Arguments
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #32, 2019
Posted on 13 August 2019 by Doug Bostrom
Clinical speech
From Barber and Burgiess' Scarcity and Safe Operating Spaces: The Example of Natural Forests
Scientists suggest placing planetary boundaries on human-induced threats to key Earth system sinks and resources. Such boundaries define a “safe operating space” on depletion and pollution. Treating any remaining “space” as a depletable economic asset allows derivation of optimal and actual rules for depletion. We apply this analysis to natural forests, and find that the critical asset is tropical forests. The size of the safe operating space and assumptions about the annual rate of tropical deforestation matter significantly. In the most critical scenario, actual depletion could occur in 11–21 years, whereas optimal depletion is 65 years. The optimal unit rental tax equates the actual price with the optimal price path. The tax rate and its amount vary with the depletion scenario and increases over time. However, if the environmental benefits of tropical forests are sufficiently large, the remaining safe operating space should be preserved indefinitely.
Hence we learn that "optimal depletion" of natural forests is best scheduled over 65 years. The specification of "optimal" in this case teeters on the summit of a mountain rooted in an orogeny of possibly adequate inference and deduction incorporating necessarily highly simplified models of human behavior and real world features. Errors in this vertiginous mental model are potentially quite costly.
Outside of formal economic concepts our notions of "optimal" continued existence vary by local culture and local exigencies. Discontinuities of cultural identity and immediate physical resource requirements, expectations and priorities are often found at international borders.
Meanwhile the term "planetary boundary" is not primarily about lines on a map circumscribing political units but refers to necessary limits on human behavior in order for Earth to continue functioning well enough for us not to experience a notably sub-optimal future. Thinking of Earth as a life support system (which it of course is), it's not really controversial to suggest that as a piece of machinery it has limited capacity, with various subsystems residing within brackets of maximum sustained performance. These are not radical concepts, not to we humans who are after all skilled builders and operators of machinery. Planetary boundaries are simply logical extension and application of what we already know about the successful maintenance of important equipment. Machinery has limits and needs to be attended.
Mutual agreement and acceptance of what are obviously mandatory planetary boundaries will succeed to the extent that international boundaries are softened and adapted for the specific purpose of mutually assured non-destruction. Operation of Earth within planetary boundaries will require some degree of relaxation and subordination of sovereign autonomy for every country on the planet; effective maintenance of the planet as an optimal living space will require building a planetary regulatory system, one resembling a conventional governmental system in some features as a matter of practical necessity. The need for operational technical systems governance of the planet's life support mechanisms is an inevitable conclusion arising from recognition of planetary boundaries, and such governance is implausible as a spontaneous emerged feature of a disorganized rabble of fully autonomous nation states.
We may either pull together a little more and have an easier future or we instead may choose the hard way.
Articles:
42 titles, 11 open access.
Physical science
Midlatitudes unaffected by sea ice loss
Minimal influence of reduced Arctic sea ice on coincident cold winters in mid-latitudes
Persistent acceleration in global sea-level rise since the 1960s
Decadal global temperature variability increases strongly with climate sensitivity
No proportional increase of terrestrial gross carbon sequestration from the greening Earth
Climate Response to Pulse Versus Sustained Stratospheric Aerosol Forcing
Pliocene warmth consistent with greenhouse gas forcing
An improved estimate of the coupled Arctic energy budget
Why Does Global Warming Weaken the Gulf Stream but Intensify the Kuroshio?
A new approach for assessing climate change impacts in ecotron experiments (open access)
Drivers and modelling of blue carbon stock variability (open access)
Extreme Precipitation Events under Climate Change in the Iberian Peninsula
118?year climate and extreme weather events of Metropolitan Manila in the Philippines
Biology
Global warming promotes biological invasion of a honey bee pest
Back home? Uncertainties for returning seized animals to the source?areas under climate change
Human affairs:
The climate mitigation opportunity behind global power transmission and distribution
California climate adaptation trust fund: exploring the leveraging of cap-and-trade proceeds
Scarcity and Safe Operating Spaces: The Example of Natural Forests
Suggestions
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The previous edition of Skeptical Science new research may be found here.
Unfortunately in the New Research for Week #32, 2019 all the articles in Nature Climate Change are erroneously not open access, but behind a paywall.
Thanks for the heads-up eschwarzbach. For human eye and machinery alike the lack of standard nomenclature or other consistent indicators for open access is a bit of a challenge. We're working on it.
Doug, thank you for providing this list and the introductory comments which I both very much appreciate! (Will not repeat this every time, but until now I only uttered general thanks to the team; someone is doing the work though ..).
Here is something else that goes with the Zang et al (on carbon sequestration) paper cited above:
Increased atmospheric vapor pressure deficit reduces global vegetation growth
The old and tired argument that CO2 is plant food seems not to be borne by evidence.