A friend asked me about the Climate Interactive Scoreboard, and Bill McKibben's interpretation of its predictions that commitments made by countries will lead to 770 ppm (of CO2 or CO2e? That's not clear either).

I responded with this:

I think that we'll avoid those levels - or at least, if we reach those levels, it'll be because of positive feedback loops (e.g. release of methane from permafrost and gas hydrates), not because of anthropogenic emissions.

Here's why:

1) There aren't enough fossil fuels to get there. While natural gas reserves are up in North America, and quite dramatically, oil reserves show no sign of increasing sufficiently. The 10 billion barrels we've found in 2009 (highest this decade)? Humanity runs through that in four months. We're probably looking at only enough resources to get to doubling of CO2. If that.

2) The 770 ppm number is likely misleading, and I hope Bill McKibben would know better. I went to the site and see only their temperature target for the weakest targets - and perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but I think we'll do better than our weakest targets globally (except for maybe Canada, we're a bunch of climate knuckle draggers with our collective heads in the oil sands). It assumes nothing about the long-term targets. We won't get to 770 ppm.

3) Confusion between metrics. I don't know if their 770 ppm refers to CO2 or CO2e. Probably the latter. 350 refers to CO2. That is equal to about 445 ppm CO2e, given methane, nitrous oxide and other non-CO2 GHGs.

4) I really believe we're not that stupid. Except maybe in North America and China, and perhaps India (oops). But the impacts are being felt and they point to anthropogenic climate change. We know better. The costs are not high, and will largely come back to us, in a large measure. Just like it would likely be with health care - the costs of insuring all Americans is probably equal to the way the system works now, because it would drop insurance costs.

I think that, at some point, trade protectionism in the US will line up with climate protection. People will decide that, between spending $X dollars on importing fuel from Saudi Arabia, or Algeria, or those frozen bastards in Alberta (shit - a lot of those companies are based in the US, that might not be a good example), they'd rather spend it on American companies who build insulation, wind turbines, solar collectors and cells, and construction companies building more sustainable communities. All of these are domestic jobs that can be difficult (though not impossible) to outsource. The language of the Kerry-Boxer bill (Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act) might indicate that the discussion is shifting.

I hope.