Going Cheney of Climate Change with Thomas Friedman

Here we find another writer choking on the contents of the infamous emails.  I do not think many have yet grasped that CO2 regulation is not an engine able to change climate.

However he makes some good points, though the one percent doctrine talked about would make anyone cringe who worries about those things.  That sort of argument is trotted out to support a lousy regulative scheme unable to handle the problem.

The present regulatory regime for nukes has been the promise of a visit from the US air force.

Now we still have the call for economic disruption to halt CO2 production of the basis of future climate risk.  We are replacing representations of direct evidence with speculation and been asked to go along with the same program.

Let me make this a little clearer.  A decade ago, it was proclaimed that the world’s largest gold mine had been found in Indonesia.  They had stacks of scientific evidence to prove exactly that.  The Indonesian dictator got so exited that his minions horned in on the project in their inimitable manner.  No end of analysts and funds gobbled up the stock and drove the price to hundreds of dollars.

Then the designated new partner did test cores to confirm the results.  It was all a hoax. The stock cratered and the fall out included the dictator himself.  Not directly of course, but the loss of face was stupendous and the opposition became emboldened.

Now, how would you feel if an engineer showed up who was involved and tried to persuade you to support a fresh drilling program based on the original premise and the same property?

That is my point.  Not only do we have data fudging that is impossible to get around but also the logical fact that if one ton of CO2 is associated with a decade of warming then two tons of CO2 in the succeeding decade of cooling is now associated with global cooling.  You simply cannot have it both ways.

Then we might address the issue of CO2 production honestly as completely independent of the global warming issue. There the reality is that we have burned a trillion barrels of oil and might be able to burn yet another trillion barrels of oil.  We are now in a similar position with coal.  The point I am making is that sooner or later we will not be burning either.  This is the worst case scenario.

The best case scenario will see it all finished this generation.  The last shoe is about to drop with the advent of ultracapacitor batteries and millions of windmills.  Both can be produced as fast as oil production declines.

I will make a bold prediction.  Over the next twenty years, both oil and coal will be fully displaced as a fuel, ending forever the age of fossil fuels.

Quite simply, if you have an oil resource, it would be wise to be a seller while there is still a buyer's market.  Soon enough the facts will be there for all to see.

 

 

Going Cheney on Climate

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: December 8, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/opinion/09friedman.html

In 2006, Ron Suskind published “The One Percent Doctrine,” a book about the U.S. war on terrorists after 9/11. The title was drawn from an assessment by then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who, in the face of concerns that a Pakistani scientist was offering nuclear-weapons expertise to Al Qaeda, reportedly declared: “If there’s a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.” Cheney contended that the U.S. had to confront a very new type of threat: a “low-probability, high-impact event.”

Soon after Suskind’s book came out, the legal scholar Cass Sunstein, who then was at the University of Chicago, pointed out that Mr. Cheney seemed to be endorsing the same “precautionary principle” that also animated environmentalists. Sunstein wrote in his blog: “According to the Precautionary Principle, it is appropriate to respond aggressively to low-probability, high-impact events — such as climate change. Indeed, another vice president — Al Gore — can be understood to be arguing for a precautionary principle for climate change (though he believes that the chance of disaster is well over 1 percent).”

Of course, Mr. Cheney would never accept that analogy. Indeed, many of the same people who defend Mr. Cheney’s One Percent Doctrine on nukes tell us not to worry at all about catastrophic global warming, where the odds are, in fact, a lot higher than 1 percent, if we stick to business as usual. That is unfortunate, because Cheney’s instinct is precisely the right framework with which to think about the climate issue — and this whole “climategate” controversy as well.

“Climategate” was triggered on Nov. 17 when an unidentified person hacked into the e-mails and data files of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, one of the leading climate science centers in the world — and then posted them on the Internet. In a few instances, they revealed some leading climatologists seemingly massaging data to show more global warming and excluding contradictory research.

Frankly, I found it very disappointing to read a leading climate scientist writing that he used a “trick” to “hide” a putative decline in temperatures or was keeping contradictory research from getting a proper hearing. Yes, the climate-denier community, funded by big oil, has published all sorts of bogus science for years — and the world never made a fuss. That, though, is no excuse for serious climatologists not adhering to the highest scientific standards at all times.

That said, be serious: The evidence that our planet, since the Industrial Revolution, has been on a broad warming trend outside the normal variation patterns — with periodic micro-cooling phases — has been documented by a variety of independent research centers.

As this paper just reported: “Despite recent fluctuations in global temperature year to year, which fueled claims of global cooling, a sustained global warming trend shows no signs of ending, according to new analysis by the World Meteorological Organization made public on Tuesday. The decade of the 2000s is very likely the warmest decade in the modern record.”

This is not complicated. We know that our planet is enveloped in a blanket of greenhouse gases that keep the Earth at a comfortable temperature. As we pump more carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse gases into that blanket from cars, buildings, agriculture, forests and industry, more heat gets trapped.

What we don’t know, because the climate system is so complex, is what other factors might over time compensate for that man-driven warming, or how rapidly temperatures might rise, melt more ice and raise sea levels. It’s all a game of odds. We’ve never been here before. We just know two things: one, the CO2 we put into the atmosphere stays there for many years, so it is “irreversible” in real-time (barring some feat of geo-engineering); and two, that CO2 buildup has the potential to unleash “catastrophic” warming.

When I see a problem that has even a 1 percent probability of occurring and is “irreversible” and potentially “catastrophic,” I buy insurance. That is what taking climate change seriously is all about.

If we prepare for climate change by building a clean-power economy, but climate change turns out to be a hoax, what would be the result? Well, during a transition period, we would have higher energy prices. But gradually we would be driving battery-powered electric cars and powering more and more of our homes and factories with wind, solar, nuclear and second-generation biofuels. We would be much less dependent on oil dictators who have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs; our trade deficit would improve; the dollar would strengthen; and the air we breathe would be cleaner. In short, as a country, we would be stronger, more innovative and more energy independent.

But if we don’t prepare, and climate change turns out to be real, life on this planet could become a living hell. And that’s why I’m for doing the Cheney-thing on climate — preparing for 1 percent.

Maureen Dowd is off today.