Source: CITRIS
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbR0EPWgkEI
Date: 01/10/2010
Event: Professor Richard Muller at i4Energy seminar, 2010: Part 1
Credit: CITRIS
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Gary Baldwin: Well, good afternoon and welcome to another in the series of i4Energy seminars. Delighted that you could be here today, welcome to those viewing this seminar on the web, especially the CITRIS sister campuses at UC Davis, UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz. I'd like to express my thanks to my colleague Carl Blumstein and CIEE for their support, California Institute for Energy and Environment, to Professor Ashok Gadgil for his support from LBNL, and to Professor Paul Wright from CITRIS for his support, for this i4Energy centre, and for these lunches. My name is Gary Baldwin, I'm the managing director of i4Energy, and I also work at CITRIS. Let me just say a few words about today's lecture. We are honoured - I'm actually thrilled that Professor Muller is able to join us today and talk about climate change and energy, some important recent developments. I have read his book Physics for Future Presidents - I have to say - twice, Professor Muller. Not that I have any intention of ever running for office, and that's for two reasons - I'm not qualified, and my butler does not have a Green Card. So I could be in neg [?] witness situation, and I don't want to be there. Professor Muller received his graduate degree from Columbia University, and his PhD in Physics from here at Berkeley. He has been with the Department of Physics at Space Sciences Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, at the department of physics here on campus for many years. He is a distinguished climate scientist. He has written profusely about the topic. I can't tell you enough about how much I enjoyed reading your book twice, because it took me back to some things that I'd completely forgotten about, about physics - both graduate and undergraduate - and I love reading about the facts independent of the politics. So, please join me in welcoming Professor Richard Muller today.
[Applause.]
Richard Muller: I'm going to attempt to give a non-partisan talk. I will attempt to give you things that everybody accepts, facts that are known to the experts but which you don't hear about very much. And often the reason you don't hear about them has to do with politics or policy. But if I'm trying to convince you to follow my policy, I wouldn't give you all the facts. That's typically what happens. I'm going to give you key facts, that - and when people dispute me on these facts, I'll try to let you know.
My goal is to try to do this in a non-partisan way, but there are some things that are going on. I'm going to start off running with something everybody needs to know, that is absolutely central, that is very important in this field and which you almost never hear about. Maybe you've heard this. If we look at the carbon dioxide - now you know carbon dioxide's a greenhouse gas. And the burning of fossil fuels - plus a little bit, maybe 15%, from the cutting back of the rain forests - causes, according to simple models - causes global warming. The carbon dioxide tends to trap the heat radiation of the Earth - it's like putting on a blanket - it becomes a better blanket when you add carbon dioxide. I don't think this is in dispute.
There is an uncertainty, because when you increase the carbon dioxide, you make the temperature rise a little bit - this causes water vapour to evaporate - more water vapour than you would have, otherwise. That enhances the greenhouse effect, but is believed not to enhance cloud cover. If it enhances cloud cover significantly, then all the calculations are wrong. Everybody admits this - this is not a contentious issue.
If you look at the IPCC - this is the big UN panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - this is - when people say there's "consensus", this is what they're referring to. And they state in their report - and you can read the summary of the report, it's only about seven or eight pages, and it's available on the web... They're very clear about the fact that cloud cover's the biggest uncertainty. And if cloud cover were to increase by 2% in the next 50 years, we wouldn't have global warming.
So this is a big unknown. And, as you'll see, if you believe that you can get favours from God by praying, then I suggest you pray that cloud cover will kick in, because my evaluation is that when I show you what the problem is, if the global warming models are right - I think they're very likely right - then we are going to have global warming. And there's nobody proposing any solution about what to do about it. And I can't think of any solution.
So, with that optimistic note, let me show you why I don't think there's any solution. This is the carbon dioxide - note the suppressed zero, this starts at 2000, zero's down here - of carbon emissions from China - wheee! - and the United States. United States is actually going down in emissions over the last couple of years, due to the recession. During the recession, the Chinese emissions went up between 7 and 9%.
This is last year - is 2006. In the newspaper yesterday, there was a report by Reuters that gave the results of a report from a Netherlands agency - can't quite read this here, the red didn't come out very well - it's an update from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, and this has the current level of carbon dioxide emitted by China every year to be 50% above that of the United States. Passed in 2006 - 2006, I thought, was a seminal year. Was at this point... It's true, they have four times the population of the U.S. So they are emitting less per person. And therefore, according to the logic of most people at Berkeley, they have every right to do this. And therefore, this increase, they have every right to let it go, and we shouldn't stop them, and Al Gore says there should be no limits whatsoever on China. But the U.S. should cut down. Because we've been responsible for about one quarter of the global warming that we've had so far. The United States has risk [?] - China is a newcomer, they have the right to emit a lot.
Let me show you what happens if - in last year, in Copenhagen, in December, there was a meeting. President Obama went, the representatives from China went. The New York Times and many others were in favour of there being a treaty that would limit the U.S. growth and make us reduce, by 80%, over the next 50 years - 40 to 50 years - that was the requirement. This was in the proposed treaty. The Chinese were supposed to reduce by - reduce their emission intensity by 4% per year. And this is something they were willing to do. And so I thought President Obama would reach an agreement with China on this. It turns out no agreement was reached, and the reason that no agreement was reached had nothing to do with Republicans refusing - to say that they would eventually ratify this treaty - treaties aren't ratified before they're signed. Al Gore signed the Kyoto treaty, it just never got ratified. So you sign the treaty, then you try to persuade the country it's a good thing to ratify.
No, what happened was China refused to allow inspections. And, to my amazement, President Obama decided that without inspections he could not sign this treaty. Now it's also true that while he was there, my op-ed piece came out in the Wall Street Journal, that - I doubt that it was what caused him not to sign the treaty, but who knows? I can dream. My op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal showed what would happen if the treaty were signed and if everybody actually abided by it.
So this is the dream scenario for the Copenhagen treaty that didn't get signed. This is what the law would be if President Obama had signed it. So what I've done here is - here's the United States, down here, about 6 gigatons per year. And it's our decreasing, cutting out, going down to 20% of its emissions over 50 years. 40 years... Okay, so this - that's what we were going to pledge to do. What about China? They would cut their emissions' intensity by 4% per year. So, put them together with India, this is what would happen to them.
Now, wait a minute - this was a cut! Why's it going up? The key word was emission "intensity". I watched the NewsHour on PBS, and they said "and China has offered to cut its emissions by 4% per year." I went "Oh God, even the NewsHour left out the word 'intensity'!" What does intensity mean? It's a technical word that means if your economy grows by 10% per year, then your emissions are only allowed to grow by 6% per year. You compare it to the growth of the economy. That's what they were offering.
Now their economy has been growing at 10% per year - not quite, for the last year - but for the last 20 years the average has been 10% per year. 20 years of 10% growth. That's not a bubble - they're just catching up. They're simply becoming modernised. It doesn't require
new technologies, just means to really modernise their economy. So, it's been doing this for 20 years and I believe it can do it for another 20 years. If they do it for another 30 years, then their economy will still be half of ours, per person. So there's a lot of room for them to expand and modernise.
So let's say the treaty was signed. And their economy continued to grow at 10% per year. But their emissions only grew at 6% per year. And this is what you get, from the emerging economies. And then I have them in the year 2040, deciding now that they're half of the value of the United States, per person. Half of our GDP, assuming that we hadn't grown. Now they can start cutting too, and that's why I show that little notch up there...
So what you see here is, in the very near future, the carbon is coming from the emerging world. To whom, a lot of people believe, they have every right to do this. What it shows is that no matter what we do, it's irrelevant. Hey, I own a Prius. Now in some Berkeley audiences, that makes them cheer. Makes me laugh, that they cheer. Because no matter what I do, I'm not solving the problem. It's a little bit like saying "Here's a" - you know, we hear about world hunger. And so next time you see a beggar, you give him 50 cents instead of a quarter. And now you feel good. You've done something. No, you haven't done a thing. You've done a feel-good measure.
So much of what I hear at Berkeley consists solely of feel-good measures. "Hey, we're going to cut back. And no limits on the developing world". "And we're going to cut back" - and what that means is out here, we're very likely to have a lot of global warming. But we'll be able to say "It wasn't our fault any more". Okay.
I am a problem-solver. And I say that any solution anybody proposes that doesn't address this issue is not addressing the problem. Now, okay. "We'll set an example. We'll buy Tesla Roadsters. We'll all go battery. We'll buy the $40,000 Chevrolet Volt." Will that solve the problem? No, because no China person can afford a $40,000 Chrevrolet Volt, let alone a Tesla.
So this is the sort of thing that makes us feel good. We can be smug in California, because we use natural gas, and that has half the CO2 emissions per gigawatt-hour that the have on the East coast, where they burn coal. So we can feel smug, but are we addressing the problem? Not unless we're trying to find natural gas for China.
So this is what nobody says. I was at a meeting down at the Berkeley Rep Theatre this morning - it's a two-day meeting on climate. And speaker after speaker after speaker talking about what we can do to set an example. But if we set an example that's too expensive for the developing world, if I were the Premier of China - now, I admit it, no more expertise. I'm now not talking about things I really know about, I'm talking about politics. Though, with that in mind, I should change my voice, and maybe my demeanour a little bit. And now I'm just talking off the top of my head, Let's say I'm the Chinese Premier. And you gave me the choice - you say "Slow down your economy, instead of growing it at 10% per year - slow it down to 6% per year. And cut carbon emissions by 6%. In that way, you'll stop global warming."
And I'll say "No way. Would I slow down my economy when I see my people being liberated, getting wealthy, coming out of poverty, getting better education, etc., etc., etc., in order to prevent global warming? Only if I thought global warming was an imminent disaster for me." [Sighs.] Well, a year ago, I might have thought it was an imminent disaster for me, because the IPCC said, in its report, that the Himalayan glaciers could actually melt by 2035. It's right here. Because of global warming. And this was in the report, and a lot of people were pushing this on China, because they get their water - a lot of their water - from the Himalayan glaciers.
Well, it turns out that the Indian government also gets its water from the Himalayan glaciers. They were in a panic, so they had their own scientific group study this. And they said "Well, the Himalayan glaciers might melt, but not in 35 years - 25 years - we're talking only in three or four hundred years. So people looked at the IPCC report. The Indian government said "This thing in your report is wrong". And Pachauri, who's Indian himself, got upset and said "You can't have a bunch of your scientists come and dispute my scientists. What you're doing is voodoo science." Thereby, not only insulting Indian scientists but the legitimate religion of Voodoo. [Laughter.]
It turned out the IPCC report was wrong. They had based their fear on a report that was in a World Wildlife Foundation magazine in which a scientist had stated that the Himalayas might melt by 2035. But when the scientist was approached subsequently, he said "I never said that. They misquoted me". And this was in the IPCC report. So one of the things that's happened now is a discrediting of the IPCC. The IPCC says "Well, most of our results are right". And that's true. Most of what they say in their report is right. The problem is the dramatic things, the things that grab the public attention, the newspaper headlines - the melting of the Himalayas, the destruction of the rain forests, the destruction of the coral reefs... None of that was based on science. So, the dramatic things, the headlines, they could not defend, scientifically. But their estimates of temperature rise are in pretty good shape. So, they say most of their science is right, but not the stuff that grab [sic] the attention.
So this is the situation today, that we're confronted with. People like me, who are deeply worried about global warming, who thinks we're very likely going to have it - and nobody who has the public mind is talking about reducing the emissions of China, India and the developing world. Nobody's discussing that publicly. I was told by the top science adviser of the UK government I should stop talking about this. Because if I do this, it will insult the Chinese. And then they'll never sign a treaty. Because it sounds like I'm impugning blame to them, and I am trying hard not to impugn blame to them. In some legitimate sense, they have every right to warm the world. But if they - only by changing what they do can we stop the world from global warming, and my bottom line usually is this; anything we develop that costs a lot of money is a waste of setting an example. Because they can't afford it, and we can't afford to subsidise it.
So what we have to do is reduce carbon in a way that's profitable. And I think there are some good options there, including solar, including wind, including nuclear. But those are the only hope. So - that's really my bottom line, and I guess I don't have to do the rest of my talk now. [Laughter.]
This was in a newspaper yesterday, talking about what I had said, you know, during Kyoto. Basically that China is now 50%, and it's shooting up so fast. One year of Chinese growth negates 10% - if the U.S. were to cut 13%, that's a tough goal. "We're going to cut 13%." In one year, China would negate that. Just China. Let alone India and the rest of the developing world. So that's where the issue is.