Publications

Global Warming:  The Next 50 Years

UUCS April 17, 2005

Global Warming is the UUA study issue for 2004 and 2005.  I would like to being with a quote from the

Executive Summary of the Oregon Strategy for Greenhouse Gas Reductions by the Governor’s Advisory Group On Global Warming.  [COPIES OF THIS ARE AVAILABLE ON THE CREDENZA IN THE HANNEMAN FELLOWSHIP HALL]

This is the group that Professor Jane Lubchenco Co-Chaired. This report was endorsed by the Governor this last Wednesday.  The full report is on the Oregon Department of Energy Web Site.

The report begins:

“Global warming is not just another environmental issue.

It’s not ‘just another issue,’ period.

Absent decisive actions across the globe of the sort proposed in this report, the warming already underway is expected to lead to changes in the earth’s physical and biological systems that would be extremely adverse to human beings, their communities, economies and cultures. These are changes that we would have unintentionally brought upon ourselves, but that are also in our power to reverse. Our failure to return atmospheric accumulations of greenhouse gases back to levels that will sustain historic climate patterns may lead to an Earth that is dramatically altered and far less habitable within only a few generations.

The impacts of such changes on Oregon citizens, businesses and environmental values are likely to be extensive and destructive. Coastal and river flooding, snowpack declines, lower summer river flows, impacts to farm and forest productivity, energy cost increases, public health effects, and increased pressures on many fish and wildlife species are some of the effects anticipated by scientists at Oregon and Washington universities.

The means to arrest and reverse these effects are at hand or within technological reach. Many of them carry co-benefits that would justify acting on them without the impetus of global warming: positive economic returns on dollars invested in energy efficiency, energy price stability, and healthier air and water. Others will cost us something up front for insurance against the deeply disruptive and costly effects that we can expect absent any action. The earlier we take many of these actions, the less drastic they will have to be to achieve the same emissions reduction result.

Several thousand of the earth’s scientists worked together on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to review the exhaustive evidence and describe the plausible range of outcomes. They agree that global warming caused by greenhouse gas pollution from human activities represents a profoundly serious threat to human civilization and to even the most robust and insulated natural ecosystems. Their comments are echoed in the Scientific Consensus Statement on the Likely Impacts of Climate Change on the Pacific Northwest prepared by scientists at Oregon and Washington universities in the fall of 2004 following a thorough regional review of the science.” [COPIES OF THE SCIENTIFIC ASSESSMENT ARE ALSO AVAILABLE]  The rest of my remarks do not necessarily represent those of the advisory group or the Oregon Department of Energy.

YOU MIGHT ASK: “But Isn’t Global Warming Just a “Theory”?

Today, there are only a handful of so called greenhouse skeptics.  I say “so called skeptics”, because they admit that CO2 is greenhouse gas.  That is:

• Carbon dioxide molecules absorb infrared rays that are reflected sunlight. 
• This reflected energy would otherwise escape into outer space and 
• Without this greenhouse effect the average temperature of the Earth would be a rather chilly zero degrees Fahrenheit rather than the current average of 59 degrees.

They admit that CO2 concentrations today are 38 percent higher than they were for thousands of years before 1850.  And they admit that the climate has responded to greenhouse gases, both historically and for the last two ice ages, in precisely the ways predicted by computer models.  These few skeptics only challenge the forecasts that global warming will cause serious harmful changes. 

It is true the global warming predictions come from computer models that probably contain errors.  But these skeptics fail to note that it is equally likely that the impacts of warming might be worse than predicted.  They offer no alternative computer models or assumptions to put into the models. 

And these skeptics are in limited company. There are more “scientists” (I use the word loosely here) who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old than who believe global warming is not a serious risk.  Surprising, though, these few skeptics get a lot of press, far in excess of what they deserve.  

My involvement in global warming began in the hot summer of 1988.  James Hansen, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, predicted the 1990’s would be the warmest decade in world history.  Many, including myself, scoffed.  Most scientists viewed this as a bold prediction, a possible outcome given the modeling efforts of the day, but dangerous to Hansen’s career. 

His forecast was correct.  And this decade will likely exceed the 1990s.  The warmest year since global records began in 1860 was 1998, 2002 was the second warmest, and 2003 the third warmest.  All of the 10 warmest years have occurred since 1990.  This is classic science --- refutable predictions that are confirmed by data that was unavailable when the predictions were made.   Since 1988, the science of climate change has advanced greatly.  In my job, I get to read the journals Science and Nature each week.  For 17 years, I have watched the evidence for warming continue to mount.  There has not been a single article refuting the theory that the planet is warming and that rising levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are the cause.  

There are surely surprises ahead, but it is very unlikely you will hear scientists saying, “ooops, never mind.”  Unless something unknown to science starts sucking up more of our CO2 emissions, the climate is going to change. 

YOU MIGHT ASK: “But, isn’t it going to be cheaper to just cope with it?”

Some economists have argued that it will cost less to adapt to a changing climate than to  reduce CO2 emissions.  It is true that Oregon and other places must make plans to adapt, and soon.  The climate has changed and will continue to change even if international emissions are reduced. 

A key idea is that even though there are many uncertainties,  many upcoming problems are irreversible.  It will be very hard to undo things as climate change unfolds.  Putting insulation in existing homes will be costly.  It is much cheaper to insulate homes when they are built. Patterns of irrigated agriculture will take decades to change.  Rising sea level and more intense storms will damage coastal roads, buildings and infrastructure.   These uncertainties increase the cost of global warming because we do not know exactly what we must do to adapt.

In most scenarios, adapting to global warming will involve horrendous costs.  But reducing emissions is not very expensive.  Some alternatives, such as energy efficiency and wind power, are already cheaper than burning fossil fuels.  Oregon and the U.S. can pioneer new technologies and these can be our growth industries.  We are entering (or soon will enter) an era of increasing prices for oil and natural gas - yet another good reason to start reducing emissions now. 

YOU MIGHT ASK: “But don’t we have enough oil, natural gas and coal to last at least this century?”

In 1970 production of oil from the 48 states peaked and has declined an average of 2 percent per year since then.  Few experts anticipated that oil production would peak in the 1970s.  Experts expected that new discoveries would make up for declines in existing wells.  It was only after several years when intensive drilling failed to maintain production that it became apparent that oil production had peaked and was on its way down.

The same phenomenon appears to be occurring for U.S. natural gas production.  As recently as 2001, the U.S. Department of Energy and industry experts were predicting U.S. natural gas production would grow more than 40 percent between 1999 and 2020.   Now, virtually all experts believe that U.S. natural gas production has peaked and will decline.  Even with more drilling, U.S. lower-48 production is likely to begin dropping by as much as 4 percent a year. 

Canadian production is also falling. Even with pipelines to remote gas resources in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and the Mackenzie River Delta, Canada, we will need to import liquefied natural gas via ocean tankers to maintain current levels of supply.  Current U.S. natural gas prices are triple the level of the mid-1990s.  The U.S. imports about 60 percent of its oil supply and 15 percent of its natural gas supply.

The scenario of rising prices and falling production will happen for world oil, and then world natural gas.  The world oil peak could be starting now, which would be followed quickly by a decline.  Experts question the ability of Saudi Arabia and other oil exporting countries to increase their production enough to match growing world demand.  Even if they drill like crazy now, most experts believe that within a decade or two, world oil supplies will begin to decline. When that happens, there will be no option to increase imports, as the U.S. is doing for oil and natural gas.  If you want to know more about the possibility of a world oil peak and corresponding decline, I wrote an article for this month’s Oregon PeaceWorker (HOLD UP COPY).  There are some copies on the credenza in Hanneman Fellowship Hall.

YOU MIGHT ASK:  “What should the government be doing?”

All of the major solutions to the oil and natural gas supply problems will require decades to implement.  Many of these are similar to the solutions to global warming.  The Governor’s Advisory Group on Global Warming makes three key recommendations: 

1. Oregon should mandate that new cars, SUVs and light trucks reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases.  Principally, this means requiring higher miles per gallon. 

2. Oregon should significantly increase efforts to conserve electricity and natural gas conservation in homes, other buildings and factories, and

3. Oregon should increase its supplies of electric power from resources that emit little or no carbon dioxide, such as wind and biomass.

There will be significant delays in improving vehicle efficiency.  And efficiency alone will not completely close the gap between oil supply and demand.  Alternative liquid fuels are needed, but will likely take even longer to develop.

Hybrid gasoline-electric sedans use less than half the gas of sports utility vehicles, mini-vans and light trucks.  They are a great solution.  But time is a concern.  Even if auto dealers had unlimited supplies of hybrids, replacing every vehicle in the U.S. with a hybrid would take decades.  Once the need is clear, it will take at least 5 years for vehicle factories to retool to make mostly hybrids.

Turning oil shale into gasoline or coal into diesel fuel is possible.  But these are not easy or cheap solutions.  Producing these fuels would require separating the CO2 and pumping it underground.  Otherwise, the CO2 impacts would greatly accelerate global warming.  Converting to these alternative fuels and to sustainable bio-diesel and ethanol fuels will take many decades.

The current American policy seems to be to wait for the actual onset of a nearly inevitable world oil peak or catastrophic climate change before beginning action.  Absent extraordinary luck, this guarantees at least several decades of serious economic and social problems. 

YOU MIGHT ASK:  How big a problem is global warming, really?” 

The scale of the changes needed to slow global warming is potentially overwhelming.  If all the known reserves of the coal, oil and natural gas are burned, it would increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by 7 to 10 fold, similar to levels of the Jurassic Age, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.  The good news is the seas won’t boil.  The bad news is it will likely create massive hurricanes to disperse massive amounts of heat from the equator to the North and South Poles.  This will likely melt most of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets and raise sea level 20 to 30 feet within 200 years.  Even a 3 foot rise in sea level would displace 40 million Bangladeshis and their food supply.  Can you think of 40 countries, each willing to take in a million refugees?  

Another fear is that global warming will shut down the Gulf Stream and other Atlantic currents that keep Europe warm.  If this happens, agriculture in Europe would be ruined.  Worldwide rainfall patterns would also be disrupted.  This is part of the reason Europe is serious about reducing its emissions to slow global warming.

To avoid a significant risk of catastrophic climate change will require reducing worldwide CO2 emissions by 50 to 75 percent within in 50 years, with continuing reductions after that.  We must learn to stretch our fossil fuel resources for a millennium or two, instead of just another century or two.     

YOU MIGHT ASK:  “But can the U.S. solve this problem alone?”

No.  The U.S. produces 25 percent of worldwide emissions.   This is far more than our population share would justify.  The U.S. must be part of the solution.  Still, China, India and the oil exporting countries are rapidly increasing their emissions and would soon overtake us if nothing is done there as well.  World cooperation is needed.

Europe, Russia and Japan took the first step by implementing the Koyoto Treaty.  Of the industrialized countries, only the U.S. and Australia stood aside.  Since then, the U.S. has not been helpful in talks about further steps to reduce CO2 emissions.

I do not expect the Bush Administration or the Congress to take effective action either to slow the growth of U.S. CO2 emissions or to reduce our dependence on imported oil and natural gas.  Their only proposed action is to open the Alaska Natural Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling.  Even if wildly successful, this measure will have a negligible impact on world oil supplies.

YOU MIGHT ASK:  “What are we likely to see when world oil production peaks and supplies begin to decline?

Gasoline prices will range between $5 and $10 per gallon.  As a result, the resale value of SUVs, motor homes and other gas-guzzlers will plummet. In the 1970s the resale prices of Lincolns and Cadillacs fell, as gas prices rose.

Currently with prices of $2.50 per gallon, SUVs are piling up on dealers lots and rebates are escalating. General Motors forecasts they will lose $1.50 per share for the first quarter of 2005.  Their corporate bonds stand just one notch above junk bond status.

Gas price increases in the 1970 also caused declines in house prices in the suburbs and rising prices for homes closer to jobs.  Homeowners beyond half an hour’s drive from significant employment will be in the most trouble.

High oil prices will also increase inflation.  This will raises interest rates, especially mortgage rates. This will make it difficult for people to move.  Homeowners with fixed rates are only forced to pay higher mortgage rates if they move and sell their home.  Once the oil price impacts hit, higher mortgage rates will make it harder for people to move closer to their jobs, even if the can’t afford to fill up their gas tank for their long commute.

And unfortunately natural gas prices are linked to oil prices.  Forty percent of world oil is use  in homes, buildings and factories.  These are converting to natural gas right now.  This will drive up the price of imports of liquefied natural gas imports that the U.S. is depending on. 

Electricity will be less affected by high oil prices.  Most of Oregon’s electricity comes from coal and hydropower.  About 10 percent comes from natural gas, although this fraction is growing.

YOU MIGHT ASK:  “This is interesting, but given all the uncertainties and a history of erroneous forecasts by so called experts, do I really need to change the way I live and drive now?”

It is not certain that world oil production will soon peak. But the current oil price spike is consistent with a plateau in world oil production. The crunch could arrive in a few years. We will be excessively lucky to avoid a major oil crisis this decade, even if oil production doesn’t peak. 

Even though oil prices are high, it was not caused by a political crisis.  All the exporting countries are pumping as fast as they can.   It would only take a crisis in one major oil exporting country to cause a serious worldwide crisis.  Nigeria and Venezuela are politically unstable.  The Middle East is a powder keg. 

The theory of global warming is as solid as science gets.  As with current high oil prices, if the government hasn’t acted yet, it is hard to see would prompt them to act. 

It seems extremely unlikely the U.S. government will mount an effective response until after a crisis is upon us.  Without an effective response before a crisis hits, it is likely the problem will last for decades.  This guarantees a long and serious oil crisis, from any one of three separate events:

1. World economic pressure on the U.S. to slow global warming,
2. A sustained political crisis in any one of a number of politically unstable oil exporting countries or
3. A peaking of world oil production.

These are related because U.S. dependence on foreign oil makes us vulnerable to pressure from the rest of the world to participate in future global warming treaties.

But here’s the good news. There ARE several effective steps that you can take.  These are not only ethical steps, but will protect you from the risks of reduced oil and natural gas supplies or dramatic changes in U.S. policy on CO2 emissions and energy conservation. 

You don’t have to wait for the government to respond. You can sell your gas guzzler now, before the resale value falls. You can get on a waiting list to buy a 45 mile per gallon gas-electric hybrid car or buy a small used sedan or station wagon. [By the way, I am in the market for a small used station wagon. So if anyone knows of one, come see me after the service]

Homeowners with oil heat will be in the most trouble. So if you have that, consider a second mortgage to convert to an efficient electric heat pump, especially if they have an underground oil tank that can leak. Regardless of your fuel, you can begin saving by insulating your house now.

You can move now to a home closer to your job and lock in low current mortgage rates.  It may have to be a smaller house, but that will make it cheaper to heat. You can choose the wind power options on your utility bill. This will ensure continued investment in wind power.

Once it becomes obvious that gasoline prices are only going higher, it will be too late to move and gas-guzzlers will have little resale value.   The risks are real, the choice is up to you.