Ingen utvei?

via kommentator "pri-de" på TOD (som virkelig burde skaffe seg et annet nick, jeg ser ham for meg som en stolt-av-det homofil tysker (ikke det at jeg har noe imot verken homser eller tyskere, men jeg tror ikke det er effekten nickets innehaver ønsker å oppnå ;-)):

No way out? The double-bind in seeking global prosperity along with mitigated climate change (T. J. Garrett / EGU.eu)

Om prosjektet:

Modern IAMs [Integrated Assesment Models] are based on neo-classical economic models that, unlike EaSMs [Earth System Models], do
not explicitly represent physical flows. Here, a different approach is taken, which is to
make a comprehensive appeal to thermodynamic laws in order to make deterministic
forecasts of the coupled evolution of the global economy and greenhouse warming.
Civilization is as much a part of the universe as is the atmosphere. Therefore, the
25 intent of this article is not to focus on evaluation of the merits of any potential policy
actions. Rather, the aim is provide a range of physically constrained trajectories for
how we might expect the atmospheric composition and the global economy to evolve
over the coming century.

Det er ikke nødvendig å gjøre det komplisert:

This combination of theoretical and observational support is the key result that
serves as a basis for assuming that civilization is financially well-mixed and that wealth
is derived most fundamentally from a capacity to enable a flow of potential energy. If
it is generally correct, it enables an enormous simplification of what is required to accurately
model the global economy and its waste products. At least at a global scale,
a sophisticated IAM approach that explicitly considers people and their lifestyles is not
necessary in order to forecast future rates of energy consumption. People do not need
to be thermodynamically resolved in order to calculate global scale flows.

Viktig resultat:

Thus, what we normally term “economic growth” [...] is a consequence of an
acceleration in the growth rate of the rate of energy consumption[.]

Oooog....

It is counter-intuitive, but comparing two scenarios with very low resilience to climate
change, energy consumption rates rise about twice as fast with rapid decarbonization
as with no decarbonization. The reason is that decarbonization aids society health,
and this means greater energy consumption, which then leads to a partial offset of any
environmental gains from decarbonizing in the first place.

Garret har også en hjemmeside hvor han har skrevet litt om disse tingene: Thermodynamics of civilization growth

Tar med denne når vi først er i gang:

Energy Limits Global Economic Growth, Study Finds (ScienceDaily)

The research leads the study's authors to infer that energy use limits economic activity directly. They conclude that an "enormous" increase in energy supply will be required to meet the demands of projected world population growth and lift the developing world out of poverty without jeopardizing standards of living in most developed countries.

The study, which used a macroecological approach, was based on data from the International Energy Agency and the World Resources Institute. It was conducted by a team of ecologists led by James H. Brown of the University of New Mexico. The team found the same sort of relationship between energy consumption per person and gross domestic product per person as is found between metabolism and body weight in animals. Brown's group suggests the similarity is real: cities and countries, like animals, have metabolisms that must burn fuel to sustain themselves and grow. This analogy, together with the data and theory, persuades the BioScience authors that the linkage between energy use and economic activity is causal, although other factors must also be in play to explain the variability in the data.

Kanskje også verd å ta en titt på boken Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics and Life av Eric Schneider og Dorion Sagan. (Kurt Cobbs omtale av boken)

Right On (and off on a tangent)

Noen kommentarer er bare så... akkurat som jeg skulle sagt det selv. Her er Darwinian på TOD om klimaforandringer:

Though I agree with almost everyone on this list that the current global warming trend is caused by human activity, I disagree with almost everyone because I believe there is not a damn thing we can do about it. The idea that we are going to stop burning coal and other fossil fuels in time to make a difference is ludicrous.

CO2 stays in the atmosphere on average of about 800 years before it is removed by natural processes. So it doesn’t matter how fast we burn the fossil fuel, it matters only how much of it we burn. And we will burn it all.

Jepp, vi kommer til å brenne alt, i alle fall alt vi får tak i. Det kommer til å få konsekvenser -- det har allerede manifestert seg betydelige konsekvenser -- men "alt" er mye mindre enn mange tror. Tidligere denne måneden holdt gjengen fra Uppsalas Global Energy Systems foredrag for den svenske Riksdagen; PDF'er av slidene de brukte ligger her.

Aleklett skrev et kondensat i et debattinlegg i SvD Klimatarbetet kan skapa svält (også på EB i engelsk oversettelse) som virker noe hysterisk og usammenhengende... men med Riksdag-slidene som bakgrunn gir det mer mening.

Men jeg vet fortsatt ikke om jeg er enig i konklusjonen hans (så vidt jeg kan bedømme, det er litt uklart skrevet), at CO₂-skatt (eller tilsvarende fordyrende kvote/handelssystem) er en uting.

Aleklett legger til grunn en ligning for menneskelig velvære, som gir velvære som summen av mat, energi, klima og fred. Ummm... jeg har et par innsigelser mot den. Jeg er ikke i mot forsøk på å lage slike formler; og jeg er også veldig klar på at jo enklere slike tanke-hjelpemidler er å bruke, jo nyttigere er de. De MÅ forenkle, og forenkle grovt, dersom de skal ha noen verdi. Men det får være måte på naivitet! Formelen er for det første og andre feil sammensatt og av variable som ikke er uavhengige av hverandre. Fred og mat er stort sett ja-eller-nei -- variabler; har du nok mat, har du (i det minste muligheten til å ha)det bra... Har du ikke nok mat, har du det ikke spesielt bra, uavhengig av hvor mye energi, klima og fred du har... Jeg mener mat må ganges inn (med tillatte verdier {0, 1}), ikke legges til, dersom du skal fange inn dette. Mere mat utover minimum fører i begrenset grad til mere velvære -- hovedeffekten er fler folk. Velværeterskelen flyttes oppover. Det gjør også minimumsverdien for energi (energi kan ikke bli lavere enn matens energiinnhold); mens maksimumsverdien for klima synker... For det tredje er det ikke klart at du blir mer "vel" av å ha tilgang på mer energi -- det viktigste ser ut til å være å ha mer enn naboen, uansett hvem naboen måtte være. Ja, mer energi er forbundet med økonomisk vekst, men igjen, ut over en viss grense fører det mest til hamstring og conspicuous consumption, ikke "velvære".

Alt i alt, dette ser ut til å være en formel for velvære kun i navnet; det er i realiteten en formel for vekst.

Og vekst, som tidligere fastslått, er problemet.

Så spørsmålet vi må stille oss ang. CO₂-skatt er: Blir det kvisten som knekker kamelens rygg og gir oss et totalt globalt økonomisk sammenbrudd? Eller blir det den utslagsgivende faktoren som gjør fornybar energi så mye mer attraktiv enn fossil at Det Store Sammenbruddet avverges?

På noen års til noen tiårs sikt er betydelig smerte uansett uungåelig. Målsetningen må være å unngå total katastrofe.

Jeg tror jeg er for CO₂-skatt. Det ser ut til å være en perfekt Orlov'sk boondoggle: Det tilfører ikke noe verdifullt, så når systemet crash'er vil savnet bli mindre; og det vil gjøre verdensøkonomien langt mindre effektiv og dermed fremskynde sammenbruddet -- og jo tidligere det kommer, jo mindre fatale blir konsekvensene.

Klimavitenskapshistorie

The Discovery of Global Warming

Spencer Weart har skrevet en veldig, veldig bra klima-vitenskapshistorie, som er gitt ut i bokform, men med en enda mer interessant tilhørende nettsted. Hele site'n er nedlastbar i en .zip, gennialt, spesielt i og med at det hele ligger under domenet til American Institute of Physics og wikipedia sier Weart pensjonerte seg derfra i 2009... sånt kan forsvinne plutselig.

Foreløpig har jeg bare lest essayene The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect og The Modern Temperature Trend og en del av det han sier om seg selv og prosjektet men inntrykkene er:

• Weart har gått meget grundig til verks.
  
• Fremstillingen er så uhildet som det er mulig å få den.
  
• Spesielt får Weart godt fram hvor vanskelig dette er.
  

Et eksempel på vanskelig -- det som førte meg til Wearts nettsted i utgangspunktet -- er spørsmålet om "absorpsjonsmetning", som bokstavelig talt er 110 år gammelt, men som fortsatt fremmes av "benektere":

A few years after Arrhenius published his hypothesis, another scientist in Sweden, Knut Ångström, asked an assistant to measure the passage of infrared radiation through a tube filled with carbon dioxide. The assistant ("Herr J. Koch," otherwise unrecorded in history) put in rather less of the gas in total than would be found in a column of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere. The assistant reported that the amount of radiation that got through the tube scarcely changed when he cut the quantity of gas back by a third. Apparently it took only a trace of the gas to "saturate" the absorption — that is, in the bands of the spectrum where CO₂ blocked radiation, it did it so thoroughly that more gas could make little difference.

Still more persuasive was the fact that water vapor, which is far more abundant in the air than carbon dioxide, also intercepts infrared radiation. In the crude spectrographs of the time, the smeared-out bands of the two gases entirely overlapped one another. More CO₂ could not affect radiation in bands of the spectrum that water vapor, as well as CO₂ itself, were already blocking entirely.

(fra det første essayet linket over)

Jeg sier ikke mer; det er en veldig interessant historie, og langt utover hva som er interessant for klimadebatten. Den sier veldig mye om hvordan vitenskap skaper viten, og hvor lang tid det kan ta å skille riktig fra feil, relevant fra irrelevant... Spesielt interessant er det med resultater som er relevante, men feil, og dem som er irrelevante, men riktige...

Klima å sånn

Det viser seg at jeg har venner som mener at menneskeskapte klimaforandringer er en myte.

OK, jeg er allergisk mot hype og har en sterk ryggmargsrefleks mot å ta konvensjonell visdom for god fisk. Og jeg mener at å diskutere klimaforandringer er litt som å sitte inne i et brennende hus og diskutere om røyking er farlig eller ikke. Og organisasjoner som Greenpeace, Bellona og Zero ser jeg på først og fremst som politiske opportunister; mange av medlemmene mener godt, men de er fullstendig ukritiske mhp de fikse ideene sine... fikse ideer som går tiår tilbake, og i mange tilfeller nå er avlegs.

Men det betyr ikke at de tar feil i alt; ei heller betyr det at den riktige responsen er å starte en like virkelighetsfjern sekt med motsatt fortegn.

Klimaprognosen alle snakker om er IPCC sin. Jeg har selv kritisert den for å ikke ta PO med i beregningen (Aleklett nevner det samme i videoen jeg linket til forrige dagen). Jeg har ikke studert den i detalj - den er lang og tung, og jeg mener som sagt gjentatte ganger at vi har langt alvorligere problemer som også er nærmere i tid... men nå har jeg i alle fall lest FAQen deres. Men la oss begynne med begynnelsen, hva er IPCC egentlig?

Her er en beskrivelse fra IPCCer Professor Martin Parry:

The IPCC is not, as some believe, a group of scientists, but a panel set up by the United Nations comprising representatives from about 140 governments to consider what we currently know about climate change.

The panel decides whether an assessment is needed, and then engages scientists to conduct it.

Since its establishment in 1987, there have been four such major assessments, published roughly every five years (1990, 1995, 2001 and 2007), sprinkled with occasional special reports on specific topics.

Why this government role? The reason is because governments need a sound summary of knowledge which, once commissioned and adopted, becomes accepted by them.

This is why the IPCC assessments are so significant; they represent the description of knowledge that governments "buy into".

We should not expect them to be full of exciting new material; rather, they are consolidations of what we know.

This is why they err, if anything, on the side of conservatism and have been criticised for not exploring the outer edges of knowledge.

En gjennomlesing av IPCCs FAQ gir et veldig tillitvekkende inntrykk. For eksempel var en hovedinnvending at IPCC undervurderer totalt/overser variasjoner i Solas intensitet... etter å ha lest hva IPCC selv skriver virker dette veldig rart; de snakker ganske mye om Sola. For eksempel,

Solar output has increased gradually in the industrial era, causing a small positive radiative forcing (see Figure 2). This is in addition to the cyclic changes in solar radiation that follow an 11-year cycle. Solar energy directly heats the climate system and can also affect the atmospheric abundance of some greenhouse gases, such as stratospheric ozone

(her)

... men det er ikke ukontroversielt, som RealClimate innrømmer:

The solar influence on climate is a controversial topic in climate research (see previous posts here and here). The irradiance changes are assumed to be relatively small and the importance of potential amplifying mechanisms is still a matter of current debate. One reason for these uncertainties is that there are only approximately 25 years of satellite-based observations of the solar irradiance. Sunspot observations for the last 400 years clearly indicate that current levels of solar activity are very different from the state of the sun during the Maunder minimum (from approx. 1645 to 1715 AD) where almost no sunspots could be observed.
[...]
Therefore, in the view of the uncertainties and the conflicting data it doesn’t seem to be appropriate to make uncritical and sensational claims about the history of the sun. As long as the differences between the ¹⁰Be records are not understood, conclusions based on only one of these records should be treated with caution. Atmospheric ¹⁴C concentrations, on the other hand, are much less sensitive to a climate influence during the last 1000 years and, therefore, can provide good estimates of the history of the sun. However, the disagreement between ¹⁴C-based solar activity and group sunspot number (Muscheler et al., 2005) should remind us that the variations of the solar activity are not yet completely understood.

Regardless of any discussion about solar irradiance in past centuries, the sunspot record and neutron monitor data (which can be compared with radionuclide records) show that solar activity has not increased since the 1950s and is therefore unlikely to be able to explain the recent warming.

(fra Did the Sun hit record highs over the last few decades?)

New Scientist har også en fin oversikt: Climate change: A guide for the perplexed (se også Climate is too complex for accurate predictions)

NS tar for seg snakkepunktet "men det var varmere i middelalderen" her; angående viking-jordbruk på Grønland linker de til ‘Greenland used to be green’—Don’t judge a book by its cover, much less a land by its name (grist).

Og Scientific American spør Just How Sensitive Is Earth's Climate to Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide? og får svaret

Earth scientist Aradhna Tripati of the University of California, Los Angeles's Department of Earth and Space Sciences and her colleagues extracted a record of past atmospheric concentrations of CO2 stretching back 20 million years from the shells of tiny creatures known as foraminifera buried in a column of ocean mud and rock. The microscopic animals build shells of calcium carbonate out of minerals in seawater—a process that is affected by the water's relative pH (acidity), which is, in turn controlled by the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. More CO2 in the atmosphere means a more acidic ocean.

"The two species we picked to analyze [Globigerinoides ruber and G. sacculifer] are both ones that are around today, and the living animals actually have photosynthetic algae as symbionts, which means that they live in the surface ocean, since the algae require sunlight to survive," Tripati explains. And that means the fossil record of their shells will reveal the relative acidity of the surface waters in the ratio of boron to calcium as well as the specific chemical signature of the boron itself. "When seawater is more acidic, less boron gets incorporated into the calcium carbonate shells," she adds.

The researchers first matched this fossil record secured by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition in the western tropical Pacific to existing records from bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice cores that stretch back 800,000 years, which preserve a precise record of past atmospheric composition. Thus reassured of the technique's accuracy, they plunged back into deep geologic time.

"Modern-day levels of carbon dioxide were last reached about 15 million years ago," Tripati says, when sea levels were at least 25 meters higher and temperatures were at least 3 degrees C warmer on average. "During the middle Miocene, an [epoch] in Earth's history when carbon dioxide levels were sustained at values similar to what they are today [330 to 500 ppm], the planet was much warmer, sea level was higher, there was substantially less ice at the poles, and the distribution of rainfall was very different."

Further, "at no time in the last 20 million years have levels of carbon dioxide increased as rapidly as at present," Tripati adds; CO2 concentrations have climbed from 280 ppm to 387 ppm in the past 200 years. And "our work indicates that moderate changes in carbon dioxide levels of 100 to 200 parts per million were associated with major climate transitions and large changes in temperature"—indicative of a very sensitive climate.

Jeg mener selv jeg har en god nese for bullshit; ingenting av det jeg har sett på her lukter. Ja, det er mye de ikke vet, ja, prognosene er forbundet med stor usikkerhet; men alt tyder på at det dreier seg om seriøse forskere som gjør sitt beste for å få oversikt over et uoversiktlig problem. Jeg tror på prof. Parry når han sier at "they err, if anything, on the side of conservatism".

Risikoen er på nedsiden.

Vi må frykte mer

Enda et bra skriv fra Michael Lardelli: Peak Oil means Peak Food as well

I am pessimistic about the future because I have seen and understood the data on resources. I know that oil production peaked in July 2008. (I have seen the unpublished reanalysis of the International Energy Agency's own 2008 report that shows this conclusively.) I know that our use of other resources - such as water and phosphate - is critically unsustainable. Now that energy is declining there will not be enough to invest in building the alternative energy future that many of us dream of.

The nature of our economic/political system means that the declining fossil energy supply will go to the shorter term priorities of growing food, supporting armies and maintaining (as far as possible) the comfortable lifestyles of an ever-contracting circle of the wealthy. The time needed to build any form of alternative energy infrastructure - and the scale of the expansion needed in the face of the current and worsening energy decline - mean that it will simply never happen.

If I am so pessimistic, why do I bother writing about it? What good does it do? As a scientist I know that you must understand a problem in order to solve it. To have any chance of coping with this developing disaster we need to see it for what it truly is - not pretend that it does not exist (for example, the population problem) or that it will never happen (for example, peak oil). If we do not understand the true nature of the problem the "solutions" we attempt may make the problem worse. Like supporting future population growth through more efficient use of resources. Or growing biofuels on marginal land without considering how you will replace the soil nutrients they deplete. Or planning to electrify of the car fleet without considering the load that will place on an overstretched grid or where the energy and materials will come from to maintain the road network it requires.

[...]

"Optimism" is the problem, not the solution. We use it as an excuse to avoid thinking about the desperate measures we must take to cope with what is coming. We use it to put off actually doing anything. As long as Dr X, CEO Y or Minister Z says, "I'm optimistic that we will develop new energy sources" then we can go back to sleep because someone is obviously taking care of the problem - aren't they?

[...]

Today we are often told we need a new "Manhattan Project" for alternative energy but we will never make the sacrifices necessary for this in our already worsening economic situation if we are not truly, deeply fearful of the consequences of failure. Only fear - not optimism - can motivate populations sufficiently when they are already struggling with rising food prices, falling incomes and unemployment.

Tragically, our sensationalist media also know that fear grabs people's attention. Our collective crisis fatigue is now so great that we ignore truly significant threats such as climate change and energy decline. Our anxiety is diverted into worrying whether it's safe for our children to step outside the 4WD (SUV). But soon we will be worrying if we can find or afford to put food in their mouths.

Sniktitt på 'State of the Future' 2009

 

The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

 

An effort on the scale of the Apollo mission that sent men to the Moon is needed if humanity is to have a fighting chance of surviving the ravages of climate change. The stakes are high, as, without sustainable growth, "billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse".

This is the stark warning from the biggest single report to look at the future of the planet – obtained by The Independent on Sunday ahead of its official publication next month. Backed by a diverse range of leading organisations such as Unesco, the World Bank, the US army and the Rockefeller Foundation, the 2009 State of the Future report runs to 6,700 pages and draws on contributions from 2,700 experts around the globe. Its findings are described by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the UN, as providing "invaluable insights into the future for the United Nations, its member states, and civil society".

The impact of the global recession is a key theme, with researchers warning that global clean energy, food availability, poverty and the growth of democracy around the world are at "risk of getting worse due to the recession". The report adds: "Too many greedy and deceitful decisions led to a world recession and demonstrated the international interdependence of economics and ethics." 

6 700 sider??! Massivt.