Mark,
I'm really glad to see this presentation, as it is to me, a collision of two of my favorite thinkers.
As you know, I work on the "chaos" side, trained as a meteorologist, so my thoughts on large scale climate tend to start at the micro-scale and expand to the macro. When assessing for any for of climate variation that takes humans (even on the fringe) out of the 'Goldilocks" zone, my mind turns quickly towards the following questions:
What organisms will thrive under such conditions?
1.a. Flora?
1.b. Fauna?
What impacts will the expansions of Flora and Fauna from point 1 bring to eco-ststems/eco-regions?
How will the increased population of certain types of fauna impact net atmospheric CO_2?
3.b. How will it affect albedo? Climate classifications, etc?
While I'm not as advanced in my studies, some of the general principles that I consider are:
Increased temperature is going to cause a net increase of positive atmospheric vorticity. For the non-science people, convection, and surface based confluence which means the air is traveling upwards.
Increased temperature is going to allow for higher water vapor content at all elevations, and thus, provides the opportunity for increased cloud cover and cloud formation.
This in turn, creates a layer of strong albedo at the level of condensations (cloud formation)
This would keep the surface warmer, cool the mid and upper levels of the atmosphere (700-200MB) and trap a lot more humidity at the surface. It may also flatten the thermal gradient over large, semi-uniform regions, such as the great plains.
These thoughts are my cursory 'projections' on how an higher aggregate temperature might begin influencing patterns of weather in terms of things people can easily envision. I'd like to start tying things like oceanic CO_2 to algael blooms, and the net impact that those might have on ocean life, the types of flora that thrive in a CO_2 dense environment and how the biology and atmospheric sciences will tie together.
If you have the time, would you mind talking on some of these points? And please, this isn't directed only at Dr. Cochrane, I'd like to hear theories from anyone with background in the sciences.
I imagine that any climate change will be a continuation of the ongoing process of natural selection.
Cheers, and thank to both Chris and Mark for this presentation!
Aaron
Thanks Mark & Chris – great discussion!
As for the challenges of growing food in a climate-destabilizing world, I think a combination of perennials-based permaculture (e.g., Mark Shepard), wild-food gathering (e.g., Samuel Thayer), and resilient small-scale annuals (e.g., Carol Deppe) has the best chance. …So let's do it! :-)
I have recently been researching what fruit trees I can plant this fall. Here, along the Texas Gulf Coast, one of the major limiting factors for selecting fruit trees is winter chill units (or lack thereof). In order to get an idea of what the winter chill units of my area I used a formula based on average temperature in the month of January. Using historical temperature records from a local Airforce base, here is what I found:
2004-2013 = 588 chill units
1994-2003 = 621 chill units
1984-1993 = 721 chill units
1974-1983 = 777 chill units
1964-1973 = 732 chill units
1954-1963 = 765 chill units
In 1950, the far left column on the chart above, there were 0 chill units that winter. Unfortunately, I was unable to get any weather data prior to 1950.
So the trend in this area seems to be a significant loss of average chill units over each ten-year period. Based on this data, I've decide that the majority of my fruit trees should be low chill varieties (200-400 chill units).
My area is getting warmer, which is good for my citrus trees, but limits my ability to grow stonefruits, apples, etc.
I agree totally with the first comment above - Hugh K. I assume that CM has tried to avoid this "ontroversial" issue, but it really needs to come front and center at this site. I just want to put in my two cents. I can't give enough applause for this happening. I think this site is really blessed to have Mark on board too.
This outstanding interview with Mark Cochrane in one fell swoop set right the single glaring shortcoming of PP.com. I hope there will be more of this sort of content in the future.
And if it results in some leaving the site I suspect it will those whose grasp of the 3Es was pretty tenuous anyway.
[quote=Mark Cochrane]Hello Stan,
Just as with many estimates, you cannot make linear extrapolations of exponentially increasing changes and project them very far into the future with any accuracy. . . .
[/quote]
Hi Mark,
OK, let's take your chart above. Fit the increase of sea level since 1870 to an exponential function and extrapolate it until 2100, and that yields a 1.6 ft increase from the present level. My point was that the extreme numbers that you casually throw out are simply not credible. Now is a 1.6 ft sea level rise a problem? Of course it is, but choosing the correct policy options to deal with it is not helped by unbelievable numbers.
Stan
Arthur,Might we have pushed the climate into a different path of a strange attractor such as illustrated in your first post that could send the world more quickly back to 'hot' world? Yes. But consider this, we could also have retracked to take several more laps around the 'cold' track as well. Our knowledge of the system is too limited to be sure of either outcome but regardless, the more that we perturb the climate system the greater the chance for nonlinear surprises.
Throughout 100's of millions of years the climate of the planet has been remarkably stable and, as per Lovelock, life certainly has played a large role in this process. I am not so concerned about 'life' continuing on whether we stay in or slip out of what we consider the current 'Goldilocks' zone. Life survived the Oxygen Catastrophe, Snowball Earth, the PETM, K-T dinosaur killing event etc. We've got multicellular life living miles deep in rock, and extremophile bacteria in all sorts of hostile environments. Sterilizing the planet is going to take a lot more than we are dishing out.
The question is how big of a reset button are we pushing. We could make a mess of things that lasts thousands or millions of years but as Lovelock showed with Daisyworld, life can modify albedo as well as atmospheric conditions. Life will go on, but will we be going with it?
We tend to think that we are 'special'. Some culmination of life. However, in a Gaian context we are an experiment. I have speculated along the lines that you mention as to our potential role. Could we be the 'saviors' of life by making sure that we do not keep all of our eggs in this one planetary basket (as per Robert Heinlein) until chance or the sun gobble us up (as it converts to a Red Giant billions of years hence)? Yes, but then again we might just be a blip on the evolutionary timeline.
This is great philosophical debate but for human society in the here and now the concerns are much more immediate. If we cannot even get things right on this planet then there is little hope that we would do better on a less hospitable one if we could get to it.
Mark
I know a very vocal minority will be stepping out to express their disappointment wirh Dr. Martenson covering this subject with Dr. Cochrane.
But just remember the difficulty in getting your friends and neighbors to accept the explanations and findings of the Crash Course, and the consequences and necessary actions they imply… and you can have a rough idea of how people dependent on the current economic course may resist the theory of climate change.
So I want to remind everyone that we have a thread for already convinced, like-minded people to get started on talking about Adaptation and Relocation actions and thoughts and information-sharing.
Interesting read from MyBachAchers on that link.Farming as currently practiced by industrial agriculture is actually a mining operation. I knew of some of the issues but I did not understand the literal depth of the impacts. Yet another illustration of how emphasis on short term profits leads to long-term suffering. Talk about diminishing returns on growing investments. How much of our petroleum energy inheritance will we end up having wasted to no good purpose?
Mark
Hello Aaron,Just lobbing out a few soft balls eh? I'll try to do justice to your questions but the answers all have to be placed in the context of when? Short term winners and losers will differ from longer term adjustments.
All life is where it is as a function of being adapted to the given climate, soils/terrain and other life forms. When we talk about climate change we are talking about disturbance to existing ecosystems, much like a hurricane or a fire. The difference is that the disturbance is global but variable in intensity and form (e.g. drought, flooding, disease, landslides etc). Responses will depend on the scale, intensity and frequency of the 'disturbed' conditions.
In ecology we group organisms by what are termed r- and K-selected species (summary here). K-selected species are those that are best adapted to conditions that are more stable. They invest more energy in reproduction of fewer but more successful offspring. They are more specialized to exploit a given niche. The r-selected species are pioneering/weedy species. They blast out millions of eggs/seeds and let chance lead to success. They are not as well adapted to specific conditions but they are poised to exploit any disturbance.
With regard to your questions: 1. What organisms will thrive under such conditions?
Anything that has wide dispersal capability, many propagules/offspring, fast growth and short generational times. As long as the rate of climate change exceeds the dispersal capability and generational reproduction rates of larger/longer lived species the balance will be in favor of disturbance adapted species. 1.a. Flora? - species we typically think of as weeds and invasives will have a field day as existing ecosystems become more stressed and frequently disturbed. 1.b. Fauna? - Simpler forms that are generalists in their eating habits with short generations and many offspring. Boom and bust populations are likely (think rabbits in Australia; mountain pine beetles in western North America). Organisms like bacteria can adapt quickly because they have very short reproduction cycles that allow rapid micro-evolution under strong selection pressure. In multicellular life forms, insects, rodents and other species that can get multiple clutches/litters in per year will be favored. 2. What impacts will the expansions of Flora and Fauna from point 1 bring to eco-ststems/eco-regions? The expansions of species from item #1 will in some cases be the harbingers of change (mountain pine beetles killing forests) and in others simply be the symptoms imbalances in the energy availability of ecosystems or predator/prey ratios. 3. How will the increased population of certain types of fauna impact net atmospheric CO_2? This is all location and rate of change dependent but globally the net impact, initially at least, is likely be a positive feedback where more CO2 is released to the atmosphere. This comes in terms of less forests, faster decomposition rates from soil carbon, melted permafrost allowing decomposition of stored carbon etc. 3.b. How will it affect albedo? Climate classifications, etc? This really getting out on the speculative ledge but forests are generally darker than grasses so less this means a negative forcing on land as more sunlight gets reflected. However loss of glaciers around the Earth changes surfaces from white to bare soil which increases thermal energy uptake. Loss of sea ice (especially in the Arctic) yields a large uptake in thermal energy. Sea level rise covers more land and also leads to more sunlight stored as heat. Net global is likely to result in increased warming in the short-to-midterm (decades to millennia). As climate begins to stabilize then this can change once life starts to catch up with the new conditions and ecosystems consolidate.
In terms of your postulated changes to the hydrological cycle, it is noteworthy that an increased rate of weathering is likely that would expose new minerals more rapidly and accelerate the long term carbon cycle, potentially taking up more carbon from the atmosphere on century to millennia time scales.
The take home here is that it is the rate of change that is the problem. Once things get more stable then there is time for life-forms that are better adapted to higher CO2 to potentially benefit (e.g. C3 versus C4 plants, non-calcium carbonate dependent ocean species ).
Mark
Les,I have not read the "Climate of Extremes" book you mention but I was wondering if they covered a few other questions?
The authors talk about the billions of human lifetimes that we have gained. They then touch on the potential cost in lives that would occur were we to try to implement any meaningful plan to combat CO2 on a global scale.
Did they consider that we may not have actually 'gained' any human lifetimes? We might merely have taken them from the future. As you mention, the Earth's carrying capacity for human life is currently being exceeded and is dependent on the lifestyles that we live. The longer we live above the carrying capacity of the planet the more of our future seed corn we are eating. Carrying capacity is dropping every year.
Also, did they calculate the potential cost in lives of NOT implementing any meaningful plan to combat CO2 increases at a global scale? It seems that without that calculation you cannot meaningfully evaluate if the potential costs would be money well spent. There are a host of intergenerational ethics involved but would billions of lives lost in the short term be worth a hundred future generations of humanity?
Is there really any choice involved other than timing? The petroleum age will become increasingly hard to maintain as EROEI decreases. 'Action' simply means choosing to reduce our usage before such austerity is forced upon us by diminishing returns on energy invested. Similarly, population control will happen, the only question is whether we will try to manage it ourselves or just let nature sort us out.
I believe some of the other issues that this website addresses are going to impact humanity far sooner than AGW can become critical. It appears the first giant shoe will be the debt bubble, followed by much more expensive energy and therefore food and everything else. Clearly, environmental issues will come into play and already are.
I completely agree with you and have stated so previously. The financial crisis is the most acute problem but also the least difficult (not easy) to adjust to. The financing exacerbates the energy issues and ultimately force us to change the way we live and how many of us can live here. As unimaginable as it is for petro-man to envision life without energy subsidies, until 150 years ago we had no idea we were lacking this irreplaceable resource. Major trauma will ensue but decreased energy availability is survivable for human society. Environmental issues (including climate change) are the easiest to ignore but the most fundamental predicaments that we face. The finance and energy issues are the key 'Limits to Growth' but destabilizing the climate changes the 'Limits to Life'. Can human societies adjust to that? I do not know.
At present I have to agree with your sentiment about the unlikelihood of concerted global action on AGW. We have proven to be a generation typified by 'No sacrifice is too small to be endured at any cost'. We have privatized benefits to the present and socialized costs (debt, energy, environment) to the future. Despite this, I have to believe that if human ingenuity can be focused to address our collective predicament then we can accomplish much more than we currently think is possible.
Has humanity profited from cheap energy? That is a very good question, many humans (including us) have profited, but humanity? Like many investments, I think that the answer will depend on when you check your returns against the costs.
Mark
JAG,That is really interesting! I am used to thinking in terms of growing degree days but hadn't seen anything in chilling units. I think that you are making wise decisions for the management of orchard crops in your region. We will increasingly have to adapt to shifting climate baselines.
Mark
Mark,
I was summarizing from memory only a few points that the authors made in the last chapter of the book.
For me personally, I believe that, with or without climate change, we are devastating the carrying capacity of the planet already and will do far more damage before any new balance can be achieved. It is likely that when we come out the other side of this overshoot, the Earth's carrying capacity for a long time will be a small percentage of what is was before the overshoot. I also don't believe the capacity was anywhere near 7 billion to begin with.
But I don’t believe we know enough to put climate change at the top of the environmental issues that are going to result in reduced carrying capacity. Fit it in with destroying fisheries, polluting the ocean, air and ground water, soil erosion, deforestation, extinction, non-renewable resource depletion and covering our planet with really ugly concrete structures.
I think it’s hard to predict what we will see as the most devastating issue 100 years from now.
I’ve done everything a devout climate change believer would do in order to reduce CO2. It’s just that I’ve done it because Peak Oil seriously scares me. From that perspective, converting me becomes solely a philosophical battle.
Regards.
I have nothing but praise for this excellent interview and Chris' willingness to deal openly with the issue. It definitely belongs as part of the "third E". Mark, you do an excellent job of presenting a very complex topic in an understandable fashion. The process you described of producing the IPCC report was especially helpful and new to me.
It might also be interesting to investigate some of the reasons for our unwillingness to accept and deal with issues which are even now having a profound impact on all our lives. I submit climate change is much like the issue of smoking and health.
Smoking is extremely pleasurable once one becomes addicted. Burning fossil fuels has led to the greatest accumulation of wealth and comfort humankind has ever known.
There was an enormous amount of profit to be made in the tobacco business and that is true today in the energy sector.
Folks making such profits wish to continue this for as long as possible and use their wealth to influence legislation and public opinion.
Short of some miraculous new technology, or adaptative process as yet undiscovered, we can’t solve our problem unless we quit smoking or drastically reduce our emissions.
Drastic emissions reductions mean a simpler way of living for all of us, especially those of us who have acquired the most since we are the primary carbon emitters. Stopping smoking means withdrawal pain and deprivation. Both consequences will be very unpleasant in the short term.
It took a very long time before the cumulative weight of scientific evidence and a supportive mainstream media persuaded most of us to quit smoking. Eventually the tobacco industry was forced to pay massive penalties for the damage done. Our health has improved as a result.
Hopefully more and more voices will be raised to support the need for climate change action until their cumulative weight will be overwhelming. We can only hope that we have the time for that to happen. A huge amount of change is already baked into the cake.
I wouldn't bother going down another gravity well if I got out of this one, MarkBesides which, contrary to the expectations of Starwars, Heinlein and the other SF writers I am willing to bet a bottle of Hooch that Wells had it spot on. If we even so much as touched another living planet all hell would break loose. We have evolved in this organism and this Gaia accomodates us.
A self-similar model is a white blood cell in our body.If you put it in the body of an elephant bad things happen.
We might conceive ourselves to be the bees knees, but all the action happens at the microscopic level. Some absurd amount of what you consider to be "you" is only related to you in the same way that the rest of the biome is. We are walking swamps. Any intercourse with another planet would probably turn both parties into slime.
Speaking of which, Sex is the way to go. All these monocultures are going to be in big trouble.
But if you think that your neighbour is promiscous, she hasn't got anything on microbes. They are over the top.
I used to think that resource shortages and then financial matters would hit us hard well before environmental problems. However, I've seen human capacity to extend and pretend and don't think debt and other financial matters are likely to be the trigger for a major decline or collapse of societies. Resource shortages might be but there is always the possibility of John Michael Greer's catabolic collapse, where empires/societies contract and feed on themselves, recycling resources already extracted. For sure more and more people will be discarded and left to fend for themselves, if they can, but some semblance of BAU could go on for a long time. A country or state defaulting here or there will just start them on some kind of recovery.
Environmental collapse, though, is global and on-going. It cannot be glossed over, except on blogs and in governments. It is certainly well within the bounds of possibility that environmental collapse (whether it is climate change, ocean death, or something else) could deal the killer blow. As Mark mentioned, much of the deterioration is going exponential, despite some people casting doubt. We're in unchartered territory as regards the environment, and with population still growing (and not really showing signs of slowing down, as it had been in the early part of this century), there seems to be no prospect of the environment improving or even stabilising.
Definitely a much neglected topic here and, hopefully, this marks the beginning of better coverage.
Based on those numbers, at the rate of less than the last 40 years, temperatures should go up about 1.35 to 1.8C by 2100. But, there is no guarantee that the rate of increase for the last 40 years will remain consistent for the next 87 years. That rate of warming is dependent on not only CO2 increases, but also methane, H2O and other ghgs, which will change with feedback effects.
At any rate, this discussion is more appropriate for the climate change thread except to note that Mark's observations that projections need to include a wide range of variability given the complexity of the climate system. Relying on minimal increases is not a good way to plan for the future in such an environment.
Doug
[quote=Doug]Stan,
It's a little difficulty to transpose your numbers. 5% of what? Are you talking temperature or CO2 increases? But, whatever, your temperature numbers are not consistent with the numbers here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-temperature-correlation-basic.html
[/quote]
Doug,
Skepticalscience has a tendency to fail to state things clearly. Let me repeat, the temperature effect of increasing CO2 varies logarithmically with concentration. The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere is what is increasing exponentially, at 5% per decade. If continued, the concentration will double in 14 decades. If that causes the temperature to increase by X, then it would increase by X each time the concentration doubles. That number, X, is known as the "climate sensitivity". On the basis of their computer models, the IPCC in its last assessment report estimates X to be somewhere between 2 C and 4.5 C. Their next report will considerably decrease these numbers. If the rate of warming remained in the range 0.15 - 0.2 C per decade for the next 87 years, the temperature would increase by 1.3 C - 1.7 C by 2100. But in actual fact, the average rate of temperature increase has only been 0.07 C per decade for the last century and has been less that that for the last 15 years.
Finally, it is agreed by alarmists and skeptics alike that the direct effect of CO2 on surface temperatures would be about X = 1.3 C for a doubling of CO2. The rest of the contributions to a larger X would have to be produced by net positive feedback effects. These have been included in the models, but have not been verified. As Roy Spencer stated, the models may have passed peer review for publication, but none have been verified to have any predictive power for the future. A careful assessment of the models for this purpose has been ongoing for a good while and may be completed within another twenty years.
I agree with you, that relying on minimal estimates is not a good way to plan for the future, however; hyping large numbers is a poor strategy as well. I find it refreshing that you think that this discussion would be best conducted on the climate change thread, however, I would guess that a majority of its readers don't believe that skeptical views should be permitted there. I agree that it would be a more appropriate forum, but I didn't feel that 6 C temperature increase and 2 meter sea level rise by 2100 should go without comment.
Stan
