John Gray on science and climate change

[Mr. Tea]

There is a need for less, or more sustainable, consumption by rich people.

Good luck telling China that!

Not that most Chinese are 'rich', by any stretch, but the country as a whole is getting richer at an astonishing rate, which is of course inevitably both a cause and an effect of a turbo-charged industrialisation.

 

[vimothy]

Bloody hell, I missed this completely. Is Vimothy proposing some kind of economic planning is in order here? Did a squadron of pigs just soar overhead?

Ha -- and it only took five months for someone to point that out! Weird thread where nomad's arguing for the power of the market and I'm saying that it might need some help...

Anyways, I see oil prices as reflecting:

1. Growng demand from emerging markets (nothing rich people can do anything about)
2. Increasing resourse nationalism (supply chain problems)
3. Speculators hedging against inflation (due to negative real interest rates)
3. Increased reserve holding (because of the first three problems)

 

[vimothy]

But don't worry: Hillary Clinton will make it all better.

 

[crackerjack]

There is not a need for vastly lower population worldwide. There is a need for less, or more sustainable, consumption by rich people.

The man is obviously a tosser.

His point is that no amount of guilt-tripping on the upper/middle classes will achieve anything worth a damn, it will just make some people feel good. The evidence is that he's right.

He's not advocating a programme of mass sterilisation/extermination, but universal access to birth control. I can't see the tosser-ness in that.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Universal birth control would certainly be a very good start, but even if the world's population stabilised tomorrow, we'd still be in the shit thanks to the established industrialisation of the developed world and the very rapid development of industry in the developing world.

To put it another way: as far as I understand it (and if I'm talking arse here, please feel free to tell me so!) we're already passed the point of inflection in the world population curve, so that while the population is obviously still increasing, the rate at which it's increasing is itself slowing down (so that, if P = total world population, then d^2 P/d t^2 is negative, if you will). In particular, China's population has more or less stabilised, thanks to the (in)famously effective One Child policy. Most of the world's population growth is occurring in Africa and the Middle East, areas that for the most part have yet to undergo large-scale industrialisation.

 

[vimothy]

New research published today by the International Council for Capital Formation (ICCF) reveals the broad and significant economic repercussions of adopting Kyoto for the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain - and specifically its impact for each nation on energy prices, economic growth and jobs. The research revealed that if the four countries meet their Kyoto emission reduction targets in 2010 they face an average increase in electricity prices of 26% and an average increase of 41% of natural gas prices by 2010. The ICCF research concludes that these consequences would severely damage economic growth and adversely affect standards of living across Europe.
--CCNet, 7 November 2005​

 

[Mr. Tea]

Talk about disheartening - the idea that significant damage would have to be done to the economies of the major West European countries (though not France, for obvious reasons) just to make a small dent in the increase in China's greenhouse gas output...well, it's a bugger, isn't it?

 

[droid]

New research published today by the International Council for Capital Formation (ICCF) reveals the broad and significant economic repercussions of adopting Kyoto for the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain - and specifically its impact for each nation on energy prices, economic growth and jobs. The research revealed that if the four countries meet their Kyoto emission reduction targets in 2010 they face an average increase in electricity prices of 26% and an average increase of 41% of natural gas prices by 2010. The ICCF research concludes that these consequences would severely damage economic growth and adversely affect standards of living across Europe.

Of course, the economic effects of NOT attempting to stop climate change by curbing emissions are far far worse, and more importanly, completely uncontrolable. Thats not to mention the social and physical costs, and the very serious threat of mass extinction of maybe 37% of plant and animal species on the planet. If the worst happens and we reach tipping point, melting all the ice as a consequence... well lets just say the economic arguments against emission controls will seem somewhat prosaic when the most populated areas of Europe have gone the way of Atlantis.

Talk about disheartening - the idea that significant damage would have to be done to the economies of the major West European countries (though not France, for obvious reasons) just to make a small dent in the increase in China's greenhouse gas output...well, it's a bugger, isn't it?

Carbon Emissions by country (tons):

1. United States 1,650,020

2. China (mainland) 1,366,554

3. Russian Federation 415,951

If the US and Europe achieved even a 30% cut (though a 90% cut is what we need to avoid the worst effects of climate change), that would make more than a dent in the effect of China's output. The new technology developed in such an effort would also go a long way to helping the developing world to curb emissions.

Monbiot is excellent on this in 'Heat'. Its an utterly essential read for skeptics and believers alike.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I thought that ice took up more volume than water - why would melting raise sea levels? Are we talking about ice that is currently resting out of harm's way on land?

 

[Mr. Tea]

I think your figures are out of date, Droid - China became the world's biggest CO2 emitter a year or two ago. And a report that came out earlier this year said that, for the period 2006-2010, a total of FIVE Kyoto Protocol-sized reductions in CO2 output would be needed to offset the *increase* in China's output over the same period.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_China#Environment_and_carbon_emissions

(Of course, the greenhouse gas emissions *per person* in China are much smaller than those of most developed countries - half that of the UK and a quarter of the US - but they're rising rapidly.)

M_b, you're right that the main concern is over ice caps and glaciers melting, so water that was safely locked away on land is draining into the see. An even bigger effect, AFAIK, is that warm water takes up more space than cold water, and the simple thermal expansion of the oceans themselves is causing most of the rise.

 

[droid]

You're right Tea. They're about 3 years old. The per capita difference is still staggering though. I guess the major question for developing nations is 'why should we reduce emissions when developed nations refuse to'?

As you mentioned, 70% of the worlds fresh water is found in the glaciers. The melting of ice will also cause a decline in the amount of sunlight reflected, resulting in a disasterous rise in sea and land temperature, and more unpredicatble consequences such as hurricanes, flooding and the widespread destruction of crops and vegetation. According to Monbiot, we need a 90% reduction in CO2 emissions in the next 15 years or so to avoid reaching the tipping point where these changes become irreversible, as this period roughly correlates with peak oil, it seems eminently sensible to focus on a change to renewable energy while we still have the chance.

 

[Mr. Tea]

You're right Tea. They're about 3 years old. The per capita difference is still staggering though. I guess the major question for developing nations is 'why should we reduce emissions when developed nations refuse to'?

Yeah, it does seem rather hypocritical, doesn't it? To be fair, developed countries (with one glaring exception) are reducing their emissions a bit, but whether it's enough to prevent disaster remains to be seen. I suppose morally there's no real reason why per-capita emissions from developing countries shouldn't be as high as ours; it's just the practical consideration that there's that many more of them. I mean, China and India make up well over a third of the world's population between them.

According to Monbiot, we need a 90% reduction in CO2 emissions in the next 15 years or so to avoid reaching the tipping point where these changes become irreversible, as this period roughly correlates with peak oil, it seems eminently sensible to focus on a change to renewable energy while we still have the chance.

Hmm, this is a tricky word - the world has gone through enormous climate changes in the past and will continue to do so in the future, so I doubt whether anything short of the extinction of all life would be truly 'irreversible'. But there could well be changes that can't be reversed over the course of one or several human lifetimes.

 

[droid]

Hmm, this is a tricky word - the world has gone through enormous climate changes in the past and will continue to do so in the future, so I doubt whether anything short of the extinction of all life would be truly 'irreversible'. But there could well be changes that can't be reversed over the course of one or several human lifetimes.

I guess it depends on what kind of timescale youre looking at really. If you look at the worst mass extinction in history at the end of the Permian, it took 30 million years or so for full ecological recovery.

So yes, it wont be 'irreversible' on an evolutionary scale, but it seems pretty certain that human civilisation and natural life as we know it today would find it pretty difficult to survive for even a fraction of that time.