The risk of climate change, and its implications
When dealing with an issue like greenhouse gas-induced climate change, productive discussion needs to stay focused on the practical questions: what is the general nature of the risk, and how can we mitigate the risk. Discussions of climate change often become sidetracked by non-productive investigations into the detailed nature of the risk, which are often initiated by individuals who are afraid that general recognition of risk implies that particular strategies/policies must be adopted. I hope to keep this discussion on track by starting with these two declarations:
- We don't know exactly how the climate will respond to our greenhouse gas emissions, and it doesn't really matter.
- There are many different strategies available to us.
Before getting into the details, let's consider the nature of risk and uncertainty with respect to climate change. We don't know what our climate will be like in the future. It might be similar to today's, or it might be worse. We often wish to refrain from developing plans/opinions until we have a clear sense of what to expect in the future, but this prudence becomes paralytic in situations where we will never have high confidence in our predictions. Some degree of uncertainty is unavoidable with any prediction, and this is especially true with climate predictions due to the complexity of the system. Just to become an expert on this topic would require about 10 years of full time study, and even the experts don't know what will happen. Obviously, most of us cannot become experts, yet we still need to decide how we will act. So, let us begin:
Greenhouse gas emissions (GGEs) create a substantial risk of problematic climate change.
1. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas: it allows visible light to pass 
2. Humans are drastically increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere 
By themselves, these facts give us reason to consider how to reduce GGEs. But we still may wonder if these changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels can impact atmospheric temperatures. So we look at fact 3:
3. Atmospheric temperature is strongly correlated with carbon dioxide concentrations . This has been seen over the long term (ice cores) and over the short term (modern monitoring).
3b. We also know that the size of glaciers is inversely correlated with atmospheric carbon dioxide, both over the long term and the short term.
This doesn't prove that carbon dioxide levels cause an increase in atmospheric temperature or glacier-melt, but the data is consistent with that proposal. Warming may have all types of side-effects, while excessive glacier-melt will impact the entire water system of the earth, ranging from glacier-fed rivers to the ocean itself. As a practical matter, we face a substantial risk that carbon dioxide emissions will cause global warming and climate change. If these facts aren't enough to convince you that we face a risk of GGE-induced climate change, here's one last fact:
4. The experts agree that we face a risk of GGE-induced climate change.
The Earth is warming. Glaciers are melting. It's time to admit that there is a risk of GGE-induced climate change, and figure out what we want to do about it:
We have many options for dealing with the risk of GGE-induced climate change.
- Reduce GGEs. This is the intuitive response, and has recieved the most attention over the past couple of decades, meaning that we have developed plenty of ideas of how to reduce GGEs. These options include personal, institutional, and governmental reforms. They exhibit a wide range of return on investment, as illustrated by abatement
curves
. These options include development of low-emission infrastructe (buildings, vehicles, cities), low-emission technologies, low-emission lifestyles, and carbon sequestration. These may be promoted by private initiative or governmental policies including subsidies, mandates, spending decisions, taxes, cap-n-trade, etc. The most drastic measures (immediate elimination of fossil fuels) could be as bad as global warming.
- Buffer the change on a global level (i.e. Geo-engineering
, such as putting sulfur dioxide in the upper atmosphere)
- Do nothing/Deal with the symptoms directly: We may decide that other concerns are more pressing, and that the risk of climate change does not justify the expenditures needed to stop it. We may also find that we "can't put the geenie back into the bottle", since we've already changed atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. We may also find that it is easier to deal with the symptoms
- adam ricketson's diary
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Comments :
relevant diaries
A quick search uncovered this diary: The conservative distrust of expertise, which is relevant for this discussion. FWIW, I don't think that conservatives are particulary distrusting of experts--they just choose different experts.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Great Find, Adam
I remember that Diary:
Here's my first response in that diary:
Sounds like something I wrote yesterday....on wait....I did! :)
make pollution be more expensive...
That sounds like a pollution tax or cap-and-trade system. Yesterday, I got the impression that you were opposed to those.
Anyway, on top of allowing economic reality to change, there's a role ofr activists to play in spreading information about the significance of these price changes the the available methods of protecting one's self form those price changes by reducing pollution.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
How so?
How so? I never said that or implied it. I told you I didn't really have a philosophical bias when it came to these matters. I'm open to various ideas. Cap and trade ideas are just one of many that can work. What I like about it is that it doesn't pretend to dictate what to do beyond it.
Making pollution more expensive and mandating lower pollution through tech mandates are too entirely different things.
kyoto and cap-and-trade
First, those programs require substantial expansions of (Federal?) government programs, which you seemed to be dismissing.
Second, the cap-and-trade system is a core part of Kyoto, which you explicitly dismissed.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Well, when i think of Cap and trade
I'm just thinking of taxing pollution. If there are details that make it different than some simple carbon tax then it doesn't mean what I thought.
cap-n-trade is a complicated carbon tax
One of the main differences is that can-n-trade involves a strict limit for emissions, whereas a tax leaves the quantiy of emissions more open-ended. Of course, even in a cap-n-trade system, a polluter could go above their allocation and just pay the fine (though I expect that it is a heafty fine).
Another difference is that cap-n-trade produces permits, which can be auctioned off or handed out to today's polluters. Either ways, it increases the cost of pollution and increases the end-cost to the consumer.
I think the main reason that cap-and-trade is popular is that these permits can be used to pay-off today's pollutors so that they don't oppose the program--the windfall compensates them for the reduction of market size due to the higher consumer prices.
Cap-n-trade also has the rhetorical advantage of being a "tough" reform, rather than "flexible" carbon taxes. This difference is illustrated in the Economist article linked below.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Doffing the Cap....
Cap and Trade
article from The Economist. Carbon Taxes would seem to be the way to go over Cap and Trade.
yeah, and like I just stated in the comment above,
for some reason my mind was saying carbon tax as my hands were typing cap and trade. That's really what I meant.
I think carbon taxes can have some value.
excellent article!
I was wondering about this exact dynamic, but I was thinking of how the development of low-emission technologies would impact the political will for additional restrictions on GGE. For example, if solar was competitive with coal for electrity, then coal-based producers would have to lower their prices. This reduced consumer price could make it even easier to raise taxes on carbon emissions.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Thanks Adam
Always happy to inspire :)
Options and action
Option 1 makes great sense, not only from the greenhouse gas angle, but also from a general conservation / energy independence angle. We waste a lot of energy, and that wasted energy produces more GGE than the specific need requires.
However, we have been needing to do this for, quite literally, decades, and yet we waste more energy today than we did in the 1970's. Homes are bigger, cars are bigger, commutes are longer, appliances are more numerous and use more energy, etc. Rebuilding / retrofitting aged infrastructure, homes, businesses, schools will take time, money, and lots of commitment to make it a priority. I am not hopeful that society will adopt this route quickly enough to make a difference. When it comes down to it, people will look out for their personal interests first, before society's. They will expect others to act before they themselves are required to.
Option 2 is risky, in the sense that we cannot easily know what we're tinkering with. The Earth is a huge and extremely complex system.
Option 3 will be unavoidable. But again, who is the actor in this scenario? Is it somebody else, or ourselves? If it is government, are we doing what we should to make sure government focuses on this, or are we demanding too many things, giving our elected leaders the opportunity to work on other items and ignore this one?
One thing is for sure. The next forty years will be mighty interesting.
"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." --R. Heinlein
Option 1
Option one does make intuitive sense. For one thing, it's the most consistent with the libertarian principle that our freedoms are limited to the extent that our actions harm others.
I wrote this diary mainly because I am bothered by people who outright dismiss the risks of global warming. This idea that we face a risk from GGEs should permeate our society (top to bottom, left to right) such that every individual is thinking "What can I do to reduce GGEs".
When you buy a car, does it have good gas mileage? Is your home insulated with an efficient heater/AC? Could you get away with changing your thermostat by a degree or two? Do you really need to live so far away from work? Could you bike to work? For the inventors out there, can you think of a way to save energy?
Most people will make minor sacrifices to promote the general welfare. But there's also the fact that people just need to have this issue at the front of their attention, so that they recognize opportunities when they see them.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
excellent comments, PF
Option 3; the actors
I think the main actors in option 3 will be researchers and entrepreneurs. As we get a better idea of what the risks are, researchers will start to sell their work as a way to address those risks (for example, I know a professor who is studying how plants will respond to expected climate changes, with the goal of breeding/engineering plants that will be adapted to those environments). Entrepreneurs will also try to anticipate those risks.
In both cases, the individuals will be able to internalize the benefits of their work.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.