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Cross-posted from DailyKos. I wrote this live, but had a long drive before to get more internet access.
I’m at Dartmouth College, Cook Auditorium, where James Hansen and Jason Grumet are speaking tonight on the topic of Climate Challenge: Implications for Energy and Policy and Intergenerational Justice.
I’ll be live blogging, updating the diary body every couple of minutes with more text. I won’t be able to comment until it’s over, assuming my battery lasts.
There’s a big disclaimer at the bottom of the presentation screen: “Any statements relating to policy are personal opinion.”
Note: I can’t type as fast as people can speak, so everything will be paraphrased.
Presentation below the fold…
The room is filling up rapidly. It appears to be a very popular lecture. Looks like a standing-room-only crowd.
Intro:
Joe K. Dean of Thayer School.
“One of the greatest challenges of all in energy: climate. Our grad student enrollments are up, across the board, 20 to 80% over this time a year ago. We think it’s because of the need for engineers to focus on energy and climate. Encouraging sign. The entire campus is paying attention, not just engineering. Students on April 15 will be launching an energy awareness campaign to accelerate Dartmouth’s progress to reducing CO2 emissions to 30% below 2005 emissions by 2030.”
Professor Lee Lynd:
Gratifying to have people show up. When we started discussing a symposium, it didn;t take us long to pick climate for the 1st topic, and the top of the list speakers would be James Hansen and Jason Grumet.
Brief outline: 1 hr presentations on science of clmate change, then on policy implications. Then a very brief (3 – 5 minutes) break for stretching. Then moderated discussion and Q & A. Finally reception at Thayer School.
James Hansen:
[heh, with perfect timing, someone apparently knocked a connector loose on the recording system, so there’s a brief break while they reconnect.]
Ok, we’re starting…
Want to emphasise energy and intergenerational justice.
1. Knowledge gap between understood (science) and what is known (public/policy makers). Part of reason is weather – it’s hard for the public to realize that we have an emergency, but we have actually reached a crisis. Partly related to a forcing. The system doesn’t respond immediately, because the ocean if 4 km deep, so it takes it a long time to respond to a warming. There’s a lot of warming already in the pipeline. We can push the sustem beyond tipping points. For example if an ice sheet melts, there’s no going back from it. you can’t put a wall around it, or tie a rope to it. It’s too big.
There are advantages to bringing CO2 in atmosphrere down. Back in early part of this decade newspapers called me the grandfather of global warming, but the intergenerational aspect of this didn’t really hit me.
I testified to Congress in late 1980s, and decided to leave it to people who ware more articulate and enjoy talking. For 15 yrs I continued the policy, but finally came to conclusion that I needed to change, because I witnessed in the Govt an unwillingness to take seriously the evidence that hd accumulated. My grandson will be around for most of this centeruy. He will be around to witness full effects.
Temp has increased by 8/10 of a degree C. The last year was a cooler year — that was a natural fluctuation. Souther oscillation index (red = el nino, blue = la nina), ocean surface temperature correlates with that index.
Warming is larger over land than the ocean. Higher at high latitudes than low attitudes because of amplifying effect of snow melting exposing darker land, which absorbs more heat.
Why should we worry about less than 1% warming?
Basis of Understanding: Earth’s Paleoclimate history, Ongoing global changes, Climate models (helpful but not primary source of understanding)
[chart of temp near south pole, from core in antarctic ice sheet)
Recorded Human history occurs within the Holocen warm period. Compared to last ice age, it’s a very large climate oscillation. Ice sheet covered all the way to NY City. So much water locked up in the ice sheet that oceans were 350 feet lower. These changes forced by earth’s orbit and tilt modifications. When tilted more, poles get sunlight, ice melts, it’s a bit warmer. Ocean gives up carbon dioxide at these times, just like your soda gives off CO2 when it gets warmer.
The mechanisms that maintain the climate: albedo and reflectivity of the planet and change in greenhouse gases. If we put the two together, we can calculate the radiative forcing, and they explain historical changes very accurate. These two gases now under control of humans and accelerating far beyond what has happened ever before. It takes time for ocean temp to change and ice to melt, so we aren’t seeing the full impact of what’s already happened.
Deep ocean temps are changing. Reason for temp change on long time scale (end of cretaceous to today 65 million years) from sun has been about 1 watt/ meter squared. Surface roughlyt the same. Atmospheric CO2, india was still south of equator and moving north at 20cm/yr, plowing through ocean, pushing silt up out of the ocean and volcanoes spewing CO2 from carbonate rich substances. Then hit Eurasia, and pushed up himalayans, and stopped blowing CO2 into atmosphere.
We’re (umans) pushing 4 orders of magnitude more than the natural CO2 release.
At the time Antarctica started to freeze over: we would increase CO2 back to ice-free state. Starting a process out of our control and that of our children and grandchildren. Need to stop at level that avoids dangerous changes:
1. Extermination of species.
2. Ice sheet disintegration and sea level rise.
There have been 5 – 6 warmings, and each has driven mass extinctions.
In Arctic already near a tipping point in sea ice. Last 2 years to 1/2 1970s when satellite measurements began. We WILL lose the rest of that ice over the next few decades. To save it: we’d have to get to 325 – 350 ppm.
There was a question: will greenland get larger or smaller with warming? Because there’s more snow when the weather is warmer. We can measure the mass, and overall it’s losing mass at 100 cubic kilometers/yer. For sea levels to be stable, we need CO2 to be 300 ppm. 385 ppm = unstable.
Ocean circulation effects: the overturning cell of water expands, has already expanded 4 degrees of lattitude expansion. Why Lake Mead and Powell are now 1/2 full. Also why forest fires are increasing in number and area (factor of 4 in US). Also fresh water supplies are being effected: Ganges river 2/3 in fall and late summer from glacial melt. In 50 years most will be gone if we continue with co2 emissions. Coral reefs – increasing surface temp and increasing acid in ocean water, dissolving carbonate-shelled creatures. All these things tell us we should aim for no more than 350 ppm – which is less than we’re at right now.
If we want a pnlanet that looks like the one we live on now, then we need to act now.
That all indicts coal. Phase out emissions from coal altogether. This alone would peak us at 400 ppm – 425 ppm. That’s an amount from which we can reduce using different agricultural policy. Not likely to happen unless we make fossil fuel cost more than the alternatives.
Problem: fossil fuels are priced lowest, because they’re subsidized. It’s only because of the way the political system works. And we don’t charge for the damage they do.
Lobbyists pay exceed President’s. It’s a very lucrative job.
Cap & Trade is NOT going to work. It raises the price of energy, but is subject to speculation and volatility. Will make millionaires at public expense. It’s ineffective at reducing emissions. The price increase it too small to impact people’s use. Emissions of countries that met Kytoto protocol was a miserable example.
Should be a carbon tax with 100% dividend. $1/gallon for gasoline, then give back to all adults = $3000/adult, plus half share for each of 1st 2 children in family. The ones who do better than aqverage at reducing usage will actually make money. Apply the fee at the port of entry or mine, or wherever the carbon is coming from. Just needs US, China, and Europe to agree to tax and put a duty on carbon sources.
Problem: conflict between fossil fuel interests vs children & nature. (animals don’t vote & can’t talk).
Political Process is not working. If we’d had campaign finance reform, we might be in a different place. But we may need the public to start to do some ethical actions.
Fossil fuel companies act as if we have God-given right to burn all the fuel.
Ran out of time, encourages people to go to his web site:
www.columbia.edu/~jeh1.
———————
Jason Grumet
Art of policy and the dark art of political compromise.
You take your victim as you find it.
We don’t have time to fix our democracy. So we need to wrestle with the beast we have. Sense of political spectrum, and key issues that are the options.
I am here to share OPINIONS.
Jim made a principled decision to leave the kleig lights to go to the lab. I got a 6 on a chem lab once, so I decided not to go into the lab ever again.
The person I’m trying to convince is NOT ME. I’ve never met anyone who is not at least 1/3 right. What are the rationales for those concerns that give people a political ability to change their minds.
The aspect of the science most compelling: urgency. Century scale problem, the first ten years looks the same no matter how much we need to reduce.
Getting started here in the US with an architecture that can be adapted is important. We’ve had a 10 yr debate about the urgency, but little motion. We need the first step.
Our government continues to flip back & forth, which is kind of neat. The policy we put in place has to be durable. You have to have bipartisan support for durability. It’s the only way it will have legs to get the job done.
We have better politics and a worse economy.
Congress is more focused on acting. Legislating on energy policy with no energy price crisis. Unheard of. Usually only do energy policy during a hysteria, leading to “do something.”
Beyond the fear and distraction, putting “market based” label on any environmental action was great. Not so much today. Walk intoa conservative member of Congress while I talk about a new commodities market and Wall street will create a derivatives market on it nd everything will be fine. But now it’s distrusted.
The basic math = coastal democrats on board, coal state republicans are a hard sell.
Why ambivalence?
Cost, competitive impact, []
Cost:
“There are $100 bills lying on the ground if you just put a cap on emissions. Pollution is inefficiency, let’s get it out of the system. “That’s true 15 – 100 yrs out. But that 1st 15 years can stink for some people. Our economy and infrastructure are based on and depend on the polluting infrastructure.
If optimist: you think this can be done pretty cheaply. If pessimist, you can think “it will bust the economy.” Everyone sticks with their own team. Need a system where you don’t have to depend on “trust me” to garner votes. If you put a cap on the costs of the program, you can help reduce that issue.
A carbon tax would put a cost cap on the program.
Madam Senator, it will not cost more than [x] – that they can come home and state to their voters.
Those pesky states do a lot of creative things, like capping emissions from smoke stacks. States go first, do smart stuff, bug the heck out of multi-state/multi-national companies, who then say to Congress “make these states stop bugging us. Give us consistent rules nationwide.”
Another option: states will have to go with fed authority for a prescribed period.
Offsets are an issue. Some places can reduce emissions than other places. Theoretically right. We will have to have a global market for offsets. Congress doesn’t trust “pay 20 million to buy offsets for Chinese farms to reduce methane to we can buy them and use them to burn our coal for a few years while we get the tech in line.”
Competitiveness:
Our country doesn’t like Presidents/Vice Presidents to negotiate international agreements ebfore congress knows what they want to do.
97 members of senate said, we won’t vote for Kyoto. It wasn’t due to not believing in climate change, it was “AL Gore, we didn’t say you could do that.”
3rd world impact: China and India are in this game, too. We need law that will take that into account. We’ll need to attend to the increased energy costs of US manufacturing (give them revenue to invest in new tech).
Money:
Climate change legislation is about redistributing money.
You want to reduce 20% of emissions/yr. The cost of reducing that is $3/$5 billion per year. The moment you start a cap and trade program, you create a commodity. Every ton you allow to be emitted, is worth whatever it would cost to reduce them. President says auction them all. Use some to invest in tech, some to help affected industries.
“Wait a minute, this is a big revenue shift! It’s not about the policy@”
Any rational policy = charge for the bad stuff and give money to good stuff.
Hansens’ suggestion about charge with rebate, govt not really touching the money might work.
If we get the law to succeed, the folks who didn’t want to pass the law will get a say in how the money is spent.
If you believe this is an incredibly big problem : famine, flooding, dislocations, extinctions, then maybe we should give them what they need – give a portion of the $$ to [say, fuel reprocessing] if that’s what it takes to get the legislator to actually vote to REDUCE CARBON.
There is a growing sense of urgency that I hope will provide the motivation to make policy happen.
————-
Moderated Panel Begins:
Q1: (for Jason Grumet)
1970 – 1973 when environmental policy laws went into effect. Response to people demanding change.
In 2008, social movement elected President who wants to make change. Is social movement done, or is more social movement needed to galvanize?
A1: President Obama has best email list in world and intends to use it. Think there’s enough social pressure now for Congress to act. We need to untangle the knots – you can call them “special interest knots,” or “I only vote for people who vote for me knots,” but they exist.
One legislator asked me “How many times do you think I’ve been asked about climate change?” Answer was NEVER. This legislator wanted to vote yes, but he needs to hear from people, a TV ad isn’t going to help.
A1 (Hansen): I’m optimistic because of outstanding people appointed, but if what we hear about the notion that cap & trade will solve this problem, then I don;’t theink they “get it” yet. I think it will take more young people getting involved and agitating. PowerShift is the beginning of an indication that young people are starting to be concerned. It will take a LOT more than that to get some attention to this. A 20 cent change in gas price will not move us to the post-fossil fuel era.
Q2: (For both)
How would you encourage the public to think about and receive what appears to be a significant disparity of opinion (like the Cato institute’s full page ad in NYT this weekend).
A2 (Hansen): It’s tough, because there is that appearance. If Pres wanted to do something and wanted backing, all he has to do is ask the national academy of scientists to give him an evaluation. They’ll make clear that it’s not a 60/40 issue. Humans are dominating long term climate change.
The reason that the appearance of doubt exists is the fossil fuel industry trying to foster the notion.
Ask the most authoritative scientific body in the country.
A2 (Grumet): Scientists speak differently from the rest of us. When scientist says there’s uncertainty, it does NOT mean “I don’t know.” When scientists say that this thing that’s worsening, it’s a “psotivie feedback.” Well people LIKE positive feedback. There are people working on helping scientists learn how to speak to US.
Q3:
New stories – “99% emerging consensus on climate change.” It became a big controversy about whether the statement was meant to be narrowly interpreted. THen you pulled out of the public discussion.
A3: (Hansen)
A1: Media always likes to put 2 talking heads debating with each other, which makes it look like the issue is evenly divided. Press in last few years, media has become more sophisticated, but NYT and other “respected” media have been slipping backward in allowing/encouraging misperception.
A lot of people think we’ll need to see significant climate effects to get policy makers to take action. But if we wait, nature may be too far down the path for any action we take to make the needed difference.
Q4:
Interaction between economic and climate challenges. When people talk about solution to economic problem, they say “let’s get consumption going again” Is that kind of antithetical to get climate action to happen, or is there a way to use the situation to address climate challenges.
A4: The system has been perturbed – things are in chaos. I don’t want to do anything to add to that. Don’t want to raise hackles. Getting the response: “I’m just getting this thing back together, give me a minute.” But we NEED BIG changes, NOW.
Let’s go back to the old economy doesn’t have quite the force that it used to, which is why green jobs and clean tech has gotten a foothold. Maybe green jobs replacing brown jobs will bring us out of this crisis. We’ve taken the “Russian approach” to climate change: have the economy croak. This isn’t the way we want to solve the climate problem. We need investment.
A4 (Hansen):
No crisis should be wasted. A carbon fee that gives $$ back to a family, is a progressive thing. It gives more to the poor who use less. And the bigger thing: Energy Independence. I once sat with a Saudi ambassador, and the more I talked about this tax. He knows that by the time gas next reaches $4/gallon, half of that tax would be dollars staying in the US, damping down demand for the product. In addition, it would be stimulative, encouraging people to be innovative.
Q5:
People in the scientific community think the stiff we don’t know should drive policy. In DC, there’s the opposite: we need certainty before we can move.
A5: The disconnect of logical imperative vs certainty. People who are elected in 2 and 6 year cycles need to be able to speak to what they’ve done, for things that are not going to work noticably in those timeframes.
The more pressure from constituents, the better.
Don’t want to wait around for the pressure to take effect, because by the time we gt there, we be seeing those “positive feedbacks.”
———–
Audience Questioins:
Q: Jason, James talked about how Cap & Trade can’t work, then you talked about cap & trade.
A: The beauty of a tax and the woe of a tax is transparency. The beauty of a tax and the woe of a tax is that it’s obfuscated.
I think a carbon tax may be possible, but our body politic may find, in the future, that we’ll have to TAX something, cuz we’re running out of money for more stimulus. That may be the point at which acceptance of carbin tax will become real.
There’s a good enough chance we can do that in 18 mo, we can’t afford not to try.
Q: Clean Coal purely euphemism or does it deserve a place in policy discussion?
A: There’s no such thing, but it’s technically possible to capture the CO2, but it would make it MUCH more expensive. It’s been used as an advertisement, but with no real intent for it to be used. COmpanies pretended to be working on it. It’s very hard to capture all the murcury. You’ll end up with waste piles at the mines and mountaintop removal is destroying mountains, so in that sense, there really isn’t any clean coal, even if we sequester. We should do a commercial scale coal plant just to demonstrate the cost. We should consider a 4th gen nuclear power (burns 100% of fuel – instead of less than 1%).
Q:
Sagan decried lack of respect for scientists in this country. People don’t believe scientists. What will we be facing if we don’t come to our senses for 25 years.
A: I could see this coming: 20 years in the future, people would ask “Why ddn’t anyone tell us?”
Well, we’re trying to make it clear, but if we go 25 years without doing the things we need, we will have certainly passed the tipping point with the ice sheets. Water problems will be one of the biggest issues in the US and developing countries. I think we’ll come to our senses before 25 years from now, but it had BETTER be much sooner than that.
Q: Low energy prices, and people are still not going back to the SUVs. We’re still concerned aout environmental ussues. WE the people GET IT. GM banked on us going back to SUVs when energy prices dropped. We didn’t so they’re going out of business. Cap & Trade and Cap & rebate are both games. public behavior fuels environmental change. We get it. Can we get OVcngress, Wall St., and the captains of industry to JUSRT act?
A: Even if we get it in US, if you don’t have a price on the carbon, it makes the fuel cheaper and somoene elese somewhere else WILL burn it. We’ve GOTTA do something to prevent the use of the cheap fossil fuels.
Q: Isn’t it better to accept the engineering challenge to come up with energy source cheaper than coal?
A: If the guy with cold fusion in a jar had been right, then we could all be at the ba r instead of in this room. If we create the rewards to maximize the liklihood of these acheivments, we’ll get there faster.
Q: We need to get manageable numbers to people who want to take action. We want to reduce 600,000 houses to 50% of their energy use, and that will cost “x.” This made it possible for politicians to grasp what they needed to do to translate it to a format that can be used for policy (your house is using 3x average, and 7x what it could be using, here’s how to fix that.”
Oftent he money’s available, but people don’t know what to do. If we’re going to reduce energy 80% worldwide, we’ll have a different lifestyle. Or do you think we’ll manage to keep the exonomy booming with 0 carbon.
A: Don’t need to reduce use by 80%, we need carbon free energies that reduce.
A2: Things will be as different in 50 years as they were 50 years ago. My favorite energy bill shows your use vs your neighbors’ use.
Q; In 2007 in spring, I stood on the ice and said “Oh My God.” We looked at the data and felt like the Los Alamos engineers after the first test. In 2008, as the data came in, we felt more like the people of Nagasaki.
There are places in Inuit villages that are already being ruined. Would like to see metrics of the human component. I think effort to place metrics on quality of life in the face of altering ecosystems would be a very good strategy to formulate at policy and systems level. Cna we show the cost of increased fires next to the cost of CO2 mediation? Ditto for food supply. 1 billion people are now officially hungry on this planet.
I don’t know how to measure the pulse of humanity. that message isn’t getting across. YOU CANNOT LIVE in the world that is being projected. Is there an effort to put quantifiable metrics on this?
A: Yes. Not sure about the successfulness. You’re trying to change people’s voting. They’re not reading and listening to those studies. They’re listening to a 30 second conversation with a friend rather than a 30k page report from a bevy of Nobel Laureates. It’s all a question of distribution. Show Senator X about how HOS constituents will be affected.
A2: Field Notes from Catastrophe (book), has addressed much of this. There are only 24 hrs in a day and we’re already using most of them.
A3: Charismatic megafauna change votes (polar bears).
Q: Technologies (wind and solar) remarkable power law on their price function. If you look at what it takes to replace US fossil fuel production, if wind and solar just keep doing what they’re doing, already (20%/yr growth), it will wipe out the problem. Why don’t we see more of that kind of projection? Why don’t we see those scenarios in policy discussion?
A: Exponential curves don’t continue indefinitely. Many experts don’t think sun & wind will supply all our energy . Some places are trying – Germany for example, but they still need 25 new coal fired power plants. Wind and solar are still only 2% of the current, we CAN’T WAIT several decades. We MUST eliminate the coal much sooner.
Cost of inaction may be 5 – 20 times greater than the cost of action.
Q: India and China don’t think wind and solar will solve all their energy needs. That means they look to coal and nuclear. Some nuclear experts say 10 yrs to a 4th generation plant working.
A:We HAVE to have the solution in a decade. You should do the R&D on both nuclear and carbon sequestration, so there are options when the 10 yrs arrives.
Q: “So What” factor. How do we deal with that?
A: The time scale for new species to evolve is a time scale we can’t even imagine. If we drive species to extinction, we’ll have a desolate planet.
Q: Sea Level rise?
A: Real experts are getting VERY WORRIED, especially when looking at western antarctica. There’s the danger that the land-bound ice will rapidly cause a 1 meter per year rise for many years (last one was 25 years).
You see littel change at the beginning, but then it suddenly goes VERY fast. We Don’t know how much further we can go.
Business as usual will be several degrees of warming. There will be no ocean ice in the ANTARCTIC, and the ice sheet will be completely covered with water in summer.
Q: Lovins says we’re in an energy efficiency erevolution, and technology will solve the problem
A: He’s usually right … EVENTUALLY. The issue is the “soft barriers.” When your hot water heater blows, you call a guy to replace it, but that doesn’t guarantee efficiency. It’s not going to happen by itself with just technology.
We keep asking utilities to save energy, but pay based on energy they produce. We need to fix that.
A2 (Hansen): Lovins is not always right. He says we don’t need a price on carbon. He’s dead wrong on that. We can make standards, but they won’t be enforced. There are not enough people to go around and make sure they’re building them that way. As long as it’s cheaper to waste, that’s what people will do.
Q: Don’t understand that 380 is too much CO2. I’m sure we’ll hit 450 before it happens. There must be incentive for NEGATIVE carbin emissions. How does port and mine tax pay for negative carbon emissions?
A: Good question. Gotta figure out how to incentivise negative emission. If you come up with a scheme to do that, the dividend pool would eed to be divided to take that into account. We’ll see more before we get action, so you’re right, we’ll have to solve this problem of incentivising negative.
