Writing of Sophie’s Planet is now
proceeding at the pace (4 chapters per month) needed to finish it in
2024; I am into the second half of the book. The style is different than
the version started years ago – most chapters now more compact and
easier for the nonscientist to read. Nevertheless, it will contain a few
chapters that are technical and challenging. Chapter 25 (Paleoclimate and “Slow” Feedbacks) is one of those, so I invite feedback on that chapter.
The time scale of “slow” feedbacks, including ice sheet disintegration,
is a crucial issue that must be understand better to assess the climate
threat. “Terminations,” the relatively rapid transitions from glacial to
interglacial conditions, are an important source of knowledge about the
physics of “slow” feedbacks. Human-made forcing driving the present
transition from an interglacial to a super-interglacial – assuming we
stay with our present ineffectual emissions reduction strategy – is more
than an order of magnitude faster than the natural forcing that drove
terminations, so the ongoing transition will be much faster than past
terminations.
There is another reason to get into technical stuff on
glacial-interglacial climate oscillations, besides the need to
understand the physics of “slow” feedbacks. There are well-educated
people[1] who do not recognize how much is known from Earth’s climate
history. Paleoclimate data show how sensitive climate is to forcings and
the magnitude of the consequences, if the forcings are left in force
long enough to bring “slow” feedbacks strongly into play. My aim is to
describe the paleoclimate evidence well enough in just a few
paleoclimate chapters that interested, objective, people will be able to
appreciate the implications.
Why write a book
that mixes climate science with a recounting of energy and climate
policy travails? If mistakes of the past are not appreciated, it will be
difficult to achieve a stable, beneficial, climate for future
generations. The audience I hope to reach is especially young people. I
am enthusiastic about the ability of student leaders to understand the
climate situation and support the sort of policies that are needed, as I
have mentioned in prior posts.[2]
Global fossil fuel emissions will not begin to decline rapidly until
there is a rising fee on carbon emissions enforced on a near-global
basis via border duties on products made from fossil fuels. Here,
however, I want to focus on two related matters – one old and one new:
(1) nuclear power, and (2) the increasingly likely possibility that
young people will need to take purposeful actions to cool off the planet
faster than is possible with even the most aggressive phasedown of
emissions and removal of greenhouse gases.
I had no strong opinion about nuclear power when I began to be
interested in energy policies about 25 years ago. But as I began to
travel with and give talks with environmentalists, some things they said
about nuclear power clearly did not have a scientific basis. The
strategy to kill nuclear power by making it so expensive that nobody
wants it (based on material costs of a nuclear power plant and fuel
costs of the fuel, nuclear power should be our cheapest energy) and
count on 100% renewables is unfair to young people. Do we have the right
to make the decision for them that they must use 100% renewables? What
if they do not want German electricity prices? De facto, we made a
decision for young people and future generations via the hidden,
unlimited, subsidy of “renewable portfolio standards” (as opposed to
“clean energy portfolio standards”) and many other actions that denied
equal opportunity to drive down costs of nuclear power. On the contrary,
disinformation about the danger of low-level radiation served to drive
up the cost of nuclear power – there is a long, sordid, story to tell
about that, but this is not the time for it.
Instead, I want to point out the analogy with a new story:
geoengineering. Old people are geoengineering the dickins out of the
planet. Never in the history of planet Earth has there been a drive for
global warming at even one-tenth of the rate of the present human-made
geoengineering of the planet. Yet there are some people (of the
generation responsible for the geoengineering) who believe they have the
right to prevent investigation of the options to phase down the massive
geoengineering that the old geezers imposed on young people and future
generations. Potential consequences are related to and analogous to the
consequences of the past lack of the support needed to drive down the
cost of modern nuclear power. Just as young people today have been
denied the option of ready, low-cost, modern nuclear power to complement
intermittent renewable energies, so young people tomorrow may be denied
the option of a life-jacket in the event that accelerating climate
change drives the climate system toward the point-of-no-return.
Recently Kathleen McCroskey wrote an article[3] in Medium aimed at my
organization, CSAS (Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions), in
response to our Global warming in the pipeline paper[4] and an update on
our research.[5] It “worked,” in the sense that public contributions to
CSAS dropped to a fraction, but “fortunately” those have not been our
main source of support recently. CSAS was once rescued via a public
appeal,[6] but such a support level of the general public was not
sustainable or expected. Instead, CSAS has survived for a decade mainly
from the support of a few philanthropists or their organizations, as
delineated at the end of section 5 of our research update.[5]
This coming fiscal year, beginning 1 July 2024, is a special case.
Makiko Sato will retire at the end of December this year. It is
impossible to replace her, as she contributes across our program in data
set compilations, climate analysis, graphics, and keeping our group
together. The essential need is for someone who can maintain, expand,
and work with climate data sets. We aim to find someone at an entry
level position who is eager to learn – in our view, working with data is
at least as interesting and important as climate modeling. If we can
afford it, we would like to start someone before the end of the year to
have a period of overlap with Makiko. A few months ago, I received an
email from someone asking if I would serve as an adviser to an
organization that supports climate research. I declined, as I must
finish SP this year. He hinted that CSAS might be eligible for support –
now I can’t find that correspondence – if you were that person, please
contact me!
BTW, my friend Bengt Sundquist has translated the Pipeline paper and the Hopium email to Swedish language; they are available here and here.
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