The Oil Drum

Global warming does not raise the specter of the end of growth.

Alas, NPC report is in accord with you. Interestingly, note how CC is used in this report not as a major problem to be dealt with, but something which will "lessen demand", and will diversify "alternative energy sources". They know the latter is bs, from a fiscal perspective--which is certainly Mr. Raymond's overriding concern, albeit the only meaningful perspective to take. They in essence say so much, under their breath, by not investing all that much in "alternatives" if you compare to hydrocarbon investments. "Lessen demand" is code for, if things do get hairy--we warned you may be driving too much! (Wow, talk about the pot calling the kettle black...) Mommy tells you "eat all the cookies you want" and then she leaves the room for a minute and comes back to find you sick and bloated from too many cookies she slaps you over the head and says "now if you want a cookie, it's gonna cost you--you know you want some more right? There are no shortages of cookies it's just now all your friends down the street want cookies, and there are evil-doers trying to blow up your cookies" etc etc... You get my drift.

I agree with Leanan* that they would sooner bring out the relatively minor boogeyman of global warming, than the stink bomb of peak oil (and these are all Big Oil guys!) Clearly, because CC is an ancillary issue. We "don't know what causes it" or "even if it is happening at all." Either way, it would cost too much money to fix, right? So fuck it all, BAU.

CC cannot be directly tied to "war" and "terrorism" (PO can). This maintains the facade, the disconnect, between war terrorism and oil. This is a critical distinction, the elephant in the room which our culture has somehow built up immunity too. "National Security", I believe the secret handshake goes...

Why would that be? The reason is pretty clear... CC and other "above ground security and political issues" will be the bellwether front for peak oil. It is far more comforting for businessmen and average Joe to think "well, these here economic problems are at root caused by 'terrorists' and the other ancillary affects of 'combating CC'" (a futile effort if I've ever seen one, one reason among a myriad that conservatives are so uber-cynical... anyone for throwing beach sand at waves? I'll take profits, thank you very much.) This is probably due to the fact that the markets need to be comforted, and even coming close to endorsing worst case scenarios for oil depletion would be tantamount to burning money (surely not something Mr. Raymond would want--can you sense my seething jealousy? ;] )

But you cannot go near peak oil without running smack into that question. Thus, peak oil is far more dangerous than global warming in the attitudes and expectations that it seems to foster.

This is why it is so easy to see how things are going to turn nasty quick, because when you can't even acknowledge a problem, then there is little chance of "fixing" it (particularly problems that seriously border on the insurmountable.) By definition, even if this so-called "progress" continues, actually addressing the root issue is an anathema to everything our society is and wants to be. Predictions are worth the price of storing them on a hard drive (hint: close to nothing) but I believe one can say fairly confidently that you will not hear these birds tweet 'uncle', ever. Why would you when you own everything and you can harp on about above ground issues?

Global warming does not raise the specter of the end of growth.

A growing economy based on burning fossil fuels will self-destruct in possibly as little as 30 years.

NASA climatologist James Hansen:
How Can We Avert Dangerous Climate Change?
http://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3720

For humanity itself, the greatest threat is the likely demise of the West Antarctic ice sheet as it is attacked from below by a warming ocean and above by increased surface melt. There is increasing realization that sea level rise this century may be measured in meters if we follow business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions.

The dangerous level of CO2 is at most 450 ppm, and it is probably less. The low limit on CO2 forces us to move promptly to the next phase of the industrial revolution. Changing light bulbs and making ethanol from corn will not solve the problem, although the former act is useful.

In the past few years it has become clear that the Earth is close to dangerous climate change, to tipping points of the system with the potential for irreversible deleterious effects.

Paleoclimate data show that climate is remarkably sensitive to global forcings. Positive feedbacks have caused the entire planet to be whipsawed between climate states, driven by very weak climate forcings.

The implication of the crystallizing scientific understanding is that the planet is on the verge of dramatic climate change. It is still possible to avoid the most deleterious effects, but only if prompt actions are taken to stabilize global temperature close to its present value.

Civilization developed during the present interglacial period, the Holocene, a period of relatively stable climate, now almost 12,000 years in duration. In this period the Earth has been warm enough to prevent formation of ice sheets in North America or Eurasia, but cool enough to keep stable ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica. Sea level rose by more than 100 meters between the peak of the last ice age, 20,000 years ago and the Holocene. After sea level finally stabilized, about 7,000 years ago, the first urban centers developed at many points around the globe, perhaps because of the increase in coastal margin productivity that occurred with sea level stabilization and thus the increased availability of high quality food necessary for urban development (Day et al. 2007).

How much warmer does the Earth need to be to destabilize ice sheets and initiate eventual sea level rise of several meters or more? Figures 2 and 3 provide useful indications. With the warming of the past 30 years, key tropical regions are now within 1°C or less of the warmest interglacial periods of the past million years (Figure 2). In the previous interglacial period (about 130,000 years ago), when global mean temperature was not more than about 1°C warmer than today, sea level is estimated to have been 4 ± 2 m higher than today (Rostami et al. 2000; Muhs et al. 2002).

Thus the natural tendency today, absent humans, would be toward the next ice age, albeit the tendency would not be very strong because the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit is rather small (~0.017). However, another ice age will never occur, unless humans go extinct. Although orbital changes are the ‘pacemaker’ of the ice ages, the two mechanisms by which the Earth becomes colder in an ice age are reduction of the long-lived GHGs and increase of ice sheet area. But these natural mechanisms are now overwhelmed by human-made emissions, so GHGs are skyrocketing and ice is melting all over the planet. Humans are now in control of global climate, for better or worse. An ice age will never be allowed to occur if humans exist, because it can be prevented by even a ‘thimbleful’ of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), which are easily produced.

To understand the urgency of addressing the global warming problem, it is necessary to recognize a critical distinction that exists among pollution problems arising in the fossil-fuel-driven industrial revolution. When the industrial revolution began in Britain it was powered first by coal, the most abundant of the fossil fuels. Later discoveries of oil and gas, which are more mobile and convenient fossil fuels, provided energy sources that helped power the developed world to ever greater productivity and living standards. We did not face up to the dark side of the industrial revolution until it was thrust in our face. London choked on smog. A river in the United States burned. Forests were damaged by acid rain. Fish died in many lakes. These problems were traced to pollutants from fossil fuels. We have solved or are solving those pollution problems, at least in developed countries. But we did not address them until they hit us with full force. That approach, to wait and see and fix the problems post facto, unfortunately, will not work in the case of global climate change. On the contrary, the inertia of the climate system, the fact that much of the climate change due to gases already in the air is still ‘in the pipeline’, and the time required for economically-sensible phase-out of existing technologies together have a profound implication. They imply that ignoring the climate problem at this time, for even another decade, would serve to lock in future catastrophic climatic change and impacts that will unfold during the remainder of this century and beyond