Hell and High Water: Global Warming - the Solution and the Politics and What We Should Do
By Joseph Romm

HARPERCOLLINS, © 2007,
ISBN 006117212x (EAN 9780061172120)
Hardcover List price $24.95

(Currently about $13 at the Strand Bookstore)

A former official for the Department of Energy, and a renowned physicist and energy expert, Joseph Romm presents a searing indictment of the policies and politics that are hasteningthe planet's destruction...

One opinion: Probably could be more innovative with solutions and strategies but seems on-target describing the situation and need for immediate action.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/earthandsun/climate_change.html

(NASA has a lot of useful information on their website about recent developments in the study of arctic ice and other important issues relating to global warming/climate change.)

realclimate.org (website on climate by climate scientists)

"The Weather Makers" by Tim Flannery -Australian scientist's comprehensive look at climate science

Thanks goes out to Aaron for references to other resources, some I haven't seen and am looking forward to checking out.

There would be no need to ask if the driver really drives so well that she gets 20 mpg, or if she only drives it every couple of months. (We might want some sort of adjustment: two cars burning the same gasoline are going to put out roughly the same CO2, but differing amounts of other pollutants; MPG is only a proxy for weight which is only a proxy for how much wear the vehicle puts on the road.)

>>At 3200 pounds, that SUV was no Hummer. That's less than plenty of minivans and bunches of cars.>>

So our letter writer is hauling around herself and her dog in a 3200-pound vehicle that (by nature of its extra weight and internal cab size) puts out more carbon monoxide and a/c exhaust (i.e., hot air) than a mid-size sedan. This is happening in a city rife with mass transit alternatives and car services. Yeah, I think that's selfish. and the fact the driver contributes to a pollution fund might help her conscience, but she's still taking a big chunk out of the traffic pie that she's sharing with eight million other city residents.

>>Do they roll over onto pedestrians due to their ungainliness? I understand that in car vs. car or car vs. truck less weight can mean less safety, but does it make any difference car vs. bike or car vs. pedestrian how much the car weighs or how much ground clearance it has?>>

The ground clearance has a direct bearing on being able to see other cars, cyclists and pedestrians. In the past year I've logged over 3,000 miles commuting on a bike, and all of my brushes with danger were with SUV's and/or oversize minivans (which I put in the same category as SUV's in terms of their mis-use as cars). In the first case, a driver in an Expedition thought he could out-accelerate the rest of traffic from the right lane. His right mirror missed my skull by no more than six inches. In the other two cases, an SUV and a large minivan respectively decided to try and squeeze into the bike lane to get past garbage trucks. First of all, both vehicles had blind spots, which is why they came so close to running me down. But because they were wider than conventional cars, they shouldn't have been trying to pass in the first place. Cars could've gotten by me without difficulty.

by the way, the extra weight and the high ground clearance of SUV's have a direct bearing on traffic safety. The distribution of weight and the height of the bumper on an SUV makes it far more likely to inflict serious damage on a compact car and its occupants. This is made worse by the fact that most SUV's are packing a huge high-horsepower engine. Their drivers (for the most part) don't understand that they're at the wheel of trucks, not cars--and it's the people in front of them who pay the price. The extra weight plus the fact that SUV's are not as manuverable as cars makes them dangerous. And call me crazy but I have a thing about SUV's (or anybody else) driving up on the curb.

Also, heavier vehicles undoubtedly put a bigger strain on the road bed.

I would agree that many drivers (not just the people behind the wheels of SUV's and large minivans) shouldn't be driving. But all this begs a larger question--why should someone own such a personal vehicle in NYC at all? Dave would probably agree with me that providing for special screening for only people who own vehicles above a certain size/weight wouldn't fly--AAA and GM would pour money into any campaign to regulate drivers of large personal vehicles. But I remember that (as part of the aftermath of the oil crises of 1973/1980, states like NJ put surcharges on personal vehicles exceeding a certain weight (I think I paid an extra $50 per year for my old and heavy Mercury Park Suite). Maybe it's time to entertain that sort of regulation again.

How much will sea level rise with five degrees of global warming? Here too, our best information comes from the Earth's history. The last time that the Earth was five degrees warmer was three million years ago, when sea level was about eighty feet higher.

Eighty feet! In that case, the United States would lose most East Coast cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Miami; indeed, practically the entire state of Florida would be under water. Fifty million people in the US live below that sea level. Other places would fare worse. China would have 250 million displaced persons. Bangladesh would produce 120 million refugees, practically the entire nation. India would lose the land of 150 million people.

[From "The Threat to the Planet" by Jim Hansen, NY Review of Books, 7/16/06]

The people who have been doing the most and best science on climate change answer these questions very differently than you:

Is there global warming?
Yes.

Is it anthropogenic?
Yes.

What will the impact be?
Many impacts are known and underway and worrisome and costly.

Is it cheaper to deal with the impacts or to try to avoid them?
We have no choice but to deal with the impacts and, if we're smart, we'll try to stop pouring so much carbon into the atmosphere as well. I don't think I've ever seen a cost-benefit analysis but I bet it's been done. Columbia U.'s Climate & Society program probably has this info.

David, have you seen the Al Gore movie or read the Elizabeth Kolbert book? Mark Lynas and Ross Gelbspan also have really good books that provide very accessible distillations of the science. You clearly like to be a contrarian but I think you'd have a hard time maintaining your stance after viewing and reading these.

At any rate, I think I'll drop out of this conversation now. Flowers are blooming up at the Bklyn Botanic Garden. Gotta go check that out....

I hold a CDL-B (bus) but the dimensions were quick Google searches.

"I couldn't find the bad parts."

Is that because you didn't read the paper or because you selectively read the paper? I wonder why danger is in the title?

Because the title is where the author puts his claims, not his evidence.

Here's something in that paper that I considered "bad"....

"We live on a planet whose climate is dominated by positive feedbacks, which are capable of taking us to dramatically different conditions. The problem that we face now is that many feedbacks that came into play slowly in the past, driven by slowly changing forcings, will come into play rapidly now, at the pace of our human-made forcings, tempered a few decades by the oceans thermal response time."

There's nothing inherently wrong with positive feedback loops. If it were really the case that we are having fewer white Christmases than in the past that would be tangible, but that claim (for the period 1990 to present versus 1960 to 1990) is not true, and even if it were, it's not necessarily bad.

Life will survive, but it will do so on a transformed planet.

Transformed for the better or the worse?

For all foreseeable
human generations, it will be a
far more desolate world than the one
in which civilization developed and
flourished during the past several
thousand years."

Why?

I'll go read the Columbia paper that Aaron recommends. Are the increases in tropical diseases in NYC due to temperature changes, or due to diseases brought by immigrants (who are drawn by other than temperature.) Malaria could be easily controlled a lot better than now if DDT were allowed for interior use. (I'm obviously not green if I think any use of DDT could be a net positive.)

Rain? Not so long ago NYC was experiencing droughts. Rain can be managed. I don't know -- is the problem in New York combined sewers? Sure there is a cost in separating the storm and the sanitary sewer system, but it's not a catastrophic cost.

Katrina was much more about a century-old policy of building in the Mississippi's flood plains, and it was only Category 3 when it made landfall. (The devastation was caused by the dike failures, not the wind, not even the storm surge; made worse by corrupt government, poor planning, and too many people who have been taught to depend on the government instead of themselves.)

Bottom line is we actually really don't know what climate change is going to do.

Now that is a statement with which I agree completely!

Is there global warming? Seems to be.
Is it anthropogenic? Undecided.
What will the impact be? Unknown.
Is it cheaper to deal with the impacts or to try to avoid them? Not even discussed!

Many imperatives exist to act immediately.

Ethics is not the least one.

There is a load of information out there about the likely (and current) negative impacts of climate change.

In NYC, Columbia University's Earth Institute has probably done the most work on this. Their New York Climate & Health Project really drills down into some of the more personal and immediate impacts that New Yorkers can expect to experience and, in fact, already are experiencing as our planet warms:

http://www.earth.columbia.edu/events/2004/nycch.htm

In no particular order, these impacts include:

- An increase in weather extremes: droughts, heat waves, intense storms, blizzards. A variety of problems and economic dislocations are associated with more extreme weather.

- More Katrina's. Greater likelihood of hurricanes hitting the NE seaboard. Greater likelihood of more intense hurricanes as oceans grow warmer. Allstate has already pulled out of southern Brooklyn. I wrote a big feature story about it after I got ahold of the Office of Emergency Management's hurricane evacuation map which, frankly, is incredible. Miami, btw, is in a load of trouble. http://www.naparstek.com/2005/07/big-one.php
http://standeyo.com/NEWS/06_USA/06_USA_pics/060629.NY.hurricane.map.jpg

- I thought this one was interesting: An increase in mosquito-born tropical diseases like West Nile and Malaria (Malaria in NYC -- enjoying the balmy weather yet?) Already underway. My wife refuses to go out into our Bklyn backyard during summer now. This is, as far as I can see, the #1 worst impact of global warming for our family so far.

- More intense rainfalls are already creating a number of problems for NYC's water and sewage systems as well as the cleanliness of our rivers and harbor.

- Increasing unpredictability in agriculture and food supply. Increasing extinction of species and difficulty in growing food as temperate zones change.

The list goes on and if you care to look you can find a lot of info that'll give you pause. Bottom line is we actually really don't know what climate change is going to do. The last 10,000 yrs of human civilization have been facilitated, in part, by a stable climate. So, really, humanity has experienced anything like what is currently underway. I'd recommend the Al Gore flick and the Elizabeth Kolbert book.

As for your northward migration: I've heard scientists say that regions around the poles are not likely to be nice places to be since those places will actually be experiencing proportionally more dramatic warming than, say, New England. In Fairbanks, AK, for example, the permafrost is thawing and houses are regularly falling into sink holes. Entire forests are dying and new insects are migrating north that have no natural predators.

But, hey, it sounds like you are enjoying the warm weather and are looking forward to a tidy mass migration northward for your children. So, I'm sorry if I'm being a big buzzkill. I for one am increasingly concerned about what we're leaving for our kids and am looking for ways to take action personally, locally, nationally, and globally.

David- Is that because you didn't read the paper or because you selectively read the paper? I wonder why danger is in the title?

Here's something in that paper that I considered "bad"....

"We live on a planet whose climate is dominated by positive feedbacks, which are capable of taking us to dramatically different conditions. The problem that we face now is that many feedbacks that came into play slowly in the past, driven by slowly changing forcings, will come into play rapidly now, at the pace of our human-made forcings, tempered a few decades by the oceans thermal response time."

So yeah, there have been ice ages and intense fluctuations in the history of the planet before, and scientists are learning more and more about the history of the climate all the time, but this scientist is saying it's never happened so rapidly before. And guess what David? We (humans) weren't around for some of those swings. Maybe we wouldn't have survived them. Maybe we won't survive them now.

Here's something else to read. It's title is "The Threat to the Planet."

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2006/2006_Hansen.pdf

"If human beings follow a businessas-
usual course, continuing to exploit
fossil fuel resources without reducing
carbon emissions or capturing and sequestering
them before they warm the
atmosphere, the eventual effects on
climate and life may be comparable to
those at the time of mass extinctions.
Life will survive, but it will do so on a
transformed planet. For all foreseeable
human generations, it will be a
far more desolate world than the one
in which civilization developed and
flourished during the past several
thousand years."

Again, these are not my words, but the words of that same man, an expert scientist on a subject that he has studied intensely at the highest levels. I'll take his word over yours anyday.

As for the long-term effects of global warming, I have not studied it in depth myself and will leave it to others to respond should they care to. But when it comes to "big picture" ecological items such as global climate and mass extinction, I am fundamentally conservative and believe that man-made changes should be avoided absent the clearest of evidence that no unintended problems will result, even if the science available to interpret that evidence is not yet crystallized. A carbon-warmed future marked by mass anthropogenic extinctions is not merely "different," but far less desirable than the status quo and probably hellish in ways we cannot yet predict. As against such a future, I do hold the general view that "this is the best of all possible worlds."

I didn't find the bad parts.

Extinctions will occur. I've been reading for decades that we're losing thousands or tens of thousands of species per year. Except for the Chinese freshwater dolphin (which I hadn't even heard of until last month when it was declared gone) I can't think of any. Mostly it's one obscure species of ant or beetle whose niche is filled by another.

Isotherms will move poleward. Yes this means pests and diseases normally associated with the low latitudes will move north, but so will their growing conditions and other good things; while the mid-latitude good and bad we enjoy will similarly move north. Again he's showing how things will be different, but not how they'll be worse.

Fair enough, but other than Sky-is-falling pronouncements (like the lack of White Christmases, which is false, or that the 20 degrees warmer than average temperature is related to long-term warming) I haven't heard much discussion about what harm it will do in the long term either, besides the general view that since this is the best of all possible worlds, anything else is a catastrophe.

The transition to a CDL is usually at 18,000 pounds MGWR, which is somewhat bigger than a panel truck (like UPS.) On the other hand, if the roadway has a blanket 5,000 pound weight rating that ought to be enforced (if that's MGWR it would catch a bunch of older sedans) and roadways that are restricted to passenger cars should make it clear if that's going by the federal definition (by which SUVs and personal pickups aren't) or the state definition (pickups are wobblers according to NY DMV, which says that parkway authorities can go by registration or by vehicle, and that NYC goes by registration -- I'd guess SUVs follow the same rules.)

If the rules that an SUV may circumvent by not being a passenger car are so bad, they ought to be revisited; if they're so good the loophole ought to be closed.

I do prefer the higher seating position of a minivan, but it's like standing up at a ballgame -- it's not so much that you get a better view, but you are forced to do so to see over everybody else who is (standing up/driving a van or SUV).

If SUV drivers are more likely to drive over curbs I suspect that reflects on the types of people who drive SUVs, and the fact that this is their only chance to go off-road. (Except for the lowest low-rider, any car may be driven over a curb without damage; at low speed over the curb doesn't even harm the tire.)

Too many drivers can't drive cars, but most of the time they get away with pointing them. I'd like to see numbers to see if adjusted for age, experience and so forth SUVs are more prone to accidents. Most people who drive SUVs drive SUVs -- the "I'm used to a sedan" factor can't be that great.

On free parking and muni-metered streets, SUVs take up more space than other vehicles.

Even there, once the pattern is established, isn't it that one vehicle pulls out and another takes its place? I suppose if an SUV (or a just-as-long 4-door sedan) establishes the spot it will be bigger, but after that the size of the spot doesn't change. (Have NYC drivers forgotten how to parallel park?) An H2 is 204 inches long, the 2006 Imperial (concept) is 214 inches long. A 2001 Crown Vic is 212 inches long. A 2006 Grand Caravan is 200 inches long. A Beetle is 161 inches long, and a Cooper Mini 143 inches.

(Granted SUVs are much taller and somewhat wider, but neither is an issue for curb parking.)

Well, according to most climate scientists, global warming and climate change is a bad thing, your personal heating bills and snow-free roads aside for a moment.

And just to be clear, I'm not talking about a White Christmas. I'm talking about the dangers of global warming and climate change brought about the release of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere by human beings and our current means of industry, transportation and energy production.

Here's a link to a paper by James Hansen, the NASA scientist who made headlines last year claiming the administration was trying to censure his communications with the public regarding recent discoveries relating to global climate change. (When this man "crunches", I listen.)

(titled: "Communicating Dangers and Opportunities in Global Warming" )

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/agu_communicating.pdf

Aaron: Nice job with the link this week for NOAA stats about the 2006 temperature in US and world.

A working class guy in Queens who drives his SUV into the city to work everytday is certainly polluting the air. But the upper-middle class couple who takes two airplane trips to the bahamas each year are polluting way more in just those two vacations alone!

That, and I wanted to respond to David. I don't deny that there is an upside to the warm weather in NYC this winter. I and bicyclists I talk to have been riding more this winter than we ever imagined we would. But I'm still haunted by thought that this is some kind of a global warming milestone.

The rarity of snow on Christmas in NYC, which I injected into the discussion, was not intended to start a discussion of the pros and cons (or even the frequency) of white Christmases, but rather simply to allude to the warming trend that most students of climate change acknowledge. Like others who have responded to David's comments, I totally disagree with the notion that global warming should be welcomed on the basis of the few short-term minor comforts or conveniences it might provide.

As for SUVs, the parking space they take up is relevant in the majority of parking situations in NYC, which do not involve traditional meters of the kind David is contemplating. On free parking and muni-metered streets, SUVs take up more space than other vehicles.

Ground clearance is an issue with SUVs because the higher the driver, the harder to make eye contact (along with the blind spots Dan mentioned). Plus in my experience SUVs hop the curb on turns more often than sedans. At least to the extent an SUV driver is accustomed to driving a sedan, one would expect maneuverability issues like this.

When vehicles get big enough, we call them trucks and require drivers to meet special licensing requirements. SUVs may not meet the "truck" threshold, but due to increased size, bulk and differences in configuration they do not handle the same as a sedan. I believe this difference may be at the root of a significant portion of the accidents that involve SUVs.

Is that a bad thing or a good thing?
If the worst thing is no White Christmas (except that isn't really any different than longer-term trends) I'll trade that for cutting my heating bills in half, snow-free roads and so forth.

I think that the ownership of SUVS--the act of owning this type of vehicle in a city like NY with such a stressed and complicated traffic grid--is pretty selfish. I commute by bicycle, and SUV's, with their massive size and multiple blind spots, are a lousy match for the cooperative traffic interaction on urban streets. Forget the global warming questions--it's rude to stress out a city with personal vehicles that are too big to easily park, that take up disproportionate amounts of scarce parking space, and endanger pedestrians, cyclists and other motorists by virtue of their ungainly and out-of-scale urban behavior.

At 3200 pounds, that SUV was no Hummer. That's less than plenty of minivans and bunches of cars. Unless the CJ-5 counts I've never had an SUV, but I haven't had more difficulty parking larger vehicles. There have been a few spots that I've had to pass by because my vehicle was too large, but mostly a spot is a spot, one parking meter to the next, and whether you've got a Mini or an Imperial, you're taking up exactly one.
Do they roll over onto pedestrians due to their ungainliness? I understand that in car vs. car or car vs. truck less weight can mean less safety, but does it make any difference car vs. bike or car vs. pedestrian how much the car weighs or how much ground clearance it has?

* the angry cyclist was not expressing the group consensus opinion of TA or Critical mass. I have a Grateful Dead decal on my bike but that doesn't make me Jerry Garcia;
* Apparently the angry cyclist had more spare time than most of us;
* I'm out commuting by bicycle these days as a result of our warm temps--lots of traffic interactions like this are happening lately. I blame El Nino.

kidding aside, I think that the ownership of SUVS--the act of owning this type of vehicle in a city like NY with such a stressed and complicated traffic grid--is pretty selfish. I commute by bicycle, and SUV's, with their massive size and multiple blind spots, are a lousy match for the cooperative traffic interaction on urban streets. Forget the global warming questions--it's rude to stress out a city with personal vehicles that are too big to easily park, that take up disproportionate amounts of scarce parking space, and endanger pedestrians, cyclists and other motorists by virtue of their ungainly and out-of-scale urban behavior.

As to the 19c. progressives and reformers, don't lose sight that there was a considerable amount of energy put into 'educating' the poor on topics that were often superfluous, or too far afield of the possible. By resisting direct wealth transference (via income redistribution, progressive taxation or minimum wages), and focusing on lifestyle (cleanliness, the arts, etc.) was condescending to the extreme. As is stopping people on the street and haggling about the carbon output of a jeep.

100 comments into this thread, it should be noted that we started off at a very narrow point. I support restriction private car access in the city. I think gas should be $10/gal, etc. My point is that cycling has an image problem, one created as much by cyclists as those who vilify them.

I've been harassed while riding, more out of the city than in it. I find many car drivers to be oddly infuriated by the lone cyclist when there is so much wrong with vehicle use in this country. That doesn't let us off the hook and justify being foolishly self righteous (and, trust me, I've probably dented more car doors as a pedestrian than anyone on this thread).

As much as we venerate G8 protesters, and other forms of civil demonstration, policy change has always been the most effective means to large scale change. That is why I'm an avid TA member, and let them do the talking. Given my personality, I'd be inclined to tell the state DOT that they were dirt dumb first chance I got. But that wouldn't help cycling in the city.