Mesoamerican rainfall anomalies, AD 800--950; source NASA GISS

There is increasing evidence that not only are we currently altering the global climate, but that humans have influenced regional climates in the past. A good place to start looking at this idea is today’s post on the NASA Earth Observatory. The paper discussed contributes to the evidence that Mayan agriculture contributed to the collapse of Mayan society in the AD 800s. My interpretation of the current best understanding can be summarized as:

Agricultural land was expanded through deforestation. The increase in agricultural land at the expense of forested land slightly altered rainfall, slightly increasing the severity of naturally occurring droughts. This increased the likelihood of famine and disease, amplifying the other factors that lead to the collapse of the Classic Mayan culture.

This potential demonstration of historical human influence on climate supports the concept that we have left the Holocene and entered the Anthropocene. It is also one more demonstration that the concept of “Rain follows the plow,” which was influential in expanding settlement of the American West & Great Plains in the 1800s, was flawed.

There are still many non-scientists who state that any claims of human caused changes in climate are simply ‘hubris’, but the growing list of examples of relatively small populations altering regional climates in the past should convince them of the plausibility of seven billion people altering the global climate.

This optimism may surprise you. It certainly surprised me, given the severity of the environmental problems we must deal with in the next few years.

How is AR4 optimistic?

Some of the studies included in AR4 concerning the impact on humans caused by anthropogenic climate change take into account surprisingly optimistic progress and economic growth. In some of these studies the technical and economic improvement is strong enough that the average person may be better off in forty or ninety years, despite the human-caused climate changes and increasing population pressure. This gives lie to the frequently repeated canards about the IPCC as a bunch of pessimistic activists who don’t believe in improvement and promote a doom and gloom vision of the future. Simply reading any of AR4 makes it clear that it is just a summary of current knowledge and best estimates—with probabilities—of likely future scenarios. Since economics and development are so fuzzy compared to climate science, there are a wide range of plausible scenarios for these human factors. Within this wide range, many studies are optimistic in their assumptions. Some of the studies included in AR4 include enough improvement that a larger proportion of people will be better off (or at least less likely to starve) in seventy years than when the report was written. But this isn’t the whole picture.

Every silver lining’s got a
Touch of Grey

It is vital to remember that the optimism in some studies doesn’t excuse us from immediate action to avoid the problems of anthropogenic global warming and other human-caused environmental degradation. When the studies with beneficial assumptions are compared against themselves but with climate change removed, the versions with no climate change are more optimistic. That is, even the studies that include enough improvements that many people are expected to be better off in the second half of the century than now, more people would be better off if we stop causing climate change. Not all the studies are as optimistic. It is more likely that climate change will actually increase the number of hungry people in the second half of the century, if not sooner. And using this one measure—the availability of food for humans over the next ninety years—is an incomplete view of the impact of climate change: effects extend far beyond food resources and last far longer than ninety years.

The Fourth Assessment Report is in some ways surprisingly optimistic, but an understanding of the report calls for immediate action to avoid the expected negative impacts, and the likely disastrous impacts. Fortunately, since we know the cause of the damage we know what we must do to avoid causing more damage. Or, at least, what we must do in order to avoid causing more damage than we are already committed to causing. Beyond the mere pragmatic necessity of immediate action is the moral responsibility to act now: not all harm caused can be simplified to measurements of human health and wealth.

As someone who enjoys debunking myths and misconceptions, I found The Debunking Handbook by John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky interesting. It is only six pages long, but includes some tips that will be useful for teaching in general as well as in debunking efforts.

I am pro-clean air. I am pro-clean water.
—Rand Paul

Libertarians invariably claim they want clean air and water, but then go out of the way to ensure that gratuitous damage to the earth continues. An example of this pattern is Senator Rand Paul’s recent attempt to prevent the EPA from regulating cross-state pollution from power plants. Paul opposes these environmental protections by using a typical libertarian objection:

I think we can have a clean environment and jobs, but not if we let this administration continue to pass job-killing regulations.

Senator Paul creates a false dichotomy between employment and limits on pollution, he then—following the universal libertarian environmental view—fails to propose a solution that is compatible with his libertarianism. This is a problem.

For any view to be part of a serious philosophy, it must be able to deal with reality. Science is clear on the causes and severity of environmental damage, and technology provides many options for practical solutions to many of our current environmental problems. Given the clear harm, any acceptable philosophy must be able to integrate an account of the cause of the problem and be able to suggest a self-consistent solution to the problem. If a philosophy is at odds with reality, it cannot be taken seriously, and should then be discarded.

If libertarianism is a serious political philosophy it must recognize the existence and severity of environmental damage, and it must be able to create a solution to stop the damage that is compatible with libertarian ideals. But libertarianism—at least in common practice—does not provide a path to solve our environmental problems. In fact, it typically ignores the uncontroversial science by denying the harm caused and its clear implications. This failure to agree with reality is what originally led me to conclude that libertarianism is not a valid position.¹

However, not that everyone who claims a political philosophy conforms completely to that philosophy or weighs each part equally. Rand Paul himself is a good example of this sort of inconsistency: he is one of the most prominent libertarians, but is pro-life. Many libertarians would consider the pro-life position to be an unjustified government intrusion on a woman’s liberty. But Senator Paul recognizes the sanctity of life, saying, “It is unconscionable that government would facilitate the taking of innocent life.” This position can be supported from a libertarian worldview by (correctly) saying that the pro-life position is protects the liberty of the unborn child. This is simply an case of attaching different weights to different liberties. However, to fulfil the requirement that a philosophy must be internally consistent, a person making this argument must recognize that the same line of reasoning is behind pollution regulations. That is, one person’s imagined liberty must be restricted in order to ensure the liberty of others.

The particular set of EPA rules that Senator Paul proposed rejecting—placing some limits on a narrow (but large) type of pollution—is a another clear example of a limit an one type of liberty outweighing another. Even if we oversimplify and use a merely economic analysis, these rules will create a healthcare benefit two orders of magnitude larger than their cost. The EPA estimates that these rules will save at least 13 000 people a year from premature death. As seen in previous posts, this sort of lopsided benefit is to be expected. Just as a child’s right to not be killed outweighs a mother’s liberty to change her mind about having a child, the right of millions of people not to be caused significant health damage outweighs the liberty of a few people to slightly increase their profit. Health issues are only one aspect of the many environmental problems, considering other impacts only widens the already 100 to 1 benefit to cost ratio.

A philosophy must be internally consistent, and must be able to explain and solve any problem. So, libertarian politicians want to be taken seriously by thinking people, they must acknowledge the problems and propose realistic solutions. If one’s philosophy causes one to ignore reality or be unable to propose solutions, one is obligated to reexamine it.

Sources:

• McClatchy DC: Senate defeats Rand Paul’s resolution to kill EPA cross-state rules
• EPA: Cross-State Air Pollution Rule
• Rand Paul: Issues: Sanctity of Life

A good example of double-counting is Bjørn Lomborg’s Cool It. Lomborg’s book seemed to be based on counting the costs of addressing human-caused climate change multiple times, while creating low estimates for the costs of not addressing the problem. Pierrehumbert’s post, on the other hand, is simply about trying to accurately estimate the climate impact of exploiting oil sands, a more basic and important question. This is comparing a set of scientific numbers to a set of speculative numbers, but in either case it is important to try for accurate numbers. When basing an argument on something that can be quantified, it is important that you quantify it properly. Otherwise you weaken your argument.

If you are using numbers to support your position, be sure to take the time to use the correct numbers and calculations. Of course, for the issue of anthropogenic climate change it isn’t just a matter of finding the right numbers: the ethical and moral aspects of our damage to the earth are also important. But when done properly, the accurate numbers and correct ethical treatment will always agree. The fact that the numbers all support the current best scientific understanding of the issue provides a little extra evidence (beyond logical consistency) for those of us who see the ethical problem with causing unnecessary damage to the planet.

Choosing a gas station to attempt to control the source of your gas is moot:

Can I Tell Which Companies Purchase Imported Crude Oil or Gasoline?
While EIA cannot identify which companies are selling imported gasoline, we do collect data on which companies import crude oil and refined products. However, the fact that a given company imported crude oil or gasoline does not mean that those particular imports will end up being sold to motorists as that company’s brand of gasoline. This is because gasoline from different refineries is often combined for shipment by pipeline, and different companies owning service stations in the same area may be purchasing gasoline at the same bulk terminal.
—US Energy Information Administration, “Oil Imports and Exports – Energy Explained, Your Guide To Understanding Energy”

Oil is a fungible commodity, so what matters to price is the world demand. (And world oil futures speculation and local distribution costs…)

Since the forwarded message makes such a point about not supporting Saudi Arabia: ~8.7% of oil used in the US is from the Persian Gulf, including ~5.3% from Saudi Arabia. The top sources of oil used in the US are:

The numbers in the email for which companies import oil from the Middle East are also wrong. For example, it lists Valero as importing no Middle Eastern oil, when in fact the Persian Gulf is the source of 24% of their oil. BP is also quoted as 0%, when it is actually 10 or 44% depending on the region. The email also lists Amoco as an importer from the Persian Gulf, when it is a division of BP, which it lists as not an importer from the Persian Gulf. Several others on the list of 0% each only supply fractions of a percent of US oil. Besides, as shown above, the original source of the oil doesn’t matter to price. Even if we could shift where we get our oil, that just shifts who is buying from where, with the total sold remaining constant.

What matters is the total oil used. A quick calculation shows that to decrease the amount of oil used in the US by the amount we import from Saudi Arabia, all you have to do is increase average fuel economy by a bit over one mile per gallon. Most people can improve their mileage by more than that by just learning to drive their current car slightly better. In fact, we may get there before most people learn to drive properly: last year’s update to the CAFE standards finally started us back on track to improve fuel economy by more than this amount.

Remember, the solution is efficiency, not which gas station you buy from!

After I wrote this, I found that a variant of this particular email has been around for years, and that Snopes debunked it six years ago.

Hmm… maybe I should debunk some of The Heritage Foundation’s claims about oil prices too…

1. ‘The Tyranny of Defense Inc.’ from The Atlantic about the insight of two of Eisenhower’s speeches.
2. ‘Light Out, Huck, They Still Want to Sivilize You’ from the New York Times is about the latest edited edition of Huckleberry Finn. The original is public domain (as it should be), so an edited edition is legal, but that doesn’t mean it is a good idea.
3. It’s a little old, but you should read this interesting article ‘Covert Operations’ in The New Yorker about the Koch brothers and their political involvement.
4. Last weekend I watched ‘The Hunting Party,’ a 2007 movie about journalists on vacation looking for a war criminal in Bosnia. Tho movie was loosely based on Scott Anderson’s story ‘What I Did on My Summer Vacation’ which was published in 2000. As usual, the story is a bit different from the movie, and the story isn’t exactly a usual news piece.

Source doi:10.1063/1.3226704

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. —Jimmy Carter, 1979-07-15

Sources quoted in the story also attribute the city’s low recycling rate to the recycling program not being convenient enough. This is wrong. For most people, the city’s recycling system doesn’t involve any extra work. All it requires is throwing some things into a different bin. It still takes the same time to carry the garbage out, because they have one large garbage bin and two small recycling bins (easily carried at once), instead of two large garbage cans. Fort Wayne’s recycling system is about as easy as it can possibly be.

A better explanation of the lack of recycling in Fort Wayne is the anti-environmentalism that is so common in this area. I am constantly amazed at the number of people here who think recycling and other sustainable activities are un-American. Unfortunately, this means that the normal approaches of limiting the amount of garbage that will be picked up per week (with unlimited recycling pickup), or of charging by volume of garbage, won’t work here. Many Fort Wayne residents would simply start burning their trash or begin (expand!) illegal dumping. This doesn’t really leave any good way of increasing Fort Wayne’s abysmally low recycling rate. Composting yard waste will significantly lower the amount of garbage, but doesn’t deal with the low recycling rate. It will be hard to get Fort Wayne from the awful 8.5% rate to a more reasonable 60+% rate, or the 100% rate that should be the goal.

• ‘City residents resist recycling’, The Journal Gazette
• Fort Wayne’s recycling program