John O. Campbell
My wife is an oceanographer and a volunteer at the Royal British
Columbia Museum. Her current project there is to sort through the vast personal
collections of scientific papers which generations of scientists have left to
the museum. She discards duplicates or those which may be accessed on the
internet and retains and catalogues those that cannot.
Yesterday she brought home a 1975 paper by one of her
academic heroes, Wallace Broecker, titled Climate Change: AreWe on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming? In this paper, written over
forty years ago, Broecker makes the scientific argument that burning fossil
fuels will lead to a significant warming of our climate:
We
may be in for a climatic surprise. The onset of the era of CO2-induced warming
may be much more dramatic than in the absence of natural climatic variations.
His line of reasoning is straight-forward and compelling. It
was already well known that CO2 traps heat and warms the atmosphere;
elementary school science experiments demonstrate this fact. Such experiments
also reveal a strict relationship between the concentration of CO2 in the
atmosphere and the amount of heating it produces. It was known that our burning
of fossil fuels had already contributed over 12% of the CO2 present in the atmosphere.
Putting these straight-forward facts together along with estimates of future rates
of fossil fuel consumption he calculated that this percentage would rise to 38%
by 2010 and produced a simple model of the consequent warming.
The model which Broecker constructed from these few facts has
proven remarkably accurate. Though his model has been greatly refined since,
his ominous predictions have largely come to pass; each of the past twelve months
has set records for the hottest of those individual months in history.
Immediately following Broecker’s paper, other climate
scientists began expanding and refining his research and models. Their findings
overwhelmingly supported his. Indeed, in those early days, Exxon invested
heavily in climate science research and its senior scientist, James Black,
informed Exxon’s senior management that [1] :
doubling CO2 gases in the atmosphere would increase
average global temperatures by two or three degrees
Exxon’s scientists certainly understood the need for
immediate action:
present thinking holds that man has a time window of
five to 10 years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy
strategies might become critical.
At the time Exxon’s scientific staff were among the leaders
in climate science research. They undoubtedly understood the conclusions very
well. In the opinion of the Harvard history of science professor Naomi Oreskes:
It’s never been remotely plausible that they did not
understand the science
Although Exxon did not lack in scientific understanding of
the problem posed to humanity by climate change or of the immediacy of the
problem, they decided against supporting ‘hard decisions regarding changes in
energy strategy’. Instead they focused on a corporate strategy designed to
delay those hard decisions, a strategy designed solely to create doubt concerning
climate science. Exxon joined with other energy companies to execute this new
strategy
By 1989 the company had helped create the Global
Climate Coalition (disbanded in
2002) to question the scientific basis for concern about climate change.
The memos produced by this coalition make it clear that
their goal was to sow misinformation and confusion [1] :
Victory will be achieved when the average person is
uncertain about climate science.
Exxon alone is reported to have spent over $30 million on
this disinformation campaign. These vast sums were not wasted; our political
process has yet to come to any ‘hard decisions’ on the issue. Indeed, the
leaders of the majority party in the US Senate continue to describe climate
science as a ‘hoax’.
In a narrow legalistic way Exxon may plausibly argue that
they should not be held responsible for these deceptions. Corporate law insists that corporate
decisions must be based only on considerations of profitability. Arguments that
they should avoid imposing catastrophes on humanity are simply irrelevant to
their decision making and undoubtedly their strategy in misleading the public
has been profitable for them. It might be argued that their tactics were
completely rational. Clearly, if humanity is to display any ability to resists these
kinds of corporate threats, we must write new laws.
Some have argued that climate change is not all bad and may
not pose much risk to humanity. The science indicates that these arguments are
wrong. A recent study by researchers led by Eric Rignot of University of
California [2] :
finds a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic
Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline, with nothing to
stop the glaciers in this area from melting into the sea.
This melting will result in the world sea level rising 4
feet, sufficient to submerge a lot of the world’s most densely populated
shorelines. Ironically one of the most devastated areas will be Florida, where State
environmental officials were ordered not to use the terms “climate change” or
“global warming” in any government communications, emails, or reports [3] . Unfortunately, such ‘head in the sand’ strategies will not hold back the tides.
The massive 2006 Stern report, commissioned by the
government of Great Britain, concluded that immediate action could result in
mitigating $2.5 trillion worth of damages resulting from global warming. Given
that a decade has since past, during which little action has been taken we may conclude that the actual damages will be much larger. We should bear in mind that
these damages will not appear on Exxon’s financial statements; the price will
be paid by humanity.
It is difficult to establish the amount of resources which we should rationally allocate to mitigate climate change. The basic calculations of
monetary risk assessment is simple enough, it is the probability of the risky thing
happening multiplied by the cost of it happening. For example, when calculating
the monetary risk of your house burning down next year we must first estimate a
percentage of it happening, say 1/1000 and then estimate the replacement cost
of your house, say $500,000. Multiplying the two we see that the fair price for
insurance against your house burning down in the next year is $500.
It is rational for us to spend such sums to insure our homes
even though the probability of them actually burning down is very low.
The problem with calculating the monetary risk of climate
change is not with the probability of some sort of a catastrophe happening (that
number is undoubtedly quite close to 1) but it is in calculating the expected potential
cost. As part of the disinformation campaign launched by Exxon and their allies,
the credibility of climate science has been viciously attacked. Critics have
hammered away that the science is not certain, that doubts remain. In response the
gun-shy scientists have been timid in exploring many of the less certain
scenarios where the risks are also much higher. Instead they have felt constrained to explore only the near certain outcomes.
The truth is that science is never certain, any scientific
hypothesis must always be falsifiable. However, science is absolutely our best
guide in assigning exact probability to a possible outcome. Let’s consider one
such possible outcome of unmitigated climate change which is not certain but I
would argue has a substantial probability, a higher
probability than the one which prompts us to insure our homes. This possible outcome
is that planet earth becomes unable to sustain life.
This may, at first glance, seem an outrageous suggestion but
we should consider that early in the history of the solar system our planet was
but one of three planets having life friendly conditions including liquid
water, moderate temperatures and an atmosphere. Science does not know for sure
why Venus and Mars subsequently developed conditions which prohibit the
existence of life. It appears that on Venus a run-away greenhouse effect may
have taken place; today temperatures are so high that lead will melt at its
surface [4] .
Could earth follow a similar catastrophic trajectory? It is
known that once global warming begins there are a number of feedback mechanisms
which tend to speed it up. These include melted, darker polar zones absorbing
more heat, the release of the greenhouse gas methane from melting permafrost
and increasing concentrations of water vapor (which is a greenhouse gas) as the atmosphere warms. The truth
is that once we get global warming going we don’t know where it will end.
The fact that two out of three planets are no longer capable
of supporting life must lead us to understand that a life-friendly planet is
fragile, and that it could easily loose its precious ability to sustain life. Yet
in the tradition of Alfred E. Newman we disrupt and perturb our planetary
systems with the full force of our technological prowess while remaining
studiously unworried as to possible consequences.
For over forty years corporate disinformation campaigns have
resisted humanity’s efforts to mitigate against climate change, to buy ourselves
a little insurance. These special interests have achieved victory; the average
person is uncertain about climate science and very few effective measures have
been taken to curtail it. Although the law is very friendly towards these morally
despicable acts, some corporations may have, in their enthusiasm, crossed even the existing legal limits. California is now considering a bill to extend the statues of
limitations on such crimes to enable law enforcement to gather evidence to [5] :
hold fossil fuel companies accountable for decades of
deception and fraud over the scientific evidence about climate change.
When considering new laws around corporate engineering of public
policy we might consider the unprecedented magnitude of the threat these
activities pose to humanity. We might consider that terrorist acts are
committed when individuals commit crimes against humanity in order to achieve their
fanatical objectives. Sometimes those fanatical objectives take the form of
religious salvation but they may also take the form of unbridled greed. In this
context, steering the citizenry into a climate catastrophe is little different
from steering a plane into an office tower. We should make the legal penalties commensurate with the moral magnitude of the crime.
References
[1]
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S. Hall,
"Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago," 26 October
2015. [Online]. Available:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/.
[Accessed 6 May 2016].
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[2]
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P. r. American
Geophysical Union, "NEW STUDY INDICATES LOSS OF WEST ANTARCTIC
GLACIERS APPEARS UNSTOPPABLE," 12 May 2014. [Online]. Available:
http://news.agu.org/press-release/new-study-indicates-loss-of-west-antarctic-glaciers-appears-unstoppable/.
[Accessed 6 May 2016].
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[3]
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T. Korten, "In
Florida, officials ban term 'climate change'," 8 March 2015. [Online].
Available:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article12983720.html.
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[4]
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Wikipedia,
"Venus," [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus.
[Accessed 7 May 2016].
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[5]
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Union of concerned
scientists, "California Bill Seeks Accountability from Fossil Fuel
Companies for Climate Science Deception," 29 March 2016. [Online].
Available: http://www.ucsusa.org/press/2016/california-bill-seeks-accountability-fossil-fuel-companies-climate-science-deception#.Vy4ajfmDFBc.
[Accessed 7 May 2016].
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