Minnesota now has a committee to come up with strategies to "combat" global warming. (H/T Fraters Inebritas) Sigh. Given that our fair state has only 0.1% of the world's people, and that the total human (worldwide) contribution is only about 5% of the world's greenhouse gases, someone might figure out that maybe, just maybe, the proper approach is to figure out ways not of stopping a problem we cannot stop, but rather to deal with whatever climate change might be coming down the pike.
Nah. Let's try to reduce our 0.05% or so contribution to 0.01%, and that will solve the other 99.95% or more--it's not like geologists tell us that we've had tropical periods or ice ages or anything like that, after all, and we have to worry about climate change for any reason other than your Suburban.
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11 comments:
Bert, you've said before that you are skeptical that humans are causing global warming. Could you please provide me some links to some sites that expound your view? I'd like to have a balanced perspective on the issue so I can discuss it intelligently. This 5% figure, for instance, I've not seen that before. Usually I can see both sides of an argument even if I only agree with one of them, but here I'm at a loss.
Joe, www.junkscience.com has a long list of articles on the subject. They take a decidedly anti-global warming approach, but they've got a lot of links to those who vehemently disagree with them, too.
And here's one that directly approaches the issue of how much is from us: see page 4:
http://www.spe-pb.org/attachments/articles/89/3-7-EPA-Kelly-ClimateChange&CO2%20Reflections.pdf
Thanks. Where I'm at right now (haven't looked at the links yet, just a quick note now) is a Pascal's wager kind of thing. The choice is whether to make an effort to reduce emissions or stay status quo, and the situation is either humanity is causing the global warming or it would have happened on its own even if we were still in the Stone Age. As in the Wager, the penalty for sitting on our hands when we really are causing climate change is catastrophic, whereas choosing to limit our impact on the environment is good stewardship regardless of whether it makes a difference or not.
Bert, I took a look at the PDF you cited. It comes from the the Society of Petroleum Engineers so I'll refer to it as SPE. The pie chart on page 4 of SPE cites to a table I found on page 4 of Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 1998, published by the Energy Information Adminsitration, so I'll call this one EIA. Here is the link to the EIA PDF.
There are four column headings in the EIA table for CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide: natural sources, human sources, natural absorption, and net change. Here are the numbers in millions of metric tons:
CO2 150000 7100 154000 +3100-3500
Methane 110-210 300-450 460-660 +35-40
N Oxide 6-12 4-8 10-17 +3-5
Now if you add up the anthropogenic sources and divide by the sum of all sources, you do indeed get about 5%. SPE is trying to use the EIA table to argue that humans have a negligible impact on the global greenhouse gas budget. The columns that they refrained to mention, though, tell the real story: without human production, all three of these greenhouse gases would be decreasing in our atmosphere! CO2 is the one that has the smallest error bars, and with that it shows that we have to cut our emissions by 50% just to reach an equilibrium with existing natural CO2 sinks. I'm basing this conclusion on the data SPE itself cited--but it says the exact opposite of what SPE is trying to make it say!
Joe, first of all, you're engaging in a ceterus parabus fallacy with the SPE data (which was some of the first actual DATA I found, which doesn't say nice things about the IPCC and EPA, by the way).
That is, if we assume that man made emissions CAN change the environment, it is false to make the claim that reducing manmade emissions would not have some effect on natural emissions.
Next, on Pascal's wager, I really don't see the evidence that compels us to take this. Climatologists have yet to produce a model that consistently will explain historic data, so why should we accept their word on what's "inevitable" based on these models?
Moreover, if we accept the wager without this justification, it STILL doesn't mean we need to slash fossil fuel use. The reason is simple; we cannot, short of war, stop China and India from using coal and such. Hence, if the hypothesis is sustained, it's a train we cannot stop.
Rather, our first goal ought to be to make sure we're not on the tracks. In other words, Minntesotans ought to first figure out how to live like they're in Iowa or Canada--and so on throughout the world.
If we figure out huge efficiency gains, so much the better. The fact is, though, that when you've got a train coming, you get off the tracks BEFORE trying to get the engineer to pull the brakes.
I think you misunderstand me, Bert. I knew your mind was made up, it was mine that wasn't. I was leaning towards the consensus, but I wanted to give the skeptics a fair hearing, and really you're the only one I knew well enough to ask. I'm not trying to argue, since I don't expect you'd change your mind--I was giving you the courtesy of knowing what I thought of the things you shared. I don't expect you to like that they didn't convince me, but I owed it to you to let you know.
Where I am at now is trying to figure out what would motivate you to be a skeptic. With your view on creationism, for instance, I recognize that you are motivated by respect for the integrity and authority of Scripture. It makes sense to me why you hold that view, even though I don't share it. Here, though, I don't really see what you get out of it. Your response to the Pascal's wager thing just doesn't make sense: why wouldn't you want to slash fossil fuel use? How do you benefit from the status quo? Even if we make the assumption that emissions have no effect on global temperatures, there are lots of other environmental effects such as pollution and mining impact, not to mention stewardship of a finite resource.
I can only think of two reasons: first, allegiance to the Republican party may motivate you to oppose the traditionally Democratic perspective on this issue. Second, your belief in a young earth may motivate you to oppose a position that treats datasets such as ice core samples as representative of timespans much longer than 6000 years.
Can you help me understand where you are coming from?
It's called "intellectual honesty," Joe, and it explains both my skepticism of Darwinism and my rejection of global warming.
In the case of global warming, little facts like "Mars is experiencing climate change" , "the effect predates the supposed cause," and the IPCC's falsification of its own data in its report summaries are huge red flags that make it very clear that what's going on is not clearly science, but rather politics.
Want proof? Take a look at "Earth In the Balance," where Al Gore quotes Paul Ehrlich sympathetically. Remember Ehrlich--who predicted a global ice age, mass starvation, and lack of vital commodities by the year 2000? (back in the late 1970s)
In other words, "credibility" for these guys is a wee bit low. Add to that the fact that their "solutions" to the problem are all socialistic--and anyone who knows anything about socialism knows that this ideology multiplies the "tragedy of the commons" by removing property rights from the environmental equation.
Thanks, I think I understand where you are coming from now. I can definitely sympathize with you about the importance of intellectual honesty.
Another reason to reject the "Pascal's wager" approach (which is not the same as denying any possibility that climate change needs to be taken seriously) is that Pascal's wager is predicated on "nothing to lose if you take the positive option and are wrong." But actually, there are high costs -- including human costs -- to many of the measures being advocated to reduce global warming. If global warming is the threat that some say it is, then those costs might be justified in order to prevent worse things. But if it turns out that they're wrong, people will actually have DIED for a predictive error and/or a mistaken set of solutions.
pentamom,
How might taking steps to reduce emissions cause someone to die?
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