Global warming: the Skeptical Environmentalist 3

[epoisses]

This book by Bjorn Lomborg is a Masterpiece with a capital M. Lomborg analyses the world's biggest problems like Gordon Ramsey would cut an onion: quickly, beautifully and effortlessly. If anybody can point me to a more informative and objective book about global warming, please stand up! (btw the book also treats hunger, poverty, pollution, deforestation...). This is not a looney author who tries to brainwash you. This is an associate professor of statistics at a department of political science, who gathered huge lots of data (the author almost apologizes for his 3000 footnotes) and analyses them with an open mind. The reader is left free to disagree. The author uses widely recognized sources as much as possible (IPCC, UN, ...), many of which can be consulted on the internet.

I do not want to commit plagiarism, heck I don't even pretend I understood everything. I just wish Lomborg insanely high book sales and I wish the world to be well-informed. So with a few postings I will try to raise everyone's curiosity.

 

[epoisses]

The temperature rise

Many different studies resulted in similar temperature curves as shown here:

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/069.htm

The curve by Mann et al is presented in the IPCC summary for policy-makers. These data lose reliability as they refer to points further back in time (see also the grey area in the chart). Lomborg looks into this in more detail: for example, many 1000-1400 data points are basd on North American tree ring data. This means that the data are (1) limited to one continent, (2) limited to land, (3) are influenced by other factors like diseases, (4) are strongly linked by summer and day-time conditions (the times at which trees mainly grow). There is still work to do to improve the temperature data set.
The time axis is also still quite short in the context of ice age and warm period cycles that appear to have a ~1500 year interval over the past 140 000 years, we don't even see one complete cycle in the chart.
It is pretty obvious that the late 20th century is significantly warmer than previous centuries, but it is hard to explain the decrease between '45 and '75. One might argue that the increase from '75 to today is caused by CO2 emissions, but CO2 emissions between 1900 and '45 were certainly not higher than between '45 and '75. Lomborg flags the issue, then continues.

 

[epoisses]

Effect of CO2

Lomborg remarks calmly that "even with with lots of negative feedback, it would seem unlikely that there would not be some form of warming coming from increased CO2. Thus, the important question is not _whether_ man-made CO2 increases global temperature, but _how much_. This question turns out to be very tricky".
The effect of CO2 on temperature is simulated by running so-called General Circulation Models on supercomputers. These models are usually based on grids of 250 km on the side and 1 km high. A set of equations is solved for every half-hour model time, which runs over several hundred model-years.

The results of this number crunching exercise obviously depend on the basic assumptions. Lomborg describes in detail the 3 main modelling problems: the effect of particles (or aerosols e.g. from SO2, see also

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig6-6.htm),

of water vapor and of clouds.

Lomborg remarks that the basic IPCC prediction of climate sensitivity of 1.5-4.5 deg C has remained constant throughout all the IPCC reports from 1990 to 2001 (and in literature since the '70s), which means that the basic range of estimates has not improved since 25 years. The IPCC defined a number of scenarios positioned on 2 dimensions (economic vs environmental development, global vs regional approach). Ironically, due to the inaccuracy of the sensitivity prediction, the choice of the model usually makes more difference than the choice of the scenario.

Lomborg also looks at other possible causes of the temperature increases like solar variation, but concludes that "neither solar variation nor greenhouse gases can alone explain the entire temperature record".

 

[epoisses]

Future scenarios

The IPCC has defined a whole zoo of future scenarios, some of which they consider more desirable than others. Lomborg analyses them in further detail to determine probability of certain scenarios vs others, taking in mind especially the fact that technology will progress and energy efficiency will increase, and that renewable energy will inevitably become cheaper and cheaper and will at some point outperform fossil fuels. The speed at which this happens is a very determining factor in future CO2 emissions.

Lomborg analyses the consequences of global warming in terms of impact on agriculture, sea level rise, human health and extreme weather (which is a popular topic, though the IPCC found no evidence that extreme weather events have increased, in a global sense, through the 20th century!). The GC models not being good at predicting local events, cannot be used for realistic predictions re hurrycanes, El Nino and the like.

The total cost of global warming is estimated to be 1.5-2% of the current (the book was written in 2001) global GDP, i.e. 480-640 billion$. In abolute terms, the cost is divided almost 50/50 between developed and developing countries, but since the latter are 5 times poorer the cost will be much harder to bear. Some countries will actually have net benefits from global warming!

 

[epoisses]

Kyoto

Lomborg analyses the costs and benefits of the Kyoto protocol. Kyoto is dramatically ineffective, partly due to the fact that the developing countries are not included (much CO2 production will of course move to developing countries, btw have you all noticed that BP is selling their European refineries and Shell is having similar plans?). Kyoto will mean that the twmperature reached in 2094 in a business-as-usual scenario is the same as the Kyoto temperature in 2100. This was pointed out in a study by Wigley (1998) of which I honestly don't know how controversial it is.

The cost of Kyoto is highly dependent on the extent of emission trading that will be applied. Global trading is obviously the most efficient way to implement Kyoto. A purist "no trading" scenario will be 5 times as expensive or approx $346 billion a year around 2010. Lomborg shows that the cost of the OECD countries of complying with Kyoto will - each year - by 2050 cost about as much as global warming will cost in 2100! (approx. 2% of present GDP). Given these numbers, Kyoto would be a silly thing to pursue.

"Then what should we do?" asks Lomborg, and answers the question by explaining how the total cost of CO2 emission reductions and the effects of global warming should be minimised across the time axis, taking in mind that one dollar today will be worth 10 dollar down the road. An extremely important thing to note is that it may _look_ like egoism to not treat the CO2 emissions problem as radically today as we could, but the world would eventually be a better place if we use our resources more wisely and invest in research and in growth in the developing world. As an example, Lomborg remarks that the cost of Kyoto for the US only would be the equivalent of providing the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation, saving 2 million deaths and half a billion illnesses per year.

Lastly Lomborg analyses why the global warming discussion has become so political. Global warming is used as a stepping stone for other political projects: changeing our individual lifestyles, moving away from consumption, choosing free time instead of wealth, choosing quality rather than quantity. Lomborg is the first to admit that such an agenda is entirely legitimate, as long as it is not hidden, as it muddles the discussion.

Lomborg ends with a remarkable comment, which more than any other comment shows his open mindedness. "Yet, one could be tempted to suggest that we are actually so rich that we can afford both to pay a partial insurance premium against global warming (at 2-4 percent of GDP), and to help the developing world (a further 2 percent), because doing so would only offset growth by about 2-3 years. And that is true. I am still not convinced that there is any point in spending 2-4 percent on a pretty insignificant insurance policy, when we and our descendants could benefit far more from the same investment placed elsewhere. But it is correct that we are actually wealthy enough to do so. And this is one of the main points of this book."

 

[tgmcg]

Thank for the great recco. I've just ordered a copy.

 

[BJC]

The guy is a fraud. His degree is in political science.
He's been investigated by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty.
Wikipedia has a good writeup on him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjørn_Lomborg

What I can't understand is why he doesn't have a position in the Bush administration.

 

[GregLocock]

No, he is not a fraud. The Danish scientific establishment beat him up, and were forced to retract the beatup. That wiki page is borderline useless, any attempt at putting the record straight gets reverted.

See his own website for his discussion of the Scientific American article.

I don't think he is 100% right, but I don't think he is 100% wrong either.



Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[SomptingGuy]

I would suggest that as a prerequisite to posting comments in this thread, posters should state whether they have read the book or just skimmed the comments about it that alligned with their pre-held views.

Personally I have read it and mostly agree with epoisses. And as touched upon in another thread, the raging and screaming of some of the scientific community in their condemnation this book makes politicians look honest, calm and thorough.

 

[controlnovice]

No, he's not a fraud.

It is like Al Gore or Michael Moore only speaking half of the truth to use only part of the information that backs one theory...

He's been investigated by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty.

But if the view was shown in its totality:

the Ministry indicated that it regarded the DCSD's findings of scientific dishonesty in regard to the book as invalid.

The same site indicates several awards and recognitions for his studies and stance on the subject.

Please read the whole site before making incomplete and misleading comments.........

______________________________________________________________________________
This is normally the space where people post something insightful.

 

[epoisses]

Many people, first and foremost the people who devoted most of their professional lives to the subjects Lomborg describes, seem to react red hot of anger, hardly having read the book diagonally, and attack Lomborg on absolutely irrelevant grounds ("he has a degree in political science", "I have never seen him on a congress") or on items that appear relevant but are beside the point ("Lomborg has not even understood Kyoto, he talks about the cost and benefits of Kyoto in 2100, but Kyoto is not supposed to last until 2100, it is just a first step" -- without touching the real issue i.e. what should we expect of the benefits over cost ratio of a going FURTHER than Kyoto between now and 2100, one wonders why ).

Frankly I find it staggering how certain IPCC members seem to be surprised that their widely published reports that treat such an all-encompassing subject are actually read and analysed and criticised by people with an independent and healthy set of brains of their own.

 

[rhodie]

Much of the "scientific establishment" critcized Galileo and Columbus as well, so frankly their track record of righteousness is shabby.

I enjoyed "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and this book appears to hold true to that rather unorthodox methodology of looking at the macro picture of an issue rather than satisfying the minutae of doctrinal sensitivities in each subject.

Thanks for the recommendation. I am excited that this book may contain some true "outside the box" analysis.

 

[0707]

Global warming – are we doing the right thing?
By Bjørn Lomborg, Ph.D., associate professor at the Department of Political Science,
University of Aarhus, Denmark



“Global warming is important, environmentally, politically and economically. There is no doubt that mankind has influenced and is still increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and that this will increase temperature.”

“However, global warming will have serious costs – the total cost is estimated at about $5 trillion. Such estimates are unavoidably uncertain but derive from models assessing the cost of global warming to a wide variety of societal areas such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, energy, water supply, infrastructure, hurricane damage, drought damage, coast protection, land loss caused by a rise in sea level, loss of wetlands, forest loss, loss of species, loss of human life, pollution and migration. The consequences of global warming will hit hardest on the developing countries, whereas the industrialized countries may actually benefit from a warming lower than 2-3ºC. The developing countries are harder hit primarily because they are poor – giving them less adaptive capacity.”

“Despite our intuition that we naturally need to do something drastic about such a costly global warming, we should not implement a cure that is actually more costly than the original affliction. Here, economic analyses clearly show that it will be far more expensive to cut CO2 emissions radically, than to pay the costs of adaptation to the increased temperatures.”

“If Kyoto is implemented with anything but global emissions trading – a scheme which seems utterly unattainable, and was not at all addressed in Bonn – it will not only be almost inconsequential for the climate, but it will also constitute a poor use of resources. The cost of such a Kyoto pact if implemented, just for the US, will be higher than the cost of solving the single most pressing problem for the world – providing the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation. It is estimated that the latter would avoid 2 million deaths every year and prevent half a billion people becoming seriously ill each year. If no trading mechanism is implemented for Kyoto, the costs could approach $1 trillion, or almost five times the cost of world-wide water and sanitation coverage. For comparison, the total global aid today is about $50 billion annually. If we were to go even further – as suggested by many – and curb global emissions to the 1990 level, the net cost to the world would seriously escalate to about $4 trillion extra – comparable almost to the cost of global warming itself. Likewise, a temperature increase limit would cost anywhere from $3 to $33 trillion extra.”

“This emphasizes that we need to be very careful in our willingness to act on global warming.
Basically, global warming will be expensive ($5 trillion) and there is very little good we can do about it. Even if we were to handle global warming optimally which would mean cutting emissions a little fairly far into the future, we can only cut the cost very little (about $0.3 trillion). However, if we choose to enact Kyoto or even more ambitious programmes, the world will lose. And this conclusion does not just come from the output from a single model. Almost all the major computer models agree that even when chaotic consequences have been taken into consideration “it is striking that the optimal policy involves little emissions reduction below uncontrolled rates until the middle of the [twenty-first] century at the earliest.” So is it not curious, then, that the typical reporting on global warming tells us all the bad things that could happen from CO2 emissions, but few or none of the bad things that could come from overly zealous regulation of such emissions? Indeed, why is it that global warming is not discussed with an open attitude, carefully attuned to avoid making big and costly mistakes to be paid for by our descendants, but rather with a fervor more fitting for preachers of opposing religions?
This is an indication that the discussion of global warming is not just a question of choosing the optimal economic path for humanity, but has much deeper, political roots as to what kind of future society we would like.”

"Thus, the important lesson of the global warming debate is fivefold. First, we have to realize what we are arguing about – do we want to handle global warming in the most efficient way or do we want to use global warming as a stepping stone to other political projects? Before we make this clear to ourselves and others, the debate will continue to be muddled. Personally, I believe that in order to think clearly we should try to the utmost to separate issues, not the least because trying to solve all problems at one go may likely result in making bad solutions for all areas. Thus, I try to address just the issue of global warming.
Second, we should not spend vast amounts of money to cut a tiny slice of the global temperature increase when this constitutes a poor use of resources and when we could probably use these funds far more effectively in the developing world. This connection between resource use on global warming and aiding the Third World actually goes much deeper, because the developing world will experience by far the most damage from global warming. Thus, when we spend resources to mitigate global warming we are in fact and to a large extent helping future inhabitants in the developing world.
However, if we spend the same money directly in the Third World we would be helping present inhabitants in the developing world, and through them also their descendants. Since the inhabitants of the Third World are likely to be much richer in the future, and since the return on investments in the developing countries is much higher than those on global warming (about 16 percent to 2 percent), the question really boils down to: Do we want to help more well-off inhabitants in the Third World a hundred years from now a little or do we want to help poorer inhabitants in the present Third World much more? To give a feel for the size of the problem – the Kyoto Protocol will likely cost at least $150 billion a year, and possibly much more. UNICEF estimates that just $70-80 billion a year could give all Third World inhabitants access to the basics like health, education, water and sanitation. More important still is the fact that if we could muster such a massive investment in the present-day developing countries this would also give them a much better future position in terms of resources and infrastructure from which to manage a future global warming.
Third, we should realize that the cost of global warming will be substantial – about $5 trillion. Since cutting back CO2 emissions quickly turns very costly and easily counterproductive, we should focus more of our effort at finding ways of easing the emission of greenhouse gases over the long run. Partly, this means that we need to invest much more in research and development of solar power, fusion and other likely power sources of the future. Given a current US investment in renewable energy research and development of just $200 million, a considerable increase would seem a promising investment to achieve a possible conversion to renewable energy towards the latter part of the century. Partly, this
also means that we should be much more open towards other techno-fixes (so-called geoengineering). These suggestions range from fertilizing the ocean (making more algae bind carbon when they die and fall to the ocean floor) and putting sulfur particles into the stratosphere (cooling the earth) to capturing CO2 from fossil fuel use and returning it to storage in geological formations. Again, if one of these approaches could indeed mitigate (part of) CO2 emissions or global warming, this would be of tremendous value to the world. Fourth, we ought to have a look at the cost of global warming in relation to the total world economy. Analysis shows that even if we should choose some of the most inefficient programs to cut carbon emissions, the costs will at most defer growth a couple of years in the middle of the century. Global warming is in this respect still a limited and manageable problem."


"Finally, this also underscores that global warming is not anywhere the most important problem in the world. What matters is making the developing countries rich and allowing the citizens of developed countries even greater opportunities.”



The Global warming is for sure a concern for the whole world. It has scientific, economical and mankind effects which must be interiorised by all of us. We live in the same ship called earth, those who travel in the first class with all conditions, should be aware that if the ship fails all of the passengers will suffer the same consequences, whatever ones seat in the ship, be it first second or third class.

Regards

Luis

 

[GMcD]

It's all a bait and switch to take the masses minds off the fact that we continue to dump enormous amounts of toxins, pollutants, and fossil fuel burning emissions into the environment. Who cares whether we cause global warming or not. We are crapping in our own nests and this global warming debate is a red herring. As engineers we are supposed to do things more efficiently. Unfortunately the majority equate efficiency with cheap, at the expense of the environment.

 

[epoisses]

You too should read the book! There are several chapters about pollution.

Or maybe before reading the book you should show us data about what toxins and other killers we are dumpring into the environment at rates that have not decreased significantly over the last decennia.

 

[SomptingGuy]

Here Here! Hence my earlier post.

I liked the chapter about land-fill sites. I also quite liked the one that proposed solar cells in the desert. Neither because of their practicality, just the way the scale of each issue is demonstrated.

 

[rb1957]

IMHO no-one can prove (or disprove) the occurrence of global warming nor describe (with confidence) the consequences; thus we're left to our own beliefs. If enough people believe it (being convinced by the arguments of scientists (or "scientists"), then politically decisions will be made accordingly.

Of course the climate is changing ... it changes every day (and is probably the least static thing around); the key question is can we do anything about it ? (if it is man-caused, then changing our activities will obviously affect it directly; if it isn't, changing our activities may help (a little).)

one argument is "even if it isn't man-caused, this is such an important thing that we have to do something about it". i think this like like selling airplane crash insurance for your house. if there's a crash you'll all be killed, don't you want to protect yourself ? maybe we should install airplane crash shields on our houses (personal missile defense ?) maybe we should reroute airplanes away from our houses ? or move everyone under these corridors ... that'd be expensive !!

my final point (vent?) is if you truly believe something, there is always something you can do ... increase the price of gas (petrol) $1/lt, phase in a $10/lt increase ... but these things are (without a doubt) considered too serious (ie costly) so we're left with hypocritical 1/2 measures.

 

[GMcD]

Epoisses: it's not about the "rates" its about the sheer amount, period. Sure, maybe the dioxin pollution emission "rates" are less than they were ten years ago, but the number of dioxin pollution sources have increased with the population, and the demand for more "stuff", and the amount is still growing, albeit at slower "rates". Check out the sources on how much long term pollutants are now carried in all our bloodstreams, including newborns- many many parts per million of fire retardents, and other pollutants. Granted they are not at a high enough level to do us harm (or do we know that?), but we sure didn't have them 100 years ago.

Some reading:

http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3001181

http://www.environmentaldefence.ca/pressroom/releases/2007/20070103.htm

http://www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/execsumm.php

 

[dcasto]

So GMcD, we are all going to die younger because of toxins, but we all live longer because of medical advances and other technology that releases the toxins. Its a cycle, we improve our chances to live and reduce our life expentancy. So, as an engineer, I say keep going until the amount of toxins released by the cure doesn't give a 1 for 1 increase/decrease.
We have a group where I live that say "We need to have babie born at home, just like our foefathers, the babies are healthier and the mothers better. Look at the babies who die in hospitals." My come back is, "Live like people did in 1865 and die at the ripe old age of 48, just like they did. Yes most babies die in hospitals because thats where they go when they are dying."
The only net increase in life with minor increases in negative life (toxins global warming, ect) is nuclear power and smaller vehicles. Why hasn't eitherside stepped up and made this push?

 

[Greg1920]

I will definitely take a look at this book.

Another interesting and well sourced book on the subject is "Heat" by George Monibot.

It has an excellent chapter on the debate on whether or not Global Warming is happening and a very detailed solution to the problem. Although he proposes that we need a 95% C02 cut in the US and Canada and says that current initiatives in there present form will not affect the climate.