Pandora's Seed

by Spencer Wells

  As I write this in early 2010, the battle still rages, but the election of Barack Obama has yielded a significant shift in U.S. climate-change policy. The administration, while still not ratifying Kyoto, is focusing on the proposal drafted at the U.N. summit in Copenhagen in December 2009 to draw up a successor to Kyoto, which is set to expire in 2012. With America’s new willingness to “play ball,” the Chinese seem to be more willing to contemplate capping their own emissions. The debate is clearly far from over, however, and even well-intentioned European countries like the Netherlands and Austria are falling well short of their agreed emissions levels. Whatever happens, it is clear that China, India, and Brazil will ultimately need to be put on a carbon diet if the treaty is to have a long-term effect on global warming.

  A HEATED ARGUMENT

  The debate about how to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions is based on some very complex science. It was only in the past decade that the scientific establishment even fully accepted the importance of carbon dioxide levels to global temperatures, culminating in the release of a landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007. This document, put together by hundreds of scientists and policy makers from around the world after widespread scientific consultation, came to the verdict that the global climate was unequivocally warming and that humans were responsible for much of the temperature increase in the twentieth century. Despite a scandal involving leaked emails between some of the scientists involved in drafting the report, and an incorrect estimate of when Himalayan glaciers could disappear, it remains an important overview of the state of climate-change research.

  The underlying patterns that led the IPCC to issue these statements are fairly straightforward, and really come down to two observations. The first is the unprecedented increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past century. Extrapolating from the study of gas bubbles frozen in deep polar ice, climatologists have calculated that the average carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere over the past 650,000 years has varied between 180 and 300 parts per million (ppm). The level at the start of the Industrial Revolution, in 1800, stood at around 280 ppm. In 2008 it was 387 ppm, far above the long-term average, and it is currently increasing at around 1.9 ppm per year. The implication is that the massive increase in the burning of fossil fuel since the dawn of the industrial age has added around 100 ppm of carbon dioxide (one of the products of fuel combustion) to the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide traps radiative heat from the sun, much like the panes in a greenhouse, with the net effect of warming the earth’s atmosphere. Other greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, have also increased substantially during this time period, but carbon dioxide is the most important contributor to global warming.

  FIGURE 29: PATTERN OF INCREASING CARBON DIOXIDE LEVELS AND TEMPERATURES OVER THE PAST 1,000 YEARS.

  The second pattern that underlies the IPCC’s recommendations is the so-called hockey stick graph of Northern Hemisphere temperatures over the past millennium. Between A.D. 1000 and 1900 temperatures varied quite a bit from year to year, dipping slightly from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries (a period known as the Little Ice Age), then rising from the beginning of the twentieth century. Since 1950, though, temperatures have increased substantially over their long-term average, and the last two decades of the twentieth century were the hottest in more than 1,000 years. The hockey stick graph has attracted quite a bit of controversy, largely based on its modeling of temperatures prior to the past couple of centuries, and many consider it to be a gross oversimplification of complex historical climatic patterns. What seems clear from all of the models, though, is that global temperatures have increased in the past half century.

  The effects are clearly visible, even without the climate statistics. The Arctic region seems to be the worst affected, with ice sheets melting in regions that used to be frozen throughout the year. Polar bears will almost certainly become extinct as their habitat disappears. Species that typically lived farther south are now more common in the far north. The 2008 Audubon Society Christmas bird count, for instance, documented species such as the purple finch and the wild turkey as much as four hundred miles farther north than their previously typical range. Glaciers are disappearing around the world, and coral reefs are increasingly showing signs of bleaching—a reaction to rising sea temperatures and acidity, as the mounting carbon dioxide is absorbed by the world’s oceans.

  Coupled with the increase in greenhouse gases during this time period, the implication is that humans are causing global temperatures to rise, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels. What is debatable is the degree to which humans alone are producing global warming. We have been in a gradual warming trend since the Little Ice Age, and some people have tried to argue that what we are seeing in the twentieth-century temperature record is simply part of a more long-term natural trend. The vast majority of scientists and global policy makers, however, now agree that we are the primary culprit. The recommendations of the IPCC underlie the creation of Kyoto and other planned treaties aimed at curbing carbon dioxide emissions, and whether they achieve their stated goals or not, they will continue to be a strong influence on global energy policy for decades to come.

  Much has been made in the press about the predictions contained in the IPCC report, which, using projections of greenhouse gas emissions, attempt to extrapolate from the existing data and computer models to estimate future temperature and sea level rises. This is currently the cutting edge of the scientific debate about global warming, and much remains to be worked out in our understanding of the complex forces we have set in motion. This short chapter is clearly not the venue for a detailed discussion of these predictions. One small point in this section of the IPCC’s report has not been as widely discussed, however, and it is perhaps the most chilling—at least when viewed from the perspective of a layperson, rather than a climate-change wonk. This statement from the IPCC “Summary for Policymakers” puts it clearly and succinctly:

  Both past and future anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions will continue to contribute to warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium, due to the time scales required for removal of this gas from the atmosphere.

  This means that, whatever we do to mitigate global warming by setting caps and trading carbon credits, the forces we have set in motion will radically change the world we live in over the next millennium. As with the power of genetically modifying our offspring and, before that, domesticating plants and animals during the Neolithic period, we have set in motion transgenerational forces whose ultimate effects we simply cannot predict. Although much of the debate around global warming centers on models and predictions, with science at the fore, the fact that we have started something that will affect us in some form or another is a certainty. Global warming will probably be the biggest social challenge of the twenty-first century—and perhaps beyond—as we adjust to these climatic changes. And if history is a guide, these changes will be profound indeed.

  THE IMPORTANCE OF SUMMER

  Today, the three tallest mountains in Oceania—which includes the Malay Archipelago, Australia, New Guinea, and the Pacific islands—are found on the islands of New Guinea and Borneo. The Carstensz Pyramid, at 16,023 feet, is the highest, one of the Seven Summits fetishized by mountaineers hoping to climb to the highest point on every continent. Puncak Trikora, formerly Mount Wilhelmina, sits nearby at 15,583 feet, while Mount Kinabalu, on Borneo, is 13,435 feet. Until 1815, however, Kinabalu was in fourth place. It rested in the metaphorical shadow of Mount Tambora, the highest point on the small island of Sumbawa, just east of the tropical paradise of Bali. Reaching an estimated height of more than 14,000 feet, Tambora’s huge, symmetrical cone soared out of the Flores Sea, which separates Sumbawa from Sulawesi. Navigators had used it as a landmark for thousands of years, and it was believed by the local people to be the home of their great god.

  According to local legend, the events that reduced Tambora to a fraction of i
ts former height happened as a result of divine retribution:

  The cause was said to be the wrath of God Almighty

  At the deed of the King of Tambora

  In murdering a worthy pilgrim, spilling his blood

  Rashly and thoughtlessly

  Syair Kerajaan Birama,

  TRADITIONAL POEM, QUOTED IN BERNICE DE JONG BOERS,

  “MOUNT TAMBORA IN 1815,”

  Indonesia (VOLUME 60), OCTOBER 1995

  On the evening of April 5, 1815, Mount Tambora, a dormant volcano, erupted. Actually, “erupted” is an understatement; it exploded, it roared, it destroyed, it belched forth demons. The sound was heard in Yogyakarta, 450 miles away, where the sultan rallied a detachment of soldiers to see if the capital was under attack. Over the next several days the eruption continued, reaching a climax on April 10, when the sound was heard in northern Sumatra, more than 1,500 miles away from Tambora. Sir Stamford Raffles, the colonial founder of Singapore, who gave his name to the famous hotel, described it in his memoir from eyewitness accounts:

  In a short time, the whole mountain … appeared like a body of liquid fire, extending itself in every direction. The fire and columns of flame continued to rage with unabated fury, until the darkness caused by the quantity of falling matter obscured it at about 8 p.m. Stones, at this time, fell very thick …some of them as large as two fists.

  Ash was thrown more than twenty-five miles into the sky, producing three days of darkness in the nearby islands. Perhaps the most powerful volcanic eruption since that of Mount Toba 74,000 years before, it spewed out more than twenty-five cubic miles of ash and stone, four times as much as its more famous Indonesian cousin, Krakatoa. The island of Bali, 150 miles to the west, was covered in nearly a foot of ash, and winds spread more ash worldwide over the next few months. The eruption reduced Tambora’s lofty elevation to today’s relatively paltry 9,350 feet—a significant drop in stature. It is thought that more than seventy thousand Indonesians perished as a result of the blast and its aftereffects, making it the deadliest volcanic eruption in history.

  Despite the catastrophic effects of Tambora’s eruption on Indonesia, the most long-lasting effect had little to do with its Hollywood-style pyrotechnics. Rather, it was the hundreds of millions of tons of sulfurous gas ejected into the stratosphere during the eruption. This, coupled with fine particles of ash blown high into the atmosphere, produced a haze that was seen as far away as London and New England. Although it resulted in some spectacular sunsets, its long-term effects were to be far more insidious.

  As outlined in their fascinating book Volcano Weather: The Story of 1816, the Year Without a Summer, Henry and Elizabeth Stommel described how the reduction in the sun’s intensity caused by Tambora’s stratospheric sulfurous belch created a global cooling effect the following year, 1816. The fact that the volcano was located practically on the equator made it easier for wind patterns to carry the effluent around the entire world, and the effect on the weather was pronounced. Amateur observers—including several meteorologically minded Ivy League scholars—who had been keeping careful records of daily temperature readings for many years noticed a pronounced drop in June of that year. Local farmers saw the effects directly: a cold front that moved through New England between June 6 and 11 left several inches of snow on the ground as far south as Massachusetts and the Catskills of southern New York State, and a hard frost occurred in Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Two more frosts arrived in July and August, effectively destroying the New England corn harvest that season, despite attempts to replant after each cold front dissipated.

  Things were even worse in Europe. An exceptionally cold and wet summer in 1816 battered wheat and corn crops in the northern countries. The resulting famine contributed to a typhus epidemic in Ireland, and thousands died of hunger in Switzerland. France, having been defeated the year before at the Battle of Waterloo, erupted into riots over the high price of grain. Europe’s problems would continue until the middle of the following year, when somewhat better temperatures allowed a harvest that was closer to normal. Overall, historians estimate that as many as 200,000 Europeans may have died as a result of the cold weather in 1816.

  Perhaps the most fascinating results of the cold snap that summer, though, were social. Most New Englanders were subsistence farmers, and the loss of their crops hit them very hard. Lured by the prospect of easier lives far removed from unseasonal frosts and harsh winters, many packed up and moved out, headed for the Midwest. The Stommels compare the emigration to the exodus during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, though that, being spread over several years, was more extreme. It is clear, however, that the freakish summer weather forced many people over the edge and led to a huge population increase in places like Ohio and Indiana—American Manifest Destiny helped along by a volcanic eruption in Indonesia.

  Other, lesser social changes may trace their origins to the Year Without a Summer. A New Scientist article published in 2005 argues convincingly that the velocipede, the ancestor of the modern bicycle, was developed in the aftermath of 1816’s failed grain harvests as a means of transportation that didn’t need to be fed (unlike horses). And in perhaps the most unusual effect of the poor weather, Mary Shelley took refuge from the elements in a Swiss castle being rented by Lord Byron, using her time to write the horror classic Frankenstein.

  A cautionary story that has lent its name to a term of disparagement used by the anti–genetic modification movement (“Franken-foods”), a means of transportation now used by more than a billion people around the world, and an America political ideology rooted in nineteenth-century westward expansion—not, perhaps, what you would expect from the aftermath of a summer’s worth of bad weather. What these disparate outcomes illustrate, though, is the unexpected long-term effects of climate changes, even relatively small ones that last less than a year. When we compare this to the much more extreme changes that are coming our way in the next century—whoever’s model turns out to be correct—it is truly frightening. But as with Pandora’s captured spirit, there is a spark of hope amid the gloom.

  DARWIN’S IMPERATIVE, OR THE GERMAN SOLUTION

  During 2008 and 2009, while I was thinking about and writing this book, economists and policy makers around the world were reeling from two financial punches. The first, a credit crisis spurred by falling property values in the developed world, threatened to kill investment by making borrowing money more difficult. Without investment, global capitalism is left stranded on the side of the road—it is the energy source that drives the economic engine of modern society. Artificial stimuli such as lowered interest rates and tax rebates may provide a short-term burst of power, but this is simply borrowing by another name—borrowing from future tax revenues to pay for today’s crisis. Some believe that it actually amounts to the greatest transfer of wealth in history, as the costs of patching today’s leaky economic boat will be borne by the taxpayers of the future. Ultimately, the economic engine will need to slow down while investors count their losses and begin to determine where to invest more wisely. As with all of the classic bubbles of the past four centuries, from tulips to South Sea Company shares to the dot-com boom of the 1990s, what Alan Greenspan has called “irrational exuberance” will need to give way to rationally based investment decisions. Though painful, such corrections seem to be a periodic feature of a capitalist system, and others will surely happen in the future.

  The second financial crisis is more serious, and somewhat unexpected. Prices for commodities—those tangible goods used to create the things that we consume—skyrocketed in the late 2000s. Oil, coal, and natural gas roughly doubled in price between mid-2007 and mid-2008, as did rice, corn, wheat, and milk. As a result, governments around the world were hit with unrest. Most of the world’s food calories come from these three grains, and the vast majority of its power comes from fossil fuels, so the effects of higher prices are particularly difficult, especially for the poor. In February 2008, thousands of Mexicans protested a 400 percent increa
se in the price of tortillas, their dietary staple, and Haiti’s government was toppled by rioters incensed at the high price of food and fuel. In June 2008, hundreds of Spanish truck drivers blocked highways, demanding lower fuel prices. Americans with SUVs winced as the cost to fill up their gas tanks rose to the triple digits. These price increases, while bad enough on their own, also raised the rate of inflation across the entire economy. Since fuel powers everything we do, the subsequent effects of higher prices were felt everywhere, from more expensive air travel to higher home electricity bills. Although oil prices dropped precipitously as the global recession took hold during the latter half of 2008, the fragile recovery of late 2009 sent it climbing toward $100 a barrel again.

  The reason this surge in commodity inflation is a surprise is that commodity prices had, until recently, been falling in inflation-adjusted terms. In a now-famous wager, Paul Ehrlich, the influential author of The Population Bomb, bet the economist Julian Lincoln Simon that commodity prices (in particular, a selection of metals) would rise in the 1980s. In fact they fell, and Simon won the wager. Similarly, food prices fell throughout the latter part of the twentieth century as the agricultural advances of the Green Revolution took effect. All of this occurred despite an increase in population of 2.5 billion between 1970 and 2000. It seemed that humanity could have its cake and eat it too—keep on expanding and pay less for the basic staples of life.

  Looking past the temporary reductions associated with a recessionary period, the era of falling commodity prices now appears to have come to an end, at the same time that global warming is entering the world stage. It seems that humanity is on a collision course with disaster, a planetary Titanic hell-bent on destroying itself. Doom-and-gloom prophets speculate on whether we will even survive as a species. It’s all so depressing…or is it?