Climate Change sceptics
9 Feb 2023 published by: Robert Phillips
CLIMATE CHANGE SCEPTICISM
Global dimming vs warming
The famous Swedish scientist Svente Arrhenius warned about the potential dangers of global warming as far back as 1896, when he confirmed that carbon dioxide absorbs heat. But it was thought at the time that the effects would be too small to be significant, and in any case, the oceans were likely to absorb the surplus CO2.
Indeed, an ecology textbook that I read from the early 1970s, was more concerned that the particulate matter being pumped into the atmosphere, as a result of human industrial activity, would reflect sunlight back into space – a process known as ‘global dimming’. The fear at the time was that this could trigger another ice age.
For some time, there was debate about whether global dimming or warming would prevail: were we heading for an Ice Age or a greenhouse world? By the 1990s, the prevailing scientific view was that the warming effect produced by excess greenhouse gases, would prevail over the dimming effect.
That there continued to be scepticism about global warming was understandable until, by the early part of this century, it became increasingly clear that warming was happening. Why then, has there continued to be scepticism. There may be a couple of reasons for this.
Elective Affinity
Elective Affinity was a term coined by the sociologist Max Weber around 1900. It refers to the tendency of people, albeit unconsciously to align their beliefs with their vested interests. He used it as a central argument in his thesis on The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Because Protestants believed in hard work and frugal living, they accumulated wealth, which they then invested to make more wealth. So their beliefs tied in with their vested interests.
In regard to climate change, the greatest degree of scepticism occurs in areas that produce the greatest amounts of fossil fuels. People involved in the fossil fuel industry are sceptical about climate change because it doesn’t fit in with their vested interest.
This has led some fossil fuel companies to deliberately try to discredit claims of climate change, often by dubious means. The fact that climate change will affect them as badly as everyone else is beside the point. They benefit from selling fossil fuels, therefore climate change cannot possibly be happening, and claims that it is must therefore be some sort of conspiracy.
One degree change
The other reason for scepticism is quantitative rather than qualitative. Greenhouse gases produced by human economic activity account for only three or four hundred parts per million, or less than one part per thousand, of atmospheric composition. Even accepting that these gases have some warming effect, how could they possibly account for the levels of warming predicted?
Sceptics may be prepared to accept that these gases could warm the world by one-fiftieth of a degree each year. In which case, it follows that in 50 years, they should warm the planet by one degree.
But so what? Based on personal experience, one cannot tell a difference in temperature of only one degree. Could you tell the difference between a temperature of 20o and 21o?
Therein lies the conceptual problem. For one thing, a one degree increase does not mean that every day and every night in the world is one degree warmer than it would have been without global warming. This is where averages can be misleading. One degree average increase may mean that the number of very hot days increases. As the oceans warm and expand, even raising sea level by only a few centimetres, can mean more devastating high tides, especially king tides. A one degree change in temperature can mean significant changes in the tides in the air and the tides in the sea.
The extra energy in the system associated with a one degree rise can mean more severe storms, floods and fires, as well as a range of effects on wildlife.
Predictions
One question that can be asked of climate change sceptics, is that if they don’t think climate change is happening, what do they think wil happen to the climate over, say, the next ten years – long enough for yearly fluctuations to even out. Logically they should say, if climate change isn’t happening, that the climate should revert to the long term means. One wonders how someone who expressed that view in 2010 would react to the continued warming since that date, culminating in the heat and massive bushfires of the summer of 2019-2020? Or the flooding events of recent months?
If pressed, they may concede that global warming is happening, but it’s not our fault. It is due to natural causes. If this is true, then it is the most depressing scenario of all. It implies that we are heading for disaster, no matter what we do, or don’t do. As it happens, scientists estimate that naturally caused warming, known as the ‘forcing effect’, accounts for only six per cent of the total warming. The other 94% is our fault.
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50 years on from The Limits to Growth
9 Feb 2023 published by: Robert Phillips
COMMENTS ON THE 50TH ANNIVERSAY OF THE LIMITS TO GROWTH1
by
Robert Phillips
In 1972, a high-powered think tank called the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth, a book that caused considerable interest and controversy at the time.
It was a book of predictions rather than prophecies, relying on a complex computer model and trend analysis of five key variables:
- World population growth
- Amount of arable land
- Amount of non-renewable resources (especially oil)
- Capital for investment; and
- Pollution
The modelling was actually done by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who had use of some of the most sophisticated computers available, enabling them to simulate the world in a large scale computer model.
As someone who worked in the field of risk modelling, albeit in a different area, I find this approach fascinating. Their trend analysis revealed that the growth in world population, combined with shortages of critical resources and growth of pollution, would lead to a series of crises and disasters in the early to middle part of this century, leading to the collapse of civilisation and the world’s population.
The approach of the Club of Rome was essentially Malthusian. Malthus predicted doom because population increased by geometric progression, that is, exponentially, while food production only increased by arithmetic progression, that is, linearly. This meant that sooner or later, population would exceed food production, and many people would starve.
The Club of Rome likewise predicted that population growth would exceed the capacity of limited resources to support it, and eventually, population would collapse. It started by taking a ‘base’ case, which assumed that increases in these variables would continue according to existing trends. Then they ‘tweaked’ the figures by making assumptions, for example, about producing food production by technological advances. (The Green Revolution had only just started at that time.)
No matter how much they tweaked the figures, the result was always the same: population ultimately collapsed. All that technological advances did was to delay the collapse by a few decades at most, and at the expense of pollution being worse. This is not such a surprising conclusion. Species tend to expand their numbers until they reach the limits supportable in their environment. After that, there is often a dying off, followed by subsequent renewal.
Fifty years on, it is interesting to look at the Club of Rome’s predictions, and see how they compare with what has actually happened. Let us, therefore, look at their five key variables, to compare prediction with reality.
World population growth
The Limits to Growth Scenario predicted that the world’s population would quadruple in sixty-odd years from 3.6 billion in 1970, to over fourteen billion in the 2030s. In a subsequent report Mankind at the Turning Point2, they made a series of population predictions based on the dates of implementation of birth control policies in the developing world. Their second-lowest estimate, some 6.5 billion people in the developing world by now, has turned out to be the most accurate. [p.79] Along with 1.5 billion in the developed world, gives a total of eight billion, which the world has just reached this year. This is considerably below the predictions in The Limits to Growth. The UN now predicts that the world’s population will level out around ten billion in the 2080s.
Amount of arable land
The amount of arable land may not have increased markedly since the 1970s, but, at least until recently, food production was generally able to keep up with population increase. Not only the proportion but the absolute number of people facing extreme poverty and starvation had actually decreased somewhat. The effects of the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine may have caused some deterioration in the last three years.
From an Australian perspective, the fact that we have poor soils and variable water availability means that we may face some growing challenges as climate change has more effect.
Amount of non-renewable resources (especially oil)
Oil supply and prices figured prominently in the Club of Rome’s deliberations, given the world was preoccupied with oil price hikes at the time (1972-74). Yet despite concerns that we may be approaching ‘peak oil’, after which oil production would decline, there is no indication of that happening yet. Oil prices have fluctuated widely over the years, but increases in the price of oil have led to more fuel efficient cars, and recently, to the growth in electrical vehicles and the exploitation of shale oils. We do not appear to be running out of oil any time soon.
There are, of course, other resources of which we may run short, such as lithium for batteries. However, shortages of resources usually leads to more exploration and finding more reserves, and new technologies can, as in the case of oil, lead to more efficient usage or substitutes.
In short, shortages of resources may not be as critical as the Club of Rome predicted.
Capital for investment
This is one area where the Club of Rome may have got it right. They were particularly concerned about whether that rate of investment in capital assets exceeded the rate of depreciation. If so, the economy would continue to grow; if not, it would decline.
Although economies are still growing, the Club of Rome did make one accurate prediction. It predicted financial crises in the earlier part of this century. We have already had one, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008-09, and the world’s financial systems since then have looked shaky.
The demands for funds for investment by governments, businesses and individuals appears to be insatiable. But the funds available for lending are limited. To some extent, we have circumvented that problem by extension of credit. But the demands for loans in the lead up to the GFC lead to a hyper-extension of credit: credit based on credit based on credit. The whole thing was like a house of cards where it took only one ‘puff of wind’, namely the Federal Reserve increasing interest rates to counter inflation in 2008 to cause the whole pack to come tumbling down. Governments had to spend billions to prop up their financial sectors. The financial sector is unique among economic sectors because if it goes down, so do all the other sectors.
Will we face similar crises in future? I suspect so. One thing I learnt from the GFC is that no one, not even the large financial institutions, controls the world’s economic and financial systems: they are too large and two complex for anyone to control them.
Whether subsequent crises result in the sudden collapse of the world’s economy, or whether it deteriorates over a number of years, it will have serious consequences.
Pollution
The Club of Rome was correct in predicting that pollution levels would rise, although it would probably be surprised by the forms it has taken. At the time, the concern was that the amounts of particulate matter being put into the atmosphere, thereby reflecting sunlight back in to space, and perhaps triggering an ice age – a process known as ‘global dimming’.
In fact, of course, the opposite is happening. The increasing amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases actually means that the planet is warming up – a process known as ‘global warming’.
This century will probably be unique in human history in that it may be dominated by one issue: how quickly can we reduce our greenhouse gas emission, how much will the world warm up, and what will the consequences be? This last question is perhaps the most compelling. The unpredictability of climate change may be the biggest threat to face the human race and the world’s economies.
- Meadows, D.L. et alia, The limits to growth: a report for the Club of Rome’s project on The Predicament of Mankind, New York and Washington, 1972
- Mesarovic, M. and Pestel, E., Mankind at the turning point: the second report to the Club of Rome, London 1975.
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