hardback

This book is over ten years old, so I read it primarily for concepts and not for the obviously out-of-date figures.

I think it’s worth pointing out, just as this book does, that as early as 1896, the scientist Svante Arrhenius (who later won the Nobel Prize) began thinking about and then calculating how much rising carbon dioxide levels would lead to rising global temperatures. This is not a new concern and we’ve had over a century of warning.

Second, this book did an excellent job of explaining why the idea that increased carbon dioxide levels will simply encourage more plants to grow more quickly, thus soaking up the excess carbon dioxide, is flawed. This is actually a common theme here in the U.S., and we are in desperate need of an analysis that can put paid to this idea. So here goes: first, it’s true that extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will encourage photosynthesis to speed up, so plants will indeed grow faster and absorb more carbon dioxide. However, we are also outpacing the plants and also seem to have the inability to cope with the existence of large tracts of forested land. The same carbon dioxide (and any other carbon dioxide we add to it) is simultaneously warming the climate. That warming accelerates the processes that break down plant material and release carbon dioxide back into the air. In addition, trees themselves (like all photosynthesizing organisms) still respire and release their own carbon dioxide, at least at night. Furthermore, the increased warming can encourage droughts in areas with large amounts of plant life, and the droughts can often lead to dead plants, which can then fuel large wildfires, which release huge quantities of carbon dioxide.

Moving on, planting trees in the Arctic in an attempt to compensate for some of the forested land that has been destroyed may actually make things worse, despite the fact that the trees absorb carbon dioxide. This is because forested areas have a much lower albedo than the retreating ice, and thus absorb more energy instead of reflecting it away. We need to be more strategic about planting trees, and also pay attention to what ecosystems can support them.

Third, this book establishes that we can put paid to the idea that climate modeling systems are more or less guesswork that don’t actually reflect reality, and only yield results that scientists who “believe in” climate change agree with:

“The Atlantic is also generating hurricanes in places where they have never been seen before. In March 2004, the first known hurricane in the South Atlantic formed, striking southern Brazil. That the hurricane, later named Catarina, even formed was startling enough. What caused the greatest shock was that it developed very close to a zone of ocean pinpointed a few years before by Britain’s Hadley Centre modelers as a likely new focus for hurricane formation in a warmer greenhouse world. But they had predicted that the waters there wouldn’t be up to the task until 2070.” (Page 214).

There is also independent evidence based on real-life historical records, not just computer-based models, to go by:

“The French mathematician Pascal Yiou…collected more than 600 years’ worth of parish records showing when the Pinot Noir grape harvest began in the Burgundy vineyards of eastern France. There is a clear relationship between summer temperatures and the start of the harvest, so he extrapolated backward to produce a temperature graph from the present to 1370. The results showed that temperatures as high as those typical in the 1990s were unusual, but had happened several times before. However, Yiou said, “the summer of 2003 appears to have been extraordinary, unique.” Temperatures in Burgundy that year were almost 11 degrees F above the long-term average. And if Yiou’s formula was accurate, the highest previous temperature had been just 7 degrees above the average. That happened in 1525, in a warm interlude during the little ice age.” (Page 202).

It is true that factors related to Earth’s movement through space influence changes in climate, but they can exacerbate already existing climatic trends and can easily push an already teetering system over the edge very quickly, and things can change “with speed and violence.”

It is also true that Earth has a “thermostat.” Basically, carbon dioxide in the air can be removed by
being dissolved in rain to form dilute carbonic acid. The acid erodes rocks on the ground, which are made primarily of calcium silicate, and thus produces calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate ultimately ends up as sediments on the ocean floor. But the amount of rain depends on the temperature of the planet. Erosion rates rise with temperature, but faster erosion removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, removes a greenhouse gas, and allows the planet to cool again. This amounts to a negative geological feedback system, but because it operates on a geological time scale, it’s not going to save us.

I was fascinated by the discussion of “the chimney,” a hydrological phenomenon in the Greenland Sea:

“Only a handful of people have ever seen it. It is a giant whirlpool in the ocean, 6 miles in diameter, constantly circling counterclockwise and siphoning water from the surface to the seabed 2 miles below. That water will not return to the surface for a thousand years. The chimney, once one of a family [!], pursues its lonely task in the middle of one of the coldest and most remote seas on Earth. And its swirling waters may be the switch that can turn the heat engine of the world’s climate system on and off.”

The book continues,

“The existence of a series of these chimneys was discovered by a second British adventurer, Cambridge ocean physicist Peter Wadhams…He concluded that they were the final destination for the most northerly flow of the Gulf Stream. The waters of this great ocean current, which drives north through the tropical Atlantic bringing warmth to Europe, are chilled by the Arctic winds in the Greenland Sea and start to freeze around the Odden tongue. The water that is left becomes ever denser and heavier until it is entrained by the chimneys and plunges to the ocean floor.

But they are in danger.

“But even as he gazed on these dynamos of ocean circulation, Wadhams knew they were in trouble…”In 1997, the last year the Odden [ice] tongue formed, we found four chimneys in a single season, and calculate there could have been as many as twelve,” says Wadhams. Since then, they have been disappearing one by one – except for one particularly vigorous specimen.”

“The great chimney had in May 2003 one dying companion, 40 miles to the northwest. But that chimney no longer reached the surface and was, he says, almost certainly in its death throes. That left just one remaining chimney in the Greenland Sea.”

I wonder if the location of the chimney(s) and ocean circulation patterns will simply change along with the climate, or if things will eventually stop altogether, which would cause a stratified ocean. Some scientists believe that one of the causes of the Permian mass extinction was a shutdown of oceanic circulation patterns and the shift to a stratified ocean. A stratified ocean would not be able to sustain the ecosystems most life depends on, and a massive die-off would be a logical consequence. If these scientists are correct, and if climate change does cause the ocean to stratify, you can pretty much kiss the world as we know it goodbye, because somewhere between 90-95% of all species on Earth died in the Permian mass extinction.

I also found the discussion of the Amazon and the weather patterns it spawns to be interesting. According to some calculations, its trees collectively release six trillion tons of water a year, and not all of that stays in the Amazon basin. Some of it goes to the Andes and some of it also waters the Argentine pampas. In fact, it’s been estimated that half of Argentina’s rain comes from evaporation from the forests of the Amazon. And some of the water travels even further – east towards South Africa or north toward the Caribbean. All of this water also carries a great deal of energy, because a tremendous amount of solar energy is required to evaporate it from the forest canopy. In fact, it takes so much energy that forests often stay cooler than nearby plains, even at the same altitude. Not only that, but when the evaporated water condenses to form new clouds, that energy is released into the air. This energy then powers weather systems and high-level winds far into the Northern Hemisphere. Several climatologists have calculated that the whole process provides the energy that drives winter storms across the North Atlantic and into Europe. And if the Amazon rainforest goes, so will the vast levels of transpiration that fuel this massive hydrological engine.

The loss of the Amazon rainforest would have even further ripple effects. This is because, unbelievable as it might seem, conditions in the Sahara affect the Amazon rainforest. This is possible because the physical distance isn’t as great as it might seem; the Atlantic is narrow near the equator, and so the two ecosystems are closer to one another than London and New York. Their relationship stems from the fact that the Sahara contains some of the dustiest areas on Earth, with satellite images showing year-round dust storms powerful enough to inject large amounts of dust into the atmosphere. While some of this dust stays in the area, large quantities of it are carried across the Atlantic by prevailing winds. The red dust clouds can reach almost two miles high by the time they approach the Americas, causing Miami’s spectacular sunrises before falling to earth in the rain that waters the Caribbean and the Amazon. The Sahara dust has some surprising effects in the Americas; according to hurricane forecasters in Florida, dry, dusty years in the Sahara correspond to milder hurricane seasons on the other side of the Atlantic. This is likely because dust in the air can interrupt the uptake of warm, moist air required to fuel hurricanes. Not only that, but the Saharan dust storms transfer large amounts of minerals and organic material that help fertilize soil in the Americas, and that includes the soils of the Amazon. The wetter the Sahara, the fewer the dust storms and the lower the levels of fertilization. And the more severe the hurricane season.

The book also pointed out something I hadn’t really thought of before. A warming troposphere means a cooling stratosphere, and now I’m wondering how that might affect both the stratosphere and the climate.

There are two things about books on this topic that I am beginning to find quite annoying. The first is the idea that somehow developing countries had nothing to do with creating this mess and shouldn’t have to share the burden. Except that they did and should. Massive deforestation caused by slash-and-burn agricultural techniques and the production of charcoal, the soot released by millions of cooking stoves, and the pollution over India and China that is visible from space are just a few examples of how the developing world is contributing to the problem. That, and the fact that most of the increase in world population is coming from the developing world.

Second, most of the “wedge” solutions being proposed to climate change also have severe environmental impacts in their own right, and these are not being addressed. For example, the production of photovoltaic cells for the solar panels – and one proposal calls for covering an area of land the size of New Jersey with solar panels – is very bad for the environment. Not to mention the ecosystems that would have to be destroyed to install those panels (unless they are placed on previously existing buildings). Planting an area the size of India with new forests sounds great, except that some places aren’t ecologically equipped to handle trees, and the parts that are especially good at it are also considered desirable for agriculture (why do you think they were deforested in the first place?) Also, what kind of trees, and where? Doubling nuclear power plant capacity – sure it’s emissions-free, but where do you put the waste where it won’t harm the rest of the environment?

Climate change isn’t the only environmental issue facing us and pretending otherwise is extremely dangerous. I think it’s about time to recognize this planet actually has a carrying capacity and there is only so much life it can support. And that means it’s time for a completely new system of accounting. What price should be attached to an ecologically healthy planet? What value should be attached to the continued existence of thousands of species of wild plants and animals – some of which have gone extinct by the time the scientific papers naming and describing them are published? What’s the cost-benefit analysis when it comes to a world solely populated by us and by those few species we find economically useful, as opposed to a world filled with species that may exist simply for their own sake?

And in this system of accounting, any attempt to cook the books could have catastrophic consequences.
( )

This book is over ten years old, so I read it primarily for concepts and not for the obviously out-of-date figures.

I think it’s worth pointing out, just as this book does, that as early as 1896, the scientist Svante Arrhenius (who later won the Nobel Prize) began thinking about and then calculating how much rising carbon dioxide levels would lead to rising global temperatures. This is not a new concern and we’ve had over a century of warning.

Second, this book did an excellent job of explaining why the idea that increased carbon dioxide levels will simply encourage more plants to grow more quickly, thus soaking up the excess carbon dioxide, is flawed. This is actually a common theme here in the U.S., and we are in desperate need of an analysis that can put paid to this idea. So here goes: first, it’s true that extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will encourage photosynthesis to speed up, so plants will indeed grow faster and absorb more carbon dioxide. However, we are also outpacing the plants and also seem to have the inability to cope with the existence of large tracts of forested land. The same carbon dioxide (and any other carbon dioxide we add to it) is simultaneously warming the climate. That warming accelerates the processes that break down plant material and release carbon dioxide back into the air. In addition, trees themselves (like all photosynthesizing organisms) still respire and release their own carbon dioxide, at least at night. Furthermore, the increased warming can encourage droughts in areas with large amounts of plant life, and the droughts can often lead to dead plants, which can then fuel large wildfires, which release huge quantities of carbon dioxide.

Moving on, planting trees in the Arctic in an attempt to compensate for some of the forested land that has been destroyed may actually make things worse, despite the fact that the trees absorb carbon dioxide. This is because forested areas have a much lower albedo than the retreating ice, and thus absorb more energy instead of reflecting it away. We need to be more strategic about planting trees, and also pay attention to what ecosystems can support them.

Third, this book establishes that we can put paid to the idea that climate modeling systems are more or less guesswork that don’t actually reflect reality, and only yield results that scientists who “believe in” climate change agree with:

“The Atlantic is also generating hurricanes in places where they have never been seen before. In March 2004, the first known hurricane in the South Atlantic formed, striking southern Brazil. That the hurricane, later named Catarina, even formed was startling enough. What caused the greatest shock was that it developed very close to a zone of ocean pinpointed a few years before by Britain’s Hadley Centre modelers as a likely new focus for hurricane formation in a warmer greenhouse world. But they had predicted that the waters there wouldn’t be up to the task until 2070.” (Page 214).

There is also independent evidence based on real-life historical records, not just computer-based models, to go by:

“The French mathematician Pascal Yiou…collected more than 600 years’ worth of parish records showing when the Pinot Noir grape harvest began in the Burgundy vineyards of eastern France. There is a clear relationship between summer temperatures and the start of the harvest, so he extrapolated backward to produce a temperature graph from the present to 1370. The results showed that temperatures as high as those typical in the 1990s were unusual, but had happened several times before. However, Yiou said, “the summer of 2003 appears to have been extraordinary, unique.” Temperatures in Burgundy that year were almost 11 degrees F above the long-term average. And if Yiou’s formula was accurate, the highest previous temperature had been just 7 degrees above the average. That happened in 1525, in a warm interlude during the little ice age.” (Page 202).

It is true that factors related to Earth’s movement through space influence changes in climate, but they can exacerbate already existing climatic trends and can easily push an already teetering system over the edge very quickly, and things can change “with speed and violence.”

It is also true that Earth has a “thermostat.” Basically, carbon dioxide in the air can be removed by
being dissolved in rain to form dilute carbonic acid. The acid erodes rocks on the ground, which are made primarily of calcium silicate, and thus produces calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate ultimately ends up as sediments on the ocean floor. But the amount of rain depends on the temperature of the planet. Erosion rates rise with temperature, but faster erosion removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, removes a greenhouse gas, and allows the planet to cool again. This amounts to a negative geological feedback system, but because it operates on a geological time scale, it’s not going to save us.

I was fascinated by the discussion of “the chimney,” a hydrological phenomenon in the Greenland Sea:

“Only a handful of people have ever seen it. It is a giant whirlpool in the ocean, 6 miles in diameter, constantly circling counterclockwise and siphoning water from the surface to the seabed 2 miles below. That water will not return to the surface for a thousand years. The chimney, once one of a family [!], pursues its lonely task in the middle of one of the coldest and most remote seas on Earth. And its swirling waters may be the switch that can turn the heat engine of the world’s climate system on and off.”

The book continues,

“The existence of a series of these chimneys was discovered by a second British adventurer, Cambridge ocean physicist Peter Wadhams…He concluded that they were the final destination for the most northerly flow of the Gulf Stream. The waters of this great ocean current, which drives north through the tropical Atlantic bringing warmth to Europe, are chilled by the Arctic winds in the Greenland Sea and start to freeze around the Odden tongue. The water that is left becomes ever denser and heavier until it is entrained by the chimneys and plunges to the ocean floor.

But they are in danger.

“But even as he gazed on these dynamos of ocean circulation, Wadhams knew they were in trouble…”In 1997, the last year the Odden [ice] tongue formed, we found four chimneys in a single season, and calculate there could have been as many as twelve,” says Wadhams. Since then, they have been disappearing one by one – except for one particularly vigorous specimen.”

“The great chimney had in May 2003 one dying companion, 40 miles to the northwest. But that chimney no longer reached the surface and was, he says, almost certainly in its death throes. That left just one remaining chimney in the Greenland Sea.”

I wonder if the location of the chimney(s) and ocean circulation patterns will simply change along with the climate, or if things will eventually stop altogether, which would cause a stratified ocean. Some scientists believe that one of the causes of the Permian mass extinction was a shutdown of oceanic circulation patterns and the shift to a stratified ocean. A stratified ocean would not be able to sustain the ecosystems most life depends on, and a massive die-off would be a logical consequence. If these scientists are correct, and if climate change does cause the ocean to stratify, you can pretty much kiss the world as we know it goodbye, because somewhere between 90-95% of all species on Earth died in the Permian mass extinction.

I also found the discussion of the Amazon and the weather patterns it spawns to be interesting. According to some calculations, its trees collectively release six trillion tons of water a year, and not all of that stays in the Amazon basin. Some of it goes to the Andes and some of it also waters the Argentine pampas. In fact, it’s been estimated that half of Argentina’s rain comes from evaporation from the forests of the Amazon. And some of the water travels even further – east towards South Africa or north toward the Caribbean. All of this water also carries a great deal of energy, because a tremendous amount of solar energy is required to evaporate it from the forest canopy. In fact, it takes so much energy that forests often stay cooler than nearby plains, even at the same altitude. Not only that, but when the evaporated water condenses to form new clouds, that energy is released into the air. This energy then powers weather systems and high-level winds far into the Northern Hemisphere. Several climatologists have calculated that the whole process provides the energy that drives winter storms across the North Atlantic and into Europe. And if the Amazon rainforest goes, so will the vast levels of transpiration that fuel this massive hydrological engine.

The loss of the Amazon rainforest would have even further ripple effects. This is because, unbelievable as it might seem, conditions in the Sahara affect the Amazon rainforest. This is possible because the physical distance isn’t as great as it might seem; the Atlantic is narrow near the equator, and so the two ecosystems are closer to one another than London and New York. Their relationship stems from the fact that the Sahara contains some of the dustiest areas on Earth, with satellite images showing year-round dust storms powerful enough to inject large amounts of dust into the atmosphere. While some of this dust stays in the area, large quantities of it are carried across the Atlantic by prevailing winds. The red dust clouds can reach almost two miles high by the time they approach the Americas, causing Miami’s spectacular sunrises before falling to earth in the rain that waters the Caribbean and the Amazon. The Sahara dust has some surprising effects in the Americas; according to hurricane forecasters in Florida, dry, dusty years in the Sahara correspond to milder hurricane seasons on the other side of the Atlantic. This is likely because dust in the air can interrupt the uptake of warm, moist air required to fuel hurricanes. Not only that, but the Saharan dust storms transfer large amounts of minerals and organic material that help fertilize soil in the Americas, and that includes the soils of the Amazon. The wetter the Sahara, the fewer the dust storms and the lower the levels of fertilization. And the more severe the hurricane season.

The book also pointed out something I hadn’t really thought of before. A warming troposphere means a cooling stratosphere, and now I’m wondering how that might affect both the stratosphere and the climate.

There are two things about books on this topic that I am beginning to find quite annoying. The first is the idea that somehow developing countries had nothing to do with creating this mess and shouldn’t have to share the burden. Except that they did and should. Massive deforestation caused by slash-and-burn agricultural techniques and the production of charcoal, the soot released by millions of cooking stoves, and the pollution over India and China that is visible from space are just a few examples of how the developing world is contributing to the problem. That, and the fact that most of the increase in world population is coming from the developing world.

Second, most of the “wedge” solutions being proposed to climate change also have severe environmental impacts in their own right, and these are not being addressed. For example, the production of photovoltaic cells for the solar panels – and one proposal calls for covering an area of land the size of New Jersey with solar panels – is very bad for the environment. Not to mention the ecosystems that would have to be destroyed to install those panels (unless they are placed on previously existing buildings). Planting an area the size of India with new forests sounds great, except that some places aren’t ecologically equipped to handle trees, and the parts that are especially good at it are also considered desirable for agriculture (why do you think they were deforested in the first place?) Also, what kind of trees, and where? Doubling nuclear power plant capacity – sure it’s emissions-free, but where do you put the waste where it won’t harm the rest of the environment?

Climate change isn’t the only environmental issue facing us and pretending otherwise is extremely dangerous. I think it’s about time to recognize this planet actually has a carrying capacity and there is only so much life it can support. And that means it’s time for a completely new system of accounting. What price should be attached to an ecologically healthy planet? What value should be attached to the continued existence of thousands of species of wild plants and animals – some of which have gone extinct by the time the scientific papers naming and describing them are published? What’s the cost-benefit analysis when it comes to a world solely populated by us and by those few species we find economically useful, as opposed to a world filled with species that may exist simply for their own sake?

And in this system of accounting, any attempt to cook the books could have catastrophic consequences.
( )

This is an important and informative book about climate change, both from an historical perspective to projections for the future.

What I liked most about this book is that Pearce talks to many different scientists who have different theories about what the central driver of climate change is and what we can expect going forward. He does not just talk to scientists who will move his own agenda forward, but gives equal time and attention to the many theories that are out there. There are few definitive answers in the scientific community, but there is one thing they all agree on, global warming is happening and it is, and will have major effects on weather systems. We are moving from the relatively stable Holocene era, that began 8,200 years ago, into an unstable (to say the least), and perhaps volatile period that could have catastrophic consequences. At the least we can expect more severe and unexpected weather; colder winters and hotter summers, desert like conditions in non-traditional arid regions and vice versa, and more frequent and severe El Niño’s.

The question is what can we do to help stem global warming and how much time do we have before we hit points where there is no turning back (or at least not for thousands maybe even millions of years until the planet can renew itself)? Again there are no definitive answers, with the exception that we (meaning the world population) must start cutting our carbon emissions so we are not adding more carbon dioxide than the planet and atmosphere can absorb. If we don’t do this, permafrost and glaciers will continue to melt rising sea levels and more importantly, exponentially releasing billions of tons of methane gas and carbon dioxide from fossilized vegetation which has formally been frozen under the tundra causing even more and faster rates of global warming.

Stylistically this book has some problems; he is all over the map so to speak. Most of the chapters are short (think magazine article) and do not flow together as a cohesive narrative. He jumps from the glaciers to the tropics, to the oceans, back to glaciers, to the atmosphere, back to the tropics etc. It is a bit hard to follow, not to mention the all of the scientific information that needs to be understood and absorbed. These are minor criticisms though, and should not deter from the overall impact of this must read book.
( )

[With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change] by Fred Pearce

I read this recently, over many lunch breaks - although not sure how I managed, since it's enough to make one lose their appetite. The book is nearly a decade old, but that actually made for some interesting points. It covers predictions and concerns that were for the near future which basically translates to now. Quite a bit of what was being discussed came about and more is still on the way. It lends more credence to the idea that the time for action is now.

Of particular concern is the idea that many scientists operate in their silos of specialty. They're not necessarily comparing notes with others outside of their area (who can blame them, with all the different types of research?) But that means that things like positive feedback loops are only being explored in narrow ways. They're not necessarily being looked at and compounded by positive feedback loops from other issues, so there's likely an underestimating of the severity of the climate change issue. ( )