Spokane7
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January 15, 2012 in Opinion
Smart Bombs: Not by soot alone
(SCENE: FBI headquarters, Washington, D.C. The year is 2112. Frank Columbo III, head of the Cold Case Unit, enters the office of the director carrying a thick manila folder.)
FRANK : Pardon the interruption, sir, but I thought I should bring this old case to your attention.
DIRECTOR : Come on in, Frank. Those cold cases can be tough to crack. How can I help?
FRANK : Well, that’s just it, sir. I was reading this Global Warming file, and I can’t figure out how it became cold in the first place. It’s like a murder detective ignoring the body, the knife, the fingerprints and declaring the whole thing an unsolved mystery.
DIRECTOR (nervously tapping pencil on desk): Go on.
FRANK : Well, sir, your grandfather’s name is in the file, so I thought you might have some insights.
DIRECTOR : Come on, Frank, you have to understand the politics of the era. Powerful forces were aligned against the theory that humans were the chief culprits in that crime.
FRANK : But with all due respect, sir, the file clearly shows that every relevant scientific organization had pinned this on carbon dioxide emissions created by man. Plus, the crime scene pictures show the dwindling glaciers, widespread drought, damage to reefs, bark beetle devastation and disappearing coastlines.
DIRECTOR (pounds desk and glowers at Frank): But YOU haven’t considered how much it would’ve cost those people to head off the disasters we’re dealing with today! Your selfishness is so typical of today’s generation!
FRANK (attempting to contain a puckish grin): So by ignoring the inevitable effects on us, they were able to say, “Move along. Nothing to see.”
DIRECTOR: It’s all about us, isn’t it, Frank? You don’t know the meaning of sacrifice! If they had knuckled under to the quote-unquote scientists, it would’ve killed jobs and destroyed the economy!
FRANK: Actually, sir, the file contains several analyses that the threat to the economy was terribly overblown. Plus, what’s left of our economy is circling the drain because they didn’t act. The postmortem reports make that clear.
DIRECTOR: Look, those people acted. They debated cap-and-trade. They formed committees to curb soot. All of that was supposed to buy them time until … until …
FRANK: They found the courage to deal with carbon emissions? The file contains this note from McKinsey Global Institute written in 2010: “Delaying action from 2010 to 2020 would cut abatement potential in half.”
DIRECTOR: You’re getting on my nerves. Too late to do anything now. In fact, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.
FRANK: What’s that?
DIRECTOR: We have to close down the Cold Case Unit. Need to shift resources over to FEMA. After all, what’s the point of solving old cases now?
FRANK: Got me there.
The dirty Little secret. The same political calculation that pushes people into passionate anti-debt rages by focusing on a sliver of the problem has them touting the wonders of reducing soot in the fight to tame global warming.
I like curbing soot for curbing soot’s sake, and it’s a lot better than pretending the entire scientific community is perpetrating a global warming hoax, but it’s dangerous to do that instead of addressing greenhouse gases.
Addressing soot is faster because it doesn’t linger in the atmosphere for a hundred years or more, like CO2 emissions. But it’s a mistake to think of “faster” as more effective or as “buying time.”
CO2 emissions are cumulative. Much of what is in the atmosphere was emitted long ago, and, as scientists note, you can’t “unemit” it.
If we could completely eliminate soot in 10 years, the globe would still warm. It’s like trying to solve a long-term budget problem with one-time money, while ignoring ongoing expenses.
We won’t be buying time. We’ll be wasting it.
If we’re eliminating soot to save millions of lives a year and bring about the estimated $6.5 trillion in savings, then great.
But if we continue to ignore CO2 emissions, it will be a temporary victory.
Associate Editor Gary Crooks can be reached at garyc@spokesman.com or (509) 459-5026. Follow him on Twitter @GaryCrooks.
Smart Bombs: Greatest generation? Not us 
mmspowaus on January 15 at 6:33 a.m.
Gary wrote…
Ok, Gary, if CO2 emissions are cumulative, …and as you pompusly state you can’t “unemit” it …then how did the CO2 get removed from the atmosphere long ago to be released now???
Hmmmmm
It sounds like Gary’s fictional scientist and detectives are saps and dullards….
Let’s hope Gary Crooks’s editorial does not get picked up by other newspapers and poor Spokane gets embarrassed yet again this month.
It’s bad enough the former Mayor is asking for back pay; we don’t need the world to know a senior editor of the paper of record for the region is illiterate scientifically as well.
Yet another Dumb Bomb editorial, Gary…
richardch on January 15 at 7:12 a.m.
This is stupid, another stink bomb from a ranting liberal.
detroitdude on January 15 at 10:41 a.m.
Regardless of what deniers think, continuing to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere while at the same time engaging in mass deforestation across the planet is not good policy.
richardch on January 15 at 11:09 a.m.
Yes, you stop breathing so you won’t be pumping all that carbon dioxide into the air either.
garyc on January 15 at 11:34 a.m.
“Unemit” means you can’t get rid of it or reverse the process. Horse has left the barn. Just have to wait for it to dissipate,.
Explanation here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/evidence/carbon_dioxide.shtml
Takes about 100 years for this process. All we can do now is to stop adding to the accumulation.This means the globe will warm no matter what. Limiting that increase is what man can do.
From the link:
That isn’t natural.
You may exhale, Richard. That carbon has already been accounted for. It’s a cycle. In economic terms a “sunk cost.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/breathing-co2-carbon-dioxide.htm
More here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm
richardch on January 15 at 1:47 p.m.
GaryC, a plant can’t tell the difference from a sunk cost to a new cost molecule of CO2 your breathing is adding to the total cost, stop it. I prefer Prof. Don Easterbrook’s analysis of CO2 accumulation .008% isn’t very much when compared to nitrogen in the atmosphere. How do you know anhydrous ammonia isn’t causing global warming? http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10783
greenlibertarian on January 15 at 11:17 p.m.
Nice, richardch, why it’s as good as a Godwin, citing ANYTHING from the megaMEGA conspiracy theory site globalresearch.ca. Every chemtrail crackpot, DNA “manipulator”, 9/11 inside job, everythings’s a false flag operation, man, article gets put there, no matter how crazy. Cuckoo!
I see you’re into that kind of thing, it’s cool, too each is own.
But Easterbrook? He’s a conspiracy theorist’s conspiracy con man crackpot. WWU disowns his theories, directly.
Too funny.
richardch on January 16 at 6:19 a.m.
I don’t form my conclusions by consensus, I form them by the scientific method and Easterbrook has the sex poodle beat on facts about a hundred to one.
richardch on January 16 at 10:36 a.m.
Greenlib, don’t shoot the messenger, eh. Wasn’t it the National Enquirer who chased down Democratic senator and presidential candidate John Edwards the philanderer who is being tried for campaign fraud, while no respected publication like the Spokesman Review would touch it.
Arch_Druid on February 12 at 8:48 p.m.
Richard, LOL! keep ranting the “don’t shoot the messenger” while you shoot the messenger at every turn.
What has Edwards got to do with carbon emissions?