Guest post by Robert Bradley, Master Resource
I have been studying the global warming debate from a physical scientific and political economy basis for 20 years. And I remain amazed at how the energy/climate alarmists will not concede (are ‘in denial’) that the human influence on climate can be positive, not only negative, from an ecological and economic perspective.
The work of leading climate economist Robert Mendelsohn calculates net positive externalities for much of the world from anthropogenic warming at the bottom of the canonic IPCC temperature range. And climate scientist Gerald North of Texas A&M convinced me that the models would eventually get to a warming range of 20C, plus or minus 0.250C, for a doubling of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas in equilibrium. (Dr. North was my paid consultant back in my Enron days, tasked with helping me figure out just where the middle ground was in the contentious debate.)
Mendelsohn plus North: a net positive externality from manmade greenhouse gas emissions. And a win for fossil fuels even before getting to the political economy question of comparing ‘market failure’ against ‘government failure’ to evaluate the case for government intervention.
Now to the renewable energy debate online at The Economist magazine where I was invited to oppose the motion: “This house believes that subsidising renewable energy is a good way to wean the world off fossil fuels.”
In my opening statement, I argued that renewable energy was doomed by physics for reasons that were first comprehended by British economist W. S. Jevons in his 1865 classic, The Coal Question.
Noting the taxpayer and environmentalist backlash against wind and solar facilities, as well as the inability of intermittent energies to exist without fossil-fuel blending/firming, I found myself squarely back at the premise to the motion: that fossil fuels were bad.
With peak oil and peak gas waylaid by the shale revolution, and the statistics of less pollution alongside greater fossil-fuel usage, the question then got back to global warming (my rebuttal statement). My closing statement summed up my case for the increasing sustainability of fossil fuels, not only the failure of renewable energy.
Economist debate moderator, James Astill, is upset. After all, we should all know that the human influence on climate is severe and bad and government must do something! He complains:
In my previous offering, I confess I underestimated how relaxed our opposer, Robert Bradley, was about global warming. I thought he did not consider it a problem. It now seems he is rather in favour of it. “A moderately warmer and wetter world, natural or manmade,” Mr Bradley writes, “is arguably a better world.”
I said “moderate warming,” Sir. And I said “arguably,” Sir. Why is your world so black and white, and black in favor of energy statism? Given the public and political backlash against climate alarmism and forced energy transformation, and the very comments and voting cast in this forum, perhaps it is time to debate rather than assume.
Astill continues:
This shows how far Mr Bradley has strayed from the question in hand: concerning the desirability, or otherwise, of subsidising renewables as a means to stop the world burning fossil fuels. I do not blame him exactly. It stands to reason that no one untroubled by the prospect of global warming would bother himself with wonky, expensive renewables. But, alas, that does not describe this house. It assumes that a way to get the world off fossil fuels must be found.
Astill is missing the energy forest for the politically correct trees. Compared to dilute, intermittent, and environmentally invasive wind and solar power, fossil fuels are socially advantageous. And even assuming high climate sensitivity to GHG forcing, ‘market failure’ must be balanced with ‘analytical failure’ and with ‘government failure.’ No more assuming the problem, the solution, and perfect government implementation of the ‘solution.’ The era of magical energy postmodernism must end!
I invite readers of WUWT to visit, read, and vote. I like my case. As I conclude my final statement: “The best energy future belongs to the efficient and to the free.”
Realism and optimism, anyone?
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Mr Bradley, it’s disrespectful of you to write “global warming” without capitalizing the words. Would you write ‘Catholic’ with a small c, or ‘Methodist’ with a small m? Sarc/ click, bang, sarc/.
Sorry about the stuck sarcasm flag. It’s hard for me to keep a straight face when the topic is debating an issue which must be assumed to be true.
Jon says:
November 16, 2011 at 8:21 am
“I’d be interested in some “positive” ecological impacts that humans have had on our planet … can you list any?”
I think Jon’s question points to something deeper. An “ecological impact” is defined by ecology, the science.
Ecologists see ANY human interference as bad – say, if you were to spread some fertilizer around in wildland, maybe you want to help some starving plants, but ecologists would condemn your actions because you would change that ecosystem. A natural forest fire is just natural, but if a human starts a forest fire, it’s of course the destruction of an ecosystem and so forth.
Humans can consequently never have a positive ecological impact per definitionem.
This also explains why environmental pressure groups never actually try to save animals or plants but only travel around protesting.
@ur momisugly Jit says:
November 16, 2011 at 10:35 am
I’m sure Jon can answer for himself, but to all those who have listed positive contributions of humanity: none of those are ECOLOGICAL benefits.
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Why is it that the environmental community, generally, considers the human species to be not part of the Ecology of planet Earth? As if we were some kind of extra-terrestrial invaders. As far as I’m aware, we evolved here, which by definition means we are as much a part of the life of this planet as anything else. Is this some kind of self-imposed guilt trip for being a successful species?
Right now the voting is 50/50. If the same question had been debated a year ago it probably would have been 70/30 Yes.
We’re making a difference. Please help out, register and vote No. It would be a great pleasure to see the enviro-Economist lose this one.
It is very important to separate the questions of what kind of energy production mechanism(s) make economic sense from the unproven debate over CO_2. This is one of the most serious flaws in the entire current public policy discussion — the two are conflated and people with strong opinions on either one are being seduced into throwing their weight behind the other.
Let me start by saying that I am enormously skeptical that the AGW hypothesis is correct. I have no “dog in the fight” — I don’t do research on this except indirectly and as a hobby — but a sober examination of the data and arguments reveals a chilling pattern of cherrypicking, confirmation bias, open manipulation of both data and methodology all towards the single minded end of convincing the work of the probable truth of the JOINT statement “The world is getting warmer” AND “The proximate cause is anthropogenic CO_2”. Since the world without much doubt got warmer since the little ice age (LIA), it naturally inclines people to believe the latter, but when one looks at the actual curves associated with CO_2 increase and temperature increase, the latter is utterly incapable of describing or predicting the FEATURES of the latter, and there is also ample evidence that warm as it may or may not be compared to some imagined “temperature that it is supposed to be” (absent CO_2) the warmth is clearly within the reasonable natural climate variability visible in the proxy reconstructed record (reconstructed by everybody but Mann or other members of the hockey team, that is).
Bayes thus gives us little reason to look for CO_2 as a proximate primary cause, and little hope of being able to resolve its effect from both noise (the essentially chaotic processes that cause significant excursions of the average global temperature from day to day, month to month) and from influences such as (again largely unpredictable) microstate of the various oscillations (solar cycle, ENSO, PDO, AO) that are known to exert a tremendous influence on the mesoscale temperature given that we KNOW that the latter and possibly unknown mechanisms of forcing and feedback are capable of producing all or most of the LONG term variation that is visible in the climatological record WITHOUT the meaningful participation of CO_2 as a driver.
It makes little sense, then, to create an enormously expensive global economic policy that has a huge impact on people’s lives and pocketbooks out of fear that all of this MIGHT be true. So let’s put that aside. Perhaps CO_2 is indeed a problem — the hypothesis is far from DISproven either — the truth is that we just don’t know yet because we cannot explain the entire thermal record in any way that is even vaguely plausible. The best we can do is “fit” parts of it with local patches based on various assumptions that turn out not to work very well to explain the whole thing, a very iffy thing to do using only fifteen or twenty decades of data (some of it highly abused and distorted data) in a system where some of the important drivers have periodicities of a thousand CENTURIES.
There’s a lovely paper I have squirrelled away of what happens when one tries to fit a simple sine function (times noise) on the basis of intervals 0.1, 0.5, 1.5 radians long. It illustrates the basic fallacy of most of the “climate debate” at this point, and why local models suck when you try to extrapolate them.
Now let me SEPARATELY comment on your remarks on renewable energy vs fossil fuels (specifically oil, coal and natural gas). Separately because this is a completely distinct issue — I don’t care about CO_2 emissions or H_2O emission (coal burns to mostly the former, the latter two burn to both) but there are aspects of burning any of them that are highly undesireable. A list might look like:
* Scarcity. In all cases the resources have significant costs associated with finding them, developing them, and using them. Once developed, the resources generally become depleted. The costs associated with developing new resources as the old ones are depleted scale up with time as we find and develop the “easy” wells/mines first and the more difficult ones later. Scarcity in an energy hungry world drives the costs (and the price) up still more. The result is an ever-increasing spiral of prices in real dollars — not a very good thing given that the continued development of modern civilization relies on energy, as a fundamental resource that more or less sets the value of money (not the other way around) progressively elevating the real cost of nearly everything.
* Equity. Who owns, or should own, these resources? Various individuals and companies become enormously wealthy from them, and will become still wealthier as they ride the cost-spiral up. Enormously wealthy corporations and individuals represent a huge threat to the civil and political liberties of all humans with far less wealth, as even a cursory glance at history can reveal. Wars have been and continue to be fought over them. Politicians are bought and sold because of them. People are advantaged or disadvantaged, often critically, during the huge fluctuations that have occurred in the supply chain (some of them artificial and INTENDED to frighten people into giving still more power and access to those that control the chain, IMO).
* Hidden costs. When one burns coal for fuel, there is a wide range of biproducts released into the atmosphere that include sulphuric acid and mercury, particulate soot, carbon MONoxide, and more. Oil has its own set of toxicities associated with its use. Natural gas is safer than either one, but not yet a particularly common primary fuel. Mining or drilling for all three do a variety of kinds of real damage and have both risks and health costs that are borne by those that work in the mines, drill the oil, refine the fuels. Many of these costs are not borne by the producer (see the bit about “corrupting politicians” above) and are a hidden cost borne by society as a whole, inequitably so that the producers of the energy can maintain their enormous profits. These costs function as something between a hidden tax and a hidden subsidy of the fossil fuel industry, and when comparing subsidy costs need to be taken into account (or at least, acknowledged and estimated).
* Sustainability. Fossil fuels are, to put it bluntly, not sustainable. I take all the crap about peak oil, peak this, peak that all being last year or ten years away with a grain of salt, but it is impossible to deny that there will BE a peak and worse, that at one point or another the diminishing returns and spiralling costs will make them completely untenable as a basis for a sustained global civilization. We aren’t idiots — we are at this point bright enough, and technically educated enough, to see this coming and we WOULD be fools if we did not use this precious time where we DO have relatively abundant, relatively cheap fossil fuel energy to bootstrap a civilization that will not be vulnerable to the crash that will otherwise come when cost per watt exceeds some critical threshold in real comparative value.
* Alternate value. One of the greatest tragedies associated with burning fossil fuels is that they have so much value NOT burned. Everything made with oil and coal is far more expensive because of the tremendous demand (relative to the supply) competing for the scarce resource and driving up the prices. Again, one would rather like to see a steady-state civilization emerge where this resource is “inexhaustible”, but this will not happen as long as we’re burning the plastic we might want to make in the year 5082 in the SUVs of 2011. A more obscure risk or future value that might be much greater than the present is visible in the interesting fact that I just learned (reading pages on climate change, actually) — during the last few ice ages, CO_2 levels dropped because of increased absorption in the colder oceans and reduced biological activity to just a few tens of PPM above the point where its partial pressure no longer can sustain non-oceanic plant life. The ice age is coming back sooner or later, and if we’ve burned all the carbon based fuels, the CO_2 has been taken up and fallen to the ocean floor as carbonates or in other forms to be carried under in the great recycling of the subduction of tectonic plates, we might be giving up a critical resource that could sustain life itself at that time, at least as we know it. As you say, CO_2 is GOOD for plant life, but right now there is plenty of it for plants. The time we really, really might need it is in (say) around 10,000 years, well into the next period of glaciation.
* Capital vs operating cost ratio. Fuel burning plants are expensive to build (high capital cost) and then expensive to run (ongoing fuel cost). Worse, as noted the cost of their product is highly sensitive to vagaries in the supply chain, which can easily be interrupted by war, politics, economics, human greed.
To summarize, quite independent of global warming, objections that any of us might have to the wholesale mining and burning of fossil fuels is that it is EXPENSIVE, DIRTY, and NOT SUSTAINABLE and that it will never become cheap, clean, or sustainable. The best of the bad lot is natural gas, which alas is not easy to use as a vehicle fuel. I also freely acknowledge that nothing is going to easily be able to compete with gasoline as a vehicle fuel — it has a phenomenal energy density and that energy can be turned into motive power with proven technology quite easily.
NOW, let us compare that to renewable energy sources. They, too, have many of these problems, but the problems, costs and benefits are tremendously variable. For the sake of argument, then, let’s pick just one of many possibilities, “traditional” solar cells made from silicon semiconductors. Silicon has to be mined, but Silicon is actually the most abundant element and hence truly is inexhaustible. Transforming e.g. sand into silicon takes energy and has other costs overt and hidden. Doping silicon requires toxic metals e.g. arsenic. I don’t think that the costs and hidden costs are “a wash” comparing oil, coal, gas to silicon cells — I think that they are almost certainly smaller, per watt over the lifetime of a cell, for silicon cells. Sure, it costs land to build solar plants — it costs FAR MORE for the land and rights required mine coal or drill for oil or build pipelines or refineries or transportation channels or delivery systems, and honestly, most people will end up simply turning their roof into one, big solar collector, starting very soon.
We can see this by comparing the energy yield of a dollar both ways. To use round numbers, lets assume the retail cost of a one-watt solar cell is $1 (it’s higher, but only slightly). To balance this, let’s assume that one gallon of gasoline costs only $3.00. Gasoline contains roughly 132 MJ of energy. This energy, however, isn’t all useable. Only roughly 25% of it is eventually available for doing work, call it 40 MJ to be generous. 1/3 of this is 13 MJ, call it 15 (I don’t want to be accused of being cruel to the oil industry or short-changing it).
The 1 Watt from the solar cell is its nominal peak energy already (actual efficiency is already factored in) but one does have to correct for things like insolation time and angle. Those limit its energy delivery to perhaps 1/3 of the day and 1/2 of its peak value. It doesn’t matter if these aren’t quite right — they are close enough for our estimate. The winner is, or should be, rather obvious already.
That means that we can get roughly 1 watt for 1/6 of every day. There are roughly 30 million seconds in a year, we can (effectively) use 5 million of them. That is 5 MJ of annual production from our humble one-watt cell. 3 years of production matches the usable energy available in a gallon of gasoline. The expected useful life of the cell is roughly 30 years (with a gradual decline in output, but arriving at the end still making perhaps 0.8 watts, again ignorable in this rough estimate). That is 150 MJ of energy over its lifetime, ten times the usuable yield of the gallon of gasoline. From this it is pretty clear why I could be sloppy. Even allowing for factors of TWO here or there it isn’t even close.
This is why the issue is a non-issue. You assertion that solar cells are undesirable or economically worse than fossil fuels is itself false. We are already at break even to win a lot (with or without subsidies) in states with high insolation and high baseline energy costs. Solar cells are getting cheaper at roughly 7-10% per year. That means in 7 to 10 years they will cost order of $0.50 a watt, adding another factor of two to their raw cost-benefit compared to fossil fuels. Does anyone actually believe that fossil fuels will be CHEAPER in 10 years? Really?
To conclude, it makes absolutely no difference what one believes about carbon or the goodness or evil of fossil fuels. In a decade, fossil fuel utilization will be plunging like a rock, forced to drop prices to match the downward spiral of just this ONE technology of solar cell, which may well not end up being the winner in a race that is really just now getting well underway. I can understand why the GOP (and its fossil fuel based energy backers) wants to do away with the DOE — it has, with its investments in research, destroyed their entire industry. They know it. Soon everybody will no it. People won’t give up carbon because they want to hug trees, they’ll give up carbon because it is stupid to burn carbon for fuel.
To give it up all the way will take time, of course. As one of the first posters pointed out, fusion is very likely to EVENTUALLY be worked out, and it is the only truly sustainable, inexhaustible fossil fuel. In the meantime, we will move towards replacing the expensive load levelling natural gas plants with solar, with a huge fraction of residential and commercial with solar, and increasingly use the fossil fuels to supply power at night and on cloudy days. Eventually the problem of storing solar efficiently and cheaply may be solved, but even if it isn’t solar will probably replace 30-50% of our energy consumption in thirty years, driven purely by humans, saving money, because it will be CHEAPER that way and MORE PROFITABLE to invest in solar than in drilling wells and digging mines and paying for a dwindling supply of dirty fuel.
In the meantime, the world will surely not be HARMED if we produce less CO_2, at least not at the moment. Nor will it be harmed by the near-bankrupting of the many of the oil producing countries with their deadly politics and religious intolerance and abuse. Nor will it be harmed by the gradual elimination of undersea wells that can blow out, the acid rain, the soot, the mercury, and the enormous and readily abused political power and influence of the oil and energy barons of the present.
rgb
Allencic: Alternative energy only makes sense if you truly believe that carbon dioxide is the devil incarnate.
Alternative energy makes sense if continued investment drives down the cost enough. In Brazil, energy from ethanol is cheaper than energy from gasoline; this resulted from 25 years continuous investment in the technology by the Brazilian government. Eventually (say 20 years) the same will be true of biodiesel vs petrodiesel in the U.S, and probably true of cellulosic ethanol vs gasoline.
The cost of extracting America’s shale gas will be huge; a writer at TheOilDrum estimated $2.3 trillion, or thereabouts. An investment less than that can probably make electricity from sunlight cheaper than electricity from gas; it’s hard to say, but solar power continues to decline in price, and is competitive without subsidy in some parts of the U.S. for meeting peak electrical demand.
Eventually, fossil fuels will be the most expensive energy, due to high extraction costs (including internalizing all the costs of coal pollution, and including deaths in extraction.) So the real question is how much investment to make in alternatives to speed along the process of making cheaper substitutes.
Jit says:
November 16, 2011 at 10:35 am
I’m sure Jon can answer for himself, but to all those who have listed positive contributions of humanity: none of those are ECOLOGICAL benefits.
Jon says:
November 16, 2011 at 10:55 am
uan … those examples you listed are great with repect to the needs of humans but highly detrimental to the natural environment.
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Uhmm, yes, they are ecological benefits and no, they aren’t highly detrimental to the “natural” environment. The problem you guys are having with this is that you are considering humans as an aberration of nature as opposed to humanity being a part of nature.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, Mr. Bradley.
We indeed must ween ourselves off of fossil fuel and or become more efficient in usage of same. The price of energy is a major cost component of just about everything. Fossil fuels aren’t getting any cheaper to recover so in the name of productivity gain, which is the only thing that sustains an increasing standard of living, we need to find a less expensive alternative to fossil fuels.
The grand mistake being made is trying to replace fossil fuels with more expensive alternatives. There’s an incredible amount of energy that arrives daily called sunshine. It’s only a matter of time before it becomes cheaper (FAR cheaper) to harvest than digging fossil fuels out of the ground. Personally I’m betting on synthetic biology which is an infant technology progressing at the rate which semiconductors did in the second half of the 20th century only what can be exploited for practical benefit from synthetic biology is far greater than the information revolution. I’d rank it in world-changing terms right alongside the agricultural revolution that transformed humanity from nomadic hunter-gatherers into farmers and villagers with spare time to discover and perfect things like metallurgy and the written word.
Septic Matthew says:
“The cost of extracting America’s shale gas will be huge; a writer at TheOilDrum estimated $2.3 trillion, or thereabouts.”
I’m not arguing that the cost of solar isn’t declining. But so what if the cost of fossil fuel is “huge”? If it didn’t provide value it wouldn’t be produced. That $2.3 trillion figure has no context. It’s just intended to be a big, scary, eye-catching number. So let’s put it in human terms.
Try this experiment: Get in your car, don’t start the engine, put it in neutral, then get out and push your car about twenty miles down the road.
Then ask yourself: Is a gallon of gas worth $3.50?
Clipe,
Yep, you’ve got the correct link to the William Tucker E=MC2 article
Jon says:
November 16, 2011 at 10:55 am
“those examples you listed are great with repect to the needs of humans but highly detrimental to the natural environment.”
Excuse me but the Empire State Building is just as natural as a termite mound or a beehive or bird nest. The Hoover Dam is as natural as a beaver dam.
According to scientific consensus (bible thumpers notwithstanding) humans and human activities are as natural as anything else on this planet. Everything evolved from the same common ancestors.
Now if humans were alien life forms who invaded this planet then you might have a point but it would be a limited one as we’d still be a natural part of the universe just not a native of this planet.
If your point is that we have a moral duty to not put our needs ahead of the rest of the living world then I’d tend to agree with you but morality and science are two different things and morality, especially an absolute moral code such as that, would seem to logically require an absolute moral authority which in a word would be God. So by saying we have an obligation to “protect the natural” environment is actually making a case for us being creatures of God with an moral responsibility.
I bet that isn’t what you meant.
I’m being forced to pay up front for something that probably won’t happen.
So will any climate alarmist pay me back, plus interest, the extra costs they have imposed now.
Don’t forget, I’ve paid up front.
Dave Springer,
The free market will solve the scarcity problem. Always has, always will. The real problem is governments believing they can do it better than the free market. Never have, never will.
The New Scientist is also very firmly in the AGW camp. Extremely so.
I recently filled in a New Scientist questionnaire, and one of the questions was; something along the lines of “do you have any suggestions how we can improve the magazine”; I suggested they remove the word “Scientist” from their magazine’s name as science is not or should not be about simply parroting the utterances of the IPCC and their cronies.
The problem in the UK is that we still have class influence, and then some. Though this is not necessarily a bad thing. So as Prince Charles is a staunch and vocal AGW supporter, editors of publications will inevitably toe the AGW line. Tea and biscuits at the Palace are important in the UK, who knows, possibly even a title one day.
Myself, I don’t blame Prince Charles, I was just the same last year. I would visit friends and relatives houses and having looked up how far above sea level they lived would pronounce on my arrival how far underwater their house would be if they didn’t change their ways, or how much their property would increase in value since it would soon have a sea view. I was as brainwashed by the press and the BBC as poor old Prince Charles is now.
I am, and remain and have always been a staunch royalist. I would sack the UK government if I had a magic wand and hand all power to Queen Elisabeth. I would then immediately take up religion and pray that she survives Charles, and that power then passes to William who’s views on AGW I am unaware of.
Robert Brown
Considering how even-handed and moderate most of your exposition is,
you seriously need to delete that absolutely horrid ‘Equity’ section,
which shows you eagerly swallowing the collectivist premise hook, line, and sinker,
except that the fishing line drags you to the bottom, not the surface.
“Who owns, or should own, these resources? ”
Whoever legally acquired or earned them, such as stockholders.
Real world to Robert: most of those resources belong to GOVERNMENTS,
most of whom STOLE them.
“Various individuals and companies become enormously wealthy from them, and will become still wealthier as they ride the cost-spiral up.”
GREAT! The more that happens the better off we all are. Do you resent the drill-inventor who rescued the Chilean miners? He could do that because he first invented fracking.
“Enormously wealthy corporations and individuals represent a huge threat to the civil and political liberties of all humans with far less wealth, as even a cursory glance at history can reveal.” (What a whopper!)
That cursory glance would assign that threat to BIG GOVERNMENT, which threatens all humans, wealthy or not. Communism and its Evil Twin Naziism killed hundreeds of millions, while Capitalism has saved billions.
“Wars have been and continue to be fought over them. ”
Actually, those wars were fought by BIG GOVERNMENTS for their own sake.
“Politicians are bought and sold because of them.”
No, they are BRIBED, because of the overweening power of BIG GOVERNMENT. In fact, the politicians act like THEY own us and ALL our money. After all, you don’t buy the Mob when you give them their ‘protection’ money.
“People are advantaged or disadvantaged, often critically, during the huge fluctuations that have occurred in the supply chain (some of them artificial and INTENDED to frighten people into giving still more power and access to those that control the chain, IMO).”
Don’t you love that weeny sway of using a noun as a verb, and a totally vague, emotionally weepy one at that. Try slipping ‘downtrodden’ in there somewhere, say behind ‘critically’?.
Worse yet, this supply-chain fluctuation notion is an obvious mark of complete ignorance of market operations, which in their essence are VOLUNTARY, and thus must profit BOTH sides.
Even more intolerable is that typical leftist projection, accusing legal corporations of the kind of coercion so typical of governments: “frightening” people into giving up power. Yeah, those multinationals are trying every day to rob me…Oops, sorry. That corporate-looking logo on that demand letter says ‘IRS’.
Geeese, pal, spare us the socialist cliches, would you. We’re all thinkers here.
It’s amazing how commonly the left seems to think that their propaganda vocabulary is some kind of stealth persuader that marches into your subconscious and transforms you into one of them. Never mind, Robert, that only works with victims of the dumbing-down schools run by your precious BIG GOVERNMENT.
Jon says:
November 16, 2011 at 8:21 am
“And I remain amazed at how the energy/climate alarmists will not concede (are ‘in denial’) that the human influence on climate can be positive, not only negative, from an ecological and economic perspective.”
I’d be interested in some “positive” ecological impacts that humans have had on our planet … can you list any?
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Of Course.
The biggest one is the burning of fossil fuels releasing CO2 back into the biosphere. At a CO2 level of around 300ppm the earth was very close to a wipe out of all green plants and the animals that live on them.
C3 plants have their net Photosynthesis depressed as CO2 concentration in air decreases to less than about 250ppm (McKay et al 1991) This is backed up by greenhouse data showing a drop of 50ppm within minutes of dawn and open field studies of wheat showing a drop to 300ppm at 2 meters above wheat.
A key piece of evidence that we’re living on a planet with CO2 levels at the very bottom of the normal range is the new group of plants that evolved specifically to cope with low CO2 levels. They developed C4 photosynthesis. It allows greater water efficiency and the ability to photosynthesise in higher temperatures at greatly reduced CO2 levels. An even better adaption is called CAM.
To put it bluntly if CO2 goes too low trees STARVE. Grasses are a bit hardier and Catus (CAM) the hardiest.
Of course there are only positive “natural” ecological benefits – anyone with half a brain can see that – nature is kind and benevolent while man is evil and destructive – NOT.
Volcanos spewing lava destroying everything in the path – earthquakes destroying landscapes, both natural and manmade – tsunamis destroyng in hours what mankind would take years to destroy – cyclones/hurricanes etc etc.
It is time people who believe nature is benevolent opened their eyes – mankind has changed the natural environment BUT it takes a civilisation to also preserve it – poor people cannot see past their need for food and energy to consider preservation.
The most toxic substances are natural – there is no “benevolent” natural state – it is always changing and our scientific advances have uncovered this truth.
@ur momisugly Dave Springer and others of like mind.
The environmentalists are coming at this whole “natural” thing from the wrong end of the stick. They are under the impression that “nature” is harmonious, when the fact is that nature is about constant life and death warfare, even in the plant world. Some species win, some lose. Some have evolved alliances for mutual defense, others have evolved high rates of reproduction for defense; others, various poisons, fangs, etc., etc. Humans are no different. Our defense is a large complex brain. One other thing: it’s a mistake to think that humanity is immune from future evolutionary events that may very well challenge our current supremacy.
Brazil uses sugar cane and not corn. Big difference in yields. But why is Brazil developing it’s offshore oil resources if it’s biofuels are cheaper?
Curiousgeorge says:
November 16, 2011 at 11:38 am
” Is this some kind of self-imposed guilt trip for being a successful species?”
We’re not particularly successful yet. Civilization is just an eyeblink old relative to average span that species persist (about 10M years) and billions of individual human is even more recent. Our own domestic animals both outnumber and outweigh us. About the only metric where we are numero uno is in pavement and a thousand years after we’re gone pretty much every sign we were here will be gone too except for footprints and machinery left on the moon.
Re Jon’s
… those examples you listed are great with repect to the needs of humans but highly detrimental to the natural environment.
If these are so detrimental, how is it that human population continues to increase? Were our environment truly degrading, it would be evident in falling populations, not rising ones.
Of course if you are of the belief that humans are a cancer on the planet, then perhaps you have a point. But until you off yourself, you are basically a hypocrite, whether you have a point or not.
James Sexton says:
November 16, 2011 at 9:03 am
Robert, this argument will continue. As RockyRoad points out, the physical limitations and lack of practicality of renewable energy does not dissuade these people. The multiple advantages of cheap, plentiful, and reliable energy means nothing to these people. They are misanthropists. They hide behind issues such as ecology and peak this or that, but, in the end, if the cause advances human suffering and/or death rates, then they are squarely for it.
______________________________________
James, You are only talking about the useful idiots the Economist is aimed at. Rob Potter noted their abrupt turn around. This is when they “scented fresh meat” and realized there was money to be made. You did not think they actually give good “insider” type advice did you?
Matt Taibbi in his article –
“The Great American Bubble Machine
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression — and they’re about to do it again…” http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405
-at least has the general idea correct. The bankers/financiers are one hundred and ten percent behind creating new bubbles. “Renewable energy” and “carbon trading” are the newest device for shearing the sheep.
Heck there is even this old article from International Business Law Advisor:
Are Carbon Credits the New Global Currency?
By Santiago A. Cueto on December 17th, 2009 Posted in International Banking
In response to the Copenhagen Climate Summit’s call for innovative environmental solutions, my law firm launched a groundbreaking program today to allow law firm clients to pay legal fees with carbon credits. The initiative is the first of its kind in the professional services industry. You can read more about my firm’s initiative in the Wall Street Journal article Will Work For Carbon Credits!’ says Florida Lawyer …. http://www.internationalbusinesslawadvisor.com/2009/12/articles/international-banking/are-carbon-credits-the-new-global-currency/
Another one from 2010:
Carbon credits to replace US $ as global currency: http://www.commodityonline.com/news/Carbon-credits-to-replace-US-$-as-global-currency-25893-3-1.html
“SCOTLAND (Commodity Online):Till now the question was whether a group of currencies would replace the dollar or even gold? Now, here comes the prediction amidst global warming and cllimate change concerns that Carbon Credit will replace the US dollar as the currency of international trading within five years….”
The Economist is still on the bandwagon because CAGW is just too big a money maker to allow us “Deniers” to kill it. Truth of course never had a place in the business of making money. Just ask a used car salesman, a horse trader or a banker.
Paved roads are better than dirt roads, because erosion doesn’t drag silt into streams where it’s bad for spawning salmon, etc. Logging roads in mountainous areas benefit from being graveled or paved.
“I’m not arguing that the cost of solar isn’t declining. But so what if the cost of fossil fuel is “huge”? If it didn’t provide value it wouldn’t be produced. That $2.3 trillion figure has no context. It’s just intended to be a big, scary, eye-catching number. So let’s put it in human terms.”
It’s a scary, eye-catching number because in a reasoned debate about economics, we have to consider the alternative value of that investment, not just pretend that there is no alternative or that some of the MANY alternatives might be better. For example, dropping the same $2.3 trillion directly into solar power would buy an easy 2.3 terawatts of generating capacity. More likely, it would drop the cost of solar power from ~$1/watt to $0.20/watt or even less as people built a hundred billion dollars worth of foundries to service it, leverage that much more money out of private investors because of the long term prospect of steady reliable ROI independent on who happens to be running Libya, whether or not fracking really does cause massive earthquakes and releases Godzilla from his tomb, and everything else. That is one could more likely build 10 TW of capacity, and even if one multiplies that down by 1/6 to 1/3, that’s a whole lot of power. That’s getting close to the capacity to use the daytime leftovers to MAKE gasoline out of raw materials — all it takes is energy and chemistry and you can make just about anything. It’s also enough money to easily fund serious, serious work on energy storage, developing ways to collect in the day and distribute at night.
But that’s not all. $2.3 trillion invested in e.g. Thorium plants and metal — that’s a hell of a lot of capacity as well, and thorium can’t be used to make bombs, at least not at all easily. Some proposed plant designs are also more or less melt-down proof (or at least far less risky than uranium or plutonium in that regard). $2.3 trillion invested in developing fusion in a Manhattan-like project atmosphere, money is no object. Risky (might not be possible, might not be easy, might not end up being feasible) but oh my, the payoff. Energy so cheap it is nearly free for the next fifty million years, or thereabouts. Humans wouldn’t be recognizably human before D_2 even thinks of being used up, we will have EVOLVED. $2.3 trillion spent simply converting arable land into genetically engineered bioenergy crops and converting everything to run on ethanol — don’t have a good feel for this one, but its name should be in the hat for a serious CBA.
That’s the point — the Cost Benefit Analysis. For example, if we had spent the estimated $1.5 trillion that Iraq ultimately cost us — or even a third of that — directly on solar plants using the cheapest technology of the year amortized over ten years — $150 billion a year — we would at this point have WON ALL WARS in the Middle East because we would no longer care outside of humanitarian issues, and all of the corrupt governments that suck at the teat of oil would be done, gone, thrown out by people who suddenly would NEED the West and commerce and civilization to generate wealth, not by renting us room on their deserts but by building something useful.
The truly sad thing is that China seems to have “got it”. They aren’t stupid. They simply look ahead at the futures market for energy, see a day when oil collapses, and invest enormous amounts of money in — solar, thorium, less in bioenergy, probably a fair bit into fusion (still risky compared to the others)…
So yeah. We’ll soon be buying Chinese solar cells instead of making our own, wondering why Chinese products are now MUCH cheaper and better than our own (built with thorium and solar energy at a vastly reduced cost per watt) and driving cars powered by gasoline that we increasingly cannot afford while the oil cartels continue to effectively influence American politics to preserve their wealth and power by buying politicians in an increasingly deregulated elections process that they control, until the whole thing crashes down.
That’s not to suggest that developing shale oil is NOT a good investment. The point is that it is far from obvious that it is, and IMO it is not. It is on a spiral of increasing costs and diminishing returns, while solar is barely entering the domain where economies of scale kick in and costs spiral DOWN and returns INCREASE, with decades of pure profit progress ahead before any of the core technologies stop continuing to improve and lower prices and increase yields.
Note that I mean “not a good investment” because people who overinvest could GO BROKE with it if the bottom falls out of the oil market in the next decade as alternative energy sources come online in a big way. Suppose somebody DID invent cheap easy fusion, say, tomorrow. Scary thought, really. Even as it revolutionizes modern civilization, it could trigger world war three as a few trillion dollars of presumed high demand “value” in oil, coal, natural gas turns into a few billion dollars of low demand value, all over the world.
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To DirkH (10:24) who says:
“This also explains why environmental pressure groups never actually try to save animals or plants but only travel around protesting.”
Virtually everything Conservation International and Ocean Conservancy do is aimed at saving animals and plants. Coral reefs that had been barren of fish due to overfishing now have large numbers of fish, once again, due to the Ocean Conservancy, for instance. OC did the science, found that if you prevent fishing in one part of the reef (the part where currents flow to the other parts), the fish grow large and spawn, and provide the other parts of the reef with abundant fish. You just have to keep one part of the reef from being fished, to provide fish elsewhere.
Don’t confuse the “mainstream” environmental groups like Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace — groups which push a utopian but ultimately harmful agenda — with other groups who do remarkable good work restoring the ecosystems whose dimunition Jon (and I) lament.