Is it actually possible to STOP Global Warming and Climate Change?

[dubeskin]

I've been wondering about this lately. I understand the arguments in favor of going greener, and I'm slowly doing so. But to what extent is it actually possible to STOP and/or reverse global warming and climate change? To some extent, with the way that civilization is going, isn't environmental destruction inevitable?

Think about it. If you use a reusable bag when you go shopping, that just means there are less plastic bags in the environment, but you're not actually saving it. When you drive a hybrid car, you're simply doing less damage, correct? Or am I way off base here? I've just wondered, wouldn't the ONLY real way to stop and reverse the effects of climate change be to remove EVERY car, light bulb, factory and anything else which produces harmful wastes?

[Systematic Chaos]

1. Sorry, the answer is no.

This thread about sums it up if you haven't checked it out already:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x143720

What it means is that once all that methane hits the atmosphere, we're going to open the floodgates to a true mass extinction.

[NickB79]

4. Yep, we've passed the tipping point

At this point, all we can do is try to slow the bleeding through conservation. Even so, we'll probably see the human population drop to 1-2 billion by the end of the century.

[lapfog_1]

2. It is my belief that the present predictions on the speed of

global climate change are wrong. It's happening much much faster than earlier predictions. The positive feedback loops in place are reaching tipping points that, once reached, it may not matter one little bit if we stopped burning fossil fuels entirely. We may still have time, but it's not enough to "cap emissions" at some level or other as if that is a magic bullet and we can walk away thinking "problem solved". At this point, our only hope may be to drastically reduce emissions coupled with artificial "global cooling" engineering (which will be very dangerous)... coupled with some yet undefined and unimagined way to capture methane and carbon and sequester it directly from the atmosphere.

And no one will be willing to engage in that kind of action.

Our resources will be consumed with trying to cope with a climate changed world and our survival... not putting the genie back in the bottle. The planet our great grandparents grew up in will not return... perhaps ever again for the age of humans.

[Teaser]

3. Stop it? No. But hopefully the biosphere will stabilize itself

at a new equilibrium point that is not hostile to human life.

[ananda]

5. Well, if miracles do happen..

.. that would be one.

[Teaser]

20. It's either that or kill myself

and I'm not ready for that option yet.

There are multiple stable climate equilibria. It's certainly possible there is another on in a higher temperature range.

just gotta hope and work for it. Nothing else to do.

[NNadir]

6. No. It's over. Ignorance has won.

[kestrel91316]

43. Oh, my. Little Mary Sunshine forgot to call us all illiterate.

STOP THE PRESSES!!!!!!

:rofl:

[melody]

7. We have to assume it can be stabilized or that we can create technology to address the instability

Otherwise, we just sit down and die.

[Dead_Parrot]

8. Probably not

The planet does have self-regulation mechanisms: If we were able to get our collective footprint within their ability to adjust we'd be more or less OK: At the moment, though, we're miles out.

I still like to think we can limit the damage - although if we do trigger a half-trillion-ton methane release we're well fucked.

[diane in sf]

9. Not necessarily, but we should try our best to undo the damage we've been doing

[gear_head]

10. how much of your standard of living, are you willing to give up? n/t

[tinrobot]

11. If we don't stop immediately, the planet will stop us.

I don't think people can give up their oil-driven lifestyles, we're too addicted. Oil makes life way too easy. We're not going to take serious action until serious catastrophes start happening... BIG catastrophes.

The only way we can prevent these catastrophes is to stop burning immediately and then invent something that sucks half the carbon out of the atmosphere very quickly.

[GliderGuider]

12. Sadly another no.

We're well past the point where human actions could prevent the coming change. And to make it worse, it's not just the climate that has us in its sights right now. In addition to global warming, the converging crisis involves Peak Oil, shrinking food supplies, a global economy on the brink, dying oceans, shrinking fresh water supplies, and a world population that is still growing by 75 million people every year. These problems are all interrelated, and their effects are all manifesting now. It is obvious that the Limits to Growth that that the Club of Rome warned us about in 1970 have arrived.

There is no technical solution to this dilemma. There is no "solution" that will keep things running much like they have in the past, with just a few minor adjustments to our technologies and lifestyles. The problem is too large and complex for any such solution to exist.

There appears to be little chance for a social solution either, one that would result in a wholesale reorientation of our culture's devotion to material growth. The economic, commercial, political, social and educational institutions that define our culture will work tirelessly to defeat any such change, as it undercuts their very reason for being.

A massive, involuntary, physical transformation of our civilization now appears inevitable. We cannot control the coming changes. We can, however, work to mitigate them -- to insulate ourselves, our families and communities from some of their effects, and we can control our personal response to them.

My web site is devoted to an analysis of this problem set, how we are responding to it, and has a few ideas about the sorts of actions that might be useful.

Paul Chefurka
http://www.paulchefurka.ca

[Delphinus]

13. My own personal opinion here, but no.

I do not think it is possible to stop it. I hate to take away someone's hope, but sometimes hope hampers us and locks us in place.

Jared Diamond, in his book Collapse, talks about how even if we stopped - EVERYTHING - RIGHT THIS MINUTE - there's a "run on" of effects. There's a term for this, but I can't recall what it is, but what it boils down to is that there is so much forward momentum, that it would take like 50 years to see the end results of what we are doing now. In other words, it's not like quitting smoking. If you quit smoking, you'll quickly notice the health effects.

What we *could* have done was mitigate the effects of global climate destabilization - but that would have had to have started many years ago. Now, we're all going to live with the consequences. Not just us, but future generations.

All this is not to say go out and party like it's 1999! Do what you can. Of course, right now, today is a good day. Tomorrow might not feel like today and then I'd say, what the hell - why bother?

[GliderGuider]

14. I think the word you're looking for is hysteresis.

It's about system inertia - the state of the system begins to change some time after an input is applied, and continues changing after the input is removed. It's the "steering a supertanker" effect.

I was asked recently to explain the difference between "Live in the Now" and "Eat drink and be merry" -- I responded that the former is mindful, the latter is heedless. We need as much mindfulness as we can muster right now.

[hatrack]

15. At this point, no. Some degree of change, very possibly quite substantial, is inevitable.

There's just too much inertia built into the system.

Remember that the CO2 you burn in your car today will be in the atmosphere for roughly a century before natural systems can reprocess it into plants, soil or seawater.

On top of that, the very rapid shifts we've seen in polar ice and its effects on albedo, mean that there's a very good chance that we've just been building up momentum over the past 20 years or so, and that the party's just now really getting going.

Don't get me wrong, I think we need to do everything we can to blunt the process. This is for two reasons.

First, what we discover or develop, whether it's a superfficient boiler or a new suite of mental furniture, may be of use.

Second, not doing so means, in my opinion, embracing permanent doublethink, screamingly intense cognitive dissonance and enhanced loss of social cohesion, particularly in the face of what is likely coming down the pike.

[pscot]

16. As long as there are 7 billion of us

and growing, it's hard to imagine how any degree of balance or sustainability can be possible. As Paul has suggested, we're probably looking at at least a century of chaos and die-back. The survivers likely won't be able to keep our technology working, and their resource base will be a mere fragment of what we've had to work with. Sustainability by default? At this point it's an open question as to whether plants and animals will be able to survive the forces we've set in motion. I'm sure there's something I should be doing about all this, but I can't for the life of me see what that might be. Somehow, I don't think that swapping out light bulbs is a sufficient response.

[XemaSab]

17. Nope

If we stopped using ALL fossil fuels RIGHT NOW, it would take 600 years for the climate to absorb all that excess carbon. IF we're lucky.

[Boomer]

18. The countdown began awhile ago

At this point, given the inertia of human behavior, the only possible hope for a substantive change would be a sudden, massive depopulation, brought about by something such as plague. Whether it would stop us in our tracks soon enough to buffer the climate rollercoaster that is already in motion is doubtful. But it's the only event that could, ironically enough, give us a fighting chance.

Personally, I think it's too late for us to change the outcome. As we're learning, it's not a matter of choosing a gradation, it's a matter of setting off a tipping point. And then once that goes off, there is a complete change of state. At best we could hope to slow our approach to major setting points, stall a little before we pay the price, but we're not even making a good faith effort for that.

[Shoelace]

19. another ice age would stop it!

which could happen within 5-10 years if the Arctic ice continues to freshen the Atlantic ocean to shut down the Thermohaline circulation. Hatrack posted an article about the freshening of Antarctic waters a couple of days ago.
It's something to ponder and from an older article about "abrupt climate change" by the Union of Concerned Scientists comes this:

How might thermohaline circulation be turned off?

Thermohaline circulation is driven by the sinking of cold, salty water at high latitudes. Fresh water flowing into the North Atlantic Ocean from rainfall or the melting of ice and permafrost can make the ocean water less salty, and therefore less dense. If it becomes "light" enough, it will not sink any more, possibly slowing or shutting down global thermohaline circulation. Indeed, during some of the abrupt events in Earth's past climate, scientists find evidence of large catastrophic flows of fresh water into the North Atlantic from the melting of glaciers and ice caps, and due to flooding from glacier-dammed lakes. Without the large-scale sinking of salty water in the North Atlantic the influx of warm water to replace it from the tropics would not occur, effectively switching off the thermohaline circulation.

Past changes in thermohaline circulation have occurred during periods of relatively rapid climate change, such as transitions in and out of glaciations. Similarly, the rapid warming we are currently experiencing could trigger an abrupt thermohaline shutdown and subsequent regional cooling. While a shutdown of thermohaline circulation is unlikely to occur in the next century, scientists have recently found that freshwater inputs have already caused measurable "freshening" of North Atlantic surface waters over the past 40 years. Human activities may be driving the climate system toward a threshold and thus increasing the chance of abrupt climate changes occurring.

http://people.uncw.edu/tobiasc/GLY%20150/Abrupt%20Climate%20Change%20FAQ.htm

[kristopher]

21. I say the answer is "We don't know"

We know there is a problem with climate.
We know that action is required.
We do not know the time available to accomplish the actions that are required.

So the real questions are, 1) how do we reduce uncertainty? And 2) how do we motivate action in the face of uncertainty?

Since we can't know the outcome until we have better data on the timing, a truthful and complete answer to your question is that we don't know.

If you are talking about technological potential, the answer is yes, we can.

If you are talking about whether we (collectively) are motivated to make the changes, the answer is clearly not yet.

If you are talking about whether we (collectively) will become motivated to make the changes in time to avoid extinction, the answer is it depends on how fast we can eliminate uncertainty and how much time we have once uncertainty is eliminated.

The future is extremely uncertain; uncertainly breeds fear; and fear breeds bitterness anger and despair.

Now the doomers are jumping on the potential for methane release as their bogeyman of the day, but that only happens because they (nor anyone else) have no idea of what is happening on a broad scale deep underwater. We have little glimpses, small hints, a clue here and a clue there. This type of uncertainly, in my mind, causes some people to ignore the problem, some people to assume and prepare however they will for the worst, and some people to act on the premise that "we can do something and we should do something until the facts come in that more clearly define the risks we are facing". Those in the last category are constrained most by the extremists at both ends who feed off a battle with their mirror image on the other side of the spectrum instead of devoting their energies to constructive action in the face of such great uncertainly.

Just MHO.

edited to change 'succeeds' to 'happens'.

[GliderGuider]

23. What's wrong with a working approximation?

As in,

"Based on the data we have today, and the observed trends in system behaviour, the answer is 'probably not.'"

What's to be gained from working to solve a probably insoluble problem? Why not reframe the problem to one that can be addressed, and work on that instead?

As in,

"The best reason to promote the electrification of transport is to reduce our global dependence on oil, which we know is a finite resource. Doing that would also stop us from treating at least one part of our natural capital as income, thereby removing a significant element of the pyramid scheme of global growth. Oh, and by the way, it might reduce the CO2 we generate per average vehicle mile traveled, for whatever good that might do."

[kristopher]

24. That works, but it isn't enough

There are a number of drivers for different parts of the picture. Right now, people are motivated for change specific to petroleum because of 1) the war and 2) high prices. Is that sufficient to over ride the interests of those who are invested in the current system by lifestyle and/or economics? By itself I'd say probably no; and if yes, only marginally. That margin subject to ending the war and adjustment to the price of gas. $6 dollars a gallon hasn't been sufficient to motivate a technology infrastructure shift in Europe and Asia, so I don't think price alone is the key.

Policy changes like we are seeking require the confluence of many otherwise unrelated events and circumstances. In this case, we need the authority of science firmly behind a timeline for shifting technology to deal with CC. The timeline is important, because it fulfills the economic argument that a transition from oil/coal (with all the associated construction and sunk costs) to other technologies will automatically occur as the availability and costs of using the resources themselves dictate. e
Without a timeline against which to anchor the future costs, those costs are simply disregarded and decision making continues to ba based on short term impact.

[GliderGuider]

25. Do you think such a timeline can be established for CC?

Both petroleum depletion and CC are global problems. To the people in most of Europe and Asia, the American occupation of Iraq has little to do with their desire to move away from oil, though it might have some marginal play in the USA. The drivers for that move are going to be price and frank shortages. I expect to see $300 to $500/bbl oil within 5 years, which translates to $11-$18/gal gasoline. If the net oil export crisis bites in the same period (as I expect it to) there will be dry pumps in the USA. That's going to motivate a lot of movement away from fossil fuels.

But as problematic as shifting global public policy away from oil is, shifting it away from CO2 will be exponentially harder because of peoples' need for energy of some sort. Chindia, South Africa and many other nations will adamantly refuse to reduce their coal consumption if it means that their citizens will freeze in the dark. They realize that is the road to revolution.

Addressing AGW in any significant way is only possible if other energy sources are available to replace fossil fuels at the scale required. The time line of oil and gas depletion, the need for fossil fuels to bootstrap alternative energy industries, the logistical and net energy difficulties posed by the required infrastructure build-out of alternatives, and the relative commercial immaturity of the alternative energy industries make such a prospect problematic. That means there will be extreme reluctance on the part of global policy-makers to move away from coal. Which means it probably won't happen. End-game ensues.

[kristopher]

26. You have to start with best available data

That means the price of petroleum you're using is suspect. It is an extraordinary claim that has, as far as I know, no basis. While it is true that for the past 5 years, we've (for the first time) been discovering new reserves at a pace lower than we are taking it out of the ground (rates have ranged from mid-50% to high 80% in those 5 years), it is also true that fully 25% of expected yet undiscovered petroleum is under the Arctic ice. We have about a 60 years supply at current use rates; and while demand is rising rapidly, there is little to support the contention that needs will so far outstrip supply as to result in the prices level you speculate about.

Coal is a different story. What you say is completely true, and that is the basis of my statement regarding risk assessment and a timeline for CC costs. The move away from fossils will occur when the perceived costs outweigh the perceived benefits. In the meantime there are a couple of things we, here, can do to mitigate the increase in growing use of FF by developing economies. First is, as mentioned, couple market access to carbon emissions at point of origin. But the more important function we can serve is technological development and deployment of viable alternatives. If we bring online a system that proves the alternative and through the judicious use of market forces, we can cause world production to target the technologies that more effectively utilize energy. As developing countries grow, if the policies are properly crafted, they will have more economic incentive to develop green than they have to develop brown.

I understand you skepticism because of the scale of the endeavor we are discussing. I too find it daunting. However, when I consider our ability to commit to change for purposes of war, I realize yet again that it is a matter of will, not capability.

WE have the resources in wind, solar, wave/current/tidal, geothermal, and if absolutely necessary, nuclear. That is an established fact.

We have the ability to extract the energy in these resources at a tolerable cost. That is an established fact.

The scale of the endeavor is monumental. That is a fact.

What is the immediacy of the danger?

That is a message full of ifs, probablys, and maybes that totally fails to broadly establish the need for such a massive undertaking.

CC is the most studied problem in the history of mankind, but it is so complex that we still can't respond to the layman's questions about risk with a definitive, unambiguous answer. WE should be able to very soon, so until then, we need to strt laying the groundwork for a globally integrated clean energy system by building its core among the economically developed countries, while guiding in a green direction the growth of developing countries.

One further word. China is extremely aggressive on the topic of climate change. While they are faced with the limits on action that you pointed out so clearly, they are simultaneously investing heavily in renewable R&D AND renewable deployment. In many senses, they are better positioned to lead than we are. They aren't saddled with massive investment in fossil fuel infrastructure, and they have a command and control government that can act decisively instead of with the need to cultivate support among democratic interest groups. Keep your eye on them.

[GliderGuider]

27. While my estimates of oil prices are extreme,

they aren't complete rectal plucks.

Keep in mind the key thing about Peak Oil - it's not how much oil you have in the ground that counts, it's how fast you can get it out. Our civilization needs flows, not stocks, to function.

In 2007, the Energy Watch Group, a German government-sponsored organization, published a very thorough analysis of the world oil situation out to 2030. The PDF is available here. They project a decline from our current supply of about 84 mbpd to a rate of 58 mbpd by 2020, or a loss of 30% of the world's oil production rate in 12 years. Based on this I expect a decline of 10% in the next 5 years.

Given that a loss of 5% of the world's oil flows due to the OPEC embargo in 1973 more than doubled the world price, a loss of 10% of the world supply in the face of relentlessly increasing demand (not to mention the growing perception that this will be a permanent condition) could easily triple the price from it's current level of $115.

China's statements on CC are aggressive all right, but so far their actions have utterly failed to make a difference. They're still putting in two coal power plants a week. I'll keep my eye on them, but my expectations have been set pretty low and so far I've seen no reason to raise the bar.

[kristopher]

28. My initial impression is that the source may be problematic

There are two reasons. First, there is the mission statement: "The Energy power industry and Government organisations keep up the belief of the unlimited availability of cheap energy from conventional sources. But energy policy needs objective information."

This presupposes the conclusion that the power industry and governments do not currently operate on "objective information". I reject that premise. It is an incredible statement for a reputable research organization to make. There are literally tens of thousands of lifelong academics and industry experts who spend their entire careers neck deep in objective information. The statement is an insult to the integrity and intelligence of all those people.

The organization doesn't appear to me to be operating under the auspices of the German government. Instead it looks like one of it's sponsors is a member of the legislature. That is as important a distinction, I think, as if I were to recommend a US government source to you, only to find the connect to be that Newt Gingrich is one of its founders.

What do you think this group sees that is different than what "the Energy power industry and Government organisations" see? What new data are they using that everyone else doesn't have? What assumptions are they using that so dramatically alters their results? Is there a supported claim of falsified data behind the results that all those university researchers and "The Energy power industry and Government organisations" are using?

All of that said, I admit that their arguments may be valid. Frankly, however, I'm not terribly optimistic. Where is their research published besides on their website? Where is the peer review? I'll check it out, but I'm pretty skeptical, and as I'm on dialup, the 2mb file will have to wait until I finish this.

In the 90s the oil industry shut down 47 refineries to consolidate operations, cut costs and fully utilize production capacity. For ten years running they reduced energy use in refining while boosting productivity. What you are observing is the market establishing for the first time an efficiently (in the sense of economics) and globally organized petroleum industry responding to a sudden surge in global demand brought on by the removal of trade barriers in the 80s and 90s. It happened so quickly it was somewhat unexpected, but judging by the way realignment of the industry has been carried out over the past 28 years, it doesn't seem to have pushed the system beyond the point the industry was precisely sizing itself for. I mean they are operating at about 95% of operating capacity in the refineries and the price is very favorable to the producers. They know the end is inevitable so they are squeezing what cash they can out of their merchandise while they can. Once a renewable economy gets established their commodity will still have great value, but it won't command nearly the percentage of the world's wealth as a source of plastics as it does as a primary source of energy.

So for now, I think you are fundamentally misinterpreting the signals.

Peak oil is a very real concept, there is a finite supply and with continued use it will run out. But making the jump to predicting the point that at which it is going to run out is a modeling task that makes CC look simple because of the diversity of variability introduced through the human element. Look at how hard it is to predict a recession. Under every possible market condition someone can and does predict impending recession. Sometimes they are right, but I think that is a law of averages type win, sooner or later someone is bound to be right. The point of that being that this type of predictive literature is, by its nature, of low value for policy planning. While it may be right, there are so many equally convincing but incorrect arguments regarding impending recession that the costs of response to all the false warnings creates a bar of credibility that must be somewhat high.



I guess I just have to read it and see.

[GliderGuider]

29. You'll make up your own mind on the paper, but

You still show evidence of not understanding the subject of Peak Oil terribly well. I draw this conclusion from your statement, "But making the jump to predicting the point that at which it is going to run out is a modeling task that makes CC look simple". If this is actually what you meant to say, it shows that you have not educated yourself sufficiently on the topic.

Peak Oil is not about guessing when the oil is going to "run out". Rather, it's about trying to determine approximately when the global oil industry will reach a state of maximum output rate. Peak Oil theory says that following that point, geological constraints will act to reduce the flows in such a way that they go into permanent decline, regardless of our levels of investment in exploration and drilling.

Beyond that simple description it gets complicated, as any scientific or engineering domain tends to. There are interminable debates on such arcane topics as "What is "oil" anyway?", Peak Lite (when oil production is still growing but demand is outstripping it), tertiary recovery technologies, data transparency etc. These debates, however, are entirely secondary to the acceptance of the idea that global oil production will act like an aggregate of individual fields, basins and provinces, all of which show a bell-curve in production under normal circumstances.

As far as our industrial civilization is concerned, Peak Oil is going to hit hard, long before climate change has made more than an opening statement. The section about oil in my article "World Energy to 2050" offers a set of internet references to get you started.

You really need to look into this more deeply. This snark is a boojum.

[tom_paine]

30. So much of our difficulties arises from breaking up into camps in which we view the other side as

"doomers" or "deniers".

By doing so, we immediately disdain by categorization, and consequently, get further away from the science and the hard data.

There are no easy answers here, especially as the Global Warming/Climate Change and Peak Oil debates (to name two of our biggest among many) have attracted political and multi-billion dollar forces lining up on one side, using the latest techniques in advertising, marketing, and PR, or as I like to call it the currently very powerful Science of Lying or the Science of Deception.

But, ignoring that for a moment and all things being equal, it is these categorizations which are detrimental to the debate.

As I have said in E/E many times before, biological processes, as opposed to physical or chemical processes, sort of have a asymptotic "evidentiary curve". In chemistry or physics, 100% certainties abound, and I mean 100% certainties. If one heats ultra-pure water to a certain temperature at a certain pressure, it will boil at the same temperature 100% of the time. If one mixes 1 mole of Sodium and 1 mole of chlorine (I'm not a chemist, so I cannot say the exact methodology for making "table salt") at X temperature and pressure, it will combine to make the same amount of aforementioned table salt 100% of the time.

In biology and all studies of ultra-complex systems, it isn't like that. Rather the evidence increases logarithmically from a % viewpoint, asymptotically from a graphic viewpoint. One can approach 100% certainty - 1% 10% 90% 99% 99.9% 99.99% and so forth, but that kind of physical sciences ironclad 100% reproducibility, can never be gained.

As a result, you couldn't have a Climate Denier-type Industry for Boyle's Law, because it is too easily 100% reproducible. But, with biology or climatology or any of these ultra-complex sciences which defy 100% proof, someone can always metaphorically drive a truck through even a 0.000001% uncertainty by arguing to the uninitiated that "uncertainty is uncertainty".

The more scientifically illiterate a society is, the easier such PR is. Unfortunately, current day Imperial Amerika is probably one of the most, if not the most scientifically illiterate of the modern industrialized nations. Certainly periodic educational studies repeatedly confirm this, though, as with all complex systems, 100% proof of such cannot be made, only increasing orders of magnitude of "suggested evidence" 90%, 99%, 99.9% and so forth which each independent study conducted from different angles and methodologies.

But I am falling down the rabbit-hole of my own point here, and violating my own stricture that for the purposes of this discussion, we must ignore the multi-billion Climate Change Denier theory borne out of the self-interests of the wealthiest segments of our society in the various extractive industries.

Getting back to my original thesis of this post and ignoring the lucrative Climate Change Denier Industry:

We feel confident because, by this time, we are on the 90% side of the equation these days (some might say the 99% side, but these things are not quantifiable). But the fact of the matter is that if we ever start rejecting ideas strictly because they come from the side opposite ours, we lose scientific objectivity.

Because in the end, there is no "doomer" side and there is no "denier" side (remember, we are speaking of the science and ignoring the Climate Change Denier Industry for the purposes of this discussion). Just the hard data and what will happen in the future, which is really just the hard data we have not yet gathered.

And the minute any of us starts dismissing data simply because we categorize one side or the other as doomers or deniers, we do nothing but blind ourselves.

But, that is all things being equal. And all things being equal, there is most definitely a chance, even if it is by now reduced to 10, 1 or even 0.1% that something which to us would appear to be a ludicrous and unbelievable deux ex machina is going to mitigate the impact of Climate Change and even Peak Oil.

We can't see it from here, just as the hard data suggested to Paul Ehrlich in the 70s that there was a 90% chance we would have mass famines by the late 1980s, and he could not see what kind of crazy deux ex machina could save us from that. Turned out that the massive leaps in the sciences of genetics and the Green Revolution was such a deux ex machina, at least temporarily.

So it's still possible, even at this late date, that a similar unknown force or technological advance will provide another "Ehrlichian" deux ex machina, even if it is only a 1% chance.

Unfortunately, all things are not equal and it is clear massive monetary forces have been brought to bear on the denier side, hence the massively profitable Climate Change Denier Industry of which Al Gore mentioned in his movie "An Inconvenient Truth". Only through massive application of wealth and power could you have a situation where 99% or higher of peer-reviewed publications accept human-caused warming as a near-certainty (as near as you can get with a complex science like climatology which is still really only in it's infancy compared to, say, chemistry or physics which are 300-400 years old), while "mainstream media" is much closer to a 50-50 split.

That also muddies the discussion, which is it's intent, but in many ways it weakens the "denier" side itself by drawing it away from the scientific data and to the advertising/marketing/PR side of things, and these things are the antithesis of hard data. Bill O'Reilly vs. Carl Sagan, if you will.

Carl has the scientific literacy and the hard data on his side, but Bill has a "megaphone" that is a million times more powerful and cash reserves pouring into his side at a rate of ten million X compared to Carl.

Which brings us full circle to the Conundrum of Totalitarianism (as I call it), as it applied to Modern Amerika. In the olden days, before advertising, marketing and PR existed in a media saturated social environment, various scientific factions battled each other on a more level playing field. Sure there's ego and all the human frailties involved. Science doesn't always get it right, but unlike religion and politics, it has mechanisms for true peer-review and self-correction.

There is a fantastic account of one such example in "Under a Green Sky" by Peter Ward, regarding the Impact Theory of Cretaceous extinction vs. the older theories that preceded it. Science and scientists are not immune from human frailties, but because of the unique nature of the scientific method, prior to the advent of the things I mentioned in the last paragraph, science usually worked it out in our ongoing asymptotic evolution of knowledge, 1, 10, 90, 99, 99.9, 99.99 and so forth.

But NOW, throw in these massive forces of money and power, media saturation and PR, and the entire system is upset.

But that is the nature of aggressive PR, to put it's "enemies" on the rhetorical defensive, to use the asymptotic nature of the evidentiary curve of biological and ultra-complex sciences to squirt rhetorical ink into the water, taking comfort the fact that the lie is wrapped around the grain of truth, that from a scientific viewpoint there IS a chance, however slim and getting slimmer, that Climate Change or Peak Oil is somehow wrong.

To the Climate Change Denier Industry, immensely lucrative and immensely more powerful than the scientific community as a whole, let alone the single discipline of climatology, hard data points such as the recent discovery of the methane releases in the Arctic Ocean are just the issue du jour of the doomer community, rather than one in a massive series of hard data points which together make up the whole scientific picture.

PR is also designed to create "no-win" situations for it's opponents, so that if scientists do acknowledge the asymptotic nature of the evidence, the Climate Change Denier Industry screams, "See? They admit they are not sure!"

If the scientific community exposes the Climate Change Denier Industry anbd rhetorically hits back, then it screams, "Look, they are disregarding their own skepticism out of self-interest by saying future warming is a 100% certainty! They are hypocrites who should not be listened to!"

As I said, the no-win situation.

I am reminded of what Carl Jung once said, something which I believe has now been revealed by the last half-century to be more akin to prophesy than mere prediction. What Jung said was that future wars (and here I expand the definition of 'wars' to include bloodless battles, as well, for the purposes of this discussion) would not be nations against nations but human beings against our psychoses. In this case, the deliberately cultivated psychoses accessed through advertising, marketing and PR wielded by the powerful in a media-saturated environment.

Whew! I'm a-rambling now, eh? But what to do about the "no-win" situation created by the multi-billion-dollar Climate Change Denier Industry that muddies the waters and forces us to make a choice between proper scientific skepticism in the face of an multi-billion advertising/PR campaign which lends said campaign unwarranted legitimacy or proper indignation and outrage at the twisting of the scientific method and the abuse of the reality of the asymptotic evidentiary curve that plays right into the hands of the hypocritical advertising/PR program by ignoring the scientific truth that there IS the chance, however small in the face of the evidence, that the science is incomplete or incorrect?

What to do about an Industry which makes hard data easily dismissable as an issue du jour or which turns dwindling uncertainty into massive uncertainty by painting the other side as "doomers", thu dismissing everything they have to say in one fell swoop?

Because one of the main tenets of good advertising/marketing/PR is the creating of a semantic template which speaks in short declarative bursts like Arctic methane release is just a issue du jour for doomers and cannot be unpacked but by much longer qualified statements that take much longer to "unpack" the compact deception created by these semantic templates.

Phil Agre, a UCLA professor, has written extensively about this relatively new methodology, which has been the most wildly successful propaganda methodology in human history, I believe, and is now employed across-the-board by the powerful to deceive the disinterested observers in the rest of society.

Thus, we are caught in a massive catch-22, a massive no-win, and collectively at the mercy of the the PR industry, wherever it chooses to "point it's massive rhetorical cannons of deceptions and half-truths".

Damn it, I don't know the answer, I can only see the question. And we collectively are more at the mercy of the advertising, marketing and PR industries, used as blinder and bludgeon by the powerful through the delivery system of media saturation, than any human beings ever were.

What do we do? As long as there is even a 0.00000000000001% doubt, this template still applies, where each contradictory (to the PR program) data point is just a fad, and issue du jour to be dismissed with a rhetorical flick of the wrist, and a 95% scientific consensus can also be dismissed as a bunch of doomers with another similar rhetorical flick of the wrist?

I just don't know, but to me it seems the asymptotic evidentiary curve on whether it has been allowed to cement itself in American culture as "conventional wisdom" and tipping point of no return, without opposition when we had the chance, seems like it, too, is approaching the 90 99 99.9 side of the curve.

But that is speculation based on my own observations these last seven years.

But that is all it is. I have never hoped to be more wrong about something.

[wtmusic]

35. Great post

A lot of what you describe can be summed up by a need to rely on the precautionary principle.

I would add pessimistically that just as every great civilization of the past has rotted from the inside out -- Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome -- IMO the decimation of urban intellectuals by nuclear terrorism in the 21st century will create an evolutionary and cultural tilt which will result in another millenium-long dark age.

Have a nice day! :D

[Shoelace]

37. but you are right

and I've studied these things for about 7 years as well. I've delved deep into the deceptive PR campaigns financed by we all know who. What I found was so vile and shameless, I had to opt out just to keep my BP down!
It has been instructive to argue with many of them on other forums and I actually did manage to chase one of them (paid to post PR person) totally off one message board. The lack of even basic science education shows up all over the internet. But when you have Exxonmobil funding various high school science programs (not to mention college level courses), what does one expect?

It would help many of us if we could have public access to research papers instead of having to pay for subscriptions to Nature, Science Mag, et al. Open access is one thing I fight for now.

And now what the Spinmeisters have gone and done now is to move their ops to the UK and it's working there as it did here. Dumbing down so many in such a short time. Still, we have realclimate.org, Tamino, Gristmill blog, and lots of other scientists working very hard to clarify the science for the masses.
How well that works is a huge question.

That said, at least we have this refuge wherein most of us here have read the science, continue to do the research and share what we know. Sort of a little light shining through our new "Dark Ages" here in Amerika.

[kristopher]

38. Call your local university and join their library

It comes with a host of access.

Google scholar will often find you a copy published on an open access site. And finally if you know the researcher you want a paper from, go their website where you will often find their published work for free.

[Shoelace]

40. thanks! Copernicus is good for open access research papers too

geez, I forgot about the Library and didn't think to go to the scientist's websites to see if their papers are available there. Problem with our library is that it's some miles away and the hours have been cut back. Perhaps they have online access - I'll look into that. Thanks Kristopher!

There is a movement by scientists themselves to create more open access to their papers but haven't heard much about progress on that front lately.

I like to read papers that are "hot off the press" so to speak.
I do use Copernicus "Open access" research publications since one can actually view the peer review process, discussions, etc and read the papers after changes are made. Here's their website:

http://www.copernicus.org/COPERNICUS/publications/publication_journals.html

[kristopher]

31. I understand it

And I believe the statement is accurate in the figurative sense I used it. The speculative and apocalyptic nature of the discussions make clear that "running out of oil" is the basis for interest in the subject. For example, the first item in the "Key Findings" is this "“Peak oil is now”.
For quite some time, a hot debate is going on regarding peak oil. Institutions close to the energy industry, like CERA, are engaging in a campaign trying to “debunk” the “peak oil theory”. This paper is one of many by authors inside and outside ASPO (the Organisation for the Study of Peak Oil) showing that peak oil is anything but a “theory”, it is real and we are witnessing it already."

Note please, that this key finding is essentially a shout that "WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF OIL!!!"

I'm a little disappointed that you choose that particular response to the criticisms I offered regarding the validity of the Energy Watch Group as a reliable source of information. For example, you offer no explanation for the misleading use of a legislator's private support; nor do you comment on a mission statement that presumes all legitimate authority on the subject to be either ethically bankrupt or stupid.

I reviewed the Executive Summary briefly, and I find a large number of unsubstantiated assertions that are used to justify what appears to be the cherry picking of information. They say they choose to rely on production data because it is a better indicator than reserve data. However, a keyword search of the document fails to find mention of the word consolidation and only one mention of the word marketing. Since production data cannot be interpreted except in light of the marketing plans of oil producers that would seem to be a serious omission. Especially since the 80s and 90s were a period where the aim was through consolidation, to eliminate the artificially low price of petroleum that resulted from production that was in excess of demand. To claim, with no reference to that marketing strategy, that declining production has an alternative explanation requires at a minimum a thorough discussion of why the accepted understanding is wrong. There are lots of charts, tables and graphs, but I don't see anywhere the necessary evidence to back up their very general claims. Basically what they are doing is throwing out a dressed up opinion, it is not a work that meets the minimum standards of scholarship, IMO. Using raw data from reputable sources is only a part of analysis, the assumptions should be meticulously documented and before being accepted for use in a 'report' of this nature shuld have been vetted fully through debate among those trained and qualified to conduct such review.

I know that you and others here are heavily invested emotionally in concern about the consequences of a finite oil supply, so please don't take this as a personal attack. Peer review is there for a reason. It is a critical assessment that requires fundamental assumptions to be challenged and defended adequately before they are accepted. The Energy Watch Group not only fails to employ peer review, in their mission statement they clearly dismiss the validity of the entire concept with their broad stroke dismissal of the Energy power industry and Government organisations. While I understand some skepticism of some research or more usually the misuse of legitimate research by industry and government (a recent example is the misleading data from Wang on ethanol) the fact is that the government and industry rely heavily on academic institutions for the qualification and accuracy of data. The broad stroke dismissal of that work at the user end presumes at minimum a silent complicity on the part of researchers.

I will finish with two final points. In your posts here you lean heavily on the proof that declining production MUST be a result of a shortage in capability because, since the price is so high, they would pump it if they could. I can see the logic in that, but it is a false argument. As I've pointed out, with a finite extractable resource, there is no reason to rush to the bottom. commodity yields its greatest return when it is balanced against demand. In the case of monopolistic pricing (which we have to a degree with crude) that sweet spot still exists, but a disproportionate part of the benefit is transferred to the the seller.

It also seems obvious to me that your message is somewhat mixed. You posit that oil companies are motivated to sell quickly because of high prices, but then accuse them of distorting data and analysis by overstating supply - a move that could only result in a lower price than would otherwise be the case if the supply were, in fact, significantly less than they report. Why would they do that?
Conversely, we have this movement, as exemplified by the us vs them attitude in the key finding quoted above, that is trying to convince a public uneducated on the topic, that there actually exists a shortage. Should this movement be successful, it would dramatically increase the profits to the petroleum producers, would it not?
Wouldn't it benefit the oil producers to encourage belief that "Peak oil is now!!!" more than it would benefit them to lull people into a false sense of security?

[depakid]

22. What about the solar shield?

:hide:

[Nihil]

33. There's a two word response to that ...

... and they aren't "solar" and "shield" ...
:evilgrin:

[Doctor Cynic]

32. A Russia-style global economic disaster could do the trick.

[truebrit71]

34. Nope. We're screwed I'm afraid. I think we are already past the "tipping point"...

...all we can do at this point is prepare for the various disasters that are bound to occur and minimize the continuing effects of global warming by making drastic changes NOW to the way we live our lives...

If we don't, the worst-case scenarios are going to be far short of what actually happens...

[Blue_In_AK]

36. I don't think we can stop it.

I think what's going to happen is that life on the planet will evolve and change just as it did during other warming periods. Many species will become extinct, maybe even humans. I was thinking about this last night while watching Expedition: Alaska on the Discovery Channel. They were discussing how the polar bears and grizzlies are very closely related and that some interbreeding is occurring now because the polar bears are on land more. Many years in the future, there will probably be no more polar bears, but there may be "prizzlies." It will be a different world, for sure.

[truebrit71]

39. What did you think of that show?

I thoroughly enjoyed it, although there was a ton of really sobbering information contained in it.

What a beautiful place...my family watched it with me and we all just looked at each other and said "we gotta go to Alaska!"...

[Blue_In_AK]

41. I loved the show,

I thought it did a really great job of showing the various ecosystems we've got going on up here, and of course it just validates a lot of things that those of us who have lived here a while have been noticing. It's not like it used to be, that's for sure. I especially appreciate the segment on Wrangell-St. Elias, which is my personal favorite part of the state (that I've been to anyway).

[kestrel91316]

42. We can mitigate the effects on future generations if we get off our

asses and make some serious changes NOW. But it's already happening.