One last chance to save mankind

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921.500-one-last-chance-to-save-mankind.html?full=true&print=true

by nickb • 18 years ago

33 25 18 years ago

hendler• 18 years ago

I wouldn't write off carbon trading yet. Trading of emissions now may not be enough to do any offsetting (only shift monies around), but as the trading system grows to be accountable and based on harder science, then why not, as the article points out, include Lovelock's idea of burying charcoal as part of the "carbon trading" market?

menloparkbum• 18 years ago

Carbon trading makes me realize that my idealism is waning as I rapidly approach old age. I agree with Lovelock in that it seems like a gigantic scam. However, rather than outrage, I'm thinking "How can I get in on the ground floor of this gigantic scam?"

3pt14159• 18 years ago

The key is to ignore CO2 and focus on the much more potent ones, because you can sell credits for equivalent tons of CO2.

See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greenhouse_Gas_by_Sector.png

Step 1: Collect Nitrous Oxide in giant tanks. Step 2: Store the Nitrous Oxide Step 3: Get $$$ from CO2 market Step 4: Use portion of money to buy 30 year government backed securities to cover maintenance of the tanks/land. Keep the rest as profit.

The key is to get your storage/transportation to a minimum. High compression, or piped to the ocean floor, maybe.

medearis• 18 years ago

I couldn't really find much in what he had to say about WHY it is a "scam." The linked article requires registration and is cut off before it starts explaining why "this approach is misguided."

While carbon trading may not be a solution for global warming, it is one of the few models we have for using market incentives to curb carbon emissions in the short term.

Retric• 18 years ago

If you just tax carbon emissions at say 1$ per ton it's easy to track. But with cap and trade people who say plant 1 million trees in the desert can get credits for making things cleaner and sell them. Now the plants all die, but that's not important as long as you can convince the regulators that some of them might make it your in the clear.

With a simple tax everyone pays, when it get's complex those who understand the system pay far less.

m0nty3• 18 years ago

I think there's some info in here:

http://www.carbontradewatch.org/pubs/carbon_neutral_myth.pdf

It's been a while since I read it through but their basic point is that carbon credits are to the environment what indulgences were to the mediaeval church.

jwb119• 18 years ago

as far as i can tell, carbon trading is not directly subsidized by the government as lovelock seems to imply.

the closest thing i can find is subsidies for emissions reductions equipment (which could allow the company purchasing the equipment to then receive some compensation by selling capacity). am i missing something?

anamax• 18 years ago

> as far as i can tell, carbon trading is not directly subsidized by the government as lovelock seems to imply.

It's subsidized in the sense that few people will buy carbon credits unless they're being forced to do so.

c1sc0• 18 years ago

Actually the most interesting point brought up in the article wasn't about carbon trading, but about the future of our species:

"I don't think we can react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what's coming up" - James Lovelock

vs.

"Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended." - Vernor Vinge

Rod• 18 years ago

Quoting economist John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006):

"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."

Remove the word "economic" from the quote, and it still applies perfectly. No expert has ever been able to predict where the human species will be in a few decades.

ivankirigin• 18 years ago

Creating scarcity of a good available in the commons is pretty straight forward. The devil is in the details though, especially for something like carbon which affects pretty much everything.

I would generally prefer a tax on coal and oil, which is easier to account for, and doesn't pick a winner. The main problem is that taxes like this typically go into general funds, rather than helping the problem with, say, investment in research into alternatives.

jsdalton• 18 years ago

I agree with his premise, though I don't entirely agree with his conclusions.

I've come to think that the problem with our approach to global warming right now is that it's been yoked to environmentalism as a broader, and in many ways, spiritual cause. Many of us are guilty of using the threat of global warming to shepherd other goals in there...e.g. renewable or alternative energy, resource conservation etc.

I happen to be inclined toward spiritual environmentalism myself, but if the earth is REALLY warming up due to human caused carbon inputs, we are fucked if we think a few extra wind farms and energy-conscious homes are going to solve anything.

The only solution I think mankind is even capable of undertaking is a technology solution...i.e. we need to find a way of getting carbon out of the air and into the ground. It may not be pretty, cheap, or some nirvana of holistic living, but it's actually how the problem will get solved.

Don't know if I'm making sense, but this is just what I was thinking about recently.

jerf2• 18 years ago

One of the proofs that the advocacy has become spiritual is precisely that engineering solutions are verboten. You can't engineer your way to spirituality, you can only suffer you way to it. (And if the poor must suffer twice as much, well, that's the price of my spirituality.)

If CO2 were a real problem and we were actually interested in solving it, engineering solutions are not a option, they are the only option if the alarmists are correct. We must not only stop putting so much out there, we must actively take out what we have put in.

Yes, I use the word "alarmist" and I'm basically a "doubter"; I'll self-label so there's no need to accuse. A small-but-significant portion of the reason why is the fundamental unseriousness of the alarmists on this point; if it's a problem, then let's fix it, not use global warming as an excuse to implement a whole raft of policies that oh-so-coincidentally you wanted even before it's was a problem and not-so-coincidentally aren't all that effective against global warming.

(The whole "we can't afford to take engineering risks we don't understand" is complete nonsense. Apparently we know with 100% certainty what is coming down the pike with our current emissions, and that is Complete Doom. It's hard to beat a negative like that and... frankly, engineering isn't exactly unfamiliar with that condition anyhow. Apparently we can predict the climate with 100% certainty unless we actually try to use this knowledge to fix the problem, and we must instead only engage in actions that by the IPCC's own admission and models will cost trillions and do next-to-nothing. See, I just have trouble wrapping my head around this whole meme-complex as an engineer; either we have a real problem and engineering solutions should be on the table, or engineering solutions shouldn't be on the table because we don't have a real problem, but trying to split the difference is just inconsistent. BTW, if you believe in AGW but you also believe that engineering solutions should be on the table then I would not label you an alarmist; I reserve the term for those who are using nakedly using AGW as a means of advancing all-but-unrelated political agendas, not those who honestly believe there's a problem that should be solved in the most effective manner possible, whatever that may turn out to be. I don't really agree that this is a problem (there are great problems but they lie elsewhere and don't have one nice catch-phrase), but if I'm wrong, hey, let's fix it! It's worth saying again.)

celoyd• 18 years ago

On spirituality: Yes, a lot of thinking about global warming resembles apocalypticism and moral panic. Some of it is downright horrifying. But that people argue for something incorrectly doesn't make it incorrect. (And apocalypticism and moral panic are presumably adaptive behaviors.)

On acceptance of engineering solutions: Are they really verboten among more than a few factions? Do you have numbers on how many people are an in the alarmist category v. AGW believers like me who accept or encourage engineering solutions? I don't, but I bet it's not as bad as you suggest. Alarmists, like all borderline kooks, are overrepresented in the press because they're fun to read about. I think almost all of us are sane enough that we want the best solution to what we think is a serious problem.

On environmentalism pork in AGW policy: This is a problem. Some of that ethanol stuff, for example, is reminiscent of the rumors that drafts of the Patriot Act had been sitting on a shelf for hears. But for some other measures, there's a more charitable interpretation of the fact that environmentaists were asking for them before we were at the point of crisis.

m0nty3• 18 years ago

WRT your third paragraph, you seem to be lumping a whole load of very diverse opinions together then criticising them as a whole, when in fact many environmentalists don't want the measures which governments are advocating. Governments and politicians want them because (a) they don't want to take bold action, because that might backfire at the polls, and (b) if they get a chance to surreptitiously increase their power over other people, well, that's what politicians do, isn't it? There's also (c) the issue of corporate manipulation of the so-called "green agenda", to the point where profits are more important than environmental problems, however serious they might look.

Engineering solutions are, or are not, a solution depending on who you talk to. I'm worried that too many people want to cash in on the problem by offering snake-oil solutions which can't be tested in advance, like this one:

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/02/geoengineering.ht...

If you can't test it, don't kid yourself that a big roll of the dice is going to help in any way. (And remember, I live here too, so the fact that you like to gamble should take into account the fact that I don't :)

As an engineer, surely you can appreciate that making a change, any change, is relatively easy, but making the correct change can be very difficult. In damaging the environment, we've moved the dials on a very complex machine, and we could do something else and move them again. Maybe we'll even get lucky and set them back to where we started, but of course getting them back to where we started probably won't fix the problem.

Lovelock has always been a radical, and I've never taken his Gaia theory seriously. I think he was quoted a few years ago as saying that nuclear energy was the only viable immediate solution, but now he seems to have changed his mind. It doesn't matter; what matters is making sound decisions based around the scientific analysis, ignoring the personalities and the near-religious fanaticism of some campaigners. In the final analysis, I think there is a real problem because (although I'm not a scientist) I can't see why so many people who are would lie so deliberately, so persistently, and about such a serious issue.

Spyckie• 18 years ago

interesting... I'm taking a class on the economics of Global warming, but as we just started I don't know if I can comment just yet.

However, allowance trading worked very well in controlling acid rain - one of the incentives to use it on carbon emissions as well.

mhartl• 18 years ago

However, allowance trading worked very well in controlling acid rain - one of the incentives to use it on carbon emissions as well.

There's a key difference: the time lag between emissions and acid rain is short. Stopping the formation of nitric and sulfuric acids in the atmosphere happened shortly after the emissions ended. Not so with carbon dioxide; the time lag is decades. Even if all CO2 emissions stopped tomorrow, the Earth would still continue to warm.

This might seem like cause for pessimism, and perhaps it is. But it also undermines the sense of urgency, almost desperation, among many environmentalists that we should "do something", no matter how ill-thought-out that something may be. It seems better just to wait, and try not to do too much harm in the short run.

Maybe we're doomed, maybe technology will save us. Either way, it's going to be a heck of a ride. :-)

gruseom• 18 years ago

What an embarrassingly vain and foolish title.

electromagnetic• 18 years ago

He's just repeating crap that's been said for centuries "the earths too populated to sustain!". They've been saying it forever, yet populations are still growing and so is food production.

"the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left"

The first part is laughable, his citation was a decrease in rice production 'predicted' because of global warming. At worst (if rice went extinct) only about 2 billion people would be at risk of potential starvation, however as the temperatures increase so do the ranges in which plants grow so when rice isn't producible other food will be and these foods already have a high productivity for plants. For the majority of the century rice production would likely be switched between the different types of rice; areas that start getting more droughts would end up growing drought resistant strains and in areas that get flooded, well then you'd grow the deep water rice.

The last part of that quote is just full out laughable. There's no evidence of significant decreases in human population in the early 500,000 years of human existence. The biggest population declines in humanity have happened relatively recently, namely the black plague and the spanish flu and all the major disease outbreaks. I'd love to hear where he got th figure '2000' from, because that would have shown in our genes.

If the human population really had dropped to 2000 people, the human race would have gone extinct. If he's talking about modern humans (us) then this is 100% bullshit, because we haven't seen anything like an ice age because we've been around for 10,000 years. If he's talking about the Cro-Magnon then it's BS again because they largely supplanted the Neanderthals by adapting to the warmer weather better. If he's talking about... oh wait the humans that lived through an ice age were the Neanderthals, which pretty much thrived during it, they lived in Southern Britain and Northern Britain at the time was a glacier! I mean his claim is laughably moronic, because the one time when homo sapiens were truly at risk in the Ice Ages we would see it, but the Neanderthals lived throughout most of Europe and the Middle East.

Here's a link to prove my point, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Carte_Nea... the red dots are where Neanderthal fossils have been found, and it even shows where the glaciers extended to during the Ice Age.

I mean, if you look at modern human population estimates, yes it's been below 5,000... because we'd just evolved! The lowest estimated population is before fossil evidence of modern humans, IE pre-8000BC. A similar thing will have happened with the Cro-Magnons, as they simply expanded and supplanted the Neanderthals, likely the same as Homo Sapiens Sapiens did to the Cro-Magnon. Human population likely never dipped below hundreds of thousands because a new species simply overtook the last. In fact Homo Sapiens Sapiens came right at the advent of agriculture when humans stopped being migratory and were truly affected by environmental change (IE you couldn't just follow your food).

/Rant over.

Summary: This guy's more quack than a duck.

njharman• 18 years ago

The thing that made me doubt.

"What about work to sequester carbon dioxide?

That is a waste of time. It's a crazy idea..."

"So are we doomed?

There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal[aka sequestered CO2]..."

One last chance to save mankind

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