A blogger once said that only the ideologically-driven anti-science disinformers never admit to error, since their job is to make errors on purpose. Okay, that was me, but still.
In truth, most people rarely if ever admit to major errors. So it seemed to me that Leap Day would be a good day to run through my biggest mistakes.
I’m not going focus on the many, many small mistakes that are inevitable for anyone who blogs daily and has written literally millions of words on this subject. I work to admit and correct those mistakes as quickly as possible – see my post about whether you should cancel your subscription to the New York Times.
I do think Climate Progress presents the science more accurately and with fewer errors than the vast majority of the MSM — especially since errors include quoting people whose job it is to make errors on purpose.
I’ll end with my biggest blogging mistake, but let me start again with my biggest climate science mistake.
I have consistently underestimated the timing and speed of climate impacts and the level of greenhouse gas emissions that would likely cause catastrophic warming. In the 1990s, I was mostly a 3°C or 550 ppm guy. In fact, looking at my 2004 book, The Hype About Hydrogen, I now see that it actually floated a scenario in which “in 2037, the the National Academy of Sciences’ Panel on Abrupt Climate Change, noting that the 3 previous years were a full 1°F warmer than the past decade, urges CO2 stabilization at 650 ppmv within 50 years.” Ouch.
Here’s how I corrected that mistake: After my brother lost his home in Hurricane Katrina, I spent a lot of time attending seminars by the top climate scientists, talking to as many as possible, and reviewing as much of the scientific literature as I could. That’s when I realized the situation was considerably more dire than I or 99% of the public and opinion-makers realized — and that climate scientists were doing a lousy job of communicating that fact. Six years later, the situation is still considerably more dire than, oh, at least 95% of the public and opinion-makers realize, but at least my understanding of climate is more grounded in the latest science (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces“).
Of course, now I’m a 450 ppm guy and I still may be too high! It’s also worth noting that because of our better understanding of carbon cycle feedbacks, the cumulative CO2 that humans can afford to emit to stabilize at any temperature level is considerably lower than we thought just 5 years ago (see “Hidden Bombshell in the IPCC Fourth Assessment“). So we need to act ASAP.
In that regard, my biggest political error in judgment was to believe President Obama (and his uniquely knowledgeable climate team) would be willing and able to actually pass a serious climate bill. All I can say in my defense is I wasn’t alone. Obama’s lameness on this issue is not the primary reason we didn’t get climate action — the disinformers and their political allies as well as the media deserve 90% of the blame, as I’ve said many times. Could Obama have succeeded if he had really tried? I do believe there was a meaningful bill that could have passed had Obama made it a priority, but we will obviously never know the answer.
I shouldn’t leave out my biggest mistake at the Department of Energy — my strong support for the hydrogen and transportation fuel cell program.
At the start of the Clinton Administration, funding for those two efforts were miniscule and small, respectively. Within days of my arrival at DOE in 1993, I was briefed on Los Alamos National Laboratory’s work slashing the cost of the fuel cell most likely to work in a vehicle, the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell. President Clinton’s entire team was very supportive of R&D for all of clean energy and fuel-efficient technologies, including PEMs. Funding for hybrid vehicles, including fuel cells, with significantly increased. So, too, was funding for hydrogen R&D.
In mid-1995, I moved to the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. I was principal deputy assistant secretary, the number 2 slot, in charge of all budget and technology analysis. In that capacity I was able to work with other fuel-cell advocates in and out of the administration to keep the PEM fuel-cell budget creeping upward even as the entire budget for the office was cut 20% by the 1995 Gingrich Congress that just hated all clean energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment. Plus ca change.
What many people may not know is that US automakers wanted to focus on R&D with near-term payoffs and thus were not supportive of increases in long-term research on PEM fuel cells, especially once budgets became tight. Also, many fossil fuel companies–including those in the natural gas industry–were equally unsupportive of PEM fuel cell research.
Had I not weighed in repeatedly to preserve the PEM budget, it probably would have been raided and gutted. In retrospect, that might have spared us hundreds of millions of dollars and a major misdirection of effort for a decade when President Bush embraced and vastly expanded the effort.
In my defense, I will say that at the time, we were pursuing onboard reforming of gasoline into hydrogen, which would have obviated the need for significant onboard storage of hydrogen — a major problem, even today — and it obviated the need for a whole new fueling infrastructure — arguably the still-unsolved fatal problem. Only after I left DOE did they abandon onboard reforming because it proved impractical. I also didn’t fully realize when I was at DOE just how intractable the problem of building a hydrogen infrastructure was.
Once I figured that all out, though I did my best to set the record straight with my book, The Hype About Hydrogen. You can read a summary of my conclusion in the 2005 journal article, “The car and fuel of the future” (see also “Hydrogen fuel cell cars are a dead end from a technological, practical, and climate perspective“).
Finally, my biggest mistake in blogging has probably been too much blogging about other bloggers, especially those unaffiliated with major media outlets. It was incredibly easy to get caught up in a back and forth with other bloggers, especially when I was a newbie. It took me a long time — too long — to stop wasting so much time and space on this blog dealing with nonsense from people that aren’t worth the time because they have relatively little traffic and/or the traffic they do have is largely unpersuadable. This is especially true of the hard-core denial sites, but also many confusionists.
In fact, CAPAF commissioned a study a couple of years ago and found that the disinformers were only reaching the already disinformed. They are mostly talking to themselves, unlike Climate Progress, which even then had a very broad audience. So I have been trying, mostly successfully I think, to stop responding to those folks — indeed, to generally stop reading them. I will admit to the occasional lapse.
I do draw a distinction between the disinformers and confusionists when they blog and the disinformers/confusionists when they get the major media to quote or print their nonsense. That still needs debunking because it reaches so many more people across the political spectrum. I will continue my focus on media criticism — and that includes the highly trafficked and influential blogger-journalists for the major media outlets.
As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome — especially since you probably won’t see a post like this until next leap year!
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“I have consistently underestimated the timing and speed of climate impacts and the level of greenhouse gas emissions that would likely cause catastrophic warming. ”
In with lots of good company there!
” especially since you probably won’t see a post like this until next leap year!”
Will the internet be around in the next 4yrs.? Close call.
After hearing that 3C plus global temp was as far back as 3 million years ago, I dont think it will manage 2 leap years myself.
You certainly have done an exemplary job Joe, but people just dont want to know. Its just too scary, difficult and painful to contemplate and act on for most.
The wisest people are those who know more than most, but who also appreciate how little they actually know.
Any admission of a mistake, turns it into an education. I wish others could learn from you.
Thanks for all that you do.
Let me add my thanks to Joe for his work here and his openness about the sordid and slovenly history of his writing. (Yes, that’s joke, I point out for the benefit of the humor impaired. And no, you don’t know who you are.)
I read “Hype about Hydrogen” right after it was published, and it was my introduction to his work. He is still the only writer I’ve seen make the point that the high electricity cost of supplying hydrogen is a very big deal because we’ll be hard pressed to clean up our electricity supply regardless of how we fuel vehicles, and will have to get the greatest mileage possible, both literally and figuratively, out of our clean electrons.
That has always struck me as exactly the kind of system-level thinking we desperately need more of in dealing with our mass of interlocking sustainability problems.
Yes, I notice you are spending less time blogging about other bloggers than you used to.
Good job!
And thanks for the insightful look back.
So the hypocrisy of the media for hire finally got so extreme that I had to hit the eject button and managed to parachute down to an island paradise. And then to my surprise the manager of the island came out with a tray of refreshments and apologized that a couple of the hedges weren’t trimmed…
All I can say is, “I’m just grateful to have landed on solid ground.”
No-one is perfect. You’ve done a lot to spread the word and that is commendable.
All that said, 450 ppm long term is terrible. If you look at paleoclimate data, 450 ppm is an ice-free world that is 4-6 degrees C warmer once all the feedbacks kick in. Let’s pray the paleo-climate data is wrong…
For my part, I’m a 350 ppm guy. Things are scary for me now. This winter wasn’t really winter here. You had an extended fall leading directly into early spring. Tornadoes in January and February. Standing alone, you could blame it on the weather and just call it an anomaly. But in the context of all the the strange weather over the past year in the US and around the world, it really does look like things are getting bad now.
Thank you Joe for your incredibly hard work, this look back and calling out what you feel you were some errors – a very brave thing to do.
Onward…
BTW there’s a sentence that says “Plus ca change.” – I’m not getting the meaning of that (guessing it was the CA mandate), anyone care to fill me in?
Sasparilla — The French adage, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (often abbreviated to “plus ça change ….”), is usually translated as, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
I think you’re a bit unfair on yourself saying you’re a 450ppm guy. Recalling a few pieces you wrote that I’ve read, my reading was that you fully understand and hear Hansen’s 300-350ppm but are for political tactics, calling for 450ppm to be the limit now, with an understanding that if or when (and let’s hope for a “when” ! and the sooner the better..!) we get there, that it will be time to re-examine and confirm (or strengthen or modify) that 300-350ppm and if that has not changed from what science learned in the interim, then to go for such lower targets. While I’m not 100% sure of my own ‘tactical position’ the above seems to be at least a reasonable tactical(in debate rhetoric) or short/medium term strategic goal…reasonable..
E.D.
(those who won’t know what this “300-350ppm” is about, after all the (admirable!) repetition of “350ppm” it’s from an original Hansen paper…he gave a range…350 was a number in that range…I might not have the range exactly right, I’ll have to recheck, but I _do_ know that his range (of how low is needed to be safe from disasters) included numbers, in that range that were _lower_ than that 350 we quote so often)
Paraphrasing Hansen: I believe he said 350 ppm or less in order to preserve a planet that resembles the one we and all other species (flora and fauna) have adapted to since the end of the last ice age.
There was an actual number in the Hansen paper I saw…Its been a couple of years so I can’t recall…it was either a range like “300-350″ or “325 +/- 25″ or something which, bottom line: gave a range for what might be safe and that range included numbers _less_ than 350. So it mightb be 300 or 325 ppm we need to aim for.
But shorter term getting stablization at and a start for reduction from, 450ppm is a good first step…we should just keep going lower after that..using the best science we have at that date (or as that date approaches)
Right now we’re headed for 400pm by 2015 or 2016 or so..and increasing quickly thereafter..
Last week at Mauna Loa the CO2 ppm reached 394.73, higher already that last year’s
seasonal high of 394.35 June 30 just as the northern hemisphere’s lungs were beginning to fill, eventually reducing the count to last November’s 390.11 ppm.
http://co2now.org/Current-CO2/CO2-Now/weekly-data-atmospheric-co2.html
Found a reference! look here:
http://target300.org/1hansenarticle.html
As you can see, Hansen points directly at 325 or even 300ppm.
Really, you’re a 450ppm? I had no idea, but I’d like you to reconsider. Can you scientifically justify that position given the available data? I’d like to see a post on that. And if you consider it a “political position” then I think you should reconsider. We’ll never get what the planet needs to be healthy if we aren’t upfront and honest about what it needs. Hiding reality is detrimental to our message and more than that to our vision of a healthy society. Truth is always important.
The maximum safe level of CO2 is not a known figure, let alone the “define safe” question. There are some significant caveats to the answer.
Virtually all climate scientists would consider the trajectory we are on as very foolish. Most would consider our current level too high already.
James Hansen’s 350ppm was not what he considered to be guaranteed to be safe but the maximum that might be safe. That is a long term figure, short term above that is not instant doom but a trend that should be reversed.
My wild guess at a desirable level is about 310 to 320ppm. Not scientifically derived, just based a few wiggles in some graphs. In any case a figure that we will never see again, probably is not relevant to the debate.
Joe may not like letting go of his 450ppm figure but as the evidence comes in his tune changes.
Rabid, your intuition is pretty good, see here:
http://target300.org/1hansenarticle.html
As you can see, Hansen points directly at 325 or even 300ppm.
Reply
Thanks a lot Joe. Great post. It takes a lot of courage to deal with mistakes, and go on. You have my respect.
Hindsight may seem 20/20, but from another perspective further ahead even looking back and being distracted could be worse error.
As a matter of fact I think its ok to accept we are probably wrong all the time with respect to some more inclusive perspective. And the bigger and more complex the decision the more wrong it probably is. Being reasonable, recognizing choice, employing self correction and getting it more real/true from another valid perspective is that much more important of an achievement! Actually in terms of biological consciousness in this universe its probably the only real standard of achievement there is.
In things like supporting the Obama administration – I dont get why that bothers you. What choice to view outside that perspective that was a more real/true option did any of us have? As we learned it can really always be much, much worse.
From multiple perspectives he’s probably not so bad most of the time. [NOW That has to be the worst campaign slogan ever!!]
Joe:
Big of you to post this. But in truth, you’ve been right about more for longer than just about anyone in this field.
Peter Seligman — a psychologist who studies optimism and happiness and one you introduced me to, had this to say about forecasting the future. Optimists are better at all facets of life, save one: accurately predicting he future.
As a doom and gloomer, I believe 350 ppm is the most we can bear for any length of time. Actually, it’s not just doom and gloom — my training as a geologist, rusty as it is, reminds me that perturbations in the carbon balance on the scale at which we are introducing them (actually the speed, if not the magnitude, of carbon releases is unprecedented in the geologic record) has consistently set off positive feedbacks and corollary changes that have caused damage far beyond anything we now project.
So, my guess is next February 29th we’ll all be 350ppmers.
Unfortunately, on our current path, the scenario from your 2004 book looks like the most probable. And even stabilizing at 650ppm looks like an insurmountable task.
These figures are all pretty depressing though. Even stopping at 2-3C of warming will result in a world vastly different from the one today. We’re already seeing drastic changes today, and that’s from less than 1C of warming. Just look at the arctic — it is clear that soon there will no longer be year-round sea ice coverage (certainly well within our lifetimes, and perhaps even before the end of this decade if things continue spiraling out of control).
On an aside, being the nerd and weather geek that I am, I once went back and looked through old climatological and phenological data from around the country from the 1800s and early 1900s. It was clear to me that the climate has already changed markedly, which of course is well depicted by the temperature records from GISS, HadCRUT, and BEST. But it was also clear that spring would arrive much later and autumn sooner from the phenological records. I think if someone could invent a time machine that would cure a lot of global warming denial.
The problem is our perception of normal has already been affected by the changes that have occurred. Nobody alive today has any experience other than that of a globally warmed earth. Just think back to this summer when they revised the normals for much of the country up 1 to 2 degrees, or when they revised the plant hardiness zones last month. Many places saw a one-half category increase (and, at least in my area, they are already being rendered obsolete, as 3 of the last 5 years were a half-category above the revised figures).
But I digress… the point I’m trying to make is really just to underscore how large the impact from our global warming pollution has already been. And that even a warming of 2C, which although it may avert the most drastic of consequences to human health and welfare, is far from ideal.
A guess at my main mistakes:
1) Forgetting my sense of humor;
2) Forgetting that we make these efforts for love — love of our fellow humans;
3) Forgetting to thank Joe and others for their work.
Thanks, Joe. And thanks to clean energy hawks everywhere.
I second all three of those, for they and many more are my mistakes as well.
Joe, first let me say that your open and honest admission of mistakes is a tremendous testament to your character. You have my utmost respect.
Regarding safe CO2 levels, are you considering a new, lower target? Given that all of the previous scientific scenarios and predictions have erred on the optimistic side, and the evidence of feedback effects already starting up, I question whether any achievable level of CO2 is sufficient to prevent catastrophic climate change. I still think we have to do the best we can, to buy humanity time to prepare for what is to come.
Speaking of which, I think the sooner we fully acknowledge the severity of the changes that are already “in the pipeline”, the better we will be able to deal with the consequences. Perhaps you can focus at least some of your articles on the theme of “full disclosure” of inevitable consequences, even as you continue to promote “best efforts” to minimize further acceleration of climate change, with the realistic goal of “buying time” for preparation and adaptation.
Thanks again for the most useful and informative blog from the intersection of environment and politics.
It’s ok Joe, I didn’t come up with the solution either.
Good ideas maybe, but problem is still there.
Of course that the Earth will become ice free in summer is evidence that the world reacts as it should.
People reacting as we should? Newer mind let’s just go get more nice dishes no need wasting time washing those dirty ones.
Speaking of new dishes, seems that new ones come with the veggies at the store. Those little foam trays will work fine as new dishes every day.
You are an honest soul Joe and I thank you for it, but you are a product of your culture. Your statement “most people rarely if ever admit to major errors” is culture and situation specific. It applies only to people who live in cultures that are organized into dominant hierarchies where those above have the right to tell those below what to do and how to do it, i.e. with unequal status.
When organized into dominant hierarchies as USA society is, of course people will not admit their mistakes – it will mean punishment or excommunication from the majority into a minority group – resulting in a segmentation of the population into warring groups.
When people are organized cooperatively and work day to day in self managing groups which work to achieve agreed goals, not only are there fewer mistakes, but people also discuss those that occur with good humour, in the pursuit of sorting out how to prevent them in the future so that they can achieve their common goals.
Everybody makes mistakes: it is the culture in which they are made that makes the difference, ME
Which countries get people to admit their mistakes in public more? Britain? German? Japan? China?
Sorry I was somewhat unclear Joe but I was writing about cultures not nation states. None of the nations you mention, and I would add to the list my own, Australia, is very good at admitting mistakes because in them and in the global majority system of which they are a part, mistakes are a symptom of weakness and failure and. therefore, cannon fodder.
As Stafford Beer showed many years ago (1972 from memory), in dominant hierarchies, errors are amplified. In a global adversarial system, therefore, mistakes, errors, are used as weapons in the same way as they are used in our representative political systems. And today, we also have the media, primarily the tool of the elites, acting as a further device for the amplification of error while simultaneously using it as a weapon to destroy the credibility of the ‘enemy’.
Beer’s analysis also showed that when people are organized as equals, mistakes are attenuated and rapidly disappear out of the system – they are corrected.
My personal experience with Aboriginal Australians and some N. American First nations, and my professional experience with helping organizations and communities become participative rather than representative democracies, totally confirms Beer’s findings. All this work has been published.
In cooperative cultures, mistakes are no longer the figure, they are merely part of the ground, the process of working towards agreed common goals, ME
Joe — You’re a “450ppm guy”?? …You really think stabilization at 450ppm is desirable (given Hansen’s work) or possible (given positive feedbacks that will have been initiated by that point)?!
Well, the ship sailed on 350 ppm. Can’t put that genie back in the bottle.
Granted, but that doesn’t mean we then settle for 450 ppm if that would turn out to be a death sentence — which Hansen suggests.
There’s no easy way out here — only very painful ones. I’m of the opinion that we need to take a much more painful ‘medicine’ (i.e. collapse) than you suggest in your posts. (http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-06-17/deus-ex-machina-will-economic-collapse-save-us-climate-catastrophe)
That said, your blog rocks & your work is MUCH appreciated.
Hay, we can get back to 350 in only a few thousand years! What are you – a Flip-Flopper??
I’m not ready to rule out going back down to 350 ppm. With land/ocean sinks absorbing half of human CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations rising at 2 ppm/year, humans are emitting the equivalent of 4 ppm atmospheric concentration per year. If we reduce human emissions to zero, the atmospheric concentration should decline at a rate of 2 ppm/year. At a linear rate, we’d be back down to 350 ppm in 20 years. Allow for non-linearity and 40 years becomes more realistic. Of course, this assumes positive feedbacks don’t grow faster than human emissions are reduced.
In any case, I’m starting to think an atmospheric CO2 concentration target is not as meaningful as it used to be, since it is doubtful that concentrations can be stabilized at any level from where we are today.
Instead, we should target a goal of net-zero emissions, but also work on preparing for the inevitable consequences that are already “in the pipeline”.
First off, going to zero (including ALL GHGs and deforestation) is hard. Second, it won’t drop 2 ppm/year.
Hi Joe.
Great blog I read everything you put up. My money is on your next leap year post mistake is you saying you are a 450 ppm man in this post. (cant quite believe you on that)
I have been digging deep into the Arctic Methane Emergency Groups data and findings their conclusions and evidence to date is a real cause for concern. Suggesting that 390 ppm is already too high for any sort of safety. See http://www.ameg.me I would love to have someone produce some solid evidence as to why they are wrong.
It will be interesting to follow the Arctic sea ice volume, area and atmospheric methane figures over the next 24 months.
Just a shame that we are all in the test tube as this add carbon to the atmosphere experiment is conducted!
AMEG will be giving evidence to the UK parliament All Party Committee on Climate Change on the 13th March – it will be interesting to see how the committee reacts.
With many thanks for all your great work.
Bru Pearce
Your words here have been both cogent and heroic, Joe, and I echo others’ thanks.
Change may happen when there’s a crack on the Republican side, and not just among the few remaining moderates. Sooner or later one of them will stumble on the facts, and his conscience will overcome the whole rot of the right in this country.
Of course, that’s one of my main faults- I’m a dreamer.
This blog was my original port of entry to all things climate so I can’t thank you enough Joe, not just for writing the most outstanding educational resource on the web but for fostering an entire supportive community of climate realists – several of whom I’ve since had the tremendous pleasure of meeting personally and forming deep friendships.
I think you are right to not be caught up in the endless back and forth with deniers…sometimes I look at the comments on other blogs and think that when we waste our time and effort arguing with the trolls, they’ve won, because it takes away from focussing on what really needs to be accomplished.
As far as mistakes, I think pretty much the entire scientific and activist community is making a mistake by pandering to the deniers. I posed the following question to a group of activists who were discussing a recent poll indicating that the more educated Republicans are, the more likely they are to be deniers, and got no response at all:
My experience with deniers is that the first question they have is, okay, if burning fuel is causing climate change, what are you going to replace it with? When they’re told that it can be replaced with wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, etc. they just don’t believe it.
So, they get very suspicious of the entire enterprise, and throw the concept that we are changing the climate out the window completely, because they can’t imagine life without their toys.
In this sense they are quite correct. If we are going to stop using dirty fuels to an extent that would slow climate change, it would require enormous reduction in lifestyle, particularly for westerners. Sacrifice. No more plane trips, for starters. No more giant tankers transporting global trade.
If the big green groups never start to be honest about the need to completely reinvent society organized around localized sustainable groups in a much simpler existence, I think we’ll all – whether climate hawks and climate deniers – just be waiting for Mother Nature to do it for us.
We all make mistakes, even the well intentioned and informed, and this post demonstrates that you are not among those who will deny mistakes or try to rewrite history. I must let you know that when I found your site a few years ago (perhaps 3 or 4 years?) I felt like a man lost in a desert of denial, rapidly dehydrating, who suddenly stumbles upon a green oasis of scientific truth and honesty. I know you have heard it many times before from your readers but I THANK YOU JOE FOR ALL THE HARD WORK YOU DO!
As for hydrogen fuel cells, given that Los Alamos scientists were supporting them when you began at DOE I would say that you can be forgiven for your initial support. Heck they are still being investigated by some and California DMV still has a special license plate sticker to allow a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle with a single occupant to use the car pool lane.
As for the denier / confusionist sites, I was interested in your critiques because I stumbled through many before I discovered Climate Progress and Skeptical Science. It was mostly their attacks of the GCM’s that was getting me confused.
Stabilizing at 450 ppm might be a realistic and practical limit to set as far as policy is concerned but I for one do not consider 450 ppm to be a safe limit from a temperature, ocean acidification, and climate disruption point of view. Since no policy exists that would insure that limit it seems like wishful thinking at this point but by 2029 or 2030 the polluting nations may adopt an aggressive and determined policy that might finally succeed at halting at that number. We would have a lot of tragedy and destruction to overcome at that point but at least we would finally be making a unified all-out effort.
Thanks again Joe!
Re the desirability of various goals for CO2, 350, 450, etc:
It is past the time when folks in the know (hey, readers of this forum, that would be you and I) recognize that scientifically, this is the Wrong Question. Not a terrible question, but not the main one. At RealClimate, Gavin S has made related points often, and read Raypierre on the bottom line being total fossil carbon emissions.
Batting those goals around is like going on a road trip starting from Chicago, with your favorite golden oldies blasting, and arguing for hours and hours whether to aim for Cleveland, NYC, or Boston, while ignoring the obvious fact that you have been driving on the road to LA. Turn the damn car around and then nitpick about where to head for! (Sorry to use a fossil-fueled metaphor. On second thought, not sorry. Deal with it.)
A goal such as 350 may of course be defended as your favorite method of PR, and it’s not all bad for public campaigns, but any science-centric discussion with a proper respect for uncertainty has to concentrate on bending the emissions curve down in the next few years. Over a multi-decade slog, the goal will surely be adjusted and redefined continually anyway.
As others have already commented, reading about your “mistakes” is an educational experience. Keep up the great work!
A major problem with hydrogen that is NEVER MENTIONED.
You cannot contain it. Well you can with stainless steel. Regular iron pipe get hydrogen embrittlement and breaks. And sealing joints, for get about it!. Hydrogen leaks. It also explodes!
Even 350ppm might be too high, Hansen says:
http://target300.org/1hansenarticle.html
As I said earlier aiming for 450ppm as your short/med term goal/strategy stated policy, is a reasonable step. But just a step…Romm has been careful to say in at least one other post I recall, that he realizes full well that once we get (or a littleb bit before we are about to reach) stability at 450ppm, is time to look hard at latest science and very possibly then aim significantly lower.
It’s very likely that indeed we will then need to go quite a bit lower than 450ppm.
Whether humanity will (or whether short term fossil profit and free-market-funementalist ‘never regulate anything’ thinking wins) is another matter
If ppm is an in the air number and positive feedbacks will add to the number without human emissions then stabilizing at a possible ppm is a good question. As weather has the potential to change people’s minds in mass about the use of fossil fuels at some point it is a good thing to think about what ppm will probably be when mother nature changes people’s minds and the carbon fluxes from there without carbon emissions from mankind.
Then it might be that people could do negative carbon forcing to actually compensate for the natural positive feedbacks.
Of course,mother nature will arrive at some point and will have the excited presence to stop all the messing up of the house so to speak as she ends peoples nature deficit disorders.
Just saying.
I was taking a course on fuel cells (the 2nd half of my thermal and statistical physics class) around the time you were pushing for them in the clinton admin and I was pushing for them in a big way, too*. The improvements in efficiency were amazing. So I share that mistake. I also think I lingered on ozone and amphibians and plastic and a few other issues too long – I knew the dangers of AGW but it was never “pressing” because acting against it was so hard, you couldn’t explain it easily, and the path of least resistance was to hope somehow other environmentalists would take up the slack.
*At the same time as I was pushing fuel cells heavily I was also dragging my friends to scientific talks by a lot of gee-whiz string theorists – “Tachyons and Smeared Branes” comes to mind – but that’s another issue.
Joe, just wanted to echo the many words of thanks posted here. Your candid analysis of where we stand, where we need to be, and how politicians and the media are shaping (or not) our future is a rare gem. Thank you for your work.