The Curse Of Akkad

[hatrack]

Kolbert intersperses the human story of the plight of Shishmaref with an account of the science of climate change. The first major study by the US National Academy of Sciences in 1979 concluded: “If CO2 continues to increase, the study group finds no reason to doubt that climate changes will result, and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible.” “The effect of adding CO2 to the atmosphere” writes Kolbert “is to throw the earth out of ‘energy balance’ and that to restore this balance, the entire planet has to heat up, including the oceans, a process … that could take ’several decades’.” The approach of waiting for more evidence has been disastrous because of the time-lag in the effects of the build-up of CO2: even if we eliminate emissions immediately, warming will continue for a long time to come. Twenty-five years on, and emissions have continued to rise, despite truckloads of reports being issued and the evidence mounting of impending disasters. From the “drunken forests” of Alaska - caused by the abrupt melting of permafrost that has been frozen for thousands of years - to the “floating houses” of Holland now being built in expectation of increasing floods; the tracking of migration patterns of European butterflies northwards in England since Victorian times, the planned evacuation of the entire nation state of the pacific island of Tuvalu to New Zealand over the next few years, climate change is here and having a real and immediate effect on the livelihoods of millions. And we may only be just beginning to see the effects. Both books have a chapter entitled “The Curse of Akkad”. This refers to a text of that name telling the story of the Akkadian empire, ruled 4,200 years ago by the despot Sargon, who presided over a vast agricultural empire in Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq.

For a long time, it was believed that the demise of Sargon’s empire after only a hundred years was due to political reasons and invasions from outside. Pierce quotes the archaeologist Harvey Weiss’s work which uncovered a “lost city” in Syria in the 70s which provided evidence of an abrupt abandonment of the city which filled up with layers of dust. This event was dated and traced to a “huge global dust spike” which has traces of dust that period in tropical ice cores. Although no-one knows for sure what caused this, it all points to a sudden and abrupt change in climate causing persistent droughts in many areas. Could history be as much a result of climate change in the past putting an end to whole civilisations in a matter of years? Kolbert also quotes Weiss: “Nothing allows you to go beyond the third or fourth year of a drought, and by the fifth or sixth year you’re probably gone”.

Another scientist Kolbert interviews, comparing these ancient events with the prognosis for future climate change in relation to drought in California, is David Rind, who says of the prospects for “adaptation” to changing climate of modern societies: “‘We may say that we’re more technologically able than earlier societies. But one thing about climate change is that it’s potentially geopolitically destabilizing. And we’re not only more technologically able; we’re more technologically able destructively as well. I think it’s impossible to predict what will happen. I guess - though I won’t be around to see it - I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that by 2100 most things were destroyed’. He paused. ‘That’s sort of an extreme view’” Both books finish with a review of the current political responses and how well they fit in with the best-guess of science.

Pierce has a useful section in which he talks about total amount of carbon in the atmosphere, rather than concentrations of parts per million. This shows that industrial society has added about 200 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere in the last 2 centuries - making a total of 800 billion tonnes. We currently add about 4 billion tonnes each year. The best-guess “safe” limit - to avoid “runaway global warming” - is 850 billion tonnes total. Barring some complete economic meltdown, we are very unlikely to stay within this limit in the next 10-20 years. The section on technological fixes is the weak part of both books, because no account of peak oil is taken into account. For example, the idea of carbon sequestration - burying CO2 emissions from power stations in the ground - doesn’t allow for the extra energy involved and how difficult this will be as we end the era of cheap energy. Similarly, while energy efficiency is obviously a good idea, it doesn’t necessarily lead to a reduction in overall emissions or energy consumption and, in fact, can send the wrong signal to the market which rewards efficiency and can therefore encourage more growth.

EDIT

http://zone5.org/2007/04/08/the-curse-of-akkad/

[havocmom]

1. . (mark for later)

when I can give it the time it deserves