The Lifetime of IntelligenceNASA Ames, 30 June 2007

William H. CalvinWilliam H. CalvinUniversity of WashingtonUniversity of Washington

Seattle, Washington USASeattle, Washington USA

Nuclear Winter Scenario• Became clear that we could

terminate civilization via worldwide changes in climate.

• Now it looks as if there is a low-tech version of this, and that it has already been producing results for a century.

• Since 1975, climate change has been in Fast Forward.

Low-tech suicide for societies?

• Cutting down trees–Whether they burn or rot, that’s extra CO2 in air until replacements grow up.

–Lose sink as well, so other CO2 sources have more of an effect on global temp.

Two stable states

BRIGHAM CITY, Utah (AP) -- Winds gusting to more than 100 mph swept across northern Utah on Friday, overturning 20 tractor-trailers.…Winds reached 113 mph setting a state record….[4/23/99 Marta Storwick/Standard-Examiner]

Utah I-15 wind 4/23/99 Credit: Marta Storwick/Standard-Examiner via Associated Press113 mph gusts in northern Utah113 mph gusts in northern Utah

More high winds are predicted More high winds are predicted for global warming.for global warming.

How to rearrange atmospheric circulation in only a few months

All it takes is a big El Niño

The Amazon is drying & burning under the influence of deforestation & climate-change-induced drought

Nepstad et al., Forest Ecology & Management 154, 2001

We’ve had big ENSOs (1982, 1997).We’ve had long ones (1991-1995)But what if the next big one is twice as long?

We need a big safety margin up front to allow for the unexpected that could losewhat maneuvering room we have.

•Amazon rain forest will NOT regrow.•Biofuels in drought.

•Half of all Amazon species will go extinct.

No reefs remaining by 2100

Ocean Acidification and the Carbon Pump

SEM photograph of E. hux

Coccolithophores sink carbon when they die.

The “Carbon pump” refers to CO2 incorporated into microalgae, consumed by zooplankton and salps, then sunk as shells or fecal pellets to the ocean floor, perhaps becoming limestone.

Unlike forests that can burn or decompose in a drought, the carbon pump take carbon out of circulation for millions of years. Ocean acidification can kill off this pump.

“The vacuum cleaner of the ocean” eats phytoplankton.

Fecal pellets carry ex-CO2 carbon to the ocean floor

Photo L. Madin, WHOI, shows a 10-centimeter individual of Salpa thompsoni .

The microsnail Limacina, is a few millimeters in diameter (zooplankton). The shell sinks when they die, taking carbon out of circulation. But its shell may not form as well if increasing CO2 changes the ocean's pH.(Photo by Larry Madin, WHOI). http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewPhotoArchive.do?gType=1&gallery=true&clid=2416

Land heats twice as much as ocean, so windstrengths and patterns change.

20% by 2050

40% by 2100

10% in 2007

2005 broke the 2002 record

One week of melting atop WAIS, 2005

The RED areas show the land covered by a 6m/20ft rise in sea level, what is expected from the 3°C/5°F temperature rise this century.

Hot Dry Rockgeothermal• This big drill

rig, in a suburb of Basel, drilled a 5 km deep well in late 2006.

The steam plant up top is about the size of atwo story parking garage.

Three technologies, in combination, could solve the 2020 part of the problem.1.Plug-in hybrid vehicles so daily commute was entirely from the electrical grid. Retire most supertankers..2.Start building enough nuclear or geothermal power plants to retire most coal trains.3. Subsidize DC power transmission lines to countries apt to modernize using their own coal or oil.DO THIS WORLDWIDE, and emissions growth will stop by 2020 and limit Earth’s fever to 2°C. (= 4°C in the interior = 8°F).

The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and goodwill would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done.

– Edmund Burke

Nimble and ponderous• So that’s the bind that I see for the future

of our intelligence. Likely similar elsewhere. Imagine where we’d be without the science satellites.

• It now looks as if the lifetime of our civilization could be shortened, with an terrible aftermath that would make a recovery very slow.

• It’s as if a special intelligence test has been set for us. Use it quickly or lose lots.

My books and talksMy books and talksmay be found at:may be found at:

WilliamCalvin.comWilliamCalvin.com

The EndThe End

Edvard Munch, The Scream

from the Economist 2007

How deserts expand

.

The Hadley

Cells are enlargin

g

Extent of deforestation

Planning Ahead• Maybe only 50,000 years old and not very well

tested by evolution.• Status quo bias, the tendency to keep doing

what you’ve always done, is often stronger than the rational arguments for changing course.

• People have a tendency, when faced with too many choices, to decide not to decide.

• People “endow” their possessions and paychecks with inordinately high value, simply because they possess them. People feel the pain of a loss more acutely than the joy of a gain – one reason why future gains are hard to balance with the loss of present-day spending money.

6 meter 6 meter (two (two

stories stories high) high)

increase increase in sea in sea levellevel

Produced with the Weiss & Overpeck map machine at geo.arizona.edu

•What’s up?•Sea-level rise•What to do?

NONLINEAR:

As wind speed increases from 50 mph to 60 mph, the damage goes up six times.

Projections of Future Changes in Climate

Precipitation increases very likely in high latitudes

Decreases likely in most subtropical land regions

Bleaching of red coral