Can Climate Campaigns Withstand a Cooling Test?

Perhaps the hardships incurred by a decade of cooling will help us realize that a warmer planet is much more hospitable than a cooler one. And then we can focus on adapting to the climate instead of trying to change it.

And we can again focus on the world’s true calamities: malnutrition, deforestation, malaria, AIDS, and pollution of the oceans.

Perhaps we’ll even focus on all of the great reasons for developing alternative energy sources without getting bogged down in the CO2 nonsense.

If the PDO causes cooling in the Northern Hemisphere and a “plateau” in the yearly worldwide average, then obviously it is going to be quite hot in the Southern Hemisphere, with all the attendant problems that will bring (droughts, food riots, social upheaval, etc.).

Will that be enough to drag the American public’s head out of the sand?

I doubt it.

Andy, yes it is true that you have been criticized for writing that the only firm impact of climate change is more CO2 = warmer world = less ice = higher seas. But can you make an honest argument that changes in weather, which we know will happen, can somehow be positive?

The coming changes in weather would not matter if we were still nomads roaming the planet, like 10,000 years ago. But we aren’t. We are stationary and have built our infrastructure and designed our economy around a current understanding of the landscape and the location of resources.

If people would have know that climate change would impact rainfall in California, do you think they would have started vineyards in Napa. If people would have known that climate change will increase flooding in the Midwest, do you think they would have built so many cities along the Mississippi.

This is big picture analysis that you seem to be missing. Change will cause damage to our economy because we invested so much in our infrastructure.

To ignore this is to really miss the point.

[ANDY REVKIN says: The problem with your “big picture” is that it’s not big enough. The 2007 IPCC report on impacts said that, out through 2050 or so, mid-latitude regions (i.e., all the wealthy North) could see boosted agricultural yields, longer growing seasons, more precipitation. Only later in the century does it all go downhill everywhere. (But maybe we’ll have solar-powered meat factories by then.~~) That all leads to the same political bind if folks are trying to paint this as a real-time, or even near-term, catastrophe. As for your question about the Mississippi and development, you must know that people are already building about $2 billion worth of development in areas that were inundated in 1993. They don’t even worry about KNOWN flooding threats, let alone those that might be amplified in coming decades. Keep in mind I’m not saying that’s a good thing. : – ) ]

All the ad money will go elsewhere. Don’t hear much about Ozone lately from mass media.
Those left standing will be the ones with common sense and facts on their side, the Eco-Loons will go the way of the Dodo bird.
Not sure what side Hansen will come down on, history will judge him on the merits of his work (both science and as a poltical lobbiets). His career in poltical lobbying may or may not still be funded going forward. Or maybe he’ll just have to do science.

I don’t think that the global warming alarmists have made much political progress in the U.S. even without global cooling. I think if temperatures drop, then they will make even less progress.
While there are many politicians willing to pay lip services to curbing CO2 emissions, I have yet to see any meaningful action by Congress. Congress will not act because politicians know that their careers as politicians will be short-lived if they takes steps to make gas more expensive (either through a direct tax or a cap-and-trade scheme).

Several years ago, certified green Peter Taylor realised the IPCC climate models were flawed, and after years of studying what the IPCC was considering, has concluded that natural forces probably account for 80% of climate fluctuations, and CO2 forcing about 20%.

Taylor’s 238 page Climate Science Report can be downloaded here: //www.ethos-uk.com/index.html

Why should we pay attention to those whose predictions were so wrong (IPCC), rather than those (solar physicists and ocean current specialists)who years ago properly predicted the current cooling now being acknowledged by the “experts.”

Having said that, Andy, your comments about energy planning could not be better. Political leadership has not existed which could visualize a future when conventional crude oil must give way to whatever is next.

Are you kidding? Human beings are a greedy bunch. Americans are the worst kind of greedy humans. Not only are we the worst, but to make it even worse is that we’re in control of the most powerful country in the world.

A country with no energy policy and an attention span of a gnat. We can barely look a year or two ahead of ourselves much less 5, 10, or 25 years ahead. It’s a shame really. If we followed through with decent enercy policies (E85 is NOT a decent energy policy) we could probably take our demand down from 21 million barrels a day to 15 million or maybe even less, but no, we push off our problems as the author mentioned to the next administration, the next Congress, the next policy maker etc. We seem to like being a reactive group and not proactive. Well the price we pay will be a big one and I’m sure it’s coming much sooner than some think.

No, we cannot grow up. It is already too late to stop Global Warming – though we might mitigate it somewhat. More likely though, we’ll stumble and bumble the way we usually do, enacting things that are questionably effecatious but politically paletable, like carbon trading and ethanol/biofuels, while ignoring the hard but effective stuff, like carbon taxes. It’s possible more enlightened countries in Europe will lead the way, but they’re too small and vulnerable to lead the way for long. Humans are terrible at thinking of the long term consequeces of their actions – think smoking, overeating, driving without seatbelts, and respond disproportionately to short term rewards – think gambling where a single win can make the gambler forget the next 10 losses; this is why the house always cleans up at 13% or more instead of 1% that would be predicted simply by the odds. We’re even worse at cooperating much beyond our immediate community, or even our family. International cooperation on this scale has never even been tried and already nearly every country is failing to meet the modest goals of Kyoto. China and India thumb their nose at us and tell us America has to fix the probelms of the world – even though they are both running substantial surpluses while we are running record deficits. We can’t even agree on Katrina and we’re going to come up with a comprehensive strategy for global warming, come on. Economically viable solutions will succeed, those done for the “moral good” alone will not.

People are fond of claiming that you can’t legislate morality, but that apparently depends on whose morality.
We can apparently legislate that people ‘grow up’? To say the least, skepticism is warranted.

Boy these comments are high minded about what the “species” will do. The “species” is pretty smart. $100+/barrel of oil makes us adjust. I look at the oil shock of the ’70’s and 80’s and the anthroprogenic global warming as over reactions. In the former case we were afraid we’d run out of fossile fuels too soon and the latter that we’ll not run out of them soon enough. Expensive energy makes a lot of alternatives competative. Let the market do its work without too much governemnt intervention or we’ll see more people malnourished or starved with an ill concieved bio-fuels energy plan.

I agree with your phylogeny recapitulating ontogeny metaphor regarding the environment. Science can be thought of as humanity’s prefrontal cortex. This is the “rational” part of the brain that makes plans, computes the consequences of planned actions, maintains goals, determines what stimuli in the environment are relevant to the goal, and tells the other parts of your brain to not execute every base motor impulse you might have. The PFC is the last brain area to mature ontogenetically, and is the newest part of cortex phylogenetically. In this way, normally, ontogeny is said to recapitulate phylogeny.

If some kind of “supra-intelligence” emerges collectively through culture and science, this maybe thought of the human race evolving a collective prefrontal cortex. Because of this we can now perceive future threats and makes plans to avoid the threat, such as the climate crisis. Just as in some individuals, our collective prefrontal cortex may not be functioning completely adaptively yet. For example, in psychiatric pathologies, the rest of the brain either does not listen to what the signals from the prefrontal cortex are saying, or the prefrontal cortex is not generating the right signals, or they may be too weak to influence behavior. The reasons for this may be lesions in the prefrontal cortex, problems in the neurotransmitters that carry signals through the brain or lesions in other parts of the brain that receive signals from the prefrontal cortex.

If science is our prefrontal cortex, we have to fix its signaling mechanisms. Science needs to send stronger more convincing signals to the rest of human race in order to influence our collective behavior. If this does not happen, the climate crisis might be one evolutionary bottleneck we do not successfully get through.

I think the metaphor of a junkie running through a heroin stash describes the petroleum blowout more accurately than the teenager with the credit card who creates a problem for his parents.

For a very enlightening exploration of the theme about whether humanity can “grow up,” and some provocative ideas about the relation of modern conduct to our evolutionary past, I very highly recommend the book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn.