50 to 1 Climate mitigation costs 50 times more than Adaptation

There is a new proxy record for global warming, the Lake El'gygtgyn cores, so I took this snapshot of the recent data to see if the middle ages warming might be detected:

"2.8 Million Years of Arctic Climate Change from Lake El'gygytgyn, NE Russia", Martin Melles, Julie Brigham-Grette, Pavel S. Minyuk, Norbert R. Nowaczyk, Volker Wennrich, Robert M. DeConto, Patricia M. Anderson, Andrei A. Andreev, Anthony Coletti, Timothy L. Cook, Eeva Haltia-Hovi, maaret Kukkonen, Anatoli V. Lozhkin, Peter Rosen, Pavel Tarasov, Hendrik Vogel, Bernd Wagner, http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/jbg/Mellesetalscience2012.pdf

The first part of the data, the first division, covers current to 100,000 year back. It does not have the resolution needed, century or decade scales, to identify a middle ages warming. However, the last glacial period is easily seen in the data. What was curious is to see our current oxygen-18 levels are pretty much at the same level as ~120,000 years go. To the extent oxygen-18 levels correspond to global average temperature, we're at least as warm as the last inter-glacial period.

I Googled but could not find any more detailed data having a finer resolution. I did find reports indicating the borehole drilling only has detailed temperature records at the bottom, not the upper, more interesting layers. Regardless, I suspect we're going to see more detailed studies in the future.

Bob Wilson

 

I regret that, amid the acrimony, no one else has been inspired to read or comment on the Grinsted paper. It really is a worthwhile activity. Once it is clear what they did, the appropriateness of the C3 revision can easily be adjudicated.

 

I found a directory of Aslak Grinsted's paper: Publications - Aslak Grinsted

He has been fairly prolific. Near as I can tell, these papers have some content referencing the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) although some may be incidental graphs. Is there any one particular paper folks consider worth reading:

• Comment on the subsidence adjustment applied to the Kemp et al. proxy of North Carolina relative sea level
  
  posted Oct 10, 2011, 7:34 AM by Aslak Grinsted [ updated Oct 13, 2011, 7:34 AM ]
• Anthropogenic forcing dominates sea level rise since 1850
  
  posted Oct 7, 2009, 1:35 AM by Aslak Grinsted [ updated Nov 11, 2009, 4:55 AM ]
• Reconstructing sea level from paleo and projected temperatures 200 to 2100 AD
  
  posted Dec 8, 2008, 1:13 AM by Aslak Grinsted [ updated Feb 2, 2011, 3:28 AM ]
• Present day summers in Svalbard are as warm as those during the medieval warm period.
  
  posted Feb 28, 2008, 7:18 AM by Aslak Grinsted [ updated Mar 4, 2008, 12:22 AM ]
• Svalbard summer melting, continentality, and sea ice extent from the Lomonosovfonna ice core
  
  posted Feb 28, 2008, 7:15 AM by Aslak Grinsted [ updated Feb 28, 2008, 8:02 AM ]

Thanks,
Bob Wilson

 

Back to 50 to 1, I provide a link

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/climatechange/publications/collaborative/halving-global-co2-by-2050

Maybe it's utter toss, maybe it's good but no one will read, but I put 'em up when they appear.

 

More on the financials:

Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2013 « CPI

tells how money is being spent now. Mostly on increasing the role of rebewables, if I read it right.

Or go to the Asian Development Bank

Asian Development Bank | Fighting Poverty in Asia and the Pacific

to see how spending X on adaptation might prevent losses of Y. In a few Asian countries. Their clearest result is that coastal defenses would be a large financial 'win'. That is of course, based on whatever future SLR they are using. That would be in the long-form report no doubt.

 

I took a quick peek this morning and the summary reminded me of what happened when the EPA was first made law. The emphasis was on reducing emissions and I knew at the time the best path was improved engine efficiency. So I was more than a little shocked when by the last 1970s-80s, engine compartments became a 'plumber's nightmare.'

Instead of cleaning up car emissions by improved efficiency, the USA (and other) car makers continue to build ever more complex kludges to keep carburetors in service. Things like the Gawd Awful 'heat riser' tubes and just wretched engineering approaches. Some I could almost understand because we didn't have good microprocessors until the middle 1980s. But they were horrible kludges even though we knew how to build fuel injection and robust analog controllers. . . . well better stop for now to take my bitter pills.

Bob Wilson

ps. Keep posting good references as I will, as time available, follow your reading lists. Can't say about the others but this is new territory to me.

 

You're not going to convince the al goracles of anything. You will have a better time trying to convince the Pope not to be Catholic.

 

Actually this Pope Francis is something better . . . a practicing Jeusit:

• Pays his own bills
• Changing focus to the poor
• Demoting extravagant living Cardinal
• Washes the feet of a Moslem woman
• De-emphasis on homosexuals and more on out-reach

I know it takes time for the Pope's policies to reach down to the individuals as it has to pass through a lot of 'filters.' Some will break-off, as the Latin Liturgy followers already have. But that is not unexpected. Following the letter but not the spirit of Jesus has long been a problem in the Christianity just as Islam has problems following the revelations of the Prophet. Even Buddhism has its militants.

But every now and then, someone like a Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rises up to redeem the terrible injustices done by others. These are rare, seeds a greatness, who give us examples to follow. We have these words from Nelson Mandela:

Source: Nelson Mandela’s Opinion About Climate Change | Turn Left 2013

Bob Wilson

 

Now if everyone only practiced what other religious leaders have preached. Oh well...

 

Then show us how by editing your earlier post, "the al goracles", into the style we should treat you.

Bob Wilson

 

Now if we both went and edited our collective posts we both would be at the computer for quite some time. Especially yourself, you've been a product of this forum for much longer than I.

But I digress, in light of your newfound religious teachings if you've seen the light and an armistice is in order shouldn't we be concerned with the events of the future rather than the past? After all isn't that what the concern for global warming is all about?

 

And you spoiled the moment "a product of this forum."

Your posting habit sets the style of my replies if I even bother to read them. For example, you'll notice I addressed your insulting description of Al Gore as "the al goracles". Yet I kinda knew you would be incapable of reform and doing the right thing at least once.

No, global warming is about facts and data along with the application of physics and chemical laws. It is an interesting technical problem like figuring out how our Prius work.

Nothing posted in this thread, this forum, or PriusChat will ever give you soul. It is just not going to happen. But when post a "whack a mole" comment, I'm quite willing to swing the "clue by four" with no expectation you'll ever get a clue.

Bob Wilson

 

I must have mistakenly interpreted your previous post as an olive branch, I must have been mistaken. I should have known better.

If you took my "product of this forum" remark as derogatory I apologize. I was merely implying that it would take an awful long time to sift through and edit thousands of posts.

 

Pat, absolutely, there are things that over the next 30 years don't cost a thing to the great masses of us. We should do all those things. Unfortunately we have entrenched interests, and these are small minorities that want to block these things. There are also old politicians (average in the US house is 57 , in the US senate 63). Only 10% of the house is under 40, and there are no senators under 40. These guys have been taking money from the same interests for a very long time, and have entrenched laws and subsidies.

Now that 50:1 thing is a little bit of a problem for me. Its pulled out of someone's A$$. Europe has had such programs as promoting diesel by giving it lower taxes and low pollution standards, that seems to have a great deal of health costs. Japan seems to have thrown away reason in a push to build nuclear power seemed to forget these utilities if not watched will build on fault lines and the companies will ignore good safety protocols. Cost of averting ghg the Japan way seems to have cost a lot.

I do not know the details of how the Australian government used the tax money. This again could be done well or poorly. The cap and tax plan that went through the house would not have brought down ghg as much as they have done just by government doing nothing. It would have subsidized some new nuclear plants, and gotten some utility companies a lot of money. The european scheme, again did little, but transfer wealth. That doesn't mean we stop trying, but it does mean that government needs to be watched.

Australia is one of the biggest per capita ghg polluters. In 2000 it was much higher than the US. I don't know how its doing today. Australia has a small population though, changes in the US and china per capita are more important just because of the number of people.

It all depends on what it is. For many things it is worth it.

 

Heck, I toss olive branches out here all the time. At least I think I do

If people who opposed spending (unwisely?) on renewable energy would strongly support the negative-cost measures we could take (energy efficiency of new buildings etc.) I'd take that as an olive branch.

But doing the 20th century again, no matter what, is a really spiky branch to be offered.

 

The post this was responding to was loaded with sarcasm.
Governments do spend money on public infrastructure, roads, health and social programs, they don't pull money out their rectum, it comes from taxes.
Australia is a shocking example of GHG emissions, we need to cut back. I'm trying but my government is reversing the good stuff the last government put in place before it had a chance to work. I'm ashamed.

 

Back to the topic of this thread, my favorite video on global warming is "Cool It". Lomborg essentially argues the same thing as the OP, that the best way to care for humans is to spend resources directly on them instead of indirectly attempting to influence the weather.

It seems to me that extremists, regardless of the issue, tend to be wrong on both ends of the issue. While humanity should probably do something about global warming, they certainly should not do everything. The low hanging fruit of curbing emission rise should be the first goal. Resources spent on this should also be weighed against all of the other issues that make living on earth miserable for people.

You say these people are morons, but you don't explain why or give evidence. The reason you gave as to why Americans don't place this problem as a higher priority is exactly spot on, and any rational person would feel the same way. The reasoning goes; "why should I lower my standard of living, only to have it elevate others standard of living, and have no net impact on the environment".

This is no trivial question. Game theory has played these scenarios out time and time again. Goodwill by one group will certainly, without a doubt, be taken advantage of by other groups. The only way I could see the US, or even all allies making a substantial difference in CO2 emissions is to first conquer the rest of the world, and then drastically limit fossil fuel production. This will never happen.

Things will go as they always have. Fossil fuels will be used until they become more expensive than their alternatives. Sperm whale oil production peaked in 1846, and then kerosene and later electricity replaced whale oil as a fuel. The same will happen with oil, regardless of the regulations that some nations impose.

 

But that is a false premise.
There is no need to lower your standard of living in order to curb your CO2 emmissions.