William H. Calvin's Blog, page 2

Discovering global fever

You can’t say I wasn’t warned. When I was in the sixth grade (that’s in 1950), we got the Saturday Evening Post in the mail once a week—and so I probably read their article, "Is the World Getting Warmer?"

About the time I started high school in 1953, both Time magazine and Popular Mechanics were running warnings by the infra-red heat expert Gilbert Plass. I probably read them too.

Then I likely forgot all about the problem, since the Cold War and bomb testing seemed much more scary than any drip-drip-drip scenario—one even slower than dry rot from an unrepaired roof leak.

But five years later, when I was a physics major at Northwestern University, there was a weekly film series in the engineering auditorium and one cold Friday night, among the short subjects preceding the main feature, I saw a short documentary on global warming directed by Frank Capra. (You can view it on YouTube’s archive and marvel at the old "straight man" attempts to provide comic relief; the diagnosis and prognosis were, however, right on.) Then in my third year of college, I read Plass’ 1959 article in Scientific American, "Carbon Dioxide and Climate."

How Much Time Do We Have Left?

"Doc, just how long do I have left? A year?"

If the patient has a gradually failing heart, the physician's answer might be "One to two years if it’s just gradual deterioration. But you could also have a heart attack at any time. Don’t count on even six months."

Climate scientists similarly warn of an approaching catastrophe by climate creep—though a climate leap may kill off civilization even sooner as the human population crashes.

How Much Time Do We Have Left?

"Doc, just how long do I have left? A year?"

If the patient has a gradually failing heart, the physician's answer might be "One to two years if it’s just gradual deterioration. But you could also have a heart attack at any time. Don’t count on even six months."

Climate scientists similarly warn of an approaching catastrophe by climate creep—though a climate leap may kill off civilization even sooner as the human population crashes.

A Humane Solitaire

Solitaire is a great preparation for life. You lose, over and over again (in my experience, about six games in every seven). Often your access to the needed card has been closed off by a prior move and so you learn about burning your bridges. And in many of your games, you have the slowly dawning realization that you are trapped—simply going around in a circle, making no progress.

In the earliest digital versions of solitaire, there was no "Undo" command, quite a shock to those used to retrieving a real card from a pile. Undo was quickly added.

And the most recent versions have become even more humane. They have foresight and will usually tell you when you are hopelessly trapped, that there are no more moves you can make that will lead out of the maze. There are still occasions of endless loops-within-loops that the software doesn’t recognize, but usually it spares you the growing despair.

Humane solitaire might be useful for training physicians and climate researchers. Just when they get good at it, you take away the foresight feature. Next, you take away Undo.

We must clean up CO2 by 2030

The testimony of Professor William H. Calvin at the EPA Endangerment Hearing in Seattle, May 22, 2009

I am William H. Calvin, a Seattle author, lecturer, and professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Medicine now affiliated with our Program on Climate Change. In 1958 when I was an undergraduate physics major, I saw a short movie where the climate scientists of the day were predicting global warming (you can now find it on YouTube). The science was good enough for an endangerment ruling back in the EPA’s first year, 1971.

We have squandered the fifty-year lead time that early climate science provided us. We now have a climate problem so big that CO2 emission reductions, even to zero, won’t be a climate fix. If we were removing CO2 in a big way, countering ongoing emissions and drawing down the 38% excess CO2, then emission reductions would speed the day and reduce the needed sequestration capacity. But without a program to quickly clean up the CO2 excess, emission reductions will not even buy us some time before we reach the overwhelming levels of climate change-and because of abrupt climate shifts, that could happen well before mid-century.

Leaving the Lights On: Sometimes It Doesn't Matter

"You left the lights on!" was a familiar complaint in my childhood, the monthly electricity bill being what it was. These days, we get advised to unplug power supplies and even television sets that use a trickle to remain alert for the remote control ON command.

I now realize that this is all nonsense in the winter but triply true during the summer.

The Politics of Resentment

Re GOP strategy: Racism isn't a good fit. But Resentment is (and it sure fits with the party of whiners).

Fits with the stripe of Red voters in 2008 from east Texas to West Virginia, where there are lots of poor whites resenting their traditional inferiors getting ahead.

Fits with all of the anti-gun-control sentiment that the GOP exploits.

Fits with the appeal to the self-made millioniare types. People will work much harder to avoid losing a million than they will to make a million in the first place (see Psych 101). To rally them to the GOP flag, call taxes "confiscation."

The Unthinkable Happens

·         "I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here," the police chief told Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (1942)[1].

·         "No one could have conceivably imagined suicide bombers burrowing into our society and them emerging all on the same day to fly their aircraft--fly US aircraft into buildings full of innocent people and show no remorse," President Bush said five days after the attacks[2].

·         "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief," Alan Greenspan told the U.S. Congress during the meltdown of 2008.

There are various reasons for shocked disbelief. For the fictional police chief, it was humorous hypocrisy (as he spoke, the croupier was handing over his winnings). For President Bush,

Instant Obama, a formula for lame ducks

Sometime between now and January 20, even the lame-duck Bush administration may conclude that a deteriorating economic situation needs extreme measures--such as an immediate transfer of power to the president elect. This is very simple under the U.S. Constitution's 25th Amendment:

Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

and can be done in a day if Congress is in session:

9am:     Vice-President Cheney resigns.

10am:    President Bush appoints Barack Obama as the new Vice.

11am:    House and Senate concur.

12noon: President Bush resigns.

1pm:     VP Obama sworn in as the 44th President of the US.

2pm:     President Obama appoints Joseph Biden as the new VP.

3pm:     Congress concurs.

4pm:     Obama cabinet appointments announced, sent to Senate.

Renewable no more

Most carbon "transactions" in the usual carbon cycle cancel out. The CO2 that photosynthesis takes out of the air is eventually returned to it, whether the farmer’s green products are burned immediately (say, corn ethanol as fuel) or eaten. We exhale CO2 and excrete the stuff that sewage treatment plants bubble air through, so as to quickly make CO2. (This shortcuts the usual rotting process, which tends to generate unwelcome odors before releasing CO2 or methane.)

The timber industry would have you believe that one-cancels-the-other reasoning applies to trees as well. But there is a big difference between farming and forestry. For crops, it only takes a year until that released carbon is recaptured by another round of photo¬synthesis. For forestry, this loop may take fifty years.