By JOHN MAULDIN
The common meme in today’s world is that we are slowly (or perhaps even rapidly in some instances) destroying our global environment. Not just by way of global warming, but pollution, over-farming, water usage, and increasing use of all sorts of resources taken from the ground.
Post-apocalyptic movies and books are the rage, showing us living in a world where man has ravaged his environment and our lives have been degraded if not destroyed. Our failure to deal with global warming and the destruction of the environment are key components of the mantra repeated by the mainstream media, pundits, and politicians.
Technology is supposed to somehow save us from our dystopian future by creating new ways to clean the environment, feed us, and help us become more thrifty and less wasteful. But when? When will we see those breakthroughs, that light at the end of the tunnel?
A few years ago I met Jesse Ausubel, who ran a two-week-long think tank for the US Department of Defense at the Naval War College, tasked with thinking about the challenges of the next 20 years. The Office of Net Assessment brought in 15 futurists from a number of disciplines and personnel from each branch of the military who were the heads of future-scenario planning for their respective branches. We sat for over a week, 10-12 hours a day plus dinners, thinking through the issues we might have to face. Andrew Marshall, who was 93 and had been running that department since he was appointed by Nixon in 1974, gathered this group of nonconsensus thinkers each summer to think about long-range issues. I was fortunate enough to be part of the group for two years. Jesse corralled this herd of cats into a cogent work group and kept us on track.
The experience was exhausting but exhilarating. It was soon clear that Jesse was not only capable of organizing a group of eclectic minds, he was also a first-rate thinker himself, knowledgeable on a wide variety of topics, a true Renaissance man. Jesse is Director and Senior Research Associate of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, a pure-research institution with more Nobel laureates than any other university.
The work they do is astounding in its breadth. I recently spent an afternoon with Jesse talking over a number of topics and especially a paper he recently published which lays out serious research in an accessible way on the subject of how things in our beleaguered world might actually be getting better. It is called “Nature Rebounds,” and it’s today’s Outside the Box.
To get the import of this paper, you may need to know more about who Jesse is. You can read his wiki bio, which is extensive; but the short version is that he was integral to setting up the first (and then subsequent) conferences on climate change in Geneva in 1979. Later, he led the Climate Task of the Resources and Environment Program of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, near Vienna, Austria, an East-West think tank created by the US and Soviet academies of sciences.
Beginning with a 1989 book called Technology and Environment, Jesse was one of the founders of the field of industrial ecology. He also co-developed the concepts of decarbonization and dematerialization. He has more serious science attached to his name than most climate and ecological scientists do, and he has the awards and honors to prove it. And what Jesse tells us is that for much of the world, in many ways, things are getting better.
Nature is winning.
Not everywhere, of course, and he documents the downside as well, notably the serious devastation of our oceans and fishing. There is still a lot to do, but the trends are positive (except, notably, for the oceans). He shows us that the effort to clean up the environment and expand the areas that are allowed to return to a more natural state has been worth it. This is a great summer read. The entire paper is included in today’s OTB, but if you would like to read it in its original format, you can download a PDF here.
http://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/Nature_Rebounds.pdf
Originally printed in PDF form Newsletter (Outside The Box) h/t to WUWT reader Andrew Cinko in Tips and Notes
Just took an inventory of 60 years of my most disgusting environmental locations. Definitely better. Some still have more work to do. But perhaps it is because a hell of a lot of people have the economic resources to give a !#!$&@ur momisugly!#! About respect for the impact WE have and care for the next generations OF ALL Species including and probably more the humans who are charged by the gift of life and sentinent brains to find the balance between disharmony and harmony. Yes, I will pick up your mess if you are unbalanced and have no respect for your gift.
But in Boulder, Colorado – so the story goes – they have a Dog Poop Fairy, a mythical & mysterious creekside nymph who supposedly picks up all the bags of dog poop left along the city’s various multi-use paths by dog owners, who are so busy strutting around being dog guardians – as they are entitled to be known in Boulder – that they can’t be bothered to dispose properly the little bag of dogsh!t they have just so diligently gathered, but instead just let said bag of dogcrap drop where it may along the path, and continue on their merry way, demonstrating to all why it is such jolly good sport being a dog guardian.
Between 1974 & 77 I was sailing around the Pacific islands, particularly the Solomons & New Guinea. As an ex naval flyer I was particularly interested in the Pacific the WW11 history, & explored many of the old bases.
It was a real mission in many areas to find major air strips & the bases, & even major overhaul bases, where heavy machine shops had many feet thick concrete to support the equipment much was already broken & penetrated by vegetation. I was amazed at how quickly bases that had 25,000 men, had disappeared back into the jungle. in just 30 years.
On Green Island a part of the old fighter strip is used as an airport, but I could find little evidence of the 2 bomber strips, & their attendant bases, the PBY catalina flying boat base, or the PT boat base.
My experience makes a mockery of the idea that nature is fragile. It is the buildings of man that are fragile.
It really depends on the ecosystem, first and foremost the availability of fresh water to support regrowth and repopulation. Which of course means rainfall-snowfall. Similar facilities to what you describe in North Africa deserts would look little changed except for lots of aeolian dust and sand burial.
And anyone who thinks a warmer world is a drier world simply doesn’t understand physics of water (the Clausius-Claperon equation, see below) or the paleorecords showing dramatically higher atmospheric dust transport during glacial times.
C-C notes: An approximation- simplification of the C-C equation is the August-Roche-Magnus equation.
T is in degrees Celcius.
It implies that saturation water vapor pressure changes approximately exponentially with temperature under typical atmospheric conditions, and hence the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere increases by about 7% for every 1 °C rise in temperature. (see AR4 WG1, FAQ 3.2). This source goes on to acknowledge an obvious fact that increased forcing heat over the oceans wont raise temperatures, it will increase the amount precipitable water vapor in the atmosphere.
note the above equation produces a pretty good estimaion of the saturation vapor pressure, e. And e & T are two variable in CC equation which tells us how vapor pressure changes with T.
Just remember every night as temperatures drop, so does the water vapor the air carriers, and some is always lost the the water table.
@Alexander Feht
Plants and animals are thriving around Chernobyl as never before.
It seems that somewhat higher level of radiation is what life on Earth is used to.
Homeopathic effect?
It’s actually called Hormesis, and it’s a true and measurable phenomenon. We seem to require a small amount of radiation to function healthily. There was an experiment done some years ago when they grew plants in a low-radiation environment, and they were stunted and less healthy than the controls.
Unsurprisingly, this is not advertised….
In the game being played between Mankind and Nature–it is Nature’s homefield advantage and momma gets to bat last. Even if we commit our own extinction through nuclear war, Nature will still win and life will go onward on this planet long after Homo Sapiens is nothing more than just another part of the fossil record.
“Good news children, science has learned that man-made production of CO2 warms our planet.
This means vast areas of tundra will become arable land or forests.
Since CO2 is plant food, more CO2 will increase the production of every farm on Earth, Lumber will be cheap. The more fosslil fuels we can find and use will contimue to increase the output of farms and forrests, we are facing runaway prosperity.
Prosperity will rise, famine will end and there will no longer be a “Third World”;
Their lives will be vastly improved through the prosperity of a warm Earth.”
All of the true believers of AGW theory could have said this as easily as their doomsday prophesy.
Unless it gets colder instead.
Warmer has always been better, and it is a mystery to me how people are so ignorant of history and gullible, to believe a few degrees warmer is somehow deadly to life.
People from all over the world flock to the hottest locations on the planet and engage in ultramarathons…running hundreds of miles in sizzling heat without stopping and with only bottles of water and some running shoes for protection.
People stuck outside on cold winter nights quickly freeze to death.
And ever tried to grow a crop on an icefield?
Alexander Feht
June 27, 2015 at 12:20 am
“Plants and animals are thriving around Chernobyl as never before.
It seems that somewhat higher level of radiation is what life on Earth is used to.
Homeopathic effect?”
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/nuclear_power/2013/01/chernobyl_wildlife_the_radioactive_fallout_zone_is_a_wildlife_refuge_photos.html
Yes, almost every imagined ecological “horror show” is really an infinitesimal of itself. Look at the creatures in the link abounding around Chernobyl. All the disaster scenarios have failed to appear and one must see Chernobyl as one of the worst. Hiroshima was back to normal radiation background in a year or two – yes it was a terrible place when bombed and it’s not a thing we should be considering doing in the future, but in terms of long term ecological damage, it is almost a non-event. Indeed, the earth is more resilient and adaptive than scare mongers would have us believe. Here is a new Pearse’s Law:
‘There is no such thing as man-made long term ecological disaster. Disasters by their nature are short term – mean and quick and they recover quickly and with vigor.’
So far, nothing has falsified this law in 4B yrs.
I thank the green movement, science and technology industries for these fine results! More needs to be done though (as mentioned, oceans…). Therefore listen to the greens and to science and make good use of technology.
Listen to science? Epicycles? Phlogiston? All science at one time.
Yes! From “climate does not change (except when God is angry)” to “There were glacials and interglacials.” From “humankind cannot change climate” to “humankind is changing climate.” Science! Yeah! See:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
Wagen
June 27, 2015 at 9:56 am
And thanks to CO2 you forgot for the re-greening. If we could get off this CO2 kick, we could be working on real environmental problems.
We can thank CO2 for assuring that a glaciation is not happening any time soon. The article discussed atl shows that a lot of the re-greening has nothing to do with CO2. It does play a part though: some greening in dry places and (mostly) moving climate zones through warming. Now, science tells us that this moving of climate zones at the present pace will challenge humankind as well as the rest of nature.
This is mostly supposition based on more supposition (models).
And Mosher, I’m a skeptic who believes in models, I helped bring electronic design modeling to the world, but I also learned to distinguish good models from bad.
Micro,
What science does not use models? “F=m*a” is a model. (This is a general point, however I didn’t bring models in the discussion.)
And what relevance has Mosher here?
It was just a bleed through from another thread, but Mosh shows up here, so I figure he’ll see it.
The “green” movement is actually an abomination to both humanity and the environment. It is in service to those who profit from it, politicians, NGOs, and assorted carpetbaggers.
Yes, cleaner air, cleaner rivers, nature reserves, protection of species, etc etc
I am abomination.
http://youtu.be/1QsLSbxhtxw
In 1967 or so, 30 miles west from Boston, I saw a wild Turkey for the first time – a never again for 30 or so years. Now, 10 miles north of the same city, along one of the most heavily traveled roads in New England, they are downright common.
“Technology is supposed to somehow save us from our dystopian future by creating new ways to clean the environment, feed us, and help us become more thrifty and less wasteful.”
Who said, “A breakthrough a day keeps the crisis at bay”?
The dystopian view is that we will run out of inventiveness, creativity and energy. The Utopian view is that whatever mess we get into, we will always find a way out and emerge victorious and happy.
The truth lies somewhere in between. We are never going to run out of ideas, but we might lack the will to implement them, or listen to the best ideas and substitute Windows for Novell, then suffer the consequences. When did mankind every do the easy and sensible thing? We learn the hard way – how very post-pubescent of us.
A maturing mankind will but permit the silliness of movements like CAGW and the Cult of the 77 Virgins to flourish. Why? Education. All these distractions thrive on ignorance. An educated world is a cleaner, sustainable, happier, productive and more efficient world.
I still remember camping out close to Lake Erie on a family trip in 1967. The trip turned out to be much shorter than we imagined, though. Millions of dead alewives (a small fish) were washed up on the shore and the stench was overwhelming.
By the late 1980s Erie had become a terrific walleye and smallmouth bass lake. Now you can see the bottom in 20 feet of water, though some of that is the result of zebra mussels. Unbelievable turnaround!
And yes, I do think we should be ironing the oceans 🙂 while developing better food tech.
What tends to be ignored by folks like Ausubel is that two, equally-important things are required for people to care, and do something to improve the environment; freedom, and sufficient wealth. That is why the US. for example has been so successful in cleaning up its environment. Of course there is always more that can be done, but at some point the law of diminishing returns kicks in. Decarbonization is actually a step backwards for both the economy and the environment. Modern-day “environmentalists” don’t seem able to grasp that idea.
Nature repairs itself and visitors to this site overall consider alarmist environmentalists to be unscientific. That said there is no reason to treat futurists like they are visionaries. If they are visionaries then Jesse Ausubel is holding forth for the most religious green of the IPCC and the Maurice Strong branch at the United Nations and the Club of Rome.
The vision of nature rebounding these guys have is bison herds migrating between feeding grounds pursued by packs of Wolves and Grizzly bears and a more natural “noble savage” living sustainably east of the Rocky Mountains in North America. No need to call that location Canada or the United States because the notion of a nation state is moribund in the New world order.
By all means keeping the planet clean is part of the overhead cost (or should be) for having a modern economy its like keeping your shop clean; just a necessary bit of housekeeping that makes your workplace safer and more efficient, with the added bonus that it is more pleasant to our sensibilities.
What gets me most though is the notion that humankind and its works are somehow NOT the singularly most amazing expression of the Laws of Nature and the Cosmos rather than something apart.
fossilsage commented: “What gets me most though is the notion that humankind and its works are somehow NOT the singularly most amazing expression of the Laws of Nature and the Cosmos rather than something apart.”
Well said.
My experience is that it’s going better in most areas.
I have a story to exemplify this:
An old Norwegian once told me that he had betted that he could swim from an island in the Oslo fiord all the way to the quay in Oslo.
Of course he had a follower in a rowboat to make the journey safe. He said that the distance, about a mile, was no problem.
However, the main problem was that the sea was so incredibly polluted that he almost fainted by the stench.
He managed to complete after all, but would never do it again for any amount of money.
That happened in the late 1930-ies. Now they have a beach where people goes swimming on the same place and the water quality is excellent.
/Jan
Nature turns discarded bottles shards into sea glass which some ‘back to earthers’ collect for its artistic value. Next time on the beach look for your own works of natural art. One man’s junk becomes another man’s treasure.
Nature has a hard time with turning plastic bottles into shards.
.
http://previews.123rf.com/images/joruba/joruba1209/joruba120900612/15443038-Plastic-bottle-floating-on-surface-of-water-Stock-Photo-ocean-sea-plastic.jpg
The ultraviolet radiation from the sun will destroy all plastics given enough time. It happens much faster floating on the ocean than when they are buried underground though.
Maybe John Mauldin has some news about Fukushima that I can’t find? Perhaps he could persuade the Chinese not to prohibit imports of (only slightly) irradiated food from Japan?
And I guess there have been some breakthroughs I haven’t heard of in the disposal of spent nuclear fuel in Germany, Canada, and the USA?
Lesser toxic wastes seem hardly worth mentioning, but I gather they’re also still accumulating, rather than transmuting into benign substances.
But I’m sure that we’ll soon have a reliable, comprehensive, and universally accessible database that will tell us how all of the natural and man-made substances we consume, inhale, and otherwise absorb, voluntarily or not, interact magically to make us healthier.
Because, as Voltaire’s Pangloss says, ” we’re living in the best of all possible worlds”.
You can “burn” unused fuel rods, or we can all go back to human labor and 30-40 year lifespans.
problems start when the oceans get short of water.
____
The simple truth: we have hard times to find selfreporting aeroplanes near the coast / that brasilian – france flight accident.
21. ctry – what do we know about the oceans!
military vessels got lost. atomic forced submarines in the 20 ctry. A technic
standard more then 50 years.
What do we know about the oceans – the vast surfaces and some 100 meters below.
Excuse me – Hans
Nature always wins.
The irony of the green movement is that humanity is fragile while nature is anti-fragile: while we may alter nature (largely through land use changes and the like, not the CO2 bogeyman) it will always rebound in some shape or form. The greens dont seem to get that we only threaten our own survival, and so efforts to eliminate those very things that allow us to survive and thrive (such as abundant fossil fuel power) will do virtually nothing to ‘help’ nature but could vastly harm humanity.
We become concerned about the environment when we are wealthy and healthy enough to turn our minds to things other than the immediate survival of ourselves and our offspring. When we have the resources to do so, we can turn our minds towards providing a better life for not only our children but also our grandchildren and their descendants and the wider community, and so we can turn our individual efforts towards cleaning up our environment and trying to help those less fortunate in an effort to help the wider world (and so create a better future). I find that a great many sceptics, if not the majority, are environmentalists at heart (not ‘greens’) but go about their efforts quietly and on an individual level. You lead by example and others may follow willingly, but not force the behaviour of others. Those bleating about what everybody else should do are interested in power and coercion rather than the environment.
This much should be clear by now. Apparently it isnt.
Thanks to WUWT reader Andrew Cinko who left a tip about this article, and thanks to Anthony for reprinting it.
Irrespective of the author’s apparent Warmist hobnobbitry in the past, this is a terrific refutation of the past 35 years of whacko-environmental apocalyptical ravings, and a great testament to the power of technology in the Information Age to effect a radical transformation of both Humanity and Nature.
In other words, it’s a vindication of the idea, so woefully expurgated by the doomsayers, of the Progress of Man. Let’s welcome it back!
/Mr Lynn
Well, uh, we are having a record drought in the Western States – and there is going to be some torrid heat in the Pacific Northwest this weekend. It already hit 113 F in Walla Walla today according to the Weather Underground – a record for the state of Washington. According to the Globe & Daily Mail the drought is also in British Columbia and the fire season in Alaska is off to a roaring start. Snow packs are down up and down the West Coast. I don’t know what is up in Mexico, but I hear that there are strong drought conditions in the Caribbean (Puerto Rico has instituted rationing for example – http://phys.org/news/2015-06-parched-caribbean-widespread-drought-shortages.html). And South America is having issues – such as Sao Paulo who may not have enough water to get it through the dry season, low rainfall amounts in the Amazon, drought conditions in Patagonia. It looks like the trend is for drought in much of the Western Hemisphere. That is sure to impact agriculture. Cheers!
Yeah, weather can be a bitch. It’s 53º, cold and wet, here in eastern Massachusetts. What has that got to do with the essay by Jesse Ausubel?
/Mr Lynn
Yes, it is cold and wet in the eastern part of the country. But the area throughout the Western Hemisphere under drought is increasing. The country of Chile which has a similar climate as California is having a winter like the one we had in California – there is no snow pack. Even though there are areas where this is intense rainfall, the area under threat of drought is increasing. Since we are talking about minimal or no snow pack, that is not just weather, that is climate. When the rains did come in this winter there was no snow in the mountains because it was too warm.
“Since we are talking about minimal or no snow pack, that is not just weather, that is climate. ”
It’s been 30 years? Isn’t that the definition of climate?
No, it’s the oceans changing state like they do every 30 years or so.
I have been in California for 35 years – no – there was some snow back in the earlier drought. Even so, the question is not about only California having no snow pack, it is about no snow pack all the way up into Alaska. It is about the longitudinally amplified jet stream which is keeping the entire west coast warm and driving cold wet weather into the center and east part of the US. And it is also about the greater amount of anomalous heat in the Pacific Ocean. And, looking farther south, there are odd things happening in South America, where Chile, which is much like California, is having a no snow winter (look for the ski reports). Yeah, it is not just the weather, it is climate.
“Yeah, it is not just the weather, it is climate.”
No snow pack for 30 years? No, it’s weather, plus California has had 100 year droughts, you get on 25 30 years, then you have climate. Right now you have weather, I would agree that the oceans are reorganizing, but they do that every 30 or so years.
You must be young Bill. I have seen this over and over and over. Go back and look at the geological record. You are living in a desert. I live just north of what was a desert a couple of hundred years ago that is being farmed due to the last hundred years or so of unusually “wet” weather. I have watched western North America burn several times in my short 7 decades with smoke so thick it covered half the continent. Not much different 40 years ago than today. It just keeps coming around but for some reason some folks think “today” is “unprecedented”. It isn’t. But unprecedented sells media adverts and that is what “today” is about. By the way, I worked inside today in spite of the smoke from forest fires because of the thunder, lightening and rain. Dang WEATHER.
And if you feel you’re not going to have the water you need, the collective you need to elect fewer dingbats, doesn’t something like 70-75% of the rain flow straight out into the ocean?
So you guys are telling me that if the entire west coast dries up – meaning there is a loss of snow pack – and there are massive wildfires – that is only a weather phenomena? That is what is trending – and it is associated with the jet stream, since the jet stream is longitudinally amplified. I would assume a change in the jet stream is a change in the climate – but you guys are saying, no, that is not a change in the climate. So, when is it a change in climate? For example, the Sahara once was relatively wet quite a long time ago but obviously it dried out. Is that a change in climate or is that a change in weather? Whats up with that?
We know the oceans have long period cycles, and actually I think climate would have to encompass a full cycle, and that would be bi-stable climate modes, and then weather would be on top of that. But we have yet to have good sampling of a full cycle, so this could and likely is normal. Plus we know California has more than 1 century long droughts, which were not caused by human Co2 emissions.
I should also note the cool weather in Ohio now, is what I grew up with in the 60’s. And there was significant Arctic melting in the 30’s and 40’s.
As well as East coast hurricanes are periodic(40’s and 50’s iirc), driven by the AMO.
That’s kinda why you shouldn’t locate large-scale agriculture in areas that are prone to drought. Like much of California. Meanwhile farmers in more fertile regions all over the planet are either encouraged, or sometimes even paid, not to grow crops. Then you have crops not being grown in their ideal climates thanks to incentive payments and/or restrictions or bans, the banning of certain crops (ie hemp) in favour of more resource intensive crops (ie cotton)…the list goes on and on.
Not a climate issue, an issue of human/political stupidity.
“That’s kinda why you shouldn’t locate large-scale agriculture in areas that are prone to drought. Like much of California. ”
While dumping most of the rain you do get right back in the ocean, idjits.
For those inclined to watch a video presentation of the paper, Ausubel gave one to the Long Now Foundation back in January. It’s about 95 minutes long. But it is fascinating because it goes against so much of what we hear in the media who seem to promote press releases issued by the World Wildlife Foundation, Sierra Club and Greenpeace without skepticism.
http://longnow.org/seminars/02015/jan/13/nature-rebounding-land-and-ocean-sparing-through-concentrating-human-activities/
The bear population is exploding throughout New England. Massachusetts has seen it’s bear population increase 9 fold since the early 1980s. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/06/20/bears/4iQHkreqivLLYBjLvtudDK/story.html
I’ve seen estimates that the white tail deer population nationwide was 300,000 in 1900 and it topped out at 30 million about a decade ago and is now declining. Jets and planes colliding with deer on runways is now a big problem. There are more white tail deer in America today than there was prior to European settlement, if you can believe it.
I started watching a pair of bald eagles raise their eaglets on a cam located in Decorah, Iowa in 2011. They come back to raise a new batch every February. That got me interested in learning more about the bald eagle population. It too, is growing rapidly. There were only about 400 breeding pairs in the wild in the early 1960s. Today there are probably close to 20,000 breeding pairs. I also watch a couple of pair of peregrine falcons raise their young every year. I have not seen data on their populations, but I’d be surprised if they are not rising, too.
This dramatic rise in wildlife population does not happen because the planet is dying from too much CO2. Wildlife is thriving, at least in North America.