Freeman Dyson's Got My Back
The first thing I ever wrote on global warming was an article pointing out the uncertainties in Global Climate Models. Freeman Dyson, one of the world’s greatest living mathematical physicists, had similar concerns.
In a recent New York Review of Books article, he says this of the perspective put forth by William Nordhaus on global warming:
The main conclusion of the Nordhaus analysis is that the ambitious proposals, “Stern” and “Gore,” are disastrously expensive, the “low-cost backstop” [Ed: a hypothetical low-cost technology for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or for producing energy without carbon dioxide emission] is enormously advantageous if it can be achieved, and the other policies including business-as-usual and Kyoto are only moderately worse than the optimal policy. The practical consequence for global-warming policy is that we should pursue the following objectives in order of priority. (1) Avoid the ambitious proposals. (2) Develop the science and technology for a low-cost backstop . (3) Negotiate an international treaty coming as close as possible to the optimal policy, in case the low-cost backstop fails. (4) Avoid an international treaty making the Kyoto Protocol policy permanent. These objectives are valid for economic reasons, independent of the scientific details of global warming.
I’ve often written that my only modification to this is that the “optimal policy” of a global carbon tax is not really optimal because of practical considerations. Dyson in the last sentence of this paragraph makes the point that this is the rational conclusion even in the face of the climate science.
What gets really interesting, however, is when Dyson goes on to discuss what a backstop technology might look like:
The science and technology of genetic engineering are not yet ripe for large-scale use. We do not understand the language of the genome well enough to read and write it fluently. But the science is advancing rapidly, and the technology of reading and writing genomes is advancing even more rapidly. I consider it likely that we shall have “genetically engineered carbon-eating trees” within twenty years, and almost certainly within fifty years.
Carbon-eating trees could convert most of the carbon that they absorb from the atmosphere into some chemically stable form and bury it underground. Or they could convert the carbon into liquid fuels and other useful chemicals. Biotechnology is enormously powerful, capable of burying or transforming any molecule of carbon dioxide that comes into its grasp. Keeling’s wiggles prove that a big fraction of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes within the grasp of biotechnology every decade. If one quarter of the world’s forests were replanted with carbon-eating varieties of the same species, the forests would be preserved as ecological resources and as habitats for wildlife, and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be reduced by half in about fifty years.
We have no idea what technologies will be available to us between now and 2100. Imagine planners in the year 1908 trying to figure out how to set up a system of taxes or rationing to limit emissions over the next century. They would probably focus a lot on the number of horses and rail engines we would need, and probably wouldn’t think a lot about jet aircraft and nuclear power.
Whoah. I was with you both for a while, and then I hit the part about replacing a quarter of the world’s forests with modded copies of the original trees. That makes “quit burning fossil fuels” sound modest by comparison.
— Matt Frost · Jul 15, 07:08 PM · #
My thought exactly, Matt. Jim: doesn’t the same complexity that makes it so hard to estimate the likely trajectory of climate change make it even more difficult to manipulate that process effectively? Whether by planting carbon-eating trees or any other method?
— Noah Millman · Jul 15, 08:00 PM · #
Matt / Noah:
In a word: yes. I think that you would only deploy geo-egineering approaches at anything like that scale in the low-odds case of an emergency. You would have to have spent the time doing the basic research, and would want some long-term experience with deploying it at a much smaller scale. This is why I think that investing government money in developing “backstop” technologies is a worthwhile investment today. Obviously the version of a backstop that is “emissions free energy” is preferable to the geo-engineering versiion that is the “continue to emit alot, but clean it up afterwards” option.
I think that we are totally unable to predict what mix of such technologies we will develop, and that we should be putting bets all over the craps table right now in order to see what works. I pointed to this example of something that its not getting a lot of public attention right now to illustrate how different our options are likely to look decades from now than we can anticipate currently.
— Jim Manzi · Jul 15, 08:33 PM · #
Jim: What is your response to the concern that the models have been too conservative in determining the synergystic impacts of climate change and the BAU approach ends up costing much more, much earlier to respond to?
(e.g., collapse of ocean fisheries due to acidification, drought in the Western US leading to much lower crop yields, loss of glaciers that supply fresh water to Southeast Asia and China, etc.)
— Francis · Jul 15, 09:13 PM · #
Francis:
It’s a great question. By far the most sophisticated (in my view) version of this argument has been made by Weitzman. My very, very long response (which links to his paper) is here:
http://theamericanscene.com/2008/01/04/weitzman-formalism-run-amok
— Jim Manzi · Jul 15, 09:30 PM · #
Jim: Thanks for the link to your earlier post; it was most helpful.
Now, since I’m a little slow around the office these days, I’ve been reading realclimate (perhaps too) obsessively. And while I hold a JD as opposed to a PhD in something useful, I can still mostly follow along.
Based on my readings there and elsewhere, it appears to me that there is an ever-increasing consensus about overall global sensitivity to increases in atmospheric greenhouses gases. There appears to be much less consensus, however, on the expected response of the planet to those temperature changes. Most troubling, melt rates in both Greenland and the West Antarctic appear to be rising much faster than expected for the given level of temperature change. Other factors, such as the response of key agricultural producing areas for the global population have yet to be modelled. If I understand correctly, it is this issue that is driving Dr. Hansen to assert that we have already overshot the carrying capacity of the planet for the current population and must therefore move to a negative net GHG release economy as soon as possible.
The lack of understanding about the micro-level response to climate change, coupled with the possibility that our global economy is much more fragile than we understand, leads then to the position that an aggressive approach to reducing net emissions of GHGs is the conservative one, so I understand.
Thanks,
— Francis · Jul 15, 11:06 PM · #
Imagine planners in the year 1908 trying to figure out how to set up a system of taxes or rationing to limit emissions over the next century.
Actually, creating a system of taxes that sets a target but lets private industry figure out how to meet that target sounds like a far more hands-off approach than having the government fund specific “backstop” technologies. What kind of “backstop” would you have wanted 1908 planners to decide upon?
— Consumatopia · Jul 16, 01:06 AM · #
Jim, promise me you will stop using “Got My Back’ ever again. K-Lo and Jonah come to mind. You’re a much smarter writer! To the point of this blog, who will step in the way of Freeman Dyson’s supernally optimistic notion of GM carbon-eating trees. I say once Monsanto enters the picture this whole idea will grind to a screeching halt. That’s right it’s either the government or the private sector. In this case it’s the private sector with the government following closely behind. How much do you think Monsanto will charge for a carbon-eating tree. I would start at about 10,000 dollars. Can you estimate the number of trees in 25% of the world’s forests? I can’t but maybe you can and if you can then you can bring this whole notion back down to earth.
— Fred · Jul 16, 02:59 AM · #
Dyson’s idea sounds terrible, too. RuBisCo is probably the most abundant enzyme on earth, it’s under loads of selective pressure, and it still sucks in terms of catalytic turnover, because the chemical problem it’s trying to solve — and that Dyson proposes we’re going to engineer something to solve — is hell of energetically difficult. I’m not inclined to discount Dyson’s intelligence but in this case I’m pretty willing to bet against his backstop.
— Sanjay · Jul 16, 01:23 PM · #
Fred, left to itself, Monsanto will charge whatever the next most expensive alternative is less a few percent. If it’s in a race against some other alteratives, that will probably be significantly cheaper than what Monsanto is going to charge us for ethanol, with a bigger carbon-saving added in.
— J Mann · Jul 16, 02:46 PM · #
And JMann tells you why it won’t happen. Again: this is a hard problem. Dyson’s no chemist or that would’ve been obvious. Monsanto probably can’t solve it the way he proposes, but if it can, it can’t solve it cheaply for sure. And it has to solve it cheaply enough to sell the solution.
— Sanjay · Jul 16, 02:56 PM · #
I think the “low cost backstop” idea is an under-baked deus ex machina. How is this different from having a magical extra option called “solve the problem cheaply”?
I agree with Consumatopia that a carbon tax seems the best method of harnessing the market to encourage innovations to help fend off climate change.
Of course one would also want to use a tax or subsidy to incentivize the development of geoengineering solutions, which are not directly related to carbon emissions. The trouble is, it’s harder to measure “projected impact on global temperature rise” than it is to measure “how much CO2 is coming out of this smokestack”.
How about we don’t throw all our eggs in one basket. Why not a moderate carbon tax, combined with research subsidies for geoengineering and renewable energy technologies.
— mk · Jul 17, 03:53 AM · #
If governments could credibly commit, a system of increasing carbon taxes over time, plus some prizes for carbon mitigation technology, might do some good.
— J Mann · Jul 17, 01:31 PM · #