Greenhouse Warming

Abatement and Adaptation

Norman J. Rosenberg, William E. Easterling III, Pierre R. Crosson, Joel Darmstadter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317332503
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Originally published in 1989, Greenhouse Warming combines papers presented at a workshop held in 1987 to discuss climate change. This study identifies ways that climate impacts upon agriculture, forestry and water resources in order to advise on safeguarding against drought, flood and extreme cold as well as what policies can be implemented to adapt to the probable physical and socioeconomic impacts of climate change. This study will be of interest to students of environmental studies.

1

Introduction

The Editors

On June 14 and 15, 1988, Resources for the Future conducted a workshop called Controlling and Adapting to Greenhouse Warming. The workshop was held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., at a time of year when its citizens ruefully prepare for the departure of the normally pleasant spring and the onset of the normally oppressive summer. The summer of 1988 turned out (perhaps with the help of the greenhouse effect?) to be even hotter than usual, both climatically and politically—but more on that later.

Resources for the Future’s sponsorship of the workshop was augmented by contributions from a number of agencies of the federal government: the National Climate Program Office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Carbon Dioxide Research Division of the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study (IFIAS) was also a cosponsor.

The purpose of the workshop was to provide a forum for natural and social scientists—individually and in teams—to review opportunities for controlling and/or diminishing the rate of greenhouse gas emissions and their accumulation in the atmosphere, and opportunities for adjustment to whatever degree of warming is unavoidable.

An audience of about 150 academics, U.S. and Canadian officials, representatives of major industries, consultants, and members of nongovernmental research and advocacy groups participated in discussions of the formal papers and responded to comments made by a panel of distinguished individuals with broad experience in research, government, and environmental policy.

This volume is a compilation of papers presented at the workshop. At the time of the workshop most of the papers were in rough draft. The versions printed here as chapters contain considerably more detail than could be presented at the workshop. The papers have been heavily edited and revised since they were first presented, and have been subjected to extensive review within Resources for the Future. In editing the papers we have tried to minimize duplication wherever possible, to add the requisite scientific detail so that our readers need take none of the statements on faith alone, and to annotate the papers so that both the lay reader and the specialist are directed to the primary sources of information used by the authors.

The chapters in the volume follow almost precisely the order in which the papers were presented at the workshop. They are divided into three parts: Background (chapters 2 through 6), Natural Resource Sectors (chapters 7 through 10), and Perspectives (chapters 11 through 14).

Leading off part I, chapter 2 by Stephen H. Schneider and Norman J. Rosenberg summarizes the current state of knowledge and the uncertainties regarding the greenhouse effect, its physical mechanisms, and its climatic implications. The authors also describe what is known concerning the direct effects of the rising carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration in the atmosphere on plant growth and water use.

In chapter 3 Joel Darmstadter and Jae Edmonds deal with the relationship between economic development and greenhouse gas emissions. Adapting the findings of an economic-energy CO₂ model, they present a reference-case projection of global CO₂ emissions by the year 2050. In addition, they examine critically two alternative scenarios—one that would maintain emissions at the current rate and one at half that rate—and discuss some of the vital questions raised in pursuing such low CO₂ futures: problems of interfuel substitution, exploitation of conservation potentials, policy initiatives, and institutional changes.

In chapter 4 Gjerrit P. Hekstra explains the physical linkages between greenhouse warming, climatic change, and sea-level rise. He reports on the wide range of rise that analysts have predicted, on the consequences for coastal ecosystems, agriculture, and other enterprises, and on the demographic, economic, and social impacts that may follow. Hekstra proposes policies for adaptation to sea-level rise should it become necessary.

Chapter 5 by Pierre R. Crosson addresses the question of how governments and the international community will decide how much global warming is too much and considers the obstacles to an international agreement to enforce the limit. In chapter 6 Paul R. Portney examines the greenhouse warming issue by using analogies and contrasts with environmental health problems that are usually studied in the framework of risk assessment and risk management.

The second set of papers, grouped under Natural Resource Sectors, includes four chapters, each one dealing with the possible consequences of greenhouse warming on a particular natural resource sector. William E. Easterling III, Martin L. Parry, and Pierre R. Crosson deal in chapter 7 with impacts of climate change on agriculture and possible responses thereto, stressing that future world agriculture must be considered in all its complexity and diversity—from the highly mechanized, capitalized, and informationbased operation of the most advanced farmers to the smallscale, labor-intensive, risk-averse agriculture in developing countries. They explore as well how farmers’ future regional comparative advantages will be determined by the pace and extent of climate changes, the rate at which adaptations can be made, and the manner in which environmental costs are handled on farms.

In chapter 8 Roger A. Sedjo and Allen M. Solomon examine the potential effects of greenhouse-induced climate change on forests. They also consider the many complex issues that must be addressed before massive afforestation can be used as a tool to reduce the accumulation of CO₂ in the atmosphere in order to moderate the rate of climate change. One emphasis is on managed forests.

In chapter 9 Sandra S. Batie and Herman H. Shugart deal with the vulnerabilities of unmanaged forests and other unmanaged ecosystems to the effects of a changed climate. They note that deriving policies to protect these systems against climate change is particularly challenging because many of the social values the systems provide are difficult to quantify (as is species diversity, for example) and raise difficult issues of intergenerational equity. Consequently, for these systems traditional benefit-cost analysis is not appropriate as a management tool. Batie and Shugart nonetheless emphasize that the economic way of thinking can provide valuable guidelines for policies to protect these systems. As an alternative to benefit-cost analysis, they propose a “safe minimum standard” approach as a basis for developing policy.

Kenneth D. Frederick and Peter H. Gleick, in chapter 10, discuss the impacts on regional hydrology that could result from greenhouse-induced climate change, and the alternatives for dealing with these impacts. They consider four broad approaches for adapting to climate-induced changes in water supplies: development of new infrastructure for storing and transporting water, improved management of existing facilities, demand management (including water pricing and marketing), and technological change.

In the final set of papers, called Perspectives, N. S. Jodha examines how developing countries perceive the greenhouse warming-climate change issue and its relevance to the many urgent problems these countries now face. He argues in chapter 11 that the unique vulnerabilities of such countries, and experience in dealing with those vulnerabilities, might enable these nations to adapt to future climate change more readily, in some ways, than the developed countries.

Ian Burton in chapter 12 puts the climate change issue in the context of those events and phenomena now transforming our planet that the scientific community calls global change—acid precipitation, deforestation, desertification, diminishing biodiversity, and others. Climate change is only one of this set; yet climate change may be affected by all of these earth-transforming processes and may in turn affect them. Burton describes a program now being developed, and centered in the social sciences, whose objective is an understanding of the human dimensions of global change.

In chapter 13 Roger R. Revelle’s broad perspective provides additional commentary on the questions of abatement and adaptation. In the course of his discussion he returns to issues and uncertainties raised in earlier chapters. On the abatement question, he emphasizes the great uncertainties remaining about the role of the ocean as a carbon sink and as a factor determining global atmospheric circulation. He also explores the possible expansion of the boreal forest in response to spontaneous warming in the high latitudes as another effect that might reduce the rate and extent of CO₂ accumulation in the atmosphere. Revelle deals also with the impacts of climate change on the need for irrigation in the United States, and provides additional thoughts on adaptation in the developing countries.

Chapter 14 summarizes comments made by a panel reacting to the papers presented at the workshop, and introduces other ideas on the questions of abatement and adaptation. The panel was chaired by Chester L. Cooper and included D. Gale Johnson, Michael Oppenheimer, Milton Russell, and Robert W. Fri. In his report, Cooper ties together the panel presentations, the discussion they engendered, and the formal papers to highlight policy issues surrounding the abatement-adaptation debate.

The reader will find, not only in chapter 14 but throughout this volume, that a wide range of informed, yet divergent and even conflicting, views are expressed. A full airing of these views—unanimous or not—is our purpose.

Nearly a year will have passed between the workshop and the publication of this book of proceedings. But given the need for coordination of subject matter, the review process, technical and stylistic editing, and all the other complicated steps involved in publication, only a slap-dash volume could have been produced much faster. We knew when we chose this publication process that the greenhouse issue was hot and getting hotter and that some of the views expressed and positions taken at the workshop might be altered by subsequent events. None of us would have predicted, however, the tremendous surge in public attention to the greenhouse issue that this past year has witnessed. The surge was due in part to a reaction to the hot summer of 1988 in North America; to the severe drought in the northern plains states and the corn belt; to a prominent scientist’s declaration that the emergence of the greenhouse warming signal from the normal “noise” of climatic variation is a near certainty (Hansen, 1988); to the declaration by the Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere (also in June 1988) that “humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war” (Conference on the Changing Atmosphere, 1988); and to the call at this same meeting for a 20 percent reduction in fossil fuel emissions of CO₂ by 2005 and further reductions in subsequent years. Public interest has been further fueled by (or perhaps reflected in) the introduction in the 100th U.S. Congress of S. 2667—the National Energy Policy Act of 1988–and a similar bill in the House of Representatives, aimed at steering the United States and other nations in directions pointed out by the report of the Brundtland Commission (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) and the Toronto Conference Statement. While no action was taken on S. 2667 in 1988, the bill has been reintroduced as S. 305 in the 101st Congress.

In view of all the ensuing activity, how relevant is this proceedings volume one year after the workshop? Is it likely to remain relevant for some time to come? Only the reader can judge this objectively. At least five critical issues were addressed at our workshop: Will greenhouse warming actually happen? If so, what will be its regional consequences? How do we decide how much warming is too much, and what options exist for abating or delaying it and for adapting to it if necessary? What are the policy steps needed to facilitate abatement and adaptation? What are the impediments to development of needed policies?

According to a recent report (Kerr, 1989), 1988 was the year of greatest global surface mean temperature on record. So perhaps the first question is being answered. However, according to a different source (Hanson et al., 1989), the temperature record of at least the contiguous United States from 1895 to 1987 shows no evidence of mean surface warming. Beyond that, there are concerns that the data used in calculating trends in global mean surface temperature may be flawed, for a number of reasons. Among them is the “urban heat island” effect, whereby the growth of population centers around weather stations has raised temperatures for reasons unrelated to greenhouse warming (see Karl et al., 1988; Jones et al., 1989). We must assume that the jury is still out on whether or not the greenhouse effect is already manifest. Nonetheless, the workshop was, and this book is, predicated on the assumption that if emissions of radiatively active trace gases continue at current or accelerated rates, or even at somewhat lower rates than today, greenhouse warming will increase and climate will change. Endorsement of this view by the electronic and print media and by environmental activists, legislators, and others does not necessarily weaken that assumption.

On the second question, our understanding of the regional climatic consequences of greenhouse gas emissions is not significantly better at this writing than it was in June 1988. Schneider and Rosenberg, in chapter 2, report that the best judgment of experts is that real progress in finding answers to this question may take another ten to fifty years of intensive research.

In October 1988 the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme convened an organizational meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This new entity is charged with assessing the state of scientific knowledge of climate change and its impacts, and of the full range of responses needed to diminish the rate and extent of change and to adapt as necessary to unavoidable change. A number of other national and regional efforts are now under way with essentially the same objectives.

The issues dealt with in these proceedings—options for abatement and adaptation, policies needed to facilitate abatement and adaptation, and impediments to development of such policies—are just those with which these intensified assessment efforts must deal. We hope that our work contributes part of what is needed for these efforts to succeed.

REFERENCES

Conference on the Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security. 1988. Conference Statement, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, June 27–30.

Hansen, James E. 1988. “The Greenhouse Effect: Its Impacts on Current Global Temperature and Regional Heat Waves.” Testimony before the U...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Resources
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Contributors
• Note from the editors
• 1 Introduction The Editors
• Part I Background
• 2 The Greenhouse Effect: Its Causes, Possible Impacts, and Associated Uncertainties
• 3 Human Development and Carbon Dioxide Emissions: The Current Picture and the Long-Term Prospects
• 4 Sea-Level Rise: Regional Consequences and Responses
• 5 Climate Change: Problems of Limits and Policy Responses
• 6 Assessing and Managing the Risks of Climate Change
• Part II Natural Resource Sectors
• 7 Adapting Future Agriculture to Changes in Climate
• 8 Climate and Forests
• 9 The Biological Consequences of Climate Changes: An Ecological and Economic Assessment
• 10 Water Resources and Climate Change
• Part III Perspectives
• 11 Potential Strategies for Adapting to Greenhouse Warming: Perspectives from the Developing World
• 12 Human Dimensions of Global Change: Toward a Research Agenda
• 13 Thoughts on Abatement and Adaptation
• 14 Epilogue