CommentsGELFAND’S WORLD--There is a building consensus among both Democrats and Republicans that climate change is real and that something should be done about it.
The New York Times refers to a recent poll conducted by Yale showing that "majorities in both parties agree that the world is experiencing global warming and call for government action to address it."
That's not all. Those surveyed had a reasonable idea as to what is to be done: "The survey also found that majorities in both parties think the government should fund research into solar and wind energy, offer tax rebates to those buying energy-efficient vehicles and solar panels, and encourage schools to teach children about the causes and consequences of global warming, and potential solutions. A majority of Democrats and Republicans believe the United States should participate in the Paris climate accord and reduce greenhouse gas emissions regardless of what other countries do."
Numerous other polls and studies support these findings.
Remedies for Global Warming fall into three different categories
The immediate cause of global warming is anthropogenic -- that is to say, caused by humanity -- and is due to the fact that we are putting millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through the burning of coal, wood, and petroleum. We also contribute a lesser amount of methane -- itself a potent contributor to global warming when added to the mix.
Thus we now have the acronym AGW for anthropogenic global warming. We humans should start getting used to this abbreviation, because we will be seeing it more and more.
But controlling carbon dioxide emissions may not be the only available approach to controlling AGW. The overall atmospheric temperature regulation depends on multiple effects. For one thing, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere contributes chiefly to trapping heat energy that has already reached the earth and is getting re-radiated as infrared light. But the energy that reaches the earth as sunlight is another critical factor.
As physicist Richard Muller pointed out in an article quoted last week in this space, the earth's temperature is lowered temporarily by a large volcanic eruption. The dust and ash shot up into the atmosphere block incoming sunlight, thereby reducing the light energy that reaches the earth's surface. These worldwide temperature declines don't last long (a few years) but they are real.
Thus we have choices. We can do something about the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or we could theoretically do something to block incoming sunlight. Gaining some control over atmospheric CO2 is most logically achieved by reducing the amount we put into the air. But there is a third possibility, which is to suck carbon dioxide out of the air (somehow) and put it where it won't escape. It turns out that there are multiple possibilities for doing this, both chemical and biological. More about this later.
Thus we can imagine these approaches:
Conservation rather than burning all the fossil fuels at a high rate
Carbon dioxide sequestration (i.e.: sucking down CO2 and storing it)
Geo engineering of the atmosphere (i.e.: our own version of volcanoes)
Of these three categories, the latter two are largely speculative at the moment The chemistry works, but at the moment we can't sequester enough carbon fast enough to save the planet.
Here are a couple of examples of carbon sequestration:
Carbon dioxide can be reacted with simple sodium hydroxide or calcium hydroxide.
In addition, we can think about growing large amounts of algae or other single celled organisms and collecting the biomass. The energy is free because it is supplied by sunlight.
We can also convert the CO2 to simple carbon, a more compact and cheaper storage method. Biochar is a term for what is left when biomass is heated in the absence of oxygen. What's left is a lot of solid carbon which is of course no longer a greenhouse gas.
We can't do without the conservation side of the equation
Right now the atmosphere has billions and billions of tons of excess CO2, and the situation is getting worse. We are not likely to get that CO2 level down by sequestration, so reducing our CO2 emissions is absolutely necessary if we are to avoid increasing disasters due to global warming.
We spoke of the Green New Deal (GND) in last week's discussion. Basically this is a call for large scale conservation with a little bit of technological wishful thinking tossed in.
We have several intermediate approaches that would slow down our greenhouse gas emissions. Richard Muller mentions the use of natural gas to replace the current use of coal for generating electricity.
There is also nuclear power. Nuclear fission is an entirely different way of liberating energy compared to the release of chemical bond energy. I understand full well that a number of people have spent a good deal of their lives opposing the use of nuclear power. They have a long list of concerns and we have to admit that there is a certain legitimacy to at least some of them. The destruction of a nuclear plant (Fukushima, for example) releases radioactive material into the air, the land, and the water. But such events have been few and far between over the history of nuclear power usage and the immediate effects are fairly localized. Even Chernobyl, as widespread as its effects were, was not a worldwide catastrophe.
Compare those events to the wide scale destruction and death toll just in Puerto Rico alone during the 2017 hurricane season. Think of the flooding in Houston and imagine it repeated time and again over the next several decades.
Without some reduction in what is driving global warming, we can expect these climatic disasters to come with increasing ferocity and with increasing numbers.
Atmospheric Engineering aka Solar Geo Engineering
Some scientists have looked at the trends for global warming and concluded that conservation and carbon sequestration are not going to do the job. They are willing to look at the other side of the equation -- reducing incident sunlight energy by treating the upper atmosphere. In effect, they are thinking about doing what a volcanic eruption accomplishes without actually generating a volcanic eruption. The idea is to reduce the incident energy just enough to control global warming without otherwise doing harm.
David Keith (from Harvard) is quoted in a review from Reuters [ "If you want to be confident to get to 1.5 degrees you need to have solar geo-engineering,"
Keith is referring here to the goal of preventing global warming from going beyond an average increase of 1.5 degrees centigrade, which is close to 3 degrees Fahrenheit and would already be at a damaging level. The argument is that doing little or nothing is going to result in massively lethal increases.
A Commitment and the Monetary Investment
The always cogent Kevin Drum took a hard look at the global warming mess and considered what approach to fixing things might have a chance. His essay How to fight climate change is worth a full and careful reading.
If I may be so bold as to summarize a couple of his points, Drum argues that people don't like to make sacrifices for long term goals, but might be convinced to engage in something that is cheap to fight. At the same time, Drum is (shall we say) contemptuous of the merely symbolic. He wants something that has at least a chance of succeeding.
"That leaves only one solution: make it cheap to fight. If we can make the sacrifice fairly small, everything changes. But how? A ban on plastic straws, for example, is certainly a small sacrifice, but it’s performative, not real. In fact, pretty much all sacrifices on a personal level—straws, Priuses, recycling, etc.—are fine, but add up to approximately zero. As long as we’re collectively committed to extracting and burning every last hydrocarbon molecule in the earth’s crust, everything we do is just for show"
Drum continues by pointing out that every country on earth that has any oil is doing its best to extract and sell that oil so as to make a living. Whether it be Norway, the U.S., or Africa, they're doing it.
"In other words, we’re doomed—unless we can figure out a way to make fighting climate change free or cheap. That means renewable energy at scale that’s cheaper than fossil fuels. This is it. There is no other answer.
And that in turn means one thing: lots and lots of R&D and lots and lots of subsidized infrastructure buildout. Put it on the national credit card and it won’t cost much. Convince climate scientists to stop waffling constantly about the cause of increased wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and so forth, and people will be willing to pay for it. It will take a while, but so would any other solution, and this at least has a chance of working."
By the way, Drum is not alone in these thoughts. The Green New Deal takes (at least implicitly) the same position, as does learned academic and author Steven Pinker in a recent pronouncement.
There are still wafflers
Senator John Barrasso (R. Wyoming) in an op ed Cut Carbon through Innovation, not Regulation, published in the New York Times [] admits that the climate is changing. This by itself is a big step for a Republican. On the other hand, Barrasso argues that "the world will continue to rely on affordable and abundant fossil fuels, including coal, to power our economies for decades to come." He goes on to suggest that " innovation, not new taxes or punishing global agreements, is the ultimate solution." He goes on to say that carbon taxes and raising the cost of energy will not be accepted by people across the globe. This is essentially to say that we can get by with business as usual, relying on the good old free enterprise system. Well, we could get lucky, provided that innovation in solar energy is allowed to go forward without ruinous interference. It's like saying that the tobacco companies will tell the truth about lung cancer without the government demanding that they do so.
Revisiting the idea of little cars
In one of the first columns I wrote for CityWatch (at least 5 years ago) I suggested the idea of a single person commuter automobile that would be narrow and fuel efficient. In my mind, I was imagining something about the size of an old-time Indianapolis race car, an adult sized version of a soap box derby racer. It could be built with 2 seats, but the second seat would be right behind the driver's seat. Think of the layout of a two-man fighter aircraft and you get the idea.
The advantage of this design is that we could make the Santa Monica Freeway 12 lanes wide on each side. Ditto for the Hollywood Freeway. Perhaps we would decide to keep a lane at the present width for non-commuters and car pools, but we know that most automobile trips in this town are done by lone drivers or, at most, by a driver and one passenger.
The other advantage of a really small, really thin car is that it could be built light, which means that it could be incredibly fuel efficient. If we further decide that such commuter cars running in commuter lanes are limited to 45 or 50 miles per hour, then we can design for cars which only require a small amount of engine. It's not inconceivable to imagine an electric motor putting out 10 or 15 horsepower and capable of regenerating electricity as it slows down.
This is not to say that the current generation of cars would have to be tossed out. We can keep them as long as our wallets and the atmosphere can afford them. But taking a bite out of commuter fuel waste is something worth thinking about.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
