Storms of My Grandchildren (4 page)

Then I showed a chart (discussed in chapter 3) providing evidence from Earth’s history for how sensitive global climate is to a change of climate forcings. The chief implication is that additional human-made climate forcing, above that in the year 2000, should be kept to less than 1 watt. If we succeed in that, further global warming should not exceed 1 degree Celsius. However, if added climate forcings exceed 1 watt, global temperature would be pushed well above the range that has existed for the past million years. Global warming of 2 degrees Celsius or more would make Earth as warm as it had been in the Pliocene, three million years ago. Pliocene warmth caused sea levels to be about twenty-five meters (eighty feet) higher than they are today.

I concluded this discussion with a diagram that contrasted the business-as-usual scenarios that IPCC examined and my alternative scenario, which defined a course that would keep additional global warming at less than 1 degree Celsius, thus presumably allowing Earth to retain a climate resembling that in which civilization developed.

The business-as-usual scenario increased the carbon dioxide forcing 2 watts between 2000 and 2050, and increased the non–carbon dioxide forcings 1 watt, for a total of 3 watts. The alternative scenario, in contrast, required a slow reduction of carbon dioxide emissions over fifty years, keeping added carbon dioxide forcing at 1 watt. Net non–carbon dioxide forcing is kept at zero by reducing black soot, ozone, and methane enough to counter expected added climate forcing due to increasing nitrous oxide (from use of fertilizers) and decreasing sulfate aerosols (from cleaning up air pollution).

Achievement of the alternative scenario would require two major policy actions. First, a downward trend in carbon dioxide emissions requires an increase in energy efficiency and the use of renewable or other energies that do not produce carbon dioxide. Second, reduction of the non–carbon dioxide climate forcings requires global programs to reduce air pollutants that contribute to global warming (black soot, ozone, and methane). I reiterated that the combination of these two policy goals could unite the interests of developed and developing countries.

Finally, I showed the table contrasting my position and that of Richard Lindzen. The first item concerned Lindzen’s take on the magnitude of global warming when it became a public issue in the late 1980s. He had stated repeatedly, consistent with an analysis by his MIT colleague Reggie Newell that was later shown to be flawed, that global warming over the prior century was only about 0.1 degree Celsius. In contrast, I had reported in the late 1980s that global warming was about 0.6 degree Celsius. Numerous later studies had confirmed my conclusion, and subsequent additional warming had increased total global warming to almost 0.8 degree Celsius.

A similar problem, to a lesser degree, occurred with regard to other items in appendix 1. Scientists who have heard Lindzen are well aware of his statements about observed global warming, climate sensitivity, water vapor feedback, and so forth. If the positions Lindzen had expressed on these matters went before, say, the National Academy of Sciences, he obviously would be on the defensive. But on what basis are cabinet members going to choose between academics with opposing views?

The capable lawyer knows that oral statements can be dismissed as hearsay. My failure to adequately appreciate this for several years caused other problems, as I relate in later chapters.

Lindzen used part of his presentation to show graphs of observed data such as temperature and precipitation, emphasizing the large fluctuations and possible measurement errors. His aim seemed to be a conclusion that global warming is a very uncertain proposition. He focused on more local observations, because he could no longer dispute the reality of global warming. But he had managed to defuse his earlier assertion about the absence of global warming, which had been proven to be wrong.

Unfortunately, this second meeting served to confuse Task Force members, rather than illuminate them. I heard indirectly from presenters at subsequent meetings that Task Force members had related that they could not evaluate our contrasting viewpoints. The third Task Force meeting focused on economics and included Richard Schmalensee of MIT as a presenter. The fourth meeting focused on policy, including the Kyoto Protocol, and had former EPA administrator Bill Reilly and Kevin Fay, a representative of the business community, as presenters. Additional Task Force meetings may have been held prior to the president’s June 11, 2001, Rose Garden speech summarizing the administration’s climate and energy policies (discussed in chapter 3).

After the second Task Force meeting, I shared a taxi with Richard Lindzen. We had always been cordial with each other, but not much was said during this ride. I was feeling down, realizing that my optimism at the end of the first meeting had been a mistake. A draw in a global warming “debate” is a loss, because policy inaction is the aim of those who dispute global warming. As we pulled up alongside a Chrysler PT Cruiser, I broke the silence by commenting that it seemed to be an interesting throwback. He said that it was cute but did not have enough trunk space.

I considered asking Lindzen if he still believed there was no connection between smoking and lung cancer. He had been a witness for tobacco companies decades earlier, questioning the reliability of statistical connections between smoking and health problems. But I decided that would be too confrontational. When I met him at a later conference, I did ask that question, and was surprised by his response: He began rattling off all the problems with the data relating smoking to health problems, which was closely analogous to his views of climate data.

O
N THE WAY HOME FROM THE SECOND Climate Task Force meeting, I had an idea. In my bag was a reminder about an overdue assignment: I needed to define the next project for my student-teacher research team. My idea was to have the team work on a project that would help clarify what I had failed to do a good job of explaining during the Task Force meetings—the implications of climate change for energy use.

Several years earlier, my colleague Carolyn Harris and I had initiated a research education program that we called the Institute on Climate and Planets. Each summer we would work with students, teachers, and professors from several New York City high schools, ranging from the disadvantaged to the highly competitive Bronx High School of Science, and from a few colleges in the City University of New York system, ranging from two-year community colleges to the City College of New York. The program had simultaneous objectives in science education, research experience, and minority participation.

Participants were divided into several teams. My team typically had about ten people, including two high school students, two high school teachers, two or three college students, a college professor, myself, and sometimes one or two other scientists. I would define a research problem, and we would work on it as a team over the summer, with some students continuing to work on it through the academic year. The educators used their experience with the research problem in their science classes and in special after-hours research courses at their schools.

I renamed my group the A-Team—from “alternative scenario”—for the new project. Their assignment: To imagine the secretary of state needs the A-Team’s help in devising a strategy to deal with global warming. The team must analyze climate and energy data and report back to the secretary, so he can advise the president on what actions need to be taken to save the planet. (I assumed that Colin Powell—and Paul O’Neill—must have been puzzled by Energy Secretary Abraham’s claim that the United States needed to build ninety new coal-fired power plants every year for the next twenty years.) I titled the student’s task description for this imaginary scenario “The Secretary’s Quandary.” It started like this:

The secretary of state is caught between a rock and a hard place. As leader of the State Department, he deals with countries around the world. These countries are calling for the United States to reduce its emissions of CO2, the principal gas that stands accused of bringing on dreaded global warming.

It is also realized that the long-term solution of global warming will require many decades. Fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) produce CO2, these fuels power our economy, and the lifetime of energy infrastructure can be many decades. A strategy to deal with global warming must be devised in concert with continuing technology development and improvements in understanding of climate science.

The big issue concerns actions that could be taken now to slow the growth of CO2. Recent research has shown that if the growth rate of CO2 emissions could be stabilized and then begin to decline, climate change would be moderate—some global warming would be expected, but the danger of disastrous climate change would be much reduced. Prompt leveling of CO2 emission rates would provide time to develop improved technologies and an economically sound strategy to reduce CO2 emissions and stabilize climate.

The secretary realizes that, as he travels around the world with this energy plan, he will be severely beaten about the head and shoulders, at least in a figurative sense, in many countries. His disquiet arises, however, because he has come to realize that the climate change issue has at least some validity, and with this energy plan the United States will aggravate future climate problems for the young and the unborn.

Besides, the secretary has a nagging feeling that something is inconsistent in the energy and CO2 projections. He knows the growth rate of energy use and CO2 emissions in the United States has been moderate in the past three decades, only about 1 percent per year, as opposed to 4 percent per year in the previous century. He also knows the president has publicly favored aggressive new actions to improve energy efficiency and develop renewable energies. Yet official projections have energy use and carbon dioxide emissions increasing at a rate at least as large as in recent decades. Something doesn’t square up.

Suddenly, an idea hits him—he must call on the A-Team, a group of students and teachers he knows in the New York City area. He and the president are committed to young people and their education. Who better to investigate this problem than the people who will inherit the consequences of our energy plan?

Their job, the secretary explains, is to provide a hard-nosed analysis, one that can be taken to the president to help him. The president is besieged from both sides. Environmental advocates see the world through their lenses—they are not concerned about the health of industry. And energy advocates argue that we must have more and more energy—climate change may be exaggerated, they say, and future generations can deal with it. The president’s job is tough, and he needs some objective scientific help.

An extreme alternative to the Energy Department scenario was provided by Amory B. Lovins, an idealist and a renowned visionary. His scenario has continual improvements in energy efficiency, so energy use grows only slightly and then begins to decline. In addition, more and more of that energy is produced by what Lovins describes as “soft technologies,” ones that do not include nuclear power or big hydroelectric plants—energy sources that are also the banes of some environmentalists.

CO2 emissions (from coal, oil, and gas) in Lovins’s scenario decline dramatically, almost disappearing by 2025. The students noted that his scenario is more extreme than the “alternative scenario.” CO2 emissions in their “A-scenario” peak early in the twenty-first century and decline enough by midcentury to prevent global warming from exceeding 1 degree Celsius. The students are puzzled because their A-scenario is already much more ambitious than those considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. So they are eager to see how Lovins’s even more optimistic scenario compares with the real world.

The task description for the A-Team continued for several pages. I suggested that each student pair up with a teacher or scientist and that each pair choose one form of renewable energy (say, geothermal), one energy efficiency area (say, residential buildings), and one area of technology development (say, carbon capture and sequestration). Then they would estimate the potential for CO2 emission reductions for fifteen-year and thirty-year time horizons—the shorter period would need to rely on existing technology, while the longer period could include realistic projections for improved technologies. They also would estimate results with “current trends” (no policy changes), “moderate action” (actions with little or no cost), and “strong action” (government-mandated energy reforms or technology subsidies).

The A-Team was the most enthusiastic and hardworking of all my Institute on Climate and Planets teams. The pairs reported back to the full team on a weekly basis, and by the end of the summer they had made good progress on the renewable energy and energy efficiency tasks. I wrote a letter to Colin Powell inviting him to give the keynote speech at our summer institute closing ceremony; we wanted to also show him the A-Team’s results. Unfortunately, Secretary Powell could not attend, but this did not deter the A-Team from continuing their enthusiastic work for two more years.