Last week, in fulfillment of a 2008 Act of Congress, our National Academies of Science published “America’s Climate Choices” [ACC], another in a numbing succession of groupthink reports predicting the end of the world unless the U.S. dramatically reduces its emissions of carbon dioxide. Pronto.
Documents like this aren’t really intended to change anyone’s mind. Rather, they are designed to be used by unelected regulators as scientific cover for what our legislature refuses to do, which is to enact expensive and intrusive restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide. The penultimate iteration of this was something called the “Synthesis Report” of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, a 2009 screed that the Environmental Protection Agency used as a scientific cover for new rules on fuel economy and regulation of power plants.
ACC is by far the most blatantly political of these documents. Several authors are environmental activists, and the National Academies’ President, Ralph Cicerone, has been on a mission to demonize carbon dioxide for decades.
He is very influential and capable. He was instrumental in getting chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerant production banned because they accelerated the destruction of stratospheric ozone over and near Antarctica in early spring. This was an easy thing to do, as chemical giant DuPont was eager to replace its patent-expired CFC Freon, once it patented a substitute hydroclorflourocarbon.
Carbon dioxide, thought to be a significant cause of the warming of surface temperature since the mid-1970s, is currently the respiration of the world’s economic civilization. Getting rid of it isn’t as simple as banning CFCs and switching to another refrigerant.
Some big-time scientists are alarmed at the Academies’ activism. MIT atmospheric physicist (and member of the National Academies) Richard Lindzen says that Cicerone, as president of the Academies, feels that “regardless of the evidence the answer is predetermined. If the government wants carbon control, that is the answer that the Academies will provide. Nothing could better epitomize the notion of science in the service of politics "“ something that, unfortunately, has characterized so-called climate science.”
The strident rhetoric in ACC could further divide the electorate and the government on climate change. Pollsters tell us — I think rightly — that the best way to characterize the majority of public sentiment is that people indeed believe that global warming is real (correct), that humans have something to do with it (correct), and that scientists are exaggerating its effects (thank you for listening).
A corollary has also been noted: the more shrill the rhetoric, the more people turn off. They are just tired of being hectored by scientists proclaiming certain apocalypses that never pan out: Examples include acid rain and the death of the forest, asteroids, the population bomb, and a catastrophic extinction of species that has eluded detection.
While again calling down hell and brimstone, this time if we don’t immediately reduce our carbon dioxide emissions, ACC never gets to the most inconvenient truth: We are the rapidly shrinking into irrelevance on this issue.
Here’s a fact that is curiously absent. If, by 2050, the U.S. reduces its per-capita emission of carbon dioxide to what it was at the end of the Civil War, and the rest of the developed world does similarly, prospective global warming would drop by a grand total of 7%, 100 years from now. This assumes that the “sensitivity” of surface temperature to a doubling of atmospheric CO-2 is 5.4 degrees, a commonly used value that may be way too high (see below).
This is a vital piece of information for any policymaker or regulator. Why is it not in the report?
To its credit, ACC does note two “main sources of uncertainty in projecting climate change impacts.” (There are actually plenty more, but these two are quite important.)
The first is the uncertainty related to future emissions because of changes in technology, policy, and “other factors that are impossible to fully predict.”
Example: In 1982 the Academy (it only has recently become the Academies) produced “Energy in Transition, 1985-2010,” a document that, like ACC, received headline recognition and was cited as gospel by the policy community that it intended to influence. It predicted a general decline in domestic production of natural gas through 2010, with the ultimate possibility of its phase-out as a significant fuel. Since then, we discovered huge reservoirs that can be coaxed from common shale formations worldwide. The amount of shale gas now being burned is responsible (along with our economic miasma) for the record reduction in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in 2009.
The second uncertainty is over the true value of the climate “sensitivity” to carbon dioxide. There are now multiple and independent strands of evidence — from the oceans, from clouds, and from thermometers — that our climate models assume a sensitivity that is about twice as large as it is in reality. Nonetheless, if evidence continues to accrue, there will be major resistance to accepting this for obvious scientific and behavioral reasons. ”We goofed” doesn’t go down easy when trying to re-engineer the world’s energy economy.
Make no mistake, though. The new National Academies report is significant. It is the sound and the fury, signifying policy.
's Categories: Op/Ed
I’ll go out on a limb and predict that, within ten years, anyone who wants to preserve what’s left of his/her professional reputation will be fleeing in panic from the notion of anthropogenic climate change. Later on we’ll have people shaking their heads in amazement at the “climate science” of this decade.
rt_trask I'll go out on a limb and predict that, within ten years, anyone who wants to preserve what's left of his/her professional reputation will be fleeing in panic from the notion of anthropogenic climate change.
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I’m not going out on a limb at all. The climate will get warmer this decade. Guaranteed. And the culprit is co2. 3 degrees centigrade climate sensitivity may be low because the slow feedbacks have not been included in that calculation.
Patrick,
I do not share your concerns about “groupthink” or the integrity of the peer-review process more generally, but I must admit that your commentary raises an immensely important point.
Many climate scientists appear to be styling their findings to influence policy. I do not believe this means the science is bogus, but I understand why others would feel this way.
Dr. Michaels,
You wrote:”ACC is by far the most blatantly political of these documents. Several authors are environmental activists, and the National Academies' President, Ralph Cicerone, has been on a mission to demonize carbon dioxide for decades.”
The document in question is a *policy document*, not a science document. The committee was formed at the request of the Congress and was charged ""¦to identify steps and strategies that U.S. decision makers could adopt now..". Their charge was to develop policy so that is what they did, they make recommendations for policy. Congress did not as NAS if global warming was real or not or some other technical issue, they asked “What can we do now to lessen global warming”. They did what they were asked to do. You may not agree with those policy recommendations and that is of course a perfect valid thing to discuss.
However, I do not see that it is a valid criticism of a policy committee, charged with recommending policy changes, that it produces a paper that it advocates policy.
Documents like this aren't really intended to change anyone's mind. Rather, they are designed to be used by unelected regulators as scientific cover for what our legislature refuses to do, which is to enact expensive and intrusive restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide.
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Maybe, just maybe a different point of view could be framed. Such that co2 is an intrusion on the earth’s climate.
Every country’s science organization in the world has signed on to the effects of global warming on the earth. And yet here is the big gun conservative Forbes putting up support for the denier community. Obviously the wealth of their clients are more important than the climate of the earth. That is pretty sad. It’s high time the people of wealth resisting climate change science and its inevitable policy get on board.
Carbon dioxide, thought to be a significant cause of the warming of surface temperature since the mid-1970s, is currently the respiration of the world's economic civilization. Getting rid of it isn't as simple as banning CFCs and switching to another refrigerant.
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Pat has hit the nail on the head. This is about the very large change required to get our world act together. It is being resisted by a very small group of very wealthy people who don’t like climate change and what it will do to their wealth. Some of these people are paying Pat’s wages.
scientific cover
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Pat is excellent at semantics. To couch science as something dark and evil. Which is bull crap. He’s just doing the work of his masters. All a scientist has is his or her integrity and their hard work. His organization has successfully attacked science with one false accusation after another. I would venture to say the darkness is part Pat’s work here.
http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/materials-based-on-reports/reports-in-brief/ACC-final-brief.pdf
The sooner that serious efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions proceed, the lower the risks posed by climate change, and the less pressure there will be to make larger, more rapid, and potentially more expensive reductions later.
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From the DENIALIST point of view “Everything will be OK”. There is no risk here, everyone move on and quit worrying about AGW.
http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/materials-based-on-reports/reports-in-brief/ACC-final-brief.pdf
Some climate change impacts, once manifested, will persist for hundreds or even thousands of years, and will be difficult or impossible to "undo." In contrast, many actions taken to respond to climate change could be reversed or scaled back, if they some how prove to be more stringent than actually needed.
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From this paper that Pat is so afraid of, it warns of the very long persistence of some of the effects of climate change. The carbon industry minority is fighting this the whole way. Extreme wealth in the hands of a few is holding up the rapid deployment needed to keep the warming changes at a minimum.
http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/materials-based-on-reports/reports-in-brief/ACC-final-brief.pdf
Every day around the world, major investments are being made in equipment and infrastructure that can "lock in" commitments to more greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come. Getting the relevant incentives and policies in place now will provide crucial guidance for these investment decisions.
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And here is the kicker. The part where the carbon intensive industries loose out. They will loose market share. Obama is considering 60 mpg average fleet cars by 2025. It’s acutually essential for the country to have this. Exxon Mobil will look at their earnings and know that they are going to go down. Not in their interest to do it.
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