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Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change (Draft Oct 2012)
Part I: Science
Ch01: Introduction
Ch03: A brief history of planet Earth
Ch03: The ice ages
Ch04: The atmosphere
Ch05: Temperature and CO2
Ch06: Climate science
Part II: Impacts / Business As Usual
Ch07: CO2 projections
Ch08: Temperature (short-run, long-run)
Ch09: Water / Oceans (acidification, sea level rise) SMALL ISLANDS
Ch10: Land (precipitation, heat waves, storms, droughts, ag, etc.)
Food?
Ch11: Uncertainty, extremes, insurance. What’s the worst that could happen? Really
really bad. But surely individuals wouldn’t let that happen! Don’t be too sure...
(transition to PD/BAU/etc. Kolbert quote?)
Ch ??: Beyond 2100 (also serves as a summary of key points from Part II)
Other ideas:
Ch07: Business as usual (CO2 and temperature)
Ch08: Water (show how complicated earth system is)
Ch09: Food (add complications with adaptation &etc)
Ch10: ?? Regional impacts? One spread each for Africa/Asia/Europe/NorAmerica/
LatAmercia/Polar (?)/Islands/AustNZ But this is BORING!
Or Ch10: Uncertainty/extremes/insurance/beyond 2100?
Or Ch10: How bad could it get?
Or Ch10: Wild cards (
Adaptation?
Part III: Response (still just ideas) / Alternatives / Mitigation
Big picture: population, sources of GHG, etc
Why it’s so hard/intractable: not sure about changes, not sure about impacts of
those changes, not sure about how to deal with time dimension.
Maybe storylines about how the 21st century and beyond might play out? Also need
to cover Tragedy of the Commons &etc.
Story #1: Business as usual / TOC
Story #2: Techno-fix
Story #3: Muddling through (no BAU, no techno fix... so you have Kyoto, and
attempts for carbon pricing, energy efficiency, etc.)
Story #4: Adaptation/geoengineering [or maybe this goes in stories 1 and/or 3?]
Conclusion
Idea about tracking a single infinitely lived individual. Maybe a story #5: Optimality?
Maybe a Story #6: International agreement (no techno-fix, this is MCMAU)
Chapter 1: Introduction
p1: Introduction
p1: Two stories are going to dominate the 21st century.
p2-3: Story #1: Poverty reduction
p2-3: One story is development and poverty reduction; this is going to be great
news, and it’s all going to happen on its own (invisible hand).
p4-5: Story #2: Environmental impact
p4-5: The other story is the environmental impact of all this development, especially
climate change. This is something that the invisible hand is not going to address, and
it’s what this book is about.
p6-7: This book is about...
p6: Almost all scientists agree that human activity is changing the climate. [IPCC
quote? “Most of the observed warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due
to human activity.”]
p7: This book is about the scientific theory of climate change... [aka global warming
(“wanted” poster?)]
...and about what will happen to life on earth if that scientific theory is correct...
[impacts, ie, Part 2]
...and about what we can do about it. [policy, ie, Part 3] [what’s happening, how bad
will it be, what can we do about it?]
p8-9: Definitions and an observation
p8: A good place to start is with a few definitions...
Climate is “average weather”... [30 year periods?]
...so climate change is a change in “average weather”.
[Maybe one of the climate jokes: The difference between climate and weather is that
climate is what you expect and weather is what you get; or climate tells you what
clothes to buy and weather tells you what clothes to wear.]
p9: ...and with an observation.
Scientist #1: “Earth’s climate has never been stable. It’s always been changing.”
Kid: But if climate has always changed then why do scientists think that recent
changes are caused by humans?
Scientist: We’ll get to that in Chapter X.
p10: Transition
p10: Let’s start with a brief history of planet earth.
Chapter 2: A brief history of planet Earth
p1: Introduction
p1: “Tell me everything that’s happened so far.” “Well, first the earth cooled, and
then the dinosaurs came...” [Note: This is a line from Airplane II]
p2-3: Formation and photosynthesis
p2: The earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago... [Timeline, with 4.6 billion years
ago on the LHS and “today” on the RHS.]
...and the first life forms—single-celled organisms—appeared in the oceans about
3.5 billion years ago. [according to Vega; see also this clock]
After millions of years of evolution some of these organisms figured out
photosynthesis... [“Man, I have been working on this forever.”]
...which is the chemical reaction that allows green plants to grow. [Something about
using sunlight and water and carbon dioxide (CO2) to produce sugars and oxygen.]
p3: As we’ll see in chapter X, green plants play a key role in the carbon cycle. [CO2
out of atmosphere through photosynthesis, then CO2 back into the atmosphere
through respiration, decomposition, fire, etc.]
Starting about 2.5 billion years ago, however, green plants did something perhaps
even more important... [Maybe a Hollywood billboard with plants?]
...they slowly pumped lots of oxygen into the atmosphere. [Maybe mention that
there wasn’t any before?]
p4-5: Ozone
p4: Getting oxygen into the atmosphere was important... [“Because without oxygen I
can’t breathe!” “Shush, it’s not your turn yet!” (maybe involve the kid from Ch1?)]
...because it led to the creation of the ozone layer. [Maybe a picture of the earth,
with some ozone (O3) in the atmosphere?]
Before the ozone layer, living in the ocean was the only way to avoid deadly
ultraviolet radiation. [Maybe a “school of amoebas”, with a lecture about how
“Most of the energy coming from the sun is in the visible spectrum, but some of it is
in the dangerous ultraviolet part of the spectrum.”]
After the ozone layer, plant life—and eventually animal life—could move out of the
ocean and onto the land.
No wonder everybody got worried in the 1980s when scientists discovered a hole
in the ozone layer. (Or maybe make this the dialog in the previous frame? Depends
on space. Also depends on whether we want to try Nobel prize gags: Rowland and
Molina won the Chemistry Nobel for their work on this. Maybe something like “Be
afraid, be very afraid.” ?)
p5: The ozone hole is not closely related to global warming... [“Environmental
problems are not all the same, and you can’t solve them all by recycling.”]
...but it is valuable to compare and contrast the two issues. [“The ozone hole is
related to human emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), gases which damage the
ozone layer. Global warming is related to human emissions of carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases.”] [PS. This is an important point to make because many
people think global warming is the same as the ozone hole.]
And you should take heart from the happy ending to the ozone hole problem.
[Reagan &etc, we banned CFCs and the ozone layer is recovering. If only it was so
easy to come up with a happy ending to the problem of global warming.]
p6-7: Off to the races
p6: But let’s get back to our story. [Where were we? Oh yes, 2.5 billion years ago.]
The next 2 billion years included the evolution of multi-cellular organisms...
...and possibly one or more Snowball Earth periods when the planet was covered in
ice. [You weren’t kidding when you said that earth’s climate has always been
changing!]
...and then 500 million years ago came the Cambrian explosion. [Animals! Eyes!]
Over the next couple hundred million years the continents moved, there were major
extinction events, vertebrates appeared on land, and tiny plants and animals died
that became fossil fuels. [“We’ll be back.”]
p7: About 250 million years ago the earth’s landmasses were all bunched together
in a super-continent called Pangea...
...and dinosaurs ruled the earth... [bird brain joke?]
...until a massive asteroid impact about 65 million years ago.
p8-9: Mammals
p8: After the dinosaurs died—65 million years ago—came the age of the mammals.
[Maybe have different mammals narrating the rest of this spread? Mice, kangaroos,
bats, horses, dogs/cats, whales, sea otters, Mog/Ooga, etc.] [Show 65 million years
ago on the timeline, and probably take it out of the text above.]
During this time period the continents slowly drifted into the positions they have
today... [Continents move at about the speed that your hair or fingernails grow...
...about 100 miles every million years.]
...and species slowly evolved into the forms they have today. [maybe show the
continents drifting apart, and then show Mog/Ooga and chimpanzees drifting
apart?] [about 5 million years ago]
p9: And of course the earth’s climate continued to change. [Maybe show the timeline
again? And somewhere on this page it would be good to note that humans still aren’t
on the scene. Maybe have the kid saying “Now are there humans?” “No, not yet.”]
Over the past 2 million years the planet has cycled between relatively cold periods...
...and relatively warm periods.
Scientists call these cycles glacial and interglacial periods. [Everybody else calls
them ice ages.]
p10: Humans
p10: Anatomically modern human beings (homo sapiens) appeared in Africa about
200,000 years ago... [timeline] [ta da!]
...and before long they began to ask tough questions. [“I wonder where I can catch
some fish? I wonder how I can avoid being eaten by a tiger? I wonder what caused
the ice ages?”]
Chapter 3: The ice ages
p1: Intro
p1: Someone in downtown Seattle or Manhattan: “Go back 15,000 years and this
was under a mile of ice!”
p2-3: Ice cores
p2: Just about the only places on earth covered by a mile of ice nowadays are
Greenland and Antarctica.
Those ice sheets were built up over hundreds of thousands of years by falling snow
that got compressed into ice.
By drilling down through the ice and analyzing the air bubbles trapped in the
various layers...
...scientists can analyze the climate of planet earth over the past 800,000 years.
p3: What these ice cores reveal is that planet earth has been pretty cold for most of
the last million years... [some sort of description of ice ages]
...except that every 100,000 years or so there’s a brief interglacial warm period.
[IPCC Figure 6.3, p444? See the black graph below.]
We are currently in one of those interglacial periods, called the Holocene. It started
about 10,000 years ago.
But... what caused the cycle of glacial and interglacial periods?
p4-5: Milankovitch cycles
p4: The mystery of the ice ages was solved during the first World War by a Serbian
mathematician named Milutin Milankovitch. [This would be a lot easier if I had a
computer. Or: I was a prisoner of war, so I had a lot of free time. Or: My work was
one of the few good things that happened during WWI.]
Milankovitch studied the daily rotation of the earth around its axis...
...and the annual rotation of the earth around the sun... [we go around once every
year]
...and hypothesized that the ice ages were caused by three cyclical variations in the
earth’s orbit around the sun. [“I call them Milankovitch cycles.” Image: here]
For simplicity we’re going to focus on just one of the three variations: the tilt of the
earth.
p5: The earth does not rotate like this... [show a person standing upright, spinning
around their own axis but also rotating around an amusement park ride or
something]
...but instead it rotates like this. [show the person still rotating around the ride, and
still spinning around their own axis, but this time the angle of the spin around their
own axis is tilted (i.e., it is no longer perpendicular to the earth-sun plane ; see
pictures online here and here).]
This tilt in the earth’s axis is responsible for the seasons... [summer and winter in
the northern and southern hemispheres; note that if there were no tilt there would
be no seasons.]
p6-7: More Milankovitch cycles
p6: Milankovitch noticed that over tens of thousands of years the amount of tilt
varies from weakly tilted... [show a weak tilt (technically 22.05 degrees according
to IPCC p445): “There’s not that much difference between summer and winter.”]
[PS. Technically it’s a 44,000 year cycle, but I think providing the actual number
would be confusing.] [PPS. Maybe show a person rotating around a fireplace? Then
sometimes their head is getting too hot and sometimes their feet are getting too hot
(and their head too cold).]
...to strongly tilted... [show a strong tilt (technically 24.50 degrees according to
IPCC): “There’s a much bigger difference between summer and winter”]
...and back again. [The current tilt is 23.5 degrees [check with IPCC?] and—slowly—
decreasing.]
p7: This variation doesn’t change the total amount of solar energy that hits the
earth each year... [regardless of the tilt, the amount of sunlight hitting the earth is
always about the same]
...but it does affect the strength of the seasons... [Are summers that much warmer
than winters... ...and winters that much colder than summer?] [How much difference
is there between summer and winter?]
...and—as we’ll see on the next page—that affects the amount of solar energy that
reflects off the earth’s surface... [albedo]
...and that changes the earth’s temperature balance. [Interglacial periods every
100,000 years or so.]
p8-9: Coming out of ice ages
p8: A simplified version of the Milankovitch story... [Milankovitch: If you want the
full story you can read my 626-page book!]
...begins during a glacial period. [Remember that glacial periods dominate the
history of the past million years; maybe say “like the one that started 116,000 years
ago” per IPCC p445]
The Milankovitch cycles eventually create conditions with strong seasons...
[winters are really cold, and summers are really hot]
...and the warm summer temperatures melt some of the ice and snow.
p9: Water and land are better at absorbing sunlight than ice and snow... [albedo]
...and so more of the sun’s energy is retained on earth. [That means global
temperatures have got to go up!]
This leads to a positive feedback loop... [Warmer temperatures -> more melting ice
and snow -> more sunlight absorbed by the earth -> warmer temperatures]
...and together with other feedback loops this produces an interglacial period.
[Like the one we’re in right now!]
p10-11: Going back into ice ages
p10: Eventually, however, the Milankovitch cycles create conditions with mild
seasons. [summers aren’t that hot, and winters are still cold enough for ice and
snow at the poles]
Summers aren’t hot enough to melt all of the new ice and snow produced in the
wintertime...
...and since ice and snow reflect more sunlight than water and land...
...more of the sun’s energy is reflected back into space. [That means global
temperatures have got to go down!]
p11: The result is a destabilizing feedback loop that cools the planet... [Colder
temperatures -> more ice and snow -> more sunlight reflected into space -> colder
temperatures]
...and together with other feedback loops this brings the interglacial period to an
end and we enter a new ice age. [That’s it, party’s over.]
Given that we’re currently in an interglacial period...
...the obvious question is whether we’ll enter another glacial period anytime soon.
[Should I worry about the next ice age?]
p12: Another ice age?
p12: The answer is that, under the natural progression of the Milankovitch cycles,
we are due for another ice age... [Oh no, I better stock up on heating oil!]
...but not for at least 30,000 years. [Ah, never mind.] [See IPCC, p435: “It is virtually
certain that global temperatures during coming centuries will not be significantly
influenced by a natural orbitally induced cooling. It is very unlikely that the Earth
would naturally enter another ice age for at least 30,000 years.”]
A more immediate concern is the human influence on the climate. [About that
heating oil...]
...starting with the changes that humans are creating in the atmosphere.
Chapter 4: The atmosphere
p1: Introduction
p1: Something here. [Maybe a dance club or something with somebody saying “I
love the atmosphere here.”]
p2-3: Air
p2: What we call air is actually a mixture that is about 21% oxygen... [created by all
those photosynthesizing plants]
...and about 78% nitrogen... [“Why does oxygen get all the attention? We should have
a Nitrogen Day.”]
The remaining 1% includes water vapor... [Evaporation and the water cycle?]
...and small amounts of trace gases such as argon and carbon dioxide (CO2).
p3: In the early 1950s a chemist named Charles Keeling... [“call me Dave”]
...figured out a way to accurately measure the concentration of carbon dioxide in air.
[I can detect differences of 1 part per million.]
Starting in 1958, Keeling and his colleagues made daily measurements of CO2...
[C’mon dad, let’s go to the beach!]
...and the results made him famous. [Not rock star famous... but scientist famous /
niche famous.]
p4-5: Keeling
p4: Keeling made three discoveries. First, the concentration of CO2 is about the
same everywhere in the world. [It’s well-mixed throughout the world by the winds
(?).] [So I might as well measure it in Hawaii!] [MB: Did he discover CO2 is well
mixed? I thought that was already known. YB: I think so; see Scripps's Keeling page]
Second, there’s an annual cycle in CO2 concentrations... [a graph like the one below,
but maybe just show one year]
...[and Keeling figured out that this was] caused by the disproportionate amount of
land area—and therefore plant activity—that takes place in the northern
hemisphere. [Show a map of world and note that the southern hemisphere is almost
entirely ocean...]
p5: Starting in about April, increased photosynthesis in the northern hemisphere
sucks CO2 from the atmosphere. [Summertime! CO2 concentrations falls by about
5 ppm, the equivalent of X gigatons of CO2, or Y aircraft carriers.]
That “extra CO2” starts to make its way back into the atmosphere in about
September, thanks to processes like the decomposition of falling leaves.
Of course, fall in the northern hemisphere is spring in the southern hemisphere...
[maybe a reference to the tilt of the earth?]
...but the northern hemisphere dominates because it has so much more land area,
and therefore so much more plant activity.
p6-7: Increase over time
p6: Keeling’s third discovery was that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were
increasing over time. [Show a couple of years, like the graph above.]
Keeling’s measurements continued, year after year, decade after decade... [Maybe
show him every decade from 1960 to 2010, saying “x ppm”]
...and after his death in [2004? Or maybe his retirement] his son Ralph (?) stepped
into his shoes. [Some sort of joke about the apple not falling far from the tree, or
“like father, like son” or something.]
p7: The graph of the daily (?) measurements that they and their colleagues have
made since 1958 is called the Keeling curve... [Keeling curve]
...and it is now one of the most famous images in the world. [Maybe a museum with
the Mona Lisa and a Mondrian and the Keeling curve?]
It’s also one of the central pieces of evidence in this book. [Questions: What’s
causing the increase? What’s going to happen because of it? What can we do about
it?]
p8-9: Fossil fuels and deforestation, plus historical context
p8: Scientists are confident that increasing CO2 is closely connected to two human
activities: burning fossil fuels and deforestation.
Between them these activities add X gigatons of CO2 per year to the atmosphere.
About half of those emissions are absorbed by the oceans... [We’ll come back to this
in chapter X, on ocean acidification.]
...and about half stay in the atmosphere, pushing up the Keeling curve.
p9: Scientists have also put the Keeling curve in historical context... [What did CO2
concentrations look like before 1958?]
...for example by measuring the amount of CO2 in air bubbles trapped in ice cores.
[We learned about these on page X]
Going back 650,000 years, we see that historical CO2 concentrations over that time
period have fluctuated between about 180ppm and 280ppm. [Red graph below.]
Today’s concentrations of about 400ppm are literally off the chart in the context of
the previous 650,000 years. [“No wonder scientists talk about being in the middle of
a planetary experiment.”]
p10: More historical context
p10: Going back 650,000 years, we can also see that fluctuations in CO2 levels...
[show the chart again]
...are closely related to fluctuations in global temperatures. [Show temperature
chart.]
Changes in CO2 concentrations aren’t the driving force behind those temperature
changes... [In the last chapter we saw that glacial and interglacial periods are driven
by Milankovitch cycles plus feedback loops.]
...but CO2 does play a major role. [...and in the next chapter we’re going to see that
one of the most important feedback loops involves CO2.]
Chapter 5: Temperature and CO2
p1: Intro
p1: We know from the ice ages that earth’s climate has changed before.... ...but this
time is different. Or maybe: The planet has a fever.
p2-3: Global average temperature
p2: The global average temperature for planet earth... [currently about 14 C (IPCC
p97, FAQ 1.1)]
...is the average of air temperatures taken all around the surface of the planet over
the course of a whole year. [Maybe show globe with thermometers sticking out of
it.]
The two dominant influences on global average temperature are energy in... [from
the sun!]
...and energy out. [energy radiates out into space from the earth, just like energy
radiates out of your house on a cold night]
p3: When energy in is larger than energy out, the planet warms up... [just like your
house warms up when you turn the heater on]
...and when energy in is smaller than energy out, the planet cools down. [just like
your house cools down when you turn the heat off; show energy leaving house]
So to understand global temperature we need to understand more about energy in
and energy out!
p4-5: Energy in/out
p4: Energy in is simple: the energy that drives our planet comes from the sun. [I can
imagine a page with a lot of breathing room here, maybe with the sun saying “You’re
welcome” or a note about how xyz amount of energy enters the earth’s atmosphere
every second; maybe one of the comparisons about “the amount of energy hitting
the earth each second is equivalent to each person on earth running 60 hair dryers
for a whole year.” (I made up the 60, but I’ve seen examples like this.)]
p5: As we noted in chapter 2, energy from the sun is spread out along the
electromagnetic spectrum. [Show ultraviolet, visible, infrared, as in chapter 2;
maybe note that the UV is blocked by the ozone layer.]
This energy is mostly in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum...
...which is one reason our eyes have evolved to see light in the visible spectrum.
[Or maybe this is the place to mention something about how much solar energy hits
the earth every minute]
p6-7: More energy in/out
p6: Energy out is more complicated: It includes solar energy that is reflected into
space by clouds in the atmosphere...
...and solar energy that is reflected into space from the earth’s surface. [albedo...
about 30% reflected by ice, snow, sand, etc.] [mention ice ages?]
p7: Crucially, energy out also includes energy given off by the earth itself that
makes it into space. [image]
This outgoing radiation is in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum...
[Show infrared part of the spectrum; maybe call it blackbody radiation?]
...and is similar to the infra-red radiation given off by humans... [“That’s why we can
see people with night-vision goggles... ...and if we had really sensitive night-visions
goggles we could see the planet.”]
And that brings us to greenhouse gases.
p8-9: Greenhouse gases
p8: Greenhouse gases are gases in the atmosphere that don’t interact much with
energy in from the sun... [Most of the sun’s energy is in the visible part of the
spectrum, which doesn’t react with greenhouse gases.] [Maybe a police roadblock,
saying “Visible light? You can go right through.”]
....but do interact with energy out from planet earth. [Greenhouses gases do interact
with infrared energy, and this is the kind of energy emitted by the planet.] [Maybe a
police roadblock, saying “Infrared energy? You’re going to have to wait here.” (Or:
Please step out of the car and keep your hands where I can see them.”]
These greenhouse gases include CO2, water vapor, CH4, and some other less
important ones.
p9: By reducing the amount of energy out, greenhouse gases warm the planet. [Full
page? “It’s the greenhouse effect... kind of like how a greenhouse keeps tomatoes
warm.”]
p10-11: The natural greenhouse effect
p10: In addition to the greenhouse gases produced by human activity... [Keeling
curve]
...there are of course natural greenhouse gases. [Water vapor and CO2 (?) have been
around from the very beginning of the solar system.]
In the 1800s scientists realized that the resulting natural greenhouse effect had a
major impact on the earth’s temperature... [If we didn’t have any atmosphere—and
consequently no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere—the temperature of the earth
would be X instead of Y.]
p11: ...and today scientists know that similar greenhouse effects exist on other
planets. [Mars/Venus/moon/Jupiter (?); Yoram needs to get data from textbook to
fill in: “Without greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the surface temperature of X
would be Y; because of greenhouse gases, the actual surface temperature is Z.”]
[Maybe this is a whole page, with scientists, e.g., juggling hot-potato planets?]
p12: Arrhenius
p12: The Swedish chemist Arrhenius was the first scientist to recognize that human
activity might add to the natural greenhouse effect... [Note: Arrhenius won the Nobel
prize in Chemistry way back in the day. If we do Nobel prize jokes maybe we could
try something like “This is going to be great... especially for farmers in Sweden!”]
...and in 1896 he made the first estimate of how much global temperatures would
eventually increase if we doubled the greenhouse gas concentrations in the
atmosphere. [Maybe he’s got reams of paper and a pencil: “About 5C, 9F”]
Remarkably, his estimate came very close to the range that climate scientists talk
about today. [Maybe they’ve got all these fancy computer models: “About 2-4C, 3.67.2F”]
Chapter 6: Climate science
p1: Introduction
p1: The theory of anthropogenic global warming goes back over 100 years... but
how do we know it’s true?
p2-3: Scientific method
p2: The scientific method is based on a never-ending cycle of developing
hypotheses... [Einstein at a blackboard: E=mc3? Or maybe something about
gravity?]
...testing those theories against the real world... [Prediction: X; actual: Y. Or maybe
something about gravity? PS. Here’s a neat video (of the moon!) showing that
without atmosphere a hammer and a feather fall at the same speed.]
...and refining those hypotheses based on the data. [Maybe E=mc2?]
p3: This cycle never ends... [you mean the theory of gravity is just a theory?]
...but the scientific method is one of the most powerful tools we have for
understanding the world around us. [If you’re building a bridge then you’d be well
advised to pay attention to the theory of gravity.]
p4-5: Testing theories
p4: The ideal way to test a theory is with a controlled experiment... [Kid’s science
project with plants?]
This works well in lots of situations.... [medicine testing: “These people all have
arthiritis; we’re giving Klatza to half of them so we can see if they do better than the
other half”]
...but controlled experiments just aren’t possible in many situations, including
climate change. [we took these identical planets and doubled CO2 in one of them]
[Something about testing at a planetary level?]
p5: Another situation where controlled experimentation is impossible is smoking...
[medicine testing: “These people all have healthy lungs; we’re giving addictive
nicotine sticks to half of them so we can see what happens to their health.”]
...and in fact the analogy between climate science and smoking is worth exploring in
more detail. [Something here for the rest of the page.]
p6-7: Smoking and lung cancer
p6: Even though controlled experiments are not possible, the scientific link between
smoking and cancer is incredibly strong...
Surgeon General’s report from 1957: “[T]he weight of the evidence is increasingly
pointing in one direction: that excessive smoking is one of the causative factors in
lung cancer”
Surgeon General’s report from 1964: “Cigarette smoking is causally related to lung
cancer in men… The data for women, though less extensive, point in the same
direction.”
Surgeon General’s report from 2004: “[New research links] smoking [to] cervical
cancer, kidney cancer and periodontitis… 25 million Americans alive today will most
likely die of a smoking-related illness.”
p7: ...and a similar trend is evident in the scientific link between carbon emissions
and climate change.
IPCC 1995: “The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on
global climate.”
IPCC 2001: “There is new and stronger evidence.”
IPCC 2007: “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the
mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic
greenhouse gas concentrations.”
IPCC 2013: [Wait until AR5 comes out? Probably yes]
p8-9: Evidence
p8: Of course, as with any scientific theory, it’s possible that climate scientists are
wrong... [whoops, it turns out global warming is caused by ants]
...just like it’s possible that the surgeon general was wrong about smoking...
[whoops, it turns out that lung cancer is caused by xyz]
But scientists have been unable to identify a good competing theory... [Maybe IPCC
graph about models with and without human activity?] [Or maybe go through some
of the competing theories: Is it sunspots? No. Is it El Nino? No. Etc.]
...and the evidence has been growing stronger year by year.
p9: The most impressive evidence comes from climate scientists’ success in
predicting the future. [Scientist with crystal ball? Maybe plugged into a computer?]
[MB: In view of the fact that models are of course tuned to agree with observations,
this should be stated very carefully. This would be a good place to really explain
how the modeling works. Or begin with the fact that we can measure net energy
flow into the earth's surface and net energy flow from the surface into the ocean.
Both are positive. We can also identify and quantify manmade GHG in the
atmosphere and (from controlled experiments) we know they interact with IR
radiation. Putting this all together, we find there has to be a heat source above the
earth's surface. Its magnitude and impacts, again, within uncertainties about things
like aerosols, is consistent with the GHG concentrations and is inconsistent with
every other source that has been tried. (Put to rest the idea that the Sun has
suddenly speeded up, for instance.)]
Since 1990 (?) climate scientists have predicted global temperature increases of
about 0.2C (0.36F) per decade... [Note: In 1990, AR1 predicted about 0.3C, with a
range of 0.2-0.5. Subsequently the predictions have been about 2C by 2100 relative
to 1990 (AR2, 1995), 0.1 to 0.2C per decade (AR3, 2001), and about 0.2C per decade
(AR4, 2007). So there’s an argument to be made that “1990” should really be “1995”
or maybe even “2001”. But... I dunno.]
...and for two decades they’ve been pretty close. [Maybe something about 1990s and
2000s being the hottest decades on record? Or the NOAA graph below? Want to bet
that this will continue?]
p10: Computer models
p10: And climate scientists haven’t just been right about the big picture; they’re also
been right about lots of details. [More warming at night than during the day? Yup.
More warming near the near pole than near the equator? Yup.]
[Maybe something about climate scientists being so confident that they’re taking
bets?]
Many of these details come from computer models...
...which now do a good job of replicating everything from the climate effects of
volcanic eruptions...
...to the ice ages.
And these computer models provide the best indication of what’s coming in the
decades ahead.
[I think we definitely need to add a spread here about uncertainty, e.g., how big are
feedbacks? Maybe end with something about how sometimes the only way to find out
is to run the experiment...]
End of Part One, start of Part Two
Chapter 7: CO2 Projections / Business As Usual
Introduction
p1: A train coming down the tracks, and the train is labeled “BAU” or “Business As
Usual”. And there’s an earth on the tracks? Or scientists tied to the tracks? Or a
crystal ball? Or maybe a picture of IPCC projections?
Scenarios / storylines
p2: Now that we’ve covered the basic science of climate change...
...it’s time to take a look at what might happen. [, and what we can do about it.]
Of course, the 21st century has just started, and lots of things could happen in the
next 80 years... [We could get cheap power from cold fusion! More examples...]
...not to mention the years after 2100. [More fun/crazy examples. People could live
forever! According to the UN, human population in 2300 could grow to 36 billion or
shrink to just 2 billion. (Double-check here.)]
p3: To account for all these possibilities, climate researchers have developed a
variety of scenarios or storylines. [Kids to parent: Tell us a story! Parent: Okay,
which one do you want? A1B? A1FI? B1?]
Officially, all of these scenarios are equally likely... [We’re scientists, not fortune
tellers!] [Or a parent: I love all my children equally, I could never choose between
them.]
...but we will pay (or many researchers/analysts/observers pay) extra attention to
scenario A1FI (?) because it’s business-as-usual and/or worst-case? (I dunno... but I
think we should pick a scenario.)
[Old: This scenario is just one of many, but you can think of it as a “best guess” of
what happens if we continue on the path we’re currently on. Older: what happens if
we continue relying on fossil fuels. (This is what’s called BAU.) See also here, which
shows the data currently tracking A2.]
BAU
p4: The basic premise of business-as-usual is that the rich world... [North America,
Europe, Japan... maybe show them hiking up a path on a mountain with a sign
pointing towards “prosperity” or “GDP/capita” or some such]
...serves as a model for the poor countries in the world. [China, India, rest of Asia,
South America, Africa] (Maybe show them down below on the same mountain,
pointing to the rich world in the distance and saying “Let’s follow their path.” Maybe
visually show 4 times more people than in the “rich world” group?)
p5: These poor countries are the home of 4 out of every 5 people in the world...
[Maybe illustrate the “5 Chinas” idea that you can basically break down the world
into 5 China-sized chunks: China, India, rest of Asia, rich world (OECD), and
everybody else (Africa and South America and Russia). (Maybe show a Mercator
map of the world and label the 5 Chinas.)]
...but until recently their economies were too small to have much effect on global
CO2 use. [Something about cumulative emissions?]
But now their economies are growing fast... [We won’t be poor for long! And/or a
reference back to p2-3 of Ch1, where we talk about the big stories of this century.]
...and it’s clear that the future of climate change will be written in the developing
world.
BAU continued
p6: At the start of the 20th century fossil fuel CO2 emissions were roughly balanced
/ evenly divided between the rich world and the developing world. [Maybe a
balancing scale? And somehow show that there are 4 times more people in the
developing world. Maybe show a rich person burdened with 4 kinds of fuel—gas
can, etc—and then those same 4 divided among 4 poor people?]
If the developing world were to immediately catch up to the rich world, total
carbon emissions would increase by 150%. [Show the same 5 people above, but
now each burdened with the 4 kinds of fuel.]
Under business-as-usual, the developing world takes time to catch up... [maybe
show the hiking scene again?]
...but growth in CO2 emissions per person is still the main driver of increasing
carbon emissions in the 21st century.
p7: A second factor is that world population is likely to increase from 6 billion to 10
billion between 2000 and 2100 (or 7 to 8 billion between 2012 and 2025). (See UN
data.) [Maybe a graph showing population trends, with growth leveling out towards
the end of the century. Maybe that NYT graph that Yoram is so fond of:]
More people... each using more fossil fuels... that means more CO2 emissions.
[Maybe do some simple multiplication here: If per-person CO2 goes up from 2 to 4
and population goes up from 6 to 10 then total emissions go up by
(4/2)x(10/6)=40/12 about 3.
CO2 and concentrations
p8: Sure enough, business-as-usual scenarios show CO2 emissions from fossil fuels
increasing from about 8 GtC (=8x44/12=29GtCO2) to around 30GtCO2. [Yoram to
get better numbers here.]
About half of those emissions end up in the atmosphere... [Something about how
most of the rest ends up in the ocean, which we’ll talk about in ch X]
...and this raises CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere from 400ppm to something
around 800ppm over the course of the 21st century. [Show graph]
p9: The resulting temperature change is likely to be in the 3-5 C range. [Show graph.
Something about the uncertainties here also including uncertainty about feedbacks
&etc.]
Transition to next chapter
p10: Something here... depends on what’s in the next chapter  [Old: From the
perspective of the atmosphere, there’s a bit of good news that we haven’t mentioned
yet. [Not all of the CO2 we put into the atmosphere stays there.] About half of the
added CO2 stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years. The other half gets taken
out of the atmosphere by photosynthesis... [Remember from chapter 3 that
photosynthesis sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere.]...or gets dissolved directly into
the oceans. And that brings us to our next topic.]
Chapter 8: Water, snow, and ice (ocean acidification,
floods/droughts, SLR, melting ice, hurricanes?)
Dihydrogen monoxide? What’s the point?? The point is
that the earth system is complicated and fragile?
Introduction
p1: Something here. Fire hydrant? Or maybe just put p2 up here and nix p3? Water
is one of the simplest molecules... but the interactions between water and climate
are anything but simple.
1) More CO2 in the atmosphere means more CO2 in the oceans (ocean
acidification)
2) More heat in atmosphere means more heat in the oceans (hurricanes, sea
level rise)
3) More heat in the atmosphere means more water vapor in the atmosphere
4) More heat in the atmosphere means more evaporation
5) Changing water circulation?
6) Hotter planet -> more SLR
7) Feedbacks to climate (water vapor, Arctic albedo [and shipping])
Intro
p2: Water covers 2/3rds (?) of the earth’s surface...
...and the water cycle is central to life on earth.
p3: So it’s not surprising that many of the most important impacts of climate
change... [Maybe identify some of them, maybe on a map?]
...are those that affect the water cycle.
This chapter looks at impacts on SLR, floods/droughts, etc.
Maybe indicate that water also affect temperature, e.g., arctic albedo, water vapor
SLR
p4: Global warming will also increase sea levels, which will affect beaches... (Maybe
say something about how this means high tide will become the new low tide? Look
at book reviewed here: The World’s Beaches)
...and agriculture... (something about salt water intrusion?)
...and of course residents in low-lying areas. [storm surges?]
p5: SLR will happen primarily (?) by melting land-based ice sheets in Greenland and
Antarctica.
The physics of ice-sheet melting are quite complicated... [maybe something about
moulins lubricating the bottom of ice sheets?]
...but current estimates are that global sea levels will increase by 1-2 meters this
century. (Maybe “at most 2”? We’ll have to see what AR5 says.)
Note that some SLR happens because of thermal expansion of the oceans (just like
mercury in a thermometer expands as temperature rises), and that ice in the Arctic
doesn’t count because it’s already floating, so melting wouldn’t change sea levels.
PS. During the last ice age, global sea levels were about 120 meters lower than they
are now. [AR4 FAQ 5.1] (Maybe something about the Bering land bridge? Wikipedia
says that at the same time Britain was connected to continental Europe, etc.)
Precipitation and evaporation
p6: The water cycle involves evaporation from oceans or land and precipitation as
rain or snow. (Or: At the core of the water cycle is)
Since warmer air is able to hold more water... [“[A] well-established physical law
(the Clausius-Clapeyron relation) determines that the water-holding capacity of the
atmosphere increases by about 7% for every 1°C rise in temperature.” AR4 FAQ 3.2]
...global warming is likely to increase the amount of water in the atmosphere. [which
is important because water vapor is a greenhouse gas—see page x.]
When conditions are right for rain or snow, those events are likely to be more
intense because of
p7: Maybe compare it to the lottery??
Hadley Cell? Precipitation is likely to dry the subtropics
TBD
p8:
p9:
TBD
p10:
Chapter 10: Food
Introduction
p1: Joke here
Dairy: Cite our paper (!) and then reference increasing output per cow, maybe with
a joke about cows getting bigger or their udders getting bigger.
CO2 effect.
Water availability. Wasted water.
Wasted food.
Demand for meat.
Maybe mention that PNW lost salmon and we seem to be okay. Or east coast cod
Wine?
Subsistence farmers &etc. Move to industrial ag
Biofuels / ethanol
Aquaculture
Pests / pathogens
Arrhenius comment (from Worlds in the Making [1908], via Wikipedia): "We often
hear lamentations that the coal stored up in the earth is wasted by the present
generation without any thought of the future, and we are terrified by the awful
destruction of life and property which has followed the volcanic eruptions of our
days. We may find a kind of consolation in the consideration that here, as in every
other case, there is good mixed with the evil. By the influence of the increasing
percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with
more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the
earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at
present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind." (p63)
Biotech / GM
Rising temperatures
p2: Global warming is likely to increase sea levels in three ways.
First,
p3:
TBD
p4:
p5:
TBD
p6:
p7:
TBD
p8:
p9:
TBD
p10:
JUNK BELOW HERE
What happens in these poor countries is key because their economies are growing
fast... [We won’t be poor for long! And/or a reference back to p2-3 of Ch1, where we
talk about the big stories of this century.]
...and because they are the home of 4 out of every 5 people in the world. [Or: ...and
because 4 out of every 5 people in the world live in these countries.]
Last chapter (Summary): Earth’s climate has never been static. But lately the
changes have been largely caused by human emissions of CO2. That’s raising global
temperatures and causing ocean acidification, with potentially dire consequences.
We can take action as individuals, but we also need to take action collectively
through our national government and through international agreements.
p2: Climate models project that global temperatures will continue to rise by about
0.2C (0.36F) for the next few decades...
...and by 2 to 6C over the course of the 21st century.
That’s a pretty big range...
...so it’s important to look at the two main sources of uncertainty.
p3: Two sources of uncertainy?
Chapter X: TBD
Introduction
p1:
TBD
p2:
p3:
TBD
p4:
p5:
TBD
p6:
p7:
TBD
p8:
p9:
TBD
p10:
Projections/Transition to Part Two
p2: The impacts of climate change are surrounded by all sorts of uncertainty...
[Doubling CO2 will probably increase temperatures by 2-4C, but which is it? How
much will sea levels rise? Will humans be able to adapt?]
...but the most fundamental uncertainty of all is human activity. [How much more
CO2 are we going to pump into the atmosphere?]
p3: The 21st century has just started... ...and lots of things could happen (we can get
cheap power from cold fusion!)... ...but let’s start by looking at what happens if we
continue relying on fossil fuels. (This is what’s called BAU.)
IPAT: P
IPAT [Bathtub analogy?] We’re now at about 400ppm. The level in 2050 or 2100
will depend on how much CO2 gets added to the atmosphere... ...and on how much
CO2 gets taken out of the atmosphere.
p4:
p5:
IPAT: A
p6:
p7:
IPAT: T
p8:
p9:
Transition to ocean acidification
p10: From the perspective of the atmosphere, there’s a bit of good news that we
haven’t mentioned yet. [Not all of the CO2 we put into the atmosphere stays there.]
About half of the added CO2 stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years. The
other half gets taken out of the atmosphere by photosynthesis... [Remember from
chapter 3 that photosynthesis sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere.]...or gets dissolved
directly into the oceans. And that brings us to our next topic.