How will we govern future climate?

[Travis]

So, we all come together, the peoples of Earth, and solve the Climate Change issue with some sort of new technology. Global Warming is stopped, we all gather on a huge grassy hill, join hands, buy the world a Coke and sing songs.

But what is the global temperature that Earth Climate is going to be constantly kept at by us into perpetuity? How is this decided? Who decides it? How will this effect future plant and animal evolution? If the technology also allows us to...say eliminate tropical cyclones do we do that? What if Country X stood to benefit from Global Warming, does it now sue the other countries for stopping it?

 

[Travis]

Nobody is going to step up to the plate here?

I know the vast majority on this forum are not Climate Change Deniers so I had hoped someone had thought through some of these pressing issues.

 

[uke2se]

I'm going to speculate a bit until someone more knowledgeable than me steps up.

I don't think we're going to aim at keeping the earth at any specific temperature for all eternity. What we're going to attempt is to offset the human induced temperature rise and get back as far as possible (probably not possible in the short run) towards what the climate was like before we started messing it up.

Any future natural changes will have to be dealt with as the situation calls for it. In the far future, if humans still populate this planet and we still have an atmosphere to speak of, I very much doubt that people would allow the planet to drift into some sort of climate that would make the planet uninhabitable or uncomfortable for humans to inhabit. Say what you will about that. If we have the technology to change things to our liking, my guess is that we'd do it.

 

[Clownshoes]

I think its an interesting question and I guarantee that it will be an issue in the far future once we have to technology to control it on a large scale.

 

[macdoc]

There is a pre-industrial base line for GHG.

It's not "controlling the climate" but rather - as with S02 and CFC controlling the level of gases emitted by human activities.

An effective carbon capture technology would allow mitigation of current change and perhaps a move downward to pre-industrial but the time frames for that are rather daunting.

All this could be moot if we unknowingly have set off a methane release feedback as that will take it's own course and there is very very little that could ever be done about it.

The levels of offshore clathrates and sequestered carbon in the tundra/taiga is unimaginable and if that avalanche gets kicked off we just sit and watch.

Some small indications..with perhaps very large implications

Methane releases from Arctic shelf may be much larger and faster ...
5 Mar 2010 ... 5, 2010) — A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of ... Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could ... Semiletov and the rest of their team took the studies offshore. ...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100304142240.htm

Science: Methane Gas Release from Arctic Permafrost is Far Larger Than Expected

Ancient permafrost submerged in the Arctic Ocean is releasing methane gas into the atmosphere at rates comparable to previous estimates for all the world’s oceans combined, researchers say. This underwater permafrost represents a large but previously overlooked source of methane, and experts say that similar but more widespread emissions of the gas could have dramatic effects on global warming in the future.

http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2010/0304sp_methane.shtml

4-6 degrees C from our carbon release which is what is likely by 2100 will alter our global community in incredible ways.

Methane feedback tho?? pretty dire

THAT is the 900 lb gorilla snoozing away just now and being...tickled....by us.

 

[Pixel42]

The irony is that if our civilisation had arisen in a few tens of thousands of years when the next ice age was imminent we would have been desperately looking for a way to stave it off, and the obvious way of doing so would have been to increase the CO2 in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel. I once read a paper which estimated that there was enough to postpone the next ice age by up to half a million years if we burnt it in carefully controlled amounts.

 

[macdoc]

Thinking seems to be we already have cancelled the next ice age cycle.

Once the orbital window passes it skips to the next period - it does not put it off but cancels that particular event.

decent article tho I suspect the BAU projection is low 5 degrees C is conservative

Avoiding the hothouse and the icehouse
February 11, 2009

. We have already increased atmospheric CO2 enough to keep us out of the next ice age for at least the next 55,000 years for this orbital setup".

http://www.physorg.com/news153556935.html

 

[drkitten]

So, we all come together, the peoples of Earth, and solve the Climate Change issue with some sort of new technology. Global Warming is stopped, we all gather on a huge grassy hill, join hands, buy the world a Coke and sing songs.

But what is the global temperature that Earth Climate is going to be constantly kept at by us into perpetuity? How is this decided?

You've answered your own question. The same structure that "solves" the global warming issue will also define what "solved" means. It will have to in order to get the various enabling legislation passed.

 

[Travis]

If we use an "pre-industrial baseline" how far back are we going? Things were pretty cold until about 23 million years ago when things were substantially hotter than now, go back to the end of the Permian and things were extinction level hot and if you keep going back you eventually hit Snowball Earth which would skew everything way out of whack.

I guess what I'm getting at is: isn't it a bit arrogant on our part to declare the way climate was in.....say 1848 is the way it ought to be kept given the tumultuous history of climate on Earth?

 

[macdoc]

Lets not get silly, pre-industrial is considered a couple of centuries back - perhaps 280-300 ppm.

There is no ought to be, there is a clear record our civilization and agriculture developed in the Holocene with a swing of +/-1 degree C.
How about we settle for that as a decent baseline to shoot for

Let natural variables govern change with our hoped for carbon neutrality

 

[drkitten]

If we use an "pre-industrial baseline" how far back are we going?

To the pre-industrial period, of course. Words have meanings.

I guess what I'm getting at is: isn't it a bit arrogant on our part to declare the way climate was in.....say 1848 is the way it ought to be kept given the tumultuous history of climate on Earth?

Not at all. Human history and society is itself a product of evolution, and evolved for the climate that was found in the immediately pre-industrial period. If the climate had been much colder than that, human society might or might not have evolved, but would have been considerably different (e.g. it's not clear that the climate of the Fertile Crescent would have supported agriculture on sufficient scale to allow for the development of cities if the early hunter-gatherers had to worry about growing seasons as farmers in more temperate climates do.) Similarly, if the climate had been much warmer.

The distribution of crops and populations that we have now is pretty well optimized for the climate c. 1500AD (which of course is roughly the same as the climate c. 1500BC). You don't see the Inuit trying to grow rice, you don't see the Vietnamese trying to hunt polar bears, and the areas where you have massive populations tend to be the areas that can carry massive populations. (Even with Canada's technology, the province of Nunavut is only about 32,000, about the population of San Marino or Monaco, and about 1/500 the population of Mumbai.)

Trying to "fix" the climate so you could grow rice in Nunavut would be silly. Rice is a very labor-intensive crop, and there aren't enough Nunavutians (and they tend to already have other jobs, jobs that they would lose when the pine forests died off). At the same time, billions of rice farmers throughout Asia would find that it was too hot even for their rice crops. If they were lucky, they could scramble and find some sort of substitute food that was suitable for massive production; if they weren't lucky, they'd just starve.

 

[bit_pattern]

If we use an "pre-industrial baseline" how far back are we going? Things were pretty cold until about 23 million years ago when things were substantially hotter than now, go back to the end of the Permian and things were extinction level hot and if you keep going back you eventually hit Snowball Earth which would skew everything way out of whack.

I guess what I'm getting at is: isn't it a bit arrogant on our part to declare the way climate was in.....say 1848 is the way it ought to be kept given the tumultuous history of climate on Earth?

You miss the point. Human civilisation evolved within a very stable climatic period known as the Holocene Optimum, there is nothing to suggest it could survive any wild oscillations beyond that optimum. It's not about what is good for the planet, rather what is good for human civilisation.

BTW - You might want to check out the New Policy on Climate Change Threads thread at the top of the page.

 

[Travis]

There is no ought to be, there is a clear record our civilization and agriculture developed in the Holocene with a swing of +/-1 degree C.
How about we settle for that as a decent baseline to shoot for

Why should it matter that our civilization happened to develop in that temperature range? Suppose, hypothetically, that humanity had arisen during a freak climatic excursion.....wouldn't it then be to the detriment of the rest of the planet for us to try and keep things in the mode of that excursion?

Trying to "fix" the climate so you could grow rice in Nunavut would be silly. Rice is a very labor-intensive crop, and there aren't enough Nunavutians (and they tend to already have other jobs, jobs that they would lose when the pine forests died off). At the same time, billions of rice farmers throughout Asia would find that it was too hot even for their rice crops. If they were lucky, they could scramble and find some sort of substitute food that was suitable for massive production; if they weren't lucky, they'd just starve.

You bring up an interesting point, what if modification benefits some areas over others? For example it can eliminate hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico but will increase aridity in Chad.

You miss the point. Human civilisation evolved within a very stable climatic period known as the Holocene Optimum, there is nothing to suggest it could survive any wild oscillations beyond that optimum. It's not about what is good for the planet, rather what is good for human civilisation.

But if you scale up enough the Holocene Optimum was itself part of an oscillation.

BTW - You might want to check out the New Policy on Climate Change Threads thread at the top of the page.

I did miss that initially but I was hoping we'd talk about all aspects of technological climatic engineering of which dealing with "anthropogenic global warming" would only be a part. For example; I can't, assuming we have politicians in charge of this technology, imagine them allowing for climatic excursions of natural origins (volcanic activity, comet strike, Melmac cat rain) to be tolerated. As you noted this is about civilization, not about the planet and nature even if the tech might be sold as that initially.

 

[Travis]

Perhaps the mods will allow this thread to persist if we do strictly keep this about the technology and it's implications and ignore global warming "real/unreal" which I didn't want to talk about anyway.

 

[bit_pattern]

Why should it matter that our civilization happened to develop in that temperature range? Suppose, hypothetically, that humanity had arisen during a freak climatic excursion.....wouldn't it then be to the detriment of the rest of the planet for us to try and keep things in the mode of that excursion?

...

But if you scale up enough the Holocene Optimum was itself part of an oscillation.

Well, it's not exactly an oscillation from my reading of he charts, but I get where you are coming from, which leads into the first paragraph of your post. Yes, climate changes naturally, no doubt, and at *some* point it will change dramatically again. But it's probably not such a crash hot idea to change it ourselves over a very short period of time in the not too distant future.

I mean, humans have only been anatomically human for 100,000+ years or so, and climate changes naturally over very loooong periods of time. If you look at the last 800,000 years the climate has been pretty regular, cycles of glacials and interglacials that don't go above or below certain points, but over longer periods the changes have been much less regular and often much more extreme. Thing is though, by the time those natural extremes might come to be, it is unlikely humans will still even be around, and whatever we've evolved into will adapt to deal with that, as the changes will play out over hundreds of thousands of years.

AGW, however, will play out over hundreds, maybe thousands of years, and to think that we can adapt to that is highly unlikely. Another way I like to look at it, on a shorter scale, is the glacial cycles, from what I understand we should be due for another ice age in 15,000 years, and that is going to be a far greater threat to human civilisation and the species in general, but we've got 15,000 years to think about it. With Anthropogenic climate change we've got a couple of hundred at best. And, personally, I'm worried about mine and my children's, and possibly my grandchildren's, should I be lucky enough to meet them, future than I am the distant future generations who might well have begun their evolutionary journey into forming a new species by the time a natural change comes to pass.

 

[Complexity]

One major problem is that people will think that their interests will benefit from different climates, and they will be right to some extent. What they are likely to overlook, or regard as less important, are the consequences that climate change will have on existing species.

I live in Minnesota. Many people here would like to have warmer winters and longer summers. Many would be prepared to risk significant die-off and extinction and increased sea levels as long as it didn't affect them personally.

There isn't a compromise climate that will satisfy all parties. Perhaps some will benefit from the changes that will come about, but many will certainly suffer.

Perhaps the best outcome would be to try to shift the climate back towards what it was several years ago. People would still bicker about why they don't get their own way, but the rest of life on the planet would benefit in general.

 

[Travis]

Well, it's not exactly an oscillation from my reading of he charts, but I get where you are coming from, which leads into the first paragraph of your post. Yes, climate changes naturally, no doubt, and at *some* point it will change dramatically again. But it's probably not such a crash hot idea to change it ourselves over a very short period of time in the not too distant future.

I mean, humans have only been anatomically human for 100,000+ years or so, and climate changes naturally over very loooong periods of time. If you look at the last 800,000 years the climate has been pretty regular, cycles of glacials and interglacials that don't go above or below certain points, but over longer periods the changes have been much less regular and often much more extreme. Thing is though, by the time those natural extremes might come to be, it is unlikely humans will still even be around, and whatever we've evolved into will adapt to deal with that, as the changes will play out over hundreds of thousands of years.

AGW, however, will play out over hundreds, maybe thousands of years, and to think that we can adapt to that is highly unlikely. Another way I like to look at it, on a shorter scale, is the glacial cycles, from what I understand we should be due for another ice age in 15,000 years, and that is going to be a far greater threat to human civilisation and the species in general, but we've got 15,000 years to think about it. With Anthropogenic climate change we've got a couple of hundred at best. And, personally, I'm worried about mine and my children's, and possibly my grandchildren's, should I be lucky enough to meet them, future than I am the distant future generations who might well have begun their evolutionary journey into forming a new species by the time a natural change comes to pass.

But I'm not talking about issues with the short term (like AGW, which in my hypothetical has already been dealt with) but with the long term. If we decide to maintain our planets climate in a certain state for times that generally exceed natural oscillations (like 30,000+ years) at some point there would be consequences. What that might be I can't say for certain which is why I posed the question.

One major problem is that people will think that their interests will benefit from different climates, and they will be right to some extent. What they are likely to overlook, or regard as less important, are the consequences that climate change will have on existing species.

I live in Minnesota. Many people here would like to have warmer winters and longer summers. Many would be prepared to risk significant die-off and extinction and increased sea levels as long as it didn't affect them personally.

There isn't a compromise climate that will satisfy all parties. Perhaps some will benefit from the changes that will come about, but many will certainly suffer.

Perhaps the best outcome would be to try to shift the climate back towards what it was several years ago. People would still bicker about why they don't get their own way, but the rest of life on the planet would benefit in general.

On the other hand change is natural. By freezing things in one state we may keep certain species around but we also will be preventing the evolution of new ones. Imagine Earth if Deinonychus had become a technologically advanced species and froze things to be like the early Cretaceous.....we wouldn't be here for one thing.

 

[bit_pattern]

But I'm not talking about issues with the short term (like AGW, which in my hypothetical has already been dealt with) but with the long term. If we decide to maintain our planets climate in a certain state for times that generally exceed natural oscillations (like 30,000+ years) at some point there would be consequences. What that might be I can't say for certain which is why I posed the question.

Ah, well, yes that's a different matter then I guess. I don't think anyone is looking 30,000 years into the future tbh. I think all we can do is limit out impact on the planet and try and avoid changing the climate in the short term. Long term, we're screwed regardless, unless we get off his rock and/or merge with out technology to create a new species of super-ape.

On the other hand change is natural. By freezing things in one state we may keep certain species around but we also will be preventing the evolution of new ones. Imagine Earth if Deinonychus had become a technologically advanced species and froze things to be like the early Cretaceous.....we wouldn't be here for one thing.

That is a good point, but, unlike your descriptor, I myself am very much an pro-anthrope, I like this species, call me biased if you will And, again, I only have my eye on the short to medium term.

 

[Trakar]

... Imagine Earth if Deinonychus had become a technologically advanced species and froze things to be like the early Cretaceous.....we wouldn't be here for one thing.

surely you jest!

 

[macdoc]

Why should it matter that our civilization happened to develop in that temperature range? Suppose, hypothetically, that humanity had arisen during a freak climatic excursion.....wouldn't it then be to the detriment of the rest of the planet for us to try and keep things in the mode of that excursion?

Hardly given the "rest of the planet" has adapted to that climate as well and we, last time I checked are dependent on the biome that has adapted to the Holocene.

WE are instituting changes in a time frame few other species can adapt quickly enough to cope with ....on top of our destruction of their habitat.

The least we can do is keep the atmosphere sane and attempt to reduce the habitat destruction.

No one is talking about "freezing things in one state" - it's returning the atmosphere to the composition before we ****ed it up.

If future generations wish tinker further that is their choice to make.