The Resilient Earth: Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity

by Simmons, Allen

  Our Global Civilization

  People's lives prior to the Industrial Revolution show the folly of longing for “simpler times.” Medieval France, blessed with an abundance of arable countryside, had a 14th century population density of 100 people per square mile. The British Isles were less populous, having little more than 40 people per sq. mile.482 Modern France has more than twice as many people and the U.K.'s population density is now 640 people per sq. mile. Japan's medieval population was around 6 million in 1280 compared with 127 million today.483 The total world population in 1250 AD was around 400 million, today there are 6,600 million people on Earth.484 There were not only fewer people on Earth, people's lives were much harder than most people's today. The people of Medieval times had to toil from sunrise to sunset to survive, always only a failed harvest away from starvation. How large a population Medieval technology could support is uncertain, but one conclusion is inescapable: Without modern technology, Earth could not support its current human population.

  Despite the exhortations of ecological Luddites, most people enjoy the benefits of our high-tech, global civilization. While a return to simpler, non-technological times is the anti-technologists' fantasy, most people in the less developed parts of the world long for the benefits of modern civilization. Those who say, “we can keep the good things, like medical care and cellphones, and dump everything else,” do not understand how interconnected people have become. The benefits of science and technology cannot be chosen or rejected on an individual basis—technological civilization is a package deal.

  Even the simplest modern conveniences require the common efforts of millions of people around the world to produce. Not just those who design and assemble the immediate product, but all those who supply parts and raw materials, and all those who build the machines that manufacture the parts and mine the raw materials as well. Every human is connected to the rest of humanity by the web of industry and commerce. No nation on Earth can exist in isolation. Those that have tried, for political or other reasons, have brought nothing but misery and despair upon their people. As members of a global civilization, we all stand in need of one another.

  Illustration 139: Image of Earth's city lights was created with data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. Source NASA.

  The simplest way to alleviate human misery and suffering is to bring modern technology to underdeveloped areas. What impoverished areas need most is energy, and the most beneficial form of energy is electricity. Electrification frees people from burning biomass, wood and dung that denudes the land and poisons the air. It allows refrigerated food storage, powers pumps for clean drinking water, and lights homes and classrooms. It would be criminal, bordering on racist, for developed nations to deny the impoverished peoples of the world a future. As shown in Illustration 139, Africa is literally the dark continent, but not by choice.

  The leaders of developing countries are aware of global warming, but they have more immediate concerns. Though he is “extremely concerned about the consequences, the adverse affects of climate change,” Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada, Mexico's environment minister, adds “We have always to bear in mind that half our population is at the poverty line.” Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of China's national development and reform commission, states the developing world's priorities clearly: “For a developing country, the main task is to reduce poverty.”485 As long as older, dirty technologies are widely available at lower cost, developing nations will always choose the quickest path to technological prosperity. For these reasons, attempts to force developing nations to adopt greener, but more expensive technologies will fail.

  Illustration 140: The Cuyahoga River burning in 1969. Source NOAA.

  The developed nations have made environmental mistakes in the past—pollution and accidental extinctions among them—but learning is part of growing up. A half a century ago, the air over major cities in the industrialized nations was a visible menace to human health, much like the atmosphere in Asia has become today. Pollution was so pervasive that life in many rivers and lakes was vanishing. One US river, the Cuyahoga in Ohio, famously caught fire on several occasions between 1936 and 1969. Today, air and water quality in industrial nations are markedly improved. In the times ahead, humanity's continued success requires that our technology and attitudes toward nature continue to mature. If the developing nations of the world are to avoid repeating the worst mistakes of the developed nations, cleaner technologies must be made available and affordable. Progress will not be denied—the path to the future does not lie in the past.

  This book is about science, about gaining understanding. It is about analyzing the true extent of global warming, anticipating the possible effects it might cause, and offering rational solutions to fix real, not imaginary, problems. After wading through the media morass, the next three chapters will return to the realm of science.

  Chapter 16 will examine the possible effects of climate change, based on the scientific evidence presented. Chapter 17 will examine the IPCC's suggested cures, called mitigation strategies, to find out which ones are useful and which ones are not. Then Chapter 18 will present what science and engineering suggest as the best plan for the future. As we will discover, things are not nearly as bad as the activists, pundits and politicians would have us believe.

  The Worst That Could Happen

  “For myself I am an optimist—it does not seem to be much use being anything else.”

  —Winston Churchill

  Much has been written and said regarding the dire effects of global warming. Just as the IPCC temperature predictions are wildly overstated, the predictions of environmental disaster have been blown far out of proportion. Cormac McCarthy won a Pulitzer Prize for his book “The Road.” We quote part of the dust jacket as follows:

  “A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food and each other.”

  McCarthy paints a grim picture of man's future; dismal and dangerous. This form of post apocalypse tale has been a staple of the science fiction and horror genres for decades. But the future doesn't have to be a dystopian hell, returning to a time when life would be a “struggle of all against all,” as Hobbs486 said, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” We think that humankind has a much brighter future than that. If, that is, we are willing to learn what nature has to teach us.

  Illustration 141: Projected temperature increase based on rising CO2 levels. Source IPCC.

  What is the worst that could happen? Recall that the predicted affects of global warming are predicated on varying levels of temperature rise. Illustration 141 shows the increase in temperature predicted by the IPCC's GCM based on increasing atmospheric CO2. The increasing width of the temperature ranges for a given CO2 level reflects growing uncertainty in the model predictions. The temperatures reflect global mean change above preindustrial levels. The central black line was calculated using “best estimate” climate sensitivity of 3°C. The upper bound line reflects climate sensitivity of 4.5°C, and the lower bound line 2°C. The Roman numerals labeling the graph segments are the scenario numbers, as described in the IPCC Working Group III report. The shaded regions show the ranges of predictions corresponding to the stabilization scenario categories I to VI. The data for the graph are drawn from AR4 WGI, Chapter 10.8.

  The IPCC's best estimate increase for a “low scenario” is 1.8°C with a likely range of 1.1 to 2.9°C. Their best estimate for a “high scenario” is 4.0°C with a likely range of 2.4 to 6.4°C. Combining the bottom of the low scenario with the top of the high scenario gives the total range of possible increase as 1.1 to 6.4°C (2.0 to 11.5°F). Keeping this range of possib
le increase in mind, here is an examination of the major disasters the IPCC predicts as a result of global warming.

  A Rising Tide

  Sea levels could rise, they have changed significantly in the past. According to the IPCC AR4, it is estimated that sea level rise will be 7 to 15 inches (18-38 cm) in a low scenario and 10 to 23 inches (26-59 cm) in a high scenario. This is based on multiple models, which all exclude ice sheet flow due to a lack of reliable published data. They also think it likely that there will be increased occurrence of extreme high tides over the coming century. With high confidence, the report predicts that coastlines will be exposed to increasing risks such as erosion and that “Many millions more people are projected to be flooded every year due to sea-level rise by the 2080s.” But sea levels are always changing and scientists have had little success predicting change in the past.

  These relatively modest levels of increase stand in stark comparison to warnings issued by environmentalists, such as Al Gore. Gore has warned that “a massive destabilization may now be underway deep within the second largest accumulation of ice on the planet, enough ice to raise sea level 20 feet worldwide if it broke up and slipped into the sea.”487 While it is true that a total melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) could theoretically cause a 20 ft (7 m) increase in world sea level, Gore's warning fails to mention how long melting the GIS would take.

  Illustration 142: Timeline for melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Source IPCC.

  The role of the GIS in climate change is not clear. Researchers have to account for the loss of ice around the edges of the sheet, while also measuring the buildup of ice in Greenland's interior. The influence of short-term weather cycles adds to the complexity. It is this complexity and incomplete understanding, a reflection of the totality of climate science on a smaller scale, that causes scientists to admit that their ice sheet models do not accurately reflect reality (page 273). Based on their best guess warming rates, the IPCC has generated model predictions for ice sheet melting in Greenland (Illustration 142).

  Notice that even after 270 years, 80% of the GIS remains. According to these predictions, it will take 1,000 years to melt half of Greenland's ice. Mr. Gore's warning about a 20 foot sea level rise due to the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet is a bit premature.

  As previously mentioned, tectonic activity is constantly causing local sea levels to change (page 139). This complicates collecting long-term sea level information. During the late 19th and 20th centuries, tidal gauges located along the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines indicated that sea levels suddenly began rising around 1920. The rate of increase nearly doubled, going from about 0.04 inches per year to about 0.07 inches per year. Naturally, this change has previously been attributed to climate change, but new data have changed that interpretation.

  Evidence gathered by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests that this change may be partly explained by the movement of large amounts of water. Atmospheric records suggest that movement of large mid-ocean water mounds, called gyres, redistributed water from the centers of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans to coastal areas. This shift explains the sudden increase in the rate at which sea levels changed as recorded by coastal instruments in the 1920s. Since tidal gauges only measure sea levels along the coasts, they could not have detected the drop in levels at the oceans' centers. Satellite measurements have only recently become sufficiently accurate to detect these types of changes. NOAA's Laury Miller states, “my guess is that it will be 20 or 30 years before we are able to identify how fast sea-level rises are truly accelerating.”488

  What about the larger concentration of ice in Antarctica? The IPCC Summary for Policy Makers reports: “Antarctic sea ice extent continues to show inter-annual variability and localized changes but no statistically significant average trends, consistent with the lack of warming reflected in atmospheric temperatures averaged across the region.” It further notes that “current global model studies project that the Antarctic ice sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall.”

  As for the Arctic pack-ice, it is irrelevant to ocean levels. The ice at the North Pole covers water, not land. Since the ice floats, even a 100% melting of the Arctic ice will not change ocean levels, just as ice melting in a glass of water does not cause the glass to overflow.

  Nils-Axel Mörner, head of paleo-geophysics at Stockholm University, has been studying the subject of sea-level rise for 35 years. He has been observing changes in ocean levels in the Maldives, one of the first places expected to disappear under the waves, and found no evidence that they are in peril. Satellite altimetry data collected over the past two decades tells the same story. His best estimate is for a rise of a couple of inches by the end of this century.489

  Worsening Weather

  Weather is caused by the exchange of heat among land, sea and air. The IPCC thinks it very likely that there will be an increased frequency of warm spells, heat waves and events of heavy rainfall due to global warming. They also call for an increase in areas affected by droughts, intensity of tropical cyclones, which include hurricanes and typhoons. These predictions have led to breathless news anchors attributing any storm activity to global warming, even though there has been no detectable trend in storm activity for over a hundred years.

  Illustration 143: Hurricane Gordon from orbit, source NASA.

  Cyclonic storms, called hurricanes in the northern hemisphere, are heat engines, driven by the thermal energy released when rain condenses from water vapor. When water condenses, it undergoes what physicists call a phase change, a transformation from one state to another. When water evaporates, it absorbs heat energy. To change back into liquid form, the absorbed heat must be released to the surrounding environment. Hurricanes are powered by moist, warm air that is created by the tropical ocean. As the moisture-laden air rises it forms thunderstorms, which are whipped into a swirling pattern by Earth's rotation.

  A tropical storm becomes a hurricane when its winds reach 74 mph (120 kph). The Atlantic hurricane season begins in June and ends in November, while the East Pacific hurricane season peaks during July through September. There are six Atlantic hurricanes during an average year. Over an average three-year period, five hurricanes strike the United States coastline, coming on shore anywhere from Texas to Maine.490

  The claims about increasing monetary damage from hurricanes are true, there is more storm damage now than a century ago. But this is because population growth has disproportionately been in littoral (coastal) areas. Florida alone has 50 times the number of people it had in 1900, mostly living on the coasts. It is easy to see how damage can increase without an increase in storm frequency or intensity.

  Bill Gray, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, is often called America's most reliable hurricane forecaster and the world's most famous hurricane expert. A pioneer in the science of forecasting hurricanes, Gray's predictions have been used by insurance companies to calculate premiums since 1983. Gray, now retired, has publicly denounced attempts to link hurricane activity to global warming. According to him, “this is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people.”

  In a paper published after the 2006 hurricane season, Dr. Gray stated that historical records “indicate that Atlantic and global tropical cyclone activity over the last century and particularly over the last 30 years has not increased despite the global warming that has occurred over the last century and the last three decades.”491 Gray goes on to explain in detail:

  “The most reliable long-period hurricane records we have are the measurements of US landfalling tropical cyclones since 1900. Although global mean ocean and Atlantic surface temperatures have increased by about 0.4°C between these two 50-year periods (1900-1949 compared with 1956-2005), the frequency of US landfall numbers actually shows a slight downward trend for the later period. If we chose to make a similar comparison between US landfall from the earli
er 30-year period of 1900-1929 when global mean surface temperatures were estimated to be about 0.5°C colder than they have been the last 30 years (1976-2005), we find exactly the same US hurricane landfall numbers (54 to 54) and major hurricane landfall numbers (21 to 21).”

  Historical records do not indicate a rising trend for either hurricane frequency or strength (see Illustration 144). Even so, global warming experts continue to confidently predict increasing tropical storm activity. To understand why this is not true, the factors that contribute to storm activity need to be examined.

  According to NOAA, the conditions that determine active and inactive Atlantic hurricane seasons are largely controlled by recurring rainfall patterns along the equator. These patterns are linked to two dominant climate phenomena: The El Niño Southern Oscillation (El Niño and La Niña) cycle, and the tropical multi-decadal signal. The latter is a set of atmospheric and oceanic conditions known to produce active hurricane eras with 25-40 year alternating periods of active/inactive hurricane seasons. It is strongly related to monsoon rainfall patterns over western Africa and the Amazon Basin, and to Atlantic Ocean temperatures.492 NOAA's official paper on recent tropical storm activity states, “NOAA research shows that the tropical multi-decadal signal is causing the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995, and is not related to greenhouse warming.”

  Illustration 144: Number of hurricanes and average strength for North America, 1851-2006. Source Associated Press.