the long term as well. Or as Amory Lovins has put it, energy efficiency is “better than a free lunch, it’s a lunch you get paid to eat”.

All said, these reductions would result in a yearly carbon savings of 123,000,000 metric tons and could account for up to 3 wedges (or as much as 44%) of apportioned US emissions reductions over ten years, a stunning result. In contrast to stunt low-GHG lifestyles, a campaign to provide government incentives and alter social attitudes towards such behavioral changes could be tremendously effective- achieving (as Deitz et al. point out) more of a GHG savings than eliminating all emissions from “the petroleum refining, iron and steel, and aluminum industries, each of which is among the largest emitters in the industrial sector.”

[Note: See Deitz's response below.] Although it could conceivably have been included in such an evaluation, I was unsurprised to see discussions of relatively small changes in diet and their respective emissions impact (among other benefits) left out- I would wager this remains too politically unpopular a topic to seriously discuss at a US-wide policy level, even as the topic is being discussed abroad [UPDATE: who could have possibly foreseen such a reaction?].

[UPDATE: I see Dot Earth covered this one as well. Anyone confused by their numbers vs. mine (i.e. 8% vs. 44%), note that they're describing overall change to emissions while I was talking about percentage of emissions reductions goal.]

[LATE UPDATE: Lead author Tom Deitz has responded in the comments, noting that their paper is also available here and explains that the diet issue was avoided not for political reasons but because the necessary lifecycle accounting was beyond the scope of their study.]

Nope, cosmic rays still not driving global warming, continued

Just imagine they’re saying “intragalactic”

While we’re on the topic, one of the proposed mechanisms of the alleged cosmic ray-climate connection, championed by Shaviv and Svensmark among others, is the supposed connection between the solar system’s path through our galaxy’s spiral arms and past climate changes. Overholt et al. examine the evidence in a paper entitled Testing the link between terrestrial climate change and galactic spiral arm transit and surprise surprise, find it wanting [abstract, all emphases in this post mine]:

We re-examine past suggestions of a close link between terrestrial climate change and the Sun’s transit of spiral arms in its path through the Milky Way galaxy. These links produced concrete fits, deriving the unknown spiral pattern speed from terrestrial climate correlations. We test these fits against new data on spiral structure based on CO data that do not make simplifying assumptions about symmetry and circular rotation. If we compare the times of these transits with changes in the climate of Earth, the claimed correlations not only disappear, but we also find that they cannot be resurrected for any reasonable pattern speed.

And their conclusion:

Although previous work found a correlation between the 140 Myr climate cycle on the Earth and the intersection with spiral arms (Shaviv 2003, Shaviv & Veizer 2003; Svensmark 2006), with new data on the structure of the Galaxy, this correlation disappears. We have used a new model of the large-scale gas distribution in the Galaxy, using a velocity deconvolution of CO and Hi line data based on self-consistently computed, non-circular gas flows in the inner Galaxy (Bissantz et al. 2003; Pohl et al. 2008; Englmaier et al. 2009). In contrast to many published studies, this model does not force azimuthal symmetry into the spiral-arm structure. The asymmetry of the arms near the solar circle erases any correlation to the 140 Myr cycle and any periodic trend less than the orbital period of our solar system relative to the spiral pattern as a whole. This would be greater than 500 Myr for the previously fit pattern speed. Even if we allow the pattern speed to vary, it will not be less than the orbital period of the Sun, which is still longer than the 140 Myr cycle in question. The asymmetry of the new galactic picture could create a correlation between the spiral-arm crossings and any non-periodic event by varying the pattern speed. We conclude that, based on these new data, there is no evidence to suggest any correlation between the transit of our solar system through the spiral arms of our Galaxy and the terrestrial climate.

Previous studies debunking this meme discussed here, here, here, and here.

Nope, cosmic rays still not driving global warming

Image courtesy of Golden Age Comic Book Stories

Atmospheric data over a solar cycle: no connection between galactic cosmic rays and new particle formation [abstract, all emphases in this post mine]:

Aerosol particles affect the Earth’s radiative balance by directly scattering and absorbing solar radiation and, indirectly, through their activation into cloud droplets. Both effects are known with considerable uncertainty only, and translate into even bigger uncertainties in future climate predictions. More than a decade ago, variations in galactic cosmic rays were suggested to closely correlate with variations in atmospheric cloud cover and therefore constitute a driving force behind aerosol-cloud-climate interactions. Later, the enhancement of atmospheric aerosol particle formation by ions generated from cosmic rays was proposed as a physical mechanism explaining this correlation. Here, we report unique observations on atmospheric aerosol formation based on measurements at the SMEAR II station, Finland, over a solar cycle (years 1996–2008) that shed new light on these presumed relationships. Our analysis shows that none of the quantities related to aerosol formation correlates with the cosmic ray-induced ionisation intensity (CRII). We also examined the contribution of ions to new particle formation on the basis of novel ground-based and airborne observations. A consistent result is that ion-induced formation contributes typically less than 10% to the number of new particles, which would explain the missing correlation between CRII and aerosol formation. Our main conclusion is that galactic cosmic rays appear to play a minor role for atmospheric aerosol formation, and so for the connected aerosol-climate effects as well.

And their conclusion:

Galactic cosmic rays and the related ion-induced nucleation have been proposed to be among the key factors governing atmospheric aerosol budgets and subsequently cloudiness and global climate. Here we have shown, based on long-term experimental data, that atmospheric nucleation frequency or nucleation mode particle concentrations do not show correlation with galactic cosmic rays on either yearly or monthly basis. The geomagnetic activity showed similar seasonal behaviour as nucleation event frequencies, peaking in spring and autumn, but this similarity seems to be caused by different reasons. Accordingly, no significant daily correlation between these variables was found. Our results do not support the idea that the ions produced by galactic cosmic rays would be a major factor behind secondary aerosol production and the related aerosol-cloud interactions.

Previous studies debunking this meme discussed here, here, and here.

Eighteen of the US’s top science organizations urge Congress to reduce emissions

Via Science Insider, the statement reads in part:

For the United States, climate change impacts include sea level rise for coastal states, greater threats of extreme weather events, and increased risk of regional water scarcity, urban heat waves, western wildfires, and the disturbance of biological systems throughout the country. The severity of climate change impacts is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades. If we are to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, emissions of greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced.

The endorsing organizations:

• American Association for the Advancement of Science
• American Chemical Society
• American Geophysical Union
• American Institute of Biological Sciences
• American Meteorological Society
• American Society of Agronomy
• American Society of Plant Biologists
• American Statistical Association
• Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
• Botanical Society of America
• Crop Science Society of America
• Ecological Society of America
• Natural Science Collections Alliance
• Organization of Biological Field Stations
• Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
• Society of Systematic Biologists
• Soil Science Society of America
• University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

This is in line with international calls from the national science academies of dozens of nations in combating climate change and ocean acidification.

American Statistical Association

Who does the Washington Post consider to be an “expert” on the science of global warming?

WaPo has a new section called “Planet Panel: Views and Debates on Climate Change Policy”.

In it, you’ll find opinions by ten ostensible experts on the question (emphasis mine) “What Doubt is There About the Science Behind Global Warming?“

How many of the experts actually have a relevant science background?

• Rick Edmund – pastor, United Methodist Church (edu –?)
• Donald Boesch – biological oceanographer
• Lars Josefsson – energy co. CEO (edu – engineering/”technical physics”)
• David Hales – college president (edu – poli sci)
• David Hone – adviser to Shell (edu – petro engineering)
• Robert Shapiro – business consultant (edu – econ)
• William O’Keefe – CEO Marshall Institute, former API CEO (edu – ?)
• Bill McKibben – environmentalist/350.org (edu – journalism)
• Bjorn Lomborg – director Copenhagen Consensus Centre (edu – poli sci)
• Reid Detchon – UN energy foundation VP (edu – ?)

I am not proposing that one must have a doctorate in a relevant field in order to have an opinion on climate as a topic, but if the Washington Post is going to make the question explicitly about the science, how can they justify having a single scientist with a somewhat-relevant background? Several, perhaps all, of the other experts listed might be experts on policy questions (although in the cases of and O’Keefe and Lomborg, doubtful), but that isn’t what the question was asking. Nor is it any better that the answers were largely in agreement about the reality of the scientific consensus on the need for mitigation. If you had the resources of the Washington Post and wanted to assemble a panel on a question about the science of a specific topic, how many relevant scientists would you have included? My guess is more than one.

This is simply disgraceful. Although hardly surprising, from the paper that elsewhere counts George Will among its authorities on climate.

Videobreak: Acid Test – The Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification

Blog Action Day 2009 – Climate Change

Events seem to be conspiring against me getting a proper post out today, but I haven’t given up hope just yet. In the mean time, I’ll redirect interested parties to David Roberts’s welcome Seven reasons for optimism about the Senate climate Bill, Skeptical Science’s comprehensive Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming, and the helpful (and new to me) Responses to Questions & Objections on Climate Change by economist Brett Paris.