Transcript Anthropogenic Climate Change –Connections to

Volcanologists report only 3-4 kt (0.003-0.004 Mt) of SO2 from the Eyjafjallajökull
volcanic eruption in Iceland as compared to 5 Mt from Katmai in 1912 and 20 Mt
from Pinatubo. Furthermore, it only went into the troposphere, with a lifetime of a
week or so. So expect absolutely no climatic effect based on emissions so far. In other
words, a much larger injection for a period of years (essentially geoengineering
implementation scenario) would be needed to detect a climate response.
Climate – Change – Intervention -- Inscription
Some highlights
Jim Fleming
STS Program
Colby College
Recent a-historical statements,
Asilomar 2010
“We Don’t have a history of geoengineering to fall back on…”
Yes we do.
“Things are moving quickly, so we don’t have the luxury of
looking at history.”
We must take the time.
“It is time to make a first impression on an uninformed public.”
This is like whitewashing an old fence.
“We are the first generation to think about these things.”
History says otherwise.
“Apprehending” Climate Change
Awareness and Understanding
Fix not too rashly upon your first apprehensions
—Richard Baxter (1670)
Anticipation and Dread — Fear
The bare fears of such things and apprehensions of their approach
—Robert Sanderson (1648)
Intervention and Control
A warrant for his apprehension, was obtained.
—Chambers Edinburgh Journal (1881)
WHEN DID HUMANS
FIRST BECOME
CONCERNED ABOUT
CLIMATE CHANGE?
The Pleistocene!
HOW ARE PRIVILEGED
POSITIONS
ESTABLISHED?
 Authority / Prestige
Theophrastus
on climate change
If… the winters are more severe, and more snow
falls than formerly…. It follows that the monsoon
has greater duration.
Is it possible for humans to change the climate?
Yes! through deforestation and irrigation.
Abbé Du Bos
(1719)
Genius is not born
in every climate
HOW ARE PRIVILEGED
POSITIONS
ESTABLISHED?
• Authority / Prestige
 Data
Thomas Jefferson
Emphasized data collection
Climate could be “improved”
"We want. . . [an index of climate] for all the States,
and the work should be repeated once or twice in a
century, to show the effect of clearing and culture
towards the changes of climate."
HOW ARE PRIVILEGED
POSITIONS
ESTABLISHED?
• Authority / Prestige
• Data
 Experiment / Theory
John Tyndall (1859)
IR absorption by trace gases is “a perfectly unexplored
field of inquiry”
“Elementary gases,” oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen, are
almost transparent to radiant heat,
More complex molecules, such as H2O, CO2, O3 and
hydrocarbons, even in very small quantities, absorb
much more strongly than the atmosphere itself.
HOW ARE PRIVILEGED
POSITIONS
ESTABLISHED?
• Authority / Prestige
• Data
• Experiment / Theory
 Models
Svante Arrhenius
Philosophical Magazine, 1896
Model of CO2 controlling ice ages and interglacials.
Geometric decline in CO2 causes a linear decrease in
temperature.
Industrial emissions not yet of concern to him.
His climate model is often cited, but it is not
continuous with modern results or concerns.
Eclipse of the CO2 theory of climate change. 1900-1950
Guy Stewart Callendar
Rising temperatures
Rising fossil fuel consumption
Rising CO2 concentrations
Detailed understanding of IR
The Callendar Effect -- Climatic change brought about by
anthropogenic increases in the concentration of
atmospheric carbon dioxide, primarily through the
processes of combustion. AGW in 1938!
Rising temperatures ca. 1858-1939
Rising CO2 Levels (1958)
IR Spectrum (1941)
HOW ARE PRIVILEGED
POSITIONS
ESTABLISHED?
• Authority / Prestige
• Data
• Experiment / Theory
• Models
 Technology
Bumper V-2
Cape Canaveral
24 July 1950
HOW ARE PRIVILEGED
POSITIONS
ESTABLISHED?
• Authority / Prestige
• Data
• Experiment / Theory
• Models
• Technology
 Consensus
Roger Revelle
Report of The Environmental
Pollution Panel, President’s
Science Advisory Committee, 1965
– Appendix Y.
By the year 2000 there will be about 25% more CO2
in our atmosphere than at present. This will modify
the heat balance of the atmosphere to such an
extent that marked changes in climate, not
controllable through local or even national efforts,
could occur.
Jule Charney
National Academy of Sciences,
Carbon Dioxide and Climate:
A Scientific Assessment (1979)
The consensus has been that increasing carbon dioxide will
lead to a warmer earth with a different distribution of
climatic regimes.
Doubling CO2 in models results in 1.5 to 4.5 C warming.
Positive feedbacks will increase the warming.
Establishing the IPCC
1979 First World Climate Conference, WMO.
1985 Assessment of the Role of Carbon Dioxide and
of Other Greenhouse Gases in Climate Variations
and Associated Impacts (UNEP, WMO, ICSU).
1988 IPCC established by WMO and UNEP.
Original IPCC Charge (1988)
1. Science of climate and climatic change
2. Social and economic impacts
3. Possible response strategies
4. International legal instruments
5. International convention on climate
Our understanding of climate is
based on authority, prestige, data,
experiments, theory, modeling,
technology, and consensus…
WHAT ROLE FOR
HISTORY?
Students of climate dynamics would be well-served
to study science dynamics (history).
History matters – it shapes identity and behavior; it is
not just a celebratory record of inevitable progress.
Our species emerged during an ice age, and all of
history has occurred in an interglacial era.
In facing unprecedented challenges, it is good to
seek historical precedents.
Clarity of communication (for dreamers)
Appropriate interventions and inscriptions (for doers)
Here’s a reason to be nice to historians
“God cannot alter the past, but historians can”
— Dr.
Samuel Johnson (18th C)
Managing Solar Radiation
A critique of
climate
engineering
The Climate
Engineers: Playing
God to Save the
Planet
http://www.colby.edu/sts/
climateengineers.pdf
Columbia University Press, 2010
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/97
8-0-231-14412-4/fixing-the-sky
“Give me a lever
long enough and a
place to stand, and I
will move the world”
—Archimedes
— but where will it
roll?
Leverage
“It occurred to me at once that this was the lever by
which the meteorologist was to move the world!” –
James Espy, The Philosophy of Storms, 1841.
Eliza Leslie
James Espy
Wexler and V.A. Bugaev in Geneva, 19
Mar 1962
Wexler 1962: prevent all O3 from forming
Starfish Prime
Aurora “Tropicalis”
and Rainbow Bomb Parties
“But how do you
know destroying
the inner Van
Allen belts will
create havoc until
you try it?”
– New Yorker,
1962
A male hand, god-like in scale, is on the thermostat
Thermostat is “nowhere,” but perhaps in outer space
Temperature is 73 F but is being turned back to 54 F or 5
degrees cooler than its long-term average
The thermostat dial is centered on Roswell, NM
Phaeton, from the series The Four Disgracers (1588)
by Hendrick Goltzius (Netherlandish, 1558-1617).
WHAT CAN I KNOW?
WHAT SHOULD I DO?
WHAT MAY I HOPE?
—Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
Climate Change is Simple
References
Historical Perspectives on Climate Change.
The Callendar Effect.
Climate Change and Anthropogenic Greenhouse
Warming: A Selection of Key Articles, 1824-1995,
with Interpretive Essays “nsdl climate”
Fixing the Sky: The checkered history of weather
and climate control.