Comments on: LA Times on Adaptation

By: Darrel

Darrel — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:31:19 +0000

Roger, your analogy in the context of heart disease is perhaps valid, but I would interpret it quite differently. Firstly, I view mitigation as a preventive measure and adaptation as a responsive measure. As such, changing one’s lifestyle (to prevent potential adverse effects in the future) is comparable with mitigation (mitigation indeed requires humankind to change their collective lifestyles and use of technology) and heart surgery is a treatment of current effects (and thus comparable with adaptation. And psychologically it could well be that people are less likely to change their behavior when they believe that (possible) negative effects of their behavior could be remedied. The dichotomy between adaptation and mitigation may not exist in an intellectual exercise on policy options, but it does in my view exist in the psychology of individuals’ and groups’ behavior in society. Which is why pushing adaptation could have the unintended side-effect of decreasing the chances for aggressive mitigation to occur.

By: Darrel

Darrel — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:30:52 +0000

By: Harry Haymuss

Harry Haymuss — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:10:00 +0000

Jonathan, docpine, et al – what makes you so sure increased CO2 will not increase Hadley cell circulation (it will by the way) and thereby shear off the tops of hurricanes more, so that instead of 150 we’re only going 140?

I don’t know what it is, but you’re not being realistic.

We simply have no clue what even the order of magnitude of adaptation is. Sorry to knock you off your pedestals…

By: docpine

docpine — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:13:06 +0000

In my view, one of the reasons the adaptation/mitigation dichotomy is so bogus is that different communities of scientists and practitioners work on the different problems, did work on them and will work on them in the future- unless we suddenly fire all the people who work on topics requiring adaptation (dealing with water, fire, biodiversity, agriculture, etc.)

Reducing greenhouse gases used in fuels and energy requires efforts of renewable energy technology developers and others. Communities adapting to lack of water requires the usual water suspects, and adapting to new climate in agriculture requires the usual agriculture research suspects.
I suppose there is a question as to the array of research funds to each discipline for climate change research but, speaking as a natural resources practitioner, I am not suddenly going to go to work on energy efficiency or new energy sources. Ultimately communities of science and practice do what they do- some work on adaptation, some on mitigation, some on both- and will continue to do what they do.

Sharon Friedman

By: Jonathan Gilligan

Jonathan Gilligan — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:32:17 +0000

Dr. von Storch,

I don’t understand the distinction you’re trying to draw. If the hazards of the natural climate represent 150 km/hr and the hazards of natural climate + anthropogenic change represent 160, why would it be incorrect to infer that you’re saying the added burdens caused by anthropogenic change would be relatively small?

Could you please explain this more clearly?

By: Hans von Storch

Hans von Storch — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 08:16:11 +0000

Usually I have no or little complaints with media reporting about my position. Such reports are not always correct, of course, but mostly not really distorted. Alan Zarembo, however, is severely misrepresenting my position. He wrote “Hans von Storch, director of the Institute of Coastal Research in Germany, said that the world’s problems were already so big that the added burdens caused by rising temperatures would be relatively small. It would be like going 160 kilometers per hour on the autobahn when ‘going 150 . . . is already dangerous,’ he said.”
I have indeed used the speed-analog, but with a different meaning. The 150 km/h should represent the present climate dangers, and the 160 km/h the dangers in a climate changing due to enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations. Obviously this is not the same as “world’s problems were already so big that the added burdens caused by rising temperatures would be relatively small”.
Unfortunately, and quite differently from the routine I am used with US journalists, did Mr Zarembo not speak to me to find out what I actually said and mean. Misrepresentations like this happen, but it is unfortunate as Zarembos lines have been used by other media and by blogs, which proliferates a significantly distorted view of mine.

By: Hans von Storch

Hans von Storch — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 08:12:42 +0000

By: Hans von Storch

Hans von Storch — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 08:12:11 +0000

By: Mark Bahner

Mark Bahner — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 01:50:54 +0000

“It will take around 50 years for even the most ambitious plausible mitigation policy to significantly reduce emissions in the developed world, to say nothing of China and India.”

World photovoltaic production has been doubling approximately every 2-3 years for the last decade. See the “additional data” link here:

http://environment.about.com/od/renewableenergy/a/solar_cells.htm

Photovoltaic production was approximately 3.6 gigawatts in 2007. That’s at full sun. Obviously, the electricity generated would be much less. Let’s say a factor of 10 less…that would be 0.36 gigawatts of constant power produced in 2007.

Total world electricity production is about 4 terwatts, and is expected to grow to 18 terawatts (18,000 gigawatts) by 2050. That means, in 2050, world electricity production is estimated at about 18,000/0.36 = 50,000 times the 2007 production.

The question is, if photovoltaics double in production every 2.5 years, when do they equal the entire world’s electricity production?

Well, if they double every 2.5 years, that means a factor of 1000 growth in 25 years, and a factor of 50,000 growth about 15 years after that. So in 40 years, if photovoltaic production continues to double every 2.5 years, the photovoltaic production in that one year would be equal to the entire world’s electrical production.

Obviously “your mileage may vary.” There’s obviously no guarantee that photovoltaic production will continue to double every 2.5 years for the next 40 years. But it’s plausible.

By: Jonathan Gilligan

Jonathan Gilligan — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:04:56 +0000

Roger,

Let’s talk about the policy implications of what you say: We agree that mitigation will not have any practical impact on climate-related quality-of-life issues over the next 50 years so adaptation is important for the next 50 years and mitigation is important for the longer term.

But that’s not saying much. It will take around 50 years for even the most ambitious plausible mitigation policy to significantly reduce emissions in the developed world, to say nothing of China and India. Moreover, given the earth’s multicentury thermal time constant, it’s clear from basic physics that most of the benefit of mitigation will accrue to distant future generations (Even Nicholas Stern agrees that you can’t justify dramatic mitigation unless you include effects of climate change through 2200: see fig. 6.5, p. 178 and table 6.1, p. 186).

But if we’re going to protect the 22nd and 23rd centuries from possibly disastrous climate change, and if some of the more alarming predictions of a tipping point into runway warming at CO2-equivalent levels in the neighborhood of 450-550 ppmv have even a small possibility of being true, we’d need to start now on aggressive mitigation.

For this reason, I think your statement, “[D]ealing with the emissions of greenhouse gases will take place over the long run. Meantime, we’ll adapt,” may give readers a misleading complacency that because the effects are distant there is no urgency to mitigation. Putting on my policy advocate hat, I think it’s precisely to protect distant posterity from climatic change that we need an aggressive mitigation policy now.

Reasonable people may disagree, and I think this is a fruitful point to discuss.