Climate Change and Sea Level Rise: Recent Developments in Science and Public Policy

Robert Almeder, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Science at Georgia State University introduces our speakers, Ian Burns and Richard Lindzen.

Ian Burns works with the Governor's Office of Energy Independence and Security. He's going to talk about the effects of climate change on Maine's beaches.

The problem, he says, is that we're enormously dependent on fossil fuels. The forecasts for greenhouse gases are sharply rising, and although the US only plays a part in the overall problem, we have a very larger per capita problem. Maine is slightly better than the rest of the other states in terms of energy consumption. He prevents a Pacala Socolow wedge chart showing different results for different approaches.

The Governor's Office of Energy as formed in 2008 and was charged with creating an energy plan for the state. The approach has three bottom lines: environmental health, economic security and security. They identified a number of strategies, including: strengthening energy independence, fostering renewable energy sources, improving transportation and fuel efficiencies and upgrading electricity transportation. Ian says that a lot of energy is lost in transportation and heat retention, and that there is a lot of room for improvement. In Denmark, he says, 80% of the home are heated with industrial heat byproducts. In addition to being more efficient, it is also much cheaper than energy we currently purchase. For a human cost perspective, he says, the economic impacts of investing in energy efficiency is the most important factor.

Fostering renewable energy, he says, is very important. Maine has a large potential for renewable energy, including a large wind resource (onshore and offshore) as well as cellulosic biofuels from woodfiber. Ian says that the University of Maine is working both on offshore wind systems as well as better ways to use wood biofuels. Right now we're harvesting about 6 million tons of wood in Maine each year. An additional four million tons, he says, is being left on the ground. Some of that is used to stabilize logging, but a lot is simply being wasted. Why? Because it doesn't pay to pick it up and truck it. If we can come up with value-added processes for this, it could be quite a benefit.

When we burn a gallon of oil, 80 cents on each dollar leaves Maine, and a big chunk of that leaves the country. If we buy an apple from a farmstand, though, more than one dollar returns to Maine for each dollar spent. Figuring out how to use our own resources wisely and locally will have both economic and environmental impacts.

Ian is reluctant to dip his toe into land planning, which he calls a "black hole." It's very important and useful, but he leaves it to the experts. However, he is more certain that we need to invest in infrastructure in order for good things to happen. Maine is in a very challenging fiscal time, and we are cutting off our nose to spite our face by cutting most of the same programs we could use to fix things. For example, the East Campus of the old AMHI is using far too much energy. This problem, he says, could be fixed for a very cost-effective system that would pay for itself in 2 years, but had to be dropped from the budget because of political squabbles. The State can do a lot lead the country.

Ian puts a picture of a St. John refinery above a wind turbine. We need a cultural shift in the way we use energy, and we need to shift from a fossil fuel culture to one where we use less to go about our daily lives. Finally, we need to figure out how to get that energy from purely renewable, sustainable sources.

Question: What is his take on how Maine can keep our energy costs low?

Ian: The Wind Power Task Force was a good start. They said: a giant windmill on a mountaintop was not something that a zoning board took into consideration. We have to respond to new situations as they come up, and these news things should be reported back to the legislature on a regular basis. Ian plugs his own office, which has a public advocate to help the mission of coordinating and directing zoning and planning decisions.

Question: What about a giant wind farm off the coast where it's shallow?

Ian: Offshore wind is certainly one of the portfolio. We are not quite there technologically for deep water offshore wind, but it's a possible solution.

Question: I live in Austria, where concrete blocks are used as building material instead of wood. Is there research in Maine about different building materials?

Ian: Not really. We've been locked in to a certain way of building which is not very efficient. We just passed a new building code, and the majority of new homes are not meeting that code. Before we can get to 0 energy loss, we need to meet the code we have.

Question: What can we do to improve transmission lines?

Ian: I'm not an expert, but there are a lot of things that can be done. The whole system is very complex and impressive, like a giant bathtub with a million tiny holes in the bathroom. Faucets at the top pour energy in, but the level of the water in the tub is not allowed to shift, or else things go back. We need to improve all kinds of meters, wires, substations, etc.

Next up is Richard Lindzen, the Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT. See his bio at http://www.maine.gov/doc/nrimc/mgs/explore/marine/beach-conference/lindzen.htm

His talk is called Global Warming - A Peculiar Issue. This is a change of pace from the other presentations, he says. None of these programs proposed, he says, would make even a dent in climate change as it stands. He talks about a magazine article he has which discusses a conflict between Republicans and others. In the article, the writer says that "American voters ... tend to take global warming seriously ... and think that conservatives are insulting those on the east and west coasts." (Paraphrased) Some professors say that global warming is quickening. Prof. Lindzen questions this. He puts a graph on the board that shows temperatures from 1900 to now. There have been two warming events over that century. Another graph from the Boston Globe shows the current day's weather against the historical temps and average temps for those dates. Prof has put a red line through the middle which represents the whole change in temperature since 1900 in the world. It's not very thick. Thus, there's no significant increase since 1993...so how do you explain this as speeding up?

Now he shows a graph on sea ice, which vacillates widely. In 2008, the summer levels dipped, but the graph doesn't show this very drastically. In fact, in 1906, Amundsen crossed the Northwest Passage by boat, and a submarine surfaced there once. Professor claims that Al Gore is notorious for exploiting a normal person's ignorance of normal variations. Historic levels of ice on other areas are not much changed, either. Also, melting sea ice does not lead to higher sea levels. Along those same lines, there is no evidence that ice caps are melting.

A professor who said that climate change was quickening answered by saying that challenges should be kept to science, not politics. Professor Lindzen says that the IPCC report does not claim that climate change is quickening. Many people think that arguing from authority is easier than arguing from science, but here the authority doesn't even exist.

Next was one of Obama's scientists, Eric Holden, who had some pessimistic things to say about climate change. Professor Lindzen says that almost nothing he said was true. even with IPCC projections, sea level may rise only by 1.26 inches, which means that sea level will rise by one foot per century...exactly the same rate it has risen in the past 12,000 years.

It remains possible, however, that the data may not be good enough to make an accurate picture. Professor Lindzen puts up a map of 12 year changes in sea level across the globe. If you subtract a mean increase of 1.26 inches/decade, but in some places the rise is much faster, and in some places the sea level is decreasing. The problem of sea level is due to many factors, not just climate change, mostly tectonic changes.

In any event, as far as tipping points go, these debates have never entered the discussion. When it comes to CO2, every new bit of CO2 you add does less than its predecessors. Professor claims that the ignorance of these debate is understandable from those who want to state from authority, and not science.

Professor Lindzen says Eric Holder went on to trick the audience. Apart from the fact that climate is always changing, Mr. Holder's statements are unattributable to anthropogenic warming. There are many factors involved. We're bad at predicting disasters...from famines to ozone etc. It's incorrect to assume that the world has reached an 'optimal' climate. There does not appear to be an increase in draught linked to a rise in climate. There does not appear to be a link to crop yields. And, this is not what IPCC meant when they said 'consensus.' They meant that it is likely that the warming over the past 50 years is due to man's emissions.

How was this figure arrived at? Well, he says, it was bizarre. There were a series of models created, but they weren't very good. When these models couldn't find a valid for argument for warming, they assumed that it was caused by humans. Some scientists say that warming will return in 2009, but this is very suspicious.

At the heart of the issue, he says, is greenhouse gasses. How much warming do you get when you double the release of CO2? the first guide of this, "climate sensitivity", was 1.5-5 C. This is still the same number, and it's still done as it was in 1979. This is peculiar because uncertainty hasn't diminished...is simply running models the best way to accomplish this? Clouds and water vapor, he says, amplify the effects of CO2. Can you check this? Yes, he says. We have records of radiation and sea surface temperature.

Professor Lindzen start putting some mathematics on the screen (he calls it simple, but many people look baffled). There is a feedback loop, he says, in the equation. By solving this equation, you can take the fluxes observed by the satellite and compare them to sea surface temperatures and find the feedback factor. The assumption is that an increase in clouds and water vapor will hinder the atmosphere's natural ability to cool itself; they'll be natural blankets. This had led most groups to insist that climate change is "robust."

The data, however, shows exactly the opposite. In nature, he says, the effect of doubling CO2 output will be HALF. So, he says, the fundamental theory of global warming is wrong. Where do we go from here? It's hard to say...because so many who believe in global warming are insulted by this thought.

Question: Can you show us that again?

Professor: Yes. Using the models, he gets a result showing an increase in warming with an increase in CO2. However, when he uses real data, he gets a result showing a decrease in warming with an increase in CO2.

Question: Can you take that less-than-negative feedback back into the models?

Professor: You can't. The models can't handle clouds. There's numerical diffusion...which causes problems.

Question: What about the argument that we're in a little ice-age?

Professor: I have no idea. There are all kinds of things we don't understand. For example, advancing glaciers are a much bigger problem than retreating ones! All of a sudden, glaciers were retreating...both in places that were experiencing cooling and warming.

Question: Why was the IPCC consensus "hardly alarming"?

Professor: Becuase it's so vague, and because the numbers are so small. Only about .2 of a degree may (or may not) be from humans. It's still within the range of natural variation.

Question: What about volcanic eruptions?

Professor: Good question. In the aftermath of big eruptions, there is a cooling effect worldwide. They may disappear after a few years, or, if the atmosphere is very sensitive, it may last for decades. When you look at the data, it's almost always just a blip on the radar.

Question: What about the medieval warming period?

Professor: Well, they didn't have thermometers, but they were probably a bit warmer than they we are now.

Question: I've been focusing on the results, not the causes. Is that OK?

Professor: Yes. We must look at the robustness of society in the face of change. Why do thousands of people die in an earthquake in Iran but only one or two in California?

Question: What would you consider a significant change in global mean temperature?

Professor: Something that would compete with what we live with. Only when we start getting outside the normal bounds of what we can live with do we get danger.

Question: We always hear about how much more carbon we are putting into the atmosphere, is there any work about "how much is too much" for manmade carbon?

Professor: No. This room, for example, has twice the normal CO2 than the outside. Greenhouses have much higher CO2. Most of our vegetation grew in a time where there was much more CO2. By the time you can put enough CO2 in the air to make a lot of change, you'd run out of fossil fuels. Energy is another issue. We'll never run out, it'll just get more expensive. We have more reserves than Saudi Arabia. Why doesn't Exxon Mobil exploit them? Because if oil drops below $35 a barrel it won't be profitable.

Question: For Ian, why didn't you have hydo on that chart?

Ian: Because Maine has a significant amount of hydro power already. However, we have not seen very many cost-effective small hydro plants.

Question, from the Professor: Isn't efficiency the same as reducing the price, and when the price goes down you use more of it. How do you know you'll come out ahead in energy usage if you increase efficiency? If I could increase efficiency, why wouldn't I want to use more energy?

Ian: Well, as a percentage of GDP it may change. You don't know what people will spend their money on, whether it be health insurance or food, etc.