Observe Armageddon

London?s The Observer has a poorly argued and alarmist piece today on a Pentagon report that suggests: ?Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.?

I?m hardly qualified to debate the conclusions, but The Observer goes into panic and conspiracy mode, with very little in the piece to suggest that the Pentagon?s report is anything more than an effort at long-term planning. Here are two typical passages:

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ?Siberian? climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is ?plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately,? they conclude. As early as next year (my italics) widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Hold on a minute. Next year? So Armageddon is already upon us. And, God forbid, that there are floods next year, will we have to simply assume they are fulfillment of Pentagon prophecy?

To substantiate this astounding jump from prospective danger to imminent happening, The Observer cites one of the report?s authors to the effect ?that it [is] already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. ?We don?t know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years.??

Yes, but ?not knowing exactly where we are? is a pretty big waffle in any book. However, the deadline to annihilation may not be as close as the London paper predicts, as the following passage from the same piece makes clear, apparently giving us roughly until 2020 to find a cave, stock up on tuna fish, and buy some batteries. (Notice also how the story muddies the waters through what is possibly an irrelevant analogy, with its ?could soon be repeated? construct thrown in as an escape hatch.)

Already, according to Randall and Schwartz [the authors], the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 ?catastrophic? shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.

The Observer has oversold quite a few its pieces that turned out to be duds (a year ago it made a big fuss out of the fact that the U.S. and the U.K. were, gosh, spying against delegations at the U.N. to see how they would vote on an Iraq resolution?hold the front page), but this one is particularly egregious.

Ron Bailey, this is your introduction.

Comments

[dj of raleigh]

> Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening.

[Nick B]

Many of you have likely read this, but I thought this was so good I should post it: "Aliens Cause Global Warming"

[mojo jojo]

Don't forget the frozen methane pockets under the ocean floor that are large enough to change the climate if they get released.

[chap]

Okay, there's something that drives me nuts here. It's kind of similar to what happened wiht that professor at the Army War College who wrote something that was trumpeted as Official Army Doctrine.

The article (similar in Guardian) says that the reporters got a hold of an Office of Net Assessment report of some kind.

That's an office with about ten people in it who think up wild thoughts for a living.

The Pentagon contains tens of thousands of people. ONA does not speak for it. The reports confuse ten people in an office with the mandate to look at weird stuff with a monolithic Voice Of The Country's Military.

Buildings don't talk, either.

Chap.

[Hydroman]

Maybe the govmmit is playing there HAARP again.
I`ve got to get off this vegen diet to avoid
the continous release of methane and save the
world.
And as they said in Houston during the late 70`s
LET`UM FREEZE IN THE DARK!

[Joe Majsterski]

Hm, this whole thing sounds strangely familiar. It's almost like I've heard the same thing before, from some Ehrlich fellow; gee, how odd. I must be imagining things. Such a once-in-a-lifetime, dire prediction has to be true.

[Paul B]

The greatest producer of CO2 (and the greatest contributor to "global warming") is . . . cow flatulence! Millions of those bovine Bessies out there farting us into global CO2 oblivion. Add in tens of millions of other methane-producing mammals, and MAN, we're in big trouble.

Clearly, we must have a plan to educate cows to eat less fiber.

[thoreau]

I know that the comment on cow flatulence was sarcastic, but there is an important distinction between CO2 produced by cows and CO2 produced by industrial activity.

The problem is NOT the release of CO2 into the atmosphere. Cows convert plant material into CO2. But plants, via photosynthesis, convert CO2 into plant matter. So that CO2 just gets cycled through.

Humans take carbon sources out of the ground and burn it to release CO2 into the atmosphere. This results in a net increase of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Now, careful study is needed to say whether that addition of CO2 is large enough to cause warming. Many scientists have concluded that it is. Many people believe them as a matter of faith and ideology ("Industry bad!") and many other people (including some posters here, probably) refuse to believe them on the basis of their own faith and ideology ("Environmentalists are all evil leftists!"). Of course, some other scientists have concluded that various natural processes will produce negative feedback to counteract warming effects from that CO2 emission. And many leftists will conclude (as a matter of ideology and faith) that those scientists are mere "industry shills", while many Hit&Run posters will conclude (from their own ideology and faith) that those scientists are modern-day Galileos defying a hostile establishment.

But, whatever you might believe based on your ideology (or, perish the thought, scientific evidence), processes like cow flatulence do not add CO2 to the atmosphere. They're part of a cycle that takes CO2 out and then puts it back in. Anybody with any scientific knowledge will agree on that. The issue is whether adding new CO2 to the atmosphere will have a large enough effect to produce climate change, and whether the planet has natural feedback processes that will put the brakes on anthropogenic climate change.

And that, sadly, will remain a religious issue for many people.

Personally, being a physicist, I've set myself a deadline of Dec. 31, 2004, to analyze the data and reach my own conclusions. The first part of the issue is actually pretty easy to analyze from back-of-the-envelope calculations. Can anthropogenic CO2 emissions absorb enough sunlight to raise the temperature significantly? Some basic knowledge of heat transfer and absorption is enough. If the answer is yes, then the second part is much harder: How will natural feedback mechanisms respond? I'm inclined to leave that part to the experts, once I have the initial data to tell me whether or not they're working on a relevant problem.

I plan to do the back-of-the-envelope calculations some time this year. I promise to post my answers (be they yea or nay) on Hit&Run. The posters here (both left-leaning and otherwise) will of course be free to praise or lambast my conclusions according to their own ideological biases.

[ivan]

According to the Observer climate change could lead to a "Siberian climate" in Britain in less then 20 years. Huh? Global warming leading to a Siberian climate? How are they gonna to explain that?
I'm afraid for another disaster scenario. That the Penatagon is gonna to use global climate change as an element to vastly increase the national security apparatus. After all, Peter Schwartz, apparently from the CIA, says in the article:
"Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern'". So science isn't important anymore, we should go beyond that...this is really frightening.

[H Middendorp]

It was also about a year ago, at the end of March 2003, that the Observer devoted its entire front page to a story about Saddam having been badly injured in a coalition strike...

[Douglas Fletcher]

Did you see those photos of the black hole sucking the juice out of a star like a praying mantis to a cricket? Talk about scary -- I've been off crickets for the past week.

[Dan]

Ivan's misunderstanding is one of the reasons why I hate the term "global warming" -- it's misleading and sloppy. Weather is driven by differences, so if the equator gets warmer, and the poles are still cold, then what you get is more drastic differences, and the result is bigger and badder weather systems.

Ivan, on the possibility of a Siberian England: the theory is that as the equator gets warmer and warmer, existing currents and air flow patterns will shift. The Gulf Stream, which keeps England particularly mild considering its location, is not a God-given right but a particular result of the environment we're in. If the Gulf Stream is shut off because of climate change, then England gets the same weather as Minnesota. Bummer.

That's a big "if" because every climate study I've seen gets a "yeah, but" tossed at it, as another climatologist tosses in another variable -- besides the heat-trapping gasses like methane and CO2, you also have the effect of increased plant growth, particulates in the high atmosphere, increased water vapor, etc. Bottom line is no one knows yet.

Doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to figure out a way to pump less CO2, though.

[Shannon Love]

Screw global warming! Lets look at the real threat!

What aren't they telling us? Why would they plan for such an outlandish occurrence unless they had specific information that it was highly likely to occur?

And don't give me any of that, "It's their job to plan for any contingecy," crap!

The Truth is Out There!

[pass the sunscreen]

thoreau,

No, sorry, you're going to have to break it down for me. Just how does "the cycle" know when it's bovine flatulence or industrial waste? That is, if it's all CO2? I'm not a PhD hopeful (no slight meant here; I have a lot of respect for someone who can get that far), but it seems that if we have more cows than before (whenever that benchmark date is), then they are adding more CO2 into the mix, and I don't think it matters to a cycle from whence the carbon dioxide comes. I understand that industry adds more CO2 than would be there without industry, but you make it sound as though industry produces some sort of evil carbon dioxide that sends the cycle reeling, while cows produce the good, wholesome kind that brings goodness and light to all.

[pass the sunscreen]

That is, a PhD hopeful in the hard sciences. I have a lot of respect for them. PhD candidates in, say, the social sciences can kiss my sweet, virtual ass.

[pass the sunscreen]

The odds of being destroyed by aliens seems greater than by global warming.

[Chuck]

Dan had a point about what would happen IF the equator got hotter and the poles got colder. Problem is, the current climate models predict exactly the opposite--very slight warming in equatorial regions and more significant warming in upper latitudes (how else are the glaciers going top melt?). Just how this squares with a siberian Britain is beyond me.

[titus]

My response to global warming is, so what? The climate is going to change, with or without us.

Let's say we as a species manage to leave no 'footprint,' so to speak. The planet's climate is still going to change, sometimes drastically and nastily. Wouldn't we be better off learning how to adapt to a changing climate, instead of trying to force stasis?

I can't help but feel like if we ever manage to eliminate pollution and environmental destruction (whatever that would mean), a caldera is going to blow. Or we'll get hit by an asteroid.

[Ron Hardin]

So Social Security is solvent after all.

[Eeck]

This sounds like one of the many contingency plans that the Pentagon makes up and then puts in files. There are plans to invade every country in the world. It doesn't mean that they actually are going to do it or believe it is even remotely likely. Their job is to be ready for anything.

[Roger Sweeny]

the current climate models predict ... very slight warming in equatorial regions and more significant warming in upper latitudes (how else are the glaciers going top melt?). Just how this squares with a siberian Britain is beyond me.

The scenario goes like this: Glaciers melt and the north Atlantic gets a lot of extra cold fresh water. This pushes the warm and salty Gulf Stream south. (If you want to sound impressive, say, "thermohaline circulation is disrupted.") Warm weather systems stay south, blocked by Arctic highs, and Britain's climate gets colder rather than warmer.

On the other hand, Siberia warms up considerably. One reason the Russian government seems to have decided not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

[Kurt]

What Eeck said. The pentagon has contingency plans to invade Canada, Mexico, Britain, France, and every other nation on the globe. It is a part of their mandate to be prepared for anything that may threaten U.S. interests.

Concerning a possible climate disruption, I would assume the pentagon has two general contingency plans: A "Hothouse" plan and a "Deep Freeze" plan. And tucked away somewhere I am sure there is an Alien Invasion resistance plan.

[thoreau]

Nick-

By December 31st I won'd have a definite conclusion on global warming. However, there are certain calculations that I can do if I just find a couple of days to sit down and do it without interruptions (not an easy task lately...). These calculations are the sort that a physicist (or any other good scientist) will do at the beginning of a project. We don't say "Let's get all of the variables, assign them the most accurate known values, and see what happens." Instead, we just carve out some upper and lower bounds.

First we make an assumption that is plausible but on the high end, and we see what happens in a simple case. Then we make an assumption that is plausible but on the low end and see what happens in a very simple case. Although there are no guarantees that we've spanned the entire range of possible outcomes when we do these types of simple calculations, we can usually get a grip on things to guide subsequent work. The subsequent work is the hard part: We have to include all of the many variables, we have to allow for all sorts of interactions and complexities, and we have to try for realistic numbers instead of upper/lower bounds (which is hard if we lack accurate measurements).

I plan to figure out how much energy is absorbed by CO2 added to the atmosphere and what effect that would have on temperature in a simple case. Of course, the earth has feedback mechanisms, and those feedback mechanisms can't be easily accounted for in a 2-day calculation. But a 2-day calculation can get a grip on the amount of energy involved. If there just isn't enough energy involved to bring about warming, I'll join the ranks of skeptics (unless somebody can show me a massive positive feedback mechanism that amplifies even tiny amounts of warming). On the other hand, if there is enough energy involved here, I'll give more credibility to my meteorological colleagues who claim that despite the feedback mechanisms significant warming is likely to occur.

Mind you, I won't be 100% convinced of warming. No scientist should be 100% convinced of anything. But I'll consider it a very serious and urgent hypothesis if it passes my "sanity check" calculations. I think that's a pretty sound scientific approach: Look at what the experts claim, do your own checks to see if they seem to be in the right ballpark, and if so then give the benefit of the doubt to the people who have done the hard work.

Now, maybe to some that is heresy. How could I possibly agree with a leftist on anything just because it passes some "sanity check" calculations? Shouldn't ideology come first? 🙂 But I would note that the existence of an environmental problem does not a priori mean one must endorse a coercive remedy. There may be other remedies.

As to your comments on biology and carbon cycles: You are indeed correct when you say that there are no steady states in nature, at least not in the long run. However, if a process is at least "capable" of sustaining a steady-state (e.g. plant sequesters CO2, cow eats plant, cow releases CO2, repeat), then you can't really point to that process and assign causation if something changes. More likely the change originated from some other influence, or in response to an interaction between that process and another process. On the other hand, some processes are incapable of sustaining a steady-state (e.g. constantly removing carbon from underground sources and putting it in the atmosphere) on their own. Those processes are more likely candidates when trying to assign causation.

Finally, when you ask "What does being a physicist have to do with anything?" the answer is that physicists can contribute to many fields of science, even those not "traditionally" associated with the word "physics." We are good at using mathematical models, as well as precise and novel instrumentation, to understand the natural world in terms of underlying fundamental processes. PHysicists can and do work in the field of global warming. I personally don't, but I can still make a rough cut at something to determine whether my colleagues are at least in the ballpark. (And while it might sound arrogant to you if I claim that I can determine if my colleagues are in the right ballpark, is it any more arrogant than people here who assume that any scientist working on global warming are all political hacks?)

[thoreau]

Then again, maybe I should refrain from doing my own calculations, and instead defer to experts who give an ideologically acceptable answer. Yeah, that's the scientific method! 🙂

[Fred]

Jeesh, I'm really screwing up today.

[Steven Crane]

Dude, Thoreau....

You're an intelligent guy, and I like a lot of your posts and what you have to say... but when nearly EVERY FREAKIN' POST is a send-up of ideological purity on one side or another, it gets old. There's only so many sarcastic "Don't you know there's a war on?" posts a brotha can read.

I liked this thread right up to the post directly above. Ease up, man?

[nobody]

I welcome warming. I'm getting older and old people lose their heat. But since my heat has to go somewhere, am I indirectly contributing to global warming, even as I cool off?

I think that's what scientists call a win/win scenario.

Cool.

[Roger Sweeny]

The problem with cow flatulence isn't CO2, it's CH4 (methane). Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas (estimates are that one molecule of CH4 has ten to twenty times the greenhouse potential of a molecule of CO2).

Unlike carbon dioxide, which is largely inert, methane is highly reactive. Most people know it as the fuel, natural gas.

Unlike CO2, which stays in the atmosphere for a long time, CH4 is fairly quickly turned into other things. So people who worry about global warming tend to think of it as second-level important.

Yet the fact that methane is natural gas is important. It means that cows are wasting a lot of the energy in their feed, turning it into gas that is just vented away rather than turning it into milk or meat or leather. Because of this, farmers and ranchers would like to know how they can keep their cows from farting so much.

[joe]

Way to bury the lede. The Pentagon issues a report identifying global warming a serious threat to national security, and Reason blogs it as "Newspaper Carries Poorly Written Story About Pentagon Report."

Is this like those oh-so-serious news stories by oh-so-repsectable journalists about "The Anatomy of the Kerry Rumor?"

[Jason Ligon]

The lede wasn't buried because there was no lede associated with this 'story'.

Pentagon says: If global warming causes enough damage to the planet, there could possibly be national security implications. The process could already have begun, and we may be too late to stop it. Note - We don't know if the process has begun, to what extent there will be damage, or even if the process will lead to net negative consequences.

Pentago also says: If aliens intent on destroying the earth come here with sufficient technology, there could be national security implications. The fleet could already be on the way, and we may be too late to stop it.

[Fred]

Thoreau: I have had a long and interesting career as a meteorologist, climatologist, hydrologic and hydraulic engineer (not all at the same time). I am very interested in your future posts on this topic.

I have noted, however, that prediction in my field is very difficult. Five days is all we ever give ourselves when predicting the weather. I recently did a calculation to determine how fast a wildlife pond would take to fill up. I calculated 8 months to fill to a depth of 27". Nope, it was full at four feet in three months.

My point being that, in general, any discussion of global warming (which, yes, is a very sloppy term) should be open ended. It is occurring but the actual effect will not be known until we are in the thick of it.

So much to say. I'll do some research or at least some reading of my own so that I can join you in this discussion.

To Pass the Sunscreen: There were buffalo in great abundance before the cows started farting things up.

[joe]

Fred, the natural, grassy diet eaten by the buffalo herds resulted in less gas than the processed, corn-based diet eaten by most cattle on factory farms. So ungulate CO2 emissions from North America have increased, as a result of the industrialization of argiculture, even if you assume a 1:1 replacement of buffalo by cows.

[Fred]

Joe: Very true. I remembered the corn thing after I hit 'post'.

It is also due to corn feed that cows require so much hormone pills or injections or whatever they are. And I am told on no authority that these hormones make it into the water supply and create Simpson-like three eyed fish.

[Nick B]

Thoreau,
I am aware that physics play some part in the puzzle, but my point is there is much, much more at play. While determining how much energy is absorbed by CO2 is a needed step in determining whether or not global warming will effect the planet, it is not the only step. Even if you can conclusively determine how much energy the "greenhouse gases" absorb, there are still so many other factors that need to be calculated that we are still nowhere close to any sort of definitive conclusion. As a previous poster has noted, meteorology is a very inexact science; there is virtually no way to know a priori what global weather patterns will be like 100 years from now. The best we can come up with is computer simulations, which while are useful, cannot be regarded as proof of any hypothesis. So to say you will come to a conclusion on global warming by the end of the year is either misleading or outright dumb. Since other posters have noted you are intelligent, I will assume the former and that you meant to say something along the lines ?I will reach a conclusion over whether or not one disputed premise made by global warming advocates is plausible?.
As far as the cow farting is concerned, I don't believe the original point was to blame the cows for global warming (though some do, New Zealand is even implementing what amounts to a ?cow fart tax? in order to comply with Kyoto), but to point out the existence of greenhouse gases don't necessarily mean extreme global warming will occur.

[Nick B]

Paul,
Hey, now I can claim when I eat hamburgers and wear my leather jacket I am helping the environment. Less cows = Less cow farting = Less CO2 in the atmosphere.

[joe]

Fred, corn diets and other unnatural conditions require the use of antibiotics. I guess the cows get sick because they're not getting the nutrients they need. These antibiotics get into both the environment and the food supply, promoting the evolution of antibiotic resistant bugs.

Recently, big ag tried to get the government to drop its ban on using the class of antibiotics that include Cipro on cattle. Because, you know, farm animals don't get anthrax or anything.

[thoreau]

Steven Crane-

Good point. I do go overboard some times.

[Nick B]

thoreau,
I know in middle school biology they teach you all that cycle shit and claimed that as long as something is natural it is ok. However, that is not the case. It is based on a faulty assumption that nature automatically stabilizes all change, but nature is constantly changing. In fact if it were not for major changes caused by natural systems, we wouldn't exist. So just because it is cows that are putting the CO2 in the air doesn't mean nature will automatically take care of it, or that if it is industry putting it there we are doomed.
Also, what does being a physicist have to do with anything? While certain branches of physics do play parts in determining the validity of global warming, there is so much more in play from meteorology to sociology. A true scientist never would claim to know something without evidence one way or the other. And most likely by Dec. 31, 2004 global warming will still be at the same stage as it is today: an untested (for obvious reasons) hypothesis.