November. Elections in the United States. One that could alter the political makeup in Washington, an alteration fervently desired by at least some. In all this campaign not a word about failing energy supplies or climate change.

Meanwhile, late last month Her Majesty’s government in Great Britain released the ‘Stern Report’, a seven hundred page study on climate change. Sir Nicholas Stern is an economist, one on the European model, which is distinctly different from the American model. American economists are trained in business schools, which perhaps explains their tight adherence to corporate thinking.

Sir Nicholas advised Her Majesty’s government that unless immediately arrested, the growth in emissions of greenhouse gases pose an unacceptable threat to Her Majesty’s government and people. Being an economist he expressed his fears in economic terms. The consequence of ignoring the onrushing global warming was going to be perhaps impossibly expensive and perhaps much worse. Sir Nicholas calculates that for every dollar – or pound if you will – not spent now to control emissions will compound exponentially to cost from 5 to 100 dollars in the not distant future. Dollar amounts are calculated in billions for control now, trillions later as a result of climate change.

Drought and attendant starvation in large areas of the planet coupled with storms of ever increasing severity, pale in comparison to the consequences devolving from the loss of the ice sheets over Antarctica and Greenland. If Greenland goes bare, sea levels will rise seven meters. Not good. There went a number of major cities and a great deal of valuable agricultural land. But wait – the really bad news is elsewhere. The loss of Antarctic ice will cause sea levels to rise from 65-70 meters. The two together would rise sea levels of up to 257 feet. Every seaport in the world is then gone, all the industrial and transportation facilities with them. Some nations will simply disappear under water – Bangladesh, the Congo, Amazon and Mississippi basins would be memory. If I remain in the Willamette Valley, my grave will be out at sea (I’m too old to watch the fun).

The great big unknown is the rate of failure of those ice sheets. The disturbing factor is the tendency of scientists to keep saying ‘Gee Whiz’ about it all the time. The old method was to measure the elevation of the surface of the ice sheets and calculate water storage from that. Oops. That ice is by no means a solid. It is badly honeycombed. The whole shebang can collapse well before you expect it to. Therein lies one whopper of a worry. One scientist raised the possibility of half the Antarctic ice sheet lifted sufficiently by melt water beneath the ice sheet to let it slide into the sea. We are talking Tsunami of truly biblical proportions my friend. The eastern side of the Cascades might be relatively safe if not too close to the Columbia. I would fear for Pendleton. At any rate, Scientists are finding new methods to measure what is happening and they keep saying Gee Whiz.

The Stern Report faults the United States and China for holding aloof from the efforts by other nations to get a handle on the situation. The United States alone contributes a full 40% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. China is effectively playing catch up and may well surpass our worthy efforts. The U.S. plans to build an additional 280 500 MW coal fired power plants by 2030; China is building at the rate of about one per week. Those new plants alone will double the amount of greenhouse gases within the life span of the plants. And the two nations won’t even talk about trying to minimize the damage.

The data on new power plants came from the September Special Edition of Scientific American, by the way. Adding CO2 scrubbers would provide wedges as described by Socolow and Pacala, and consequently a methodology to avert some of the future sorrow we are bringing upon ourselves.. Will we elect a congress that insists that we do? This is written the day before the 2006 election. Tomorrow evening will be of interest to me I assure you. In two years we will elect a new administration in Washington. That, too, should be quite interesting. Or possibly heartbreaking.

The ice sheet data came from Wikipedia, by the way.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 6th, 2006 at 10:13 am and is filed under Energy Future, Environment, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.