Did DOE Chief Scientist Say We're Definitely Going to 550ppm?

Dr. Steven Koonin of the DOE recently spoke about the future of energy and its implications for the goals of the New York State University system. Given that my husband is employed by said system, and in fact teaches Environmental Physics (aka "Here's how to do the math to prove we're doomed ;-)"), this was interesting to me. Neither of us was present for this event, but a friend who was reported that Koonin stated in the presentation, as a representative of the DOE that it unrealistic to expect the US to hold carbon emissions below 450ppm and that 550ppm was the best that could reasonably be hoped for. I'm attempting now to query and find out if this represents DOE opinion, or US administration opinion.

Note, what's interesting to me about this isn't that I don't agree - I think the chances of the US achiveing constraints that put us at 450ppm is extremely unlikely indeed - and 450 almost certainly wouldn't be adequate to constrain climate change. But I was under the impression that stated Obama administration policy was that we were still shooting to achieve 450ppm, so this may represent part of a gradual process of accustoming us to the realities.

I wanted to confirm this, by watching the video of the presentation, but it won't play for me. I'm not sure if it is my crappy internet or video - anyone with time on their hands and faster internet want to find out for me? His presentation begins at 34 minutes in, and there's a slide with 450 on it that should be useful to indicate where he talks about this.

http://suny.mediasite.com/suny/Viewer/Viewers/ViewerVideoOnly.aspx?mode…

You can also view the powerpoint linked from here: http://www.suny.edu/strategicplan/presentationsPublications.cfm

Overall, it seems like the basic "we can do it" presentation with little discussion of the actual implications. Again, what's interesting is whether the administration, or just some people in it are trying to get the US ready to join China in its expressed sense that 450 ain't gonna happen.

This is easier, I gather, if one doesn't include any discussion of the consequences of 550ppm - as I'm told is the case in this presentation.

Sharon

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If we are heading up to the 550 number, then I'd say our goose is cooked. We'll 100's of millions of environmental refugees and major changes in landscapes. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that Homo sapiens is not a viable species for the long-run.

Hi Sharon,

I can't open it either, but I have my husband working on it.

I don't know how to feel about this. How do you feel about someone or an organization abandoning a target they never made any attempt to achieve. I just don't know.

A while back this became much more of an ethical rather than practical question for me. I truly do believe that we're headed to 550ppm and beyond no matter what we (the people who are concerned about this) do personally. Millions will be harmed, possibly die as a result of climate change. The question has become instead,for me, do I want to be the one to pull the trigger and cause those deaths? I don't. So I keep trying harder and harder to reduce my footprint/CO2 emissions. But it's just so I can sleep at night and look at myself in the mirror and have a moment of peace now and then.

At about 47:11 into the presentation, Dr. Koonin says:
"Let me now turn to the second great problem which is can
we stabilize the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide is the predominent greenhouse gas
that's of interest. It's rising at an accelerating rate.
The concentration is going up. We will reach 550 parts per
million, about twice the pre-industrial level, at about the middle of the century. And many scientists believe that going above this level would unreasonably threaten the environment and climate system."...

"We need to make drastic reductions in our emmissions if we have any hope of stabilizing concentrations."

At about 82:02, Dr. Koonin responds to a question from the audience regarding the 550 statement from earlier:
"So, the, uh, 550 ppm as a danger line. I would say several things about it. One is, um, you know it's a very fuzzy number for several reasons. One is that the impacts are really quite uncertain with increasing concentration. The second is that the direct rate of impacts are actually logarithmic with the concentration not linear because of saturation of CO2 (bands?). But the third is that the kind of system may have tipping points that we don't know or understand."
...
"But you know if you really think 450 is a level above which we should not go, I think it would be extraordinarily difficult to do that in part because the CO2 equivalent
concentration when you improve the other greenhouse gases like methane, nitrous oxide, some of the CFCs, were already at 430 or something like that. So, you know, if you believe it's 450, we're going to have to deal with 450 already. And I think many people are increasingly believing that we would see 550 for CO2 by itself just given the dynamic at Copenhagen, the long time scales, etc."

Peak oil (& peak NG), per se, might keep atmospheric CO2 concentrations <550 ppm, but as production of these fossil fuels decline the burning of coal, wood (with concomitant deforestation), plastics & anything else flammable virtually assures levels >550 ppm. And this consideration doesn't even include the kicking in of + feedbacks such as reduced global primary productivity due to heat stress, release of CH4 from thawing permafrost and the release of marine CH4 clathrates, reduced albedo from decline of summer Arctic sea ice & northward shift of treeline, etc. Oxidized carbon emissions are currently increasing by 3.5% per year and the political will to reduce these emissions and effectively mitigate their consequences is wholly lacking, as we saw recently in Copenhagen. In an environment fragmented by human activities range shifts will not be able to keep pace with changing climate caused by these accelerating emissions of high heat capacity gasses, nor will natural selection be able to keep pace. The outcome is extinction for a large percentage of the flora & fauna - a mass extinction event, to be sure. Anthropogenic Mass Extinction (AME) is ongoing and will prove to be one of the most inclusive & extensive mass extinction pulses of the Phanerozoic. AME will claim its own perpetrator among its victims. There's simply no getting around this conclusion.

By darwinsdog (not verified) on 08 Feb 2010 #permalink

Some of what I wrote in post #5 above failed to appear. Weird. But the gist is intact, so... oh well.

By darwinsdog (not verified) on 08 Feb 2010 #permalink

If we are heading up to the 550 number, then I'd say our goose is cooked. We'll be 100's of millions of environmental refugees and major changes in landscapes. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that Homo sapiens is not a viable species for the long-run.

Very rich Homo sapiens are an eminently viable species.

Let's not confuse terms of reference.

IE did not show video so I switched to Firefox which said WMF plugin needed. I downloaded the WMF7 plugin (for Firefox) and then tried IE WHICH WORKED.

The video is excellent. Dr Koonin spoke from 36:00 to 74:00. He addressed population growth, how hard it was going to be to get CO2 to stay below 600 without the world's cooperation. He said he was not a Peak guy and trusted that technology would come to the rescue.

Good questions from the audience and panel responses from 74:00 to 101:00.

NStory, thanks so much - that's what I wanted to know. So he's talking carbon equivalents, and he's not stating administration policy, just observing the difficulty.

I wish he wasn't right, but he's basically right about Carbon/Carbon equivalents.

DD, Kjell Aleklett has done a great job of showing we can't get to 550 ppm based solely on fossil fuels, but as a number of people, including Joe Romm have shown, we can get there on permafrost methane and past.

Dennis, human beings are pretty damned adaptable. I think a lot of people's goose is cooked, but that's not the same as saying we all are.

Sharon

We can't get to 550 ppm on petroleum & natgas, perhaps, but coal can take us there. But the real problem, as you point out, is with the + feedbacks that may/will/are kick(ing) in. The marine clathrates, for instance, are an utter wild card. If they cut loose we may be looking at rampant warming regardless of CO2 levels. Also, few models, at least until recently, have taken into account net reductions in primary productivity caused by heat/drought stress, increased UV irradiation, etc. A global reduction of PP of only 1 or 2% could send CO2 soaring >1K ppm.

I don't think that the conclusion that Homo can avoid extinction on an order of decades to a few centuries is rational. Humans aren't very "adaptable" at all. "Adaptation" is what results from natural selection. Our physiology is adapted to the environment of tropical Africa. Certain cultural innovations (not adaptations) have allowed us to colonize the higher latitudes but the success of this colonization is contingent on these innovations and is thereby tenuous. I think that the position that impending human extinction is unlikely or avoidable is based on the argument from personal incredulity ('I can't imagine it so it must not be so'), or on the wish to avoid a self-fulfilling prophecy, or on the view that acceptance of the inevitability of extinction eliminates any motivation for making efforts towards mitigation or making 'preps.' If this is so, so be it, but we should at least be honest about it. There's nothing wrong with making a noble effort in the face of certain defeat. We don't have to convince ourselves that there's a chance of success, however remote, when in fact there isn't one, in order to do the right thing.

AGW, peak oil, habitat destruction & fragmentation, etc., are precipitants of anthropogenic mass extinction. The real problem is the radical decline in biodiversity worldwide, and the resultant collapse of ecosystems, including the agro-ecosystems that support such an enormously bloated human census number. The more a population exceeds its carrying capacity (K) the harder it crashes. And the harder it crashes the more K is degraded relative to what it was previous to its having been surpassed. And the more K is degraded the smaller the population it will subsequently support. Human population exceeds the sustainable (sans fossil fuels) carrying capacity of the biosphere by such an unprecedented extent that a crash straight down to extinction is a likely outcome. If relict populations manage to survive the initial crash they will likely prove inviable over the course of a few generations. Allee effects coupled with enormous environmental upheavals will see to it. Dennis is correct in stating that "our (Homo's goose is cooked."

By darwinsdog (not verified) on 09 Feb 2010 #permalink

How tenuously held is the concept of making warm clothes or building shelters (the only new cultural innovations that were required for foraging peoples to invade temperate latitudes)? There's a certain strain of survivalist that wants to believe non-rural Americans have become inherently incapable of making shelter, fire, etc. Well, even if that were true, there would still be millions of people around the world living traditional subsistence lifestyles that make the average American redneck's homestead look like Beverly Hills, and while some of those groups will suffer greatly from climate change, they're not all going to die off en masse no matter where they might be located. That is not an "argument from personal incredulity," just an argument from the fact that human beings now successfully occupy many different habitats with little or nothing in the way of technological support.

For tens of millenia the "Cold Wall" of about 50^o north latitude was unbreachable by humans. The invention of the eyed needle allowed for the manufacture of clothing necessary for the "wall" to be penetrated and the megafauna of the "Mammoth Steppe" to be hunted to extinction. Fluted points, the eyed needle, bow drill fire making apparatus... I guess none of these qualify as "technological support" to your mind. Now, with the exception of a few musk oxen & woods bison, there's nothing left to hunt. AME has been ongoing for quite awhile.

But, okay dewey, you win. Humans will never go extinct and you, personally, will never die, either. I'm down with that.

By darwinsdog (not verified) on 09 Feb 2010 #permalink

I have remarked elsewhere on how I judge the character of people who pretend to know that I am stupid or irrational because I have disagreed with them. The ability to make fire has been possessed by several hominin species, and I don't see us losing it. Likewise, I noted that warm clothing (which Neanderthals made without eyed needles, apparently) is a technological advance, but I don't imagine the concept of the needle being lost to humanity.

What evidence can you present indicating that hominins besides Homo sapiens possessed the ability to start or make fire, as opposed to merely controlling it
once ignited?

Homo neandertalensis was a cold adapted conspecific. H. sapiens is adapted to the climate of tropical Africa. The cultural innovations that allowed them to endure the climatic extremes of northern Indoeurasia were very different from those our own species requires. The fact that they could survive the cold without benefit of sewn clothing says nothing about our own ability to do so.

Your impression of how stupid or irrational I may regard you to be, I'll leave to your own imagination.

By darwinsdog (not verified) on 11 Feb 2010 #permalink

I know you NOT to be a troll, so there is no point in your pretending to be one. The snottiness of your previous personal remark is not a matter of my "imagination."

Let's put it this way: Homo erectus and related species, as well as the much later Neanderthals, spread over vast portions of Eurasia, and in all those areas (as well as in all known inhabited regions of Africa), they used fire. Either they knew how to make it, or fire in nature is so plentiful that they were able to re-acquire it whenever it was lost by mischance. Since some of these peoples had pretty darn good tool-making ability, and there is no reason to think that fire-making was beyond their intellectual capacity, I would presume that they had figured out how to make it. I am sure you know that 50,000-yr-old bow drills cannot be preserved, any more than clothing is, yet we can deduce that Neanderthals had clothing by the application of common sense.

Anyway, if you are one of those people who reflexively doubt the mental ability of Neanderthals and other hominins, that's fine. But it's also irrelevant. We are here discussing modern H. sapiens sapiens. Is it your assertion that if technological supports magically vanished, there would be nobody in most parts of the world who knew or could figure out how to make fire?

Further, though humans evolved in tropical Africa, it is way too simplistic to say that we are all adapted to that climate. Arctic and Andean peoples are physically and physiologically distinguishable from tropical Africans. At least this great concern for how we will all survive naked in the bitter cold, though needless, indicates that you are not one of those people who imagines the entire planet becoming unlivably hot from pole to pole. Points to you for that.

Post #13: "The ability to make fire has been possessed by several hominin species,"

Post #15: "I would presume that they (neandertals) had figured out how to make it (fire)."

There's a big difference between fact and presumption, dewey.

Wear patterns on neandertal incisors indicates that they probably chewed hides to soften them. There is nothing anywhere close to an eyed needle in the Mousterian toolkit. Perhaps they covered themselves while sleeping with prepared hides or wore them as ponchos but there is no indication whatsoever that they knew how to make sewn clothing. Eyed needles were already a component of Homo sapiens' material culture before humans (in the restrictive sense) colonized the cold high latitudes. Physiological differences between extant human populations living in the arctic versus in the tropics are slight compared to the adaptational differences between humans and neandertals, who had six times the length of exposure to cold climate than any human population has had. The point is that the ability of neandertals to survive in cold climates is attributable to physiological adaptation whereas that of humans to survive cold winters is due to cultural innovation and technology. For all their splendid adaptations to the cold, which we lack, the neandertals are extinct, victims of anthropogenic mass extinction.

When human population collapse comes - which it will, unless you believe in the possibility of indefinite gross excess of carrying capacity - subpopulations in harsh environments will be the most disadvantaged. Perhaps the concept of the eyed needle will be retained in these populations, but could you make an eyed needle from scratch out of bone or antler, and sew a warm & durable set of clothing out of raw hide with it? Could you start a fire from scratch? Perhaps you could but could you do it quickly enough when wet, cold & exhausted, time and time again, to avoid hypothermia? Could you find a mate? Could your descendants stave off debilitation on account of the genetic load that accumulates in small isolated populations due to drift, and other Allee effects? The neandertals couldn't, when impacted by our own species. The overall impact of humanity's gross excess of carrying capacity is going to be at least as great on us as was that of the appearance on the scene of a conspecific with superior lithic and projectile technology on the neandertals. Think it through.

Populations living in the tropics, and especially south of the equator, may not be impacted as severely by general population collapse, at least at first. But even they will be subjected to the demographic and genetic stochasticity, mentioned above, that threatens any small isolated population. Anthropogenic climate change will still impact them, as will the decline in biodiversity that is already rampant in the tropics. And population collapse may be accompanied and exacerbated by nuclear &/or biological warfare. Radioactive fallout and genetically engineered strategic pathogens won't be restricted to the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere. In this day & age the vast majority of the inhabitants of tropical climes are every bit as dependent on the artifacts of fossil fueled industry & commerce as we are in the temperate zones. A few uncontacted tribes in the Amazon Basin, perhaps in Irian Jaya, and in the Andaman Islands, are all that's left of those possessing the know-how and capacity to fend for themselves in nature. Without at least occasional genetic introgression even these relict peoples are susceptible to inbreeding depression or just plain bad luck, not to mention the great environmental upheavals that will be the result of overshoot and degradation of carrying capacity, worldwide.

Believe what you want dewey. Confuse fact with presumption until you manage to convince yourself of the inevitability or overwhelming likelihood of some technocopian fix, if that appeals to you. Heck, even Greenpa, who ought to know better, appears to believe that fusion power generation may save us. In the end, it doesn't matter what any of us believe. Nature doesn't care what we believe or disbelieve in. What will be, will be.

By darwinsdog (not verified) on 11 Feb 2010 #permalink

Correction: Greenpa clarified, in a different thread, his stance, re: fusion power. I apologize for having misinterpreted his intent.

By darwinsdog (not verified) on 11 Feb 2010 #permalink

Latest research argues that Neanderthals had to have had warm clothing to survive, and some sort of fitted clothing could have been made using only awls, which they had - at the cost of much miserable labor, yes, but that was pretty much their lifestyle.

Extreme dieoff rhetoric always assumes that doom will be instant and total - that all the tech will vanish before one iota of knowledge has entered our empty heads. Well, this is not plausible. No, I would not make a very good needle without practice, but there are carvers who could do it - how can we assume that we are so grossly inferior to people of 30,000 years ago that none of us could manage to pick up a task they did regularly? But I wouldn't, initially, have to rely on those people. There are billions of needles in the world and they are pretty durable if kept well. If I were to fantasize such an instant and total human dieoff that I would have trouble "finding a mate", then I would also be fantasizing that a hundred lifetimes' worth of needles were lying around without owners, ready to be scavenged and preserved. My great-grandchildren would have plenty of leisure to work on means of making good bone needles - or good metal ones. And so forth.

There are ridges on neandertal phalanges much like those of chimpanzees that are artifacts of chimp infants clinging to their mother's fur. This indicates that neandertals may have been considerably hairier than humans. Point mutations that affect pituitary or adrenal function can produce hirsutism in humans. Such people now receive medical treatment; formerly they were in circuses. If neandertals were as hairy as chimps, and consumed 8 - 10K Kcals of predominately meat per day, as isotopic analysis indicates, they presumably wouldn't have needed sewn clothing. Have you seen a Mousterian stone "awl"? They resemble scrapers with a small jagged point somewhere along the cutting surface, and are nowhere nearly as functionally sophisticated as contemporary Aurignacian points or burins. In fact, I'm not even convinced they functioned as awls. They certainly were a far cry from an eyed needle.

Don't let the needle you manage to salvage or scrounge from the ruins get lost or rusty, and by no means let others know you have one. The day will come when people will kill for a needle. Better not prick yourself with it, either. There won't be any antibiotics in case the wound becomes infected.

By darwinsdog (not verified) on 11 Feb 2010 #permalink