Joseph Romm is a climate extremist who blogs at climateprogress.org. He very frequently miscontrues and exaggerates the science behind climate change to paint the most extreme position possible, and to imply conclusions that are not grounded in legitimate science.

Such extremists, including Romm, are doing as much damage to the legitimate concerns regarding climate change as the right-wingers do: Michaels, Balling, Singer, Idso & Idso, Baliunas, Soon, Spencer, and that crowd. Such extremists need to be stopped--challenged at every turn--before they do so much damage to the climate change problem that no one takes actual climate science seriously.

Romm is dangerous.

In other words, please don't reply to d41295.

I should add that I also see Grist and this blog as frequent extremists, one whose financial existence is tied up with its extremism, although I do not view Grist as extremely as I do Romm.

Lipow, if you actually read Climateprogress.org you'd see that I am not mere troll.

Lipow, you can start by showing me where in the consensus climate change science there is evidence for a sea level rise of "20 feet." The sea level rise predicted by the IPCC for 2100 is less than one meter, and possibly as low as 9 cm.

Bravo, Gar, this is magisterial, a terrific amount of work and thought which deserves to be studied far and wide.

I am glad there is consensus about tropical deforestation, i.e. it should stop, period.  But also, there is benefit in planting trees, even if the counter-GW effect might be exaggerated.  The biodiversity crisis is happening, along with the climate crisis, let us not forget.

Your appeal for a progressive movement, advancing on many fronts, is beautiful.  Thanks for including race issues, women's rights and GLBT rights.

But of course the Deniers and Delayers can find wedge issues here.  E.g., are the evangelicals, newly committed to "creation care," going to stick by their non-fundamentalist and non-religious allies, if the latter insist on gay rights?

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

... I would like to know where Romm gets those figures on projected damage. I've never heard anyone, scientist or otherwise, project sea level rises of "40 to 80 feet," permanent droughts, or the other Mad Max scenarios you mention. That stuff is way, way above the high end of the most catastrophic scenarios in the IPCC.

I don't have to be convinced of the need for action, but I would like to know on what basis Romm paints his apocalyptic picture.

www.grist.org

But I have read somewhere that the IPCC does not include the effects of tipping points, like the methane escaping the permafrost.

"Politically, even this requires we give up our anti-government fetish."

Can I get an amen?

Romm is not talking about 20 foots sea level rises this century. He is talking about 20 foot sea level rises becoming locked in for the 21st century this century. (In terms of trollishness, the post on 20 foot sea level rises is the only post by DTwotshisnumber that I consider non-trollish.

Here is the quote from Romm's book:

Sea- level rise of 20 to 80 feet will be all but unstoppable by midcentury if current emissions trends continue. The first few feet
of sea- level rise alone will displace more than 100 million people worldwide and turn all of our major Gulf and Atlantic coast cities into pre- Katrina New Orleans--below sea level and facing superhurricanes. How fast can seas rise? For the past decade, sea levels have been rising about 1 inch a decade, double the rate of a few decades ago.

[snip]

Since 2001, however, a great many studies using direct observation and satellite monitoring have revealed that both of the two great ice sheets are losing mass at the edges much faster than the  models had predicted. We now know a number of physical processes can cause the major ice sheets to disintegrate faster than by simple melting alone. The whole idea of "glacial change" as a metaphor for change too slow to see will vanish in a world where glaciers are shrinking so fast that you can actually watch them retreat.

The factors he cites include:  Polar amplification due to albedo changes, and  Permafrost melting causing feedback from methane releases.

Now what he worries about in terms of early 22nd century rises is melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the collapse of much of Antarctica.

Current climate models project that the entire ice sheet will melt if Greenland warms only about 4.5°C (8.1°F). Since Greenland is currently warming much faster than the planet as a whole, that is likely to occur when the planet warms more than 3°C compared with levels of the late 1800s.

The point is by mid-21st century we could have huge 22nd century sea level rises locked in; even with a reasonable action starting in 2015 or 2015 Romm thinks we will lock in up to a 20 foot rise.

One last quote:

Scientists have given us more than enough serious and credible warnings of the consequences of our current path. The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report this year (2007) will present a much stronger
consensus and a much clearer and darker picture of our likely future than the Third Assessment--but it will almost certainly still underestimate the likely impacts. The Fifth Assessment, due around
2013, should include many of the omitted feedbacks, like that of the defrosting tundra, and validate the scenarios described on these pages, especially if we haven't yet sharply reversed our current energy policies. At that point, exceeding a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in our air will be a near certainty, and a tripling will
be quite likely. The IPCC process tends to produce an underestimation of worst- case scenarios for two reasons--because it is consensus based  and because it encompasses many greenhouse gas scenarios that assume far stronger action on emissions reduction than the United States or the world seems prepared to embrace.

should be: locked in for the 22nd century in this century

AMEN!

Actually, even if all of the polar ice sheets were to melt, we would not see a dramatic rise in sea level.  The reason is isostasy. (A term from geology and geodesy.)

In short, when the ice sheets formed, the earth's crust sank.  As the ice sheets melt, the crust will rebound.

The formation of ice-sheets can cause the Earth's surface to sink. Conversely, isostatic post-glacial rebound is observed in areas once covered by ice-sheets which have now melted, such as around the Baltic Sea and Hudson Bay. As the ice retreats, the load on the lithosphere and asthenosphere is reduced and they rebound back towards their equilibrium levels. In this way, it is possible to find former sea-cliffs and associated wave-cut platforms hundreds of metres above present-day sea-level. The rebound movements are so slow that the uplift caused by the ending of the last Ice Age is still continuing.

I've called Leiserowitz and begged him to write something for Gristmill before, but he's concentrating on his academic career (doesn't he know blogs are The Future?). Great link, though -- I love that stuff.

www.grist.org

   One of the problems with Global Warming is the snowball rolling downhill effect.  Once it begins to take off seriously, then it creates momentum.

   I suspect that this is what Joseph Romm is really talking about.  No one can predict the exact future.  For instance, if you stand in front of an avalance, you may very well survive.  It  happens.

   The deniers are encouraged to test out this hypothesis, since it fits in with their approach to science.

   One of the things to note, is that scientists are now noticing that some things that they predicted due to global warming are happening FASTER THAN they predicted.  This should scare the living heck out of everyone.  Sigh.  But apparently it doesn't.

   Strange days indeed...

patrick

Gar, I particularly like your #7. I currently get all my protein from plant sources, and couldn't be happier, or healthier.

Have you considered the impact of the methane reductions if this were to happen? (The downside, of course, is that we'd live longer, thus taking up more resources.)

Number 9 is also something I've been advocating, ever since driving the M25 near the Chunnel and seeing the endless line of lorries bringing goods from other  EU countries. Unfortunately thousands of miles of rail have been dug up here in the UK in favor of motorways.

Let me know when that global movement starts, I want in.

Yes, KathyF, I join you in endorsing trains.

The other subject is complicated.  I am not competent to express an opinion on biofuels.  But "vegetable protein" ought to mean: in a healthy vegetarian diet, a combination of legumes and whole grains, two rather different kinds of crops.  And neither should be grown as monocrops.

Hopefully, if ever that is done right, flesh-eating will come to seem less normal, less something that so many people feel entitled to.  It is after all a relatively recent phenomenon, historically, in most of Europe and the Mediterranean region, that one can eat meat daily.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

>> "Politically, even this requires we give up our >> anti-government fetish."

> Can I get an amen?

This is about the scariest thing I've read on a blog in a long time. Look around you--the US is slowly but steadily becoming a police state. The tactics and practices of the Bush administration are taking away civil liberties at every turn and subjecting us to increased surveillance, and you want to give government MORE power? And this trend has been going on in the US since about WW2. Are you all so desperate to solve global warming, and so unwilling to take responsibility and action on your own, that you must wait for governments to act, that you will trade your liberty for a couple less degrees of warming? There is nothing more important than our liberty, and without it it doesn't even matter if the sea level rises 80 feet or 800 feet--we will be essentially dead anyway.

You liberals really scare me.

OK - a strongly worded but non-trollish post so I will reply.

>The tactics and practices of the Bush administration are taking away civil liberties at every turn and subjecting us to increased surveillance, and you want to give government MORE power? And this trend has been going on in the US since about WW2. Are you all so desperate to solve global warming, and so unwilling to take responsibility and action on your own, that you must wait for governments to act, that you will trade your liberty for a couple less degrees of warming?

Can glibertarians really not tell the diffrence between a building codes and a police state? Man cutting fossil fuel use instead of constant wars for oil is part of the reversal of our increasing militarization - one of things that can save our liberty. As to solving everything ourselves; can't build my own trains, can't even build my own car.  Sorry - we are way past the "wish upon a star" stage.

GliderGuider wrote:
> My major concern is in the imminent convergence
> of Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food Scarcity.

This is what I mean when I referred to climate extremism above. Some on the left seem to have an obsession with apocalyptic thinking, even, it seems, a wish that it will happen. (The blog Past Peak is especially guilty of this.)

Of course, people have been predicting the apocalypse for millenia, and yet life has only gotten better and better for more and more people. I don't see any real reason why that trend should not continue. That's not to say it will be easy. But life has never been easy. Climate change could well add a couple-to-three degrees to the planet, which will benefit some areas and harm some others. We will develop alternative sources of energy as oil peaks and then declines, the inevitable result of free market forces. Science and technology will continue to provide enough food for the masses -- for so many of us the major problem is now a food surplus -- and we will continue to overcome the major food problems on the planet, which lie in distribution and not quantity.

There is absolutely no justification for apocalyptic thinking, and worse, it is anathema to the spirit which has driven the best of mankind to find solutions to its problems. But some people like to predict an apocalypse. It justifies their world views and, I think, their worries about spiritual impotence. But some people have always had what it takes to press ahead and make progress, and that spirit is as alive today as it has ever been.

For six of the last seven years, the world has consumed more grain than it has grown.  Global grain reserves are down from 130 days at their peak in 1986 to a mere 57 days today.  Global per capita grain production has declined since then as well, down 10% from 1986 to today. While there are indeed distribution inequities, these raw facts imply that they are not the only effects at work.

It's interesting that in a post filled with positive references to a promising multi-faceted technology you choose to take the ad-hominem route of attacking my concerns rather than the substance of my post.

I'm satisfied that my concerns are grounded on an objective reading of the underlying science.  While the conclusions may seem florid and objectionable to you, the fact that overshoots and population collapses are a common feature of all ecologies tells me that these concerns are eminently supportable.

Your dualist worldview and cornucopian fantasies cut no ice with me, I'm afraid.

But am I the only one who notices a depressing similarity in 98% of these sorts of books?  Detailed, rigorous explanations of just what is going wrong followed by a tacked-on solutions chapter that utterly fails to measure up to everything that went before?  

It feels a lot like a forced optimism, the kind of thing the makers of the British zombie movie "28 Days Later" felt they had to cater to when writing a happy ending specifically for the American market.  Of course, others can be susceptible to this, too - George Monbiot's "Heat", again, was interesting, but his proposals showed the political and social acumen of a 5-year-old (a World Parliament?  Yeah, we'll get right on that).  The mere act of noticing this forced optimism will get you screamed at by devotees of the "Great Turning" (because, of course, once "Empire" collapses, the world will inevitably and immediately rush towards "Earth Community" for the first time in human history).  You'll be denounced as a Kunstlerian doomsayer.  

But maybe there's some room between wishing for the End and "everything's gonna be okay - wait, it'll all be better, even!".  Maybe we need to look at things with clearer eyes.  

Just some thoughts...

"Labor rights, women's rights, and racial equality are on the decline; there's pushback against GLBT and the disabled."  Yep - exactly like how Down's Syndrome babies are disappearing in affluent parts of the U.S..  Marketplace eugenics.  And don't think for a minute that the day after the first test for a "gay gene", there won't be the first abortion of a potentially gay child.  Which'll lead to more "disappearances".  

"Today there are new bipartisan attempts to destroy social security and a lack of serious efforts to establish universal health care."  What on earth does universal health care have to do with global warming?  I support it, but come on!  Please, please, PLEASE get over the "unified revolutionary vanguard" fetish.  Again, you're going right into that old leftist trap, of ever-increasing purity and every-increasing jihads against other factions, until you're like the Trotskyites.  

This disconnect between the problem set and the solution set is evident in every Global Warming or Peak Oil book I've read that takes the time to do a halfway rigorous assessment of the problem.  Look at any of the works by Tim Flannery, George Monbiot, Ken Deffeyes, Richard Heinberg - if you want to see a tryly naive proposal, read Heinberg's new book "The Oil Depletion Protocol".

The difficulty is obviously the scale of the problems and the fact that any significant mitigation is going to require international cooperation in making ourselves voluntarily poorer.  That will be a hard sell even as the effects of the problems become obvious.

Garret Hardin observed in "The Tragedy of the Commons" that not every problem has a technical solution.  He was talking about population growth, but the observation applies equally to the GW/PO domains - especially inasmuch as these problems are merely manifestations of the actual underlying problem of too many people doing too much.

However, as you observe, it's considered unseemly to point this out.  The human spirit must be thought triumphant in all matters, or it raises uncomfortable suspicions that we may in fact be merely part of nature, running by pretty much the same rules as reindeer or yeast.  This notion is profoundly distressing to the well-conditioned dualist world view upon which our continued comfort  depends.  As a result, all the authors described above are forced to take refuge in puerile proposals, or risk not being published at all.

I personally don't think there is a technical solution to the problems of Global Warming or Peak Oil, at least in the sense of a solution that would somehow permit 6.5 billion people to keep on living this lifestyle in perpetuity.  My readings on ecology convince me that in such an overshoot as we are currently in the pressure is ultimately resolved through a modification of both quality of life and population numbers.  I see no reason to believe we are any more exempt than other species from this iron law of nature.

I find his approach too technological (which limits its applicability to less-developed nations) and too optimistic in some areas like biofuels and the willingness of people to embrace wholesale change absent a demonstrated need.  That said, he has a lot of interesting proposals (as do Monbiot, Romm, Heinberg and the others) that should be acted on.

I have one fundamental objection to all the solution proposals I've seen, and that is that they each treat only one symptom of a multi-factorial problematique, while ignoring both the interactions of different problem domains and the root cause of population.  To give people an idea of the enormity of the "Global Problematique" I usually lay it out as follows.

The Problematique consists of the following problem areas:

Air, water and soil pollution.  This is how we became aware of environmental problems.  Acid rain, Silesia, Love Canal etc.

Climate Change.  This is the one we've all been watching. Every time a new report comes out, it turns out that its getting worse faster than we thought.

Deforestation and desertification.  The world is losing 130,000 sq km of  forest every year. Over a billion people in 110 countries are now affected by desertification.

Depletion of ocean fish stocks.  Big-fish stocks have fallen 90% since 1950.  90% of all fish species could collapse before 2050.

Depletion of soil fertility and fresh water reserves.  Soil fertility on the Great Plains is half what it was a a hundred years ago. The Ogallala aquifer is being drained at 100 times the replacement rate.

Decline of the global grain supply.  The world has eaten more grain than it has consumed in six of the last seven years.  Global grain reserves have fallen from 130 days in 1986 to 57 days today.

Massive rates of extinction and biodiversity loss.  Species are going extinct at 1000 times the expected natural rate.

Social, economic and geopolitical instability. The US national debt, cultural clashes, resource wars, terrorism...

Oil and natural gas depletion.  We have burned up about half the world's recoverable oil, the supply rate is about to start declining, and the second half of the oil is going to be more expensive in both monetary and energy terms.

All of these problems intersect, amplify and interfere with each other.  Mitigating one might be possible.  Mitigating all of them is exponentially more difficult, and the case can be made that a full solution is not findable due to the complexity of the full problem set.

We live in a finite world.  We have a global impact on every aspect of the ecosphere.  We must continue to make what efforts we can to reduce those impacts, to make room for other species and to maximize the opportunities for our own.  However, we must do this with our eyes open to the full extent of the challenge.

I take a lot of comfort from the recent work of a group of ecologists who are investigating complex system theory.  They use the concepts of adaptive loops and resilience, borrowed from the study of forest ecologies, to describe how complex systems grow, decline, adapt and reconstitute into  new growth cycles.  I firmly believe that this better describes the progress of human societies better than the two-dimensional growth/overshoot/collapse usually put forward.

On the other hand, the idea that another civilization will eventually rise to replace your own is cold comfort if your own starts to disintegrate.

JackH, GliderGuider,
One thing about the simplistic solutions offered by otherwise thought-provoking environmental authors:  authors in every other field have this problem too.  It doesn't help, of course--it's still a problem--but at least it's not just environmentalists.  I noticed this most recently when I read Jane Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities, in which she provides an insightful critique of the problems in 1960s American cities, including spending rather a lot of time beating to a pulp every "garden city" or "city of tomorrow" theory out there, especially as those theories were used in "slum clearance"/housing projects of that era.  She then proceeds, at the end of the book, to come up with a series of suggestions every bit as ridiculous as the existing housing-project model.

Point being, it's astonishingly much easier to modify existing ideas--ie, to criticise, even if the modifications you suggest will never be put into effect--than it is to come up with new ones out of whole cloth.  

The types of change people tend to propose in the last chapters of books that critique widespread political/social phenomena are perforce the work of a single mind (albeit influenced broadly by many others), while the actual solutions tend to be more general trends started by many, many people acting together, which is far too complex an occurrence for any one author to be able to accurately predict or model.

It'd be nice if someone could propose a solution and have it actually work, but I'm afraid that's not the nature of the beast.

It is indeed much easier to snipe than to come up with workable suggestions of one's own.  As well, what finally gets implemented after several bruising encounters with reality will probably bear little resemblance to any of the original plans (that reminds me of the  quote, "In war no plan survives its first contact with the enemy.")

The problem is that all these plans are the best I've seen, and they all have holes you could drive a  Humvee through.  Given the strength of the "enemy" we face in the Problematique, it's very easy to lose faith...