“Damn! I think we just passed the last exit for the Holocene!”
“I’m sorry, honey, I wasn’t looking.”
“We have to get off this highway. What’s the next exit?”
“It’s a long way ahead. Goes to somewhere called Perdition.”
That’s syndicated columnist Gwynne Dyer’s little allegory in The Salt Lake Tribune on where we are at with global warming. The Holocene has treated us well in the last 10,000 years or so. The civilisation project is coming along nicely and our numbers have increased about a thousandfold, many living with a degree of comfort and wealth simply unimaginable in the history of the species during the last ice age.
James Hansen, she* writes, says we need to go in a different direction from that recommended by scientists to date. Tamino at Open Mind in his recent post on Hansen also points out that the Holocene has served us well, with CO2 levels “varying between about 260 and 285 ppmv (parts per million by volume)”. He quotes Hansen as saying:
“We’re toast if we don’t get on a very different path,” Hansen told The Associated Press. “This is the last chance.”
Leaving Hansen’s ideas aside for a moment, other work indicates that our leaders are heading for Perdition.
In a sense perdition was built into Garnaut’s terms of reference:
The Review’s terms of reference require it to analyse two specific stabilisation goals: one at which greenhouse gases are stabilised at 550 ppm CO2-e (strong global mitigation) and one at which they are stabilised at 450 ppm CO2-e (ambitious global mitigation).
That is from the Draft Report (pdf). It is immediately followed by this astonishing statement:
A stabilisation target of 450 ppm CO2-e gives about a 50 per cent chance of limiting the global mean temperature increase to 2°C above pre-industrial levels (Meinshausen 2006), a goal endorsed by the European Union (Council of the European Union 2005) among others.
So Garnaut is constrained by his terms of reference, determined by the now government when in opposition, which on the face of it gives us a 50:50 chance of avoiding dangerous climate change (DCC). That is simply ridiculous and outrageous. But then the real problem is that the situation is actually a good deal worse than that.
There is a deluge of reports on climate change at present. One that deserved greater attention was by Andrew Macintosh from the ANU Centre for Climate Law and Policy and Oliver Woldring, staffer for the Greens. Naturally it got a gig at the Greens and the discussion thread is well worth a read.
They nail the source of Rudd’s oft stated “The science tells us…” by quoting Rudd:
Why do we pick this number 60 per cent? Because it comes from the science. Unless we are able to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions at something in the order of 450-490 parts per million, then frankly we place the planet in grave danger of not being able to correct itself.
This appears to come directly from the the IPCC Report WG 111. But immediately there are problems.
First, The forecast global mean temperature for stabilisation given by the IPCC is 2C to 2.4C, which is above the 2C guard rail for dangerous climate change.
Second, the 2050 target for global emissions is -50 to -85% compared to 2000 levels. Rudd’s 60% is conveniently near the lower bound.
Third, that’s the target for global emissions. Is Rudd assuming that the developing nations will have no increase, but will in fact also have a corresponding decrease?
Before we go any further I’ll just quote a comment by Woldring on the GreensBlog thread:
We discussed our paper with two scientists who really know this issue, Professor Andy Pittman (UNSW) and Dr Michael Raupach (CSIRO). Both felt we were being conservative.
Macintosh and Woldring quote articles of the UNFCCC framework document which enjoin policy makers to “take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects.” The precautionary principle is to be used and the “lack of full scientific certainty is not to be used as a reason for postponing such measures.” So there!
Hence policies should not be focussed on the median effects in a range of uncertainty, but also on high-impact, low-probability effects.
One of the major thrusts of the paper is to look at more recent ‘coupled’ climate models which take better account of feedbacks in the carbon balance between oceans, land and atmosphere. In particular such models attempt to take account of diminishing carbon sinks.
They also look at various stabilisation scenarios, taking into account trends in emissions from developing countries.
The sad conclusion they come to is that we are heading for 650ppm of CO2e and will need to work quite hard to stabilise even at that level. In fact they say that unless something is done to arrest the current emissions trajectory the growth in developing country emissions will close off the 650ppm CO2e option. Take a look at the eventual temperature ranges for various emission levels from a part of a figure in the Stern Review (download from here the full Executive Summary - Figure 2).
The solid horizontal lines indicate the 5% to 95% range based on climate sensitivity estimates from the IPCC 2001 report and a 2004 Hadley ensemble study. The vertical lines represent the 50th percentile. The dashed lines represent the 5% to 95% range based on 11 “recent” studies. You’ll notice that at 450ppm and above these are off the page on the upside.
Now here’s the same chart in full with effects in the real world:
There, I’ve always wanted to show that one!
So before we get to 2C which is considered dangerous, we’ve already lost small mountain glaciers and devastated the coral reefs. Kakadu also, I understand, would be a goner.
At 4C we’d have a world that was unrecognisable. Beyond that you really wouldn’t want to think about it. Yet the five percenters of the 11 studies let alone the one percenters get us into that sort territory even with 450ppm.
This is simply unacceptable risk management. People who aim for 450ppm should be sacked and replaced by more appropriate personnel.
Last year Cannadel and others (pdf - slide 6) found that emissions were running at above the IPCC’s worst scenarios:
I understand that when scientists make forecasts about regional climate effects, as in how much water there is going to be in the Murray River, they use a mid-range of the IPCC forecasts of emissions. But these projections are in danger of becoming irrelevant. Recently we were told that China’s emissions will treble by 2030 and will amount to 37% of the world’s CO2 emissions at that time.
Sheehan, Jones et al in their paper Climate Change and the New World Economy (pdf) survey what is happening in the real world and examine the implications for policy. One of their findings was that:
an atmospheric CO2 concentration level of over 900ppm CO2e and warming of 2.2C to 4.7C are projected by 2100, even if aggressive emission reductions after 2030 are achieved. (Emphasis added)
Have a look at this graph from a paper by Sheehan covering similar material:
Roger Jones’ comment that it’s “A1FI on steroids” seems more than warranted.
Macintosh and Woldring address the problem of overshooting. The longer you leave high levels of CO2 concentrations up there the more likelihood of triggering unpleasant
tipping points and exacerbating ocean acidity.
It seems that when CO2 levels hit 500ppm the entire ocean surface may violate US EPA ocean-quality standards.
Macintosh and Woldring emphasise that focus should be on near-term objectives for 2020 and 2030 rather than 2040 and 2050.
Now along comes the old grump James Hansen. All the above is based on the notion that climate sensitivity, the warming resulting from a doubling of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, is about 3C at the midpoint. Hansen has worked out that when longer term feedbacks (the standard concept was only ever based on short term feedbacks) which are now becoming evident are taken into account, climate sensitivity is doubled to 6C. Furthermore, the amount of warming in the pipeline is not 0.5 to 0.6 as supposed, but 2C. Finally, by looking at paleoclimate records of sea level rise he concludes that the IPCC has entirely misjudged what’s afoot. Two graphs are a bit hard to get around. First we have the relationship between GHG levels, temperature and sea levels (original from NASA):
The second is comes from Climate Code Red (February 2008) who got it from Archer (2006) via Rahmstorf:
You may recall the Rahmstorf found that from the paleoclimate record every degree of temperature change resulted the sea level changed 20 metres, plus or minus 10, on the average. From what’s happening in the Arctic and developments in Greenland and Antarctica we need, I think, to take Hansen’s estimate of a two metre sea level rise by 2100 seriously. If you don’t think it’s a worry check out this comment and this one by Professor Barry Brook of Adelaide University. Then check out what he, Janette Lindesay and Barrie Pittock told a conference recently. Pittock said:
“the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere had overtaken even the worst-case scenario included in last year’s bench-mark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“We are at or exceeding the fossil-fuel-intensive scenario, which the latest IPCC report didn’t cover because they thought it was too much.” (Emphasis added)
Oh dear!
Hansen is one who has given us a reasonable explanation why events seem to be continually surprising everyone.
Hansen has been wrongly quoted as saying that the new target should be 350ppm. (Please note that he always means a net figure you get by taking CO2 levels then adding the other GHGs to get CO2e, and then subtracting anything with a net cooling effect such as aerosols.) This is what he told Gwynne Dyer:
“To figure out the optimum is going to take a while, but the fundamental thing about the 350 [ppm target], and the reason that it completely changes the ball game, is precisely the fact that it’s less than we have now.”
“Even if the optimum turns out to be 325 or 300 or something else, we’ve got to go through 350 to get there. So we know the direction now that we’ve got to go, and it’s fundamentally different. It means that we really have to start to act almost immediately. Even if we cut off coal emissions entirely, CO2 would still get up to at least 400, maybe 425, and then we’re going to have to draw it down, and we’re almost certainly going to have to do it within decades.”
What we should not do as Macintosh and Woldring emphasise is to lock in post-Kyoto arrangements from 2013 that are based on old science without the opportunity to change anything until, say, 2018.
But Hansen seems to be struggling to get any traction as you can see from this thread at Quiggin. No wonder he might be a bit grumpy. I wonder whether he is, in fact, or whether that’s been put on him by people who don’t want to hear what he’s saying. I’ll leave you with this ‘haiku’ sent in by a listener to Bush Telegraph:
Coal fired power,
melting ice caps,
acid oceans,
drowning planet.
I think one line too many, and not the best aesthetically, but she and Gwynne Dyer are closer to the mark than those who are leading us.
* It seems she’s a he.
Thanks, great post pulling all this into one spot Brian. Bit of a worry.
We’re fucked. Sorry, kids.
Word Brian,
good post (well, I would say that, wouldn’t I)?
Actually, I’ve spent much of the past couple of weeks trying to constrain sea level rise uncertainties, especially the contribution from Greenland.
I think the evidence suggests that surface mass balance on the Greenland ice sheet is on the cusp of turning from net accumulation to net loss (This implies that surface melting outweighs increased precipitation - this is not a good thing). I think it’s already crossed on the balance of probabilities but measurement and model uncertainty suggests some doubt. This says nothing about how quickly melting may occur in the future - we should get at least one more generation out of shorefront properties on most unprotected coastal dunes.
My difference with the long-term target approach, and debating a stabilisation range of 300-450 is that they are all long-term targets.
From our current rapid emissions path, they all require overshoot. My take would be forget stabilisation, go for overshoot asap, then see how far towards negative territory you can get with the mix of technology, behaviour and sink capacity that oceans, forests and soils can allow. It’s a dynamic system with large inherent uncertainties - let’s manage it that way, rather than hope for some distant equilibrium.
Mind you, we’re along way from either choice at the moment.
Jeebus. this scares the hell out of me.
It’s a good thing I’m already on anti-depressants.
mister z, thanks.
David, yep it’s sad, and I just recently became a grandpa.
Tim, me too to be honest. As I got my head into it, it just got worse and worse.
Roger, thanks, I’ll respond more specifically later.
Down and out, Hansen is still in there swinging, and we can’t give up. Apart from Christine Milne and the Greens, I think the only pollie we’ve got who might come close to understanding what it’s all about is Malcolm Turnbull. They keep saying he’s the biggest brain in the parliament.
It’s just that he’d need to say the right things, and at present he’s not.
Also I’d need to be convinced he could actually lead the gaggle he’s with, and I’m not convinced of that either.
Nooooo, they be stealin my handbaskit!!
It seems all my life there have been people who want to believe the end is nigh. It’s such bollocks. We survived 90 000 years of Ice Age without much more than a sharpened stick. This sort of rhetoric is not helpful.
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Reminds me of a guy in my honours class. That year there was some batshit Guru who said the world was gonna end on a specific day at a specific time. The deadline was two days before the deadline for honour theses. So this clown made sure he got his paper in early and went up the mounain to pray with all the other idiots. A cursory bit of research would’ve shown that said Guru had taken all this cash from the gullible and invested it short term to mature 6 months after D-Day! (He got busted).
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I myself woke up momentarily about 10 minutes after the world was s’posed to end, went: “O, still here and went back to sleep.”
Adrien, surely the point is not that the world is going to end, or even that humanity is going to end, but that on the evidence it is quite likely that a lot of things are going to change, and dramatically. Were it merely an apocalyptic scenario, I would certainly be less concerned. It is the world continuing, unpleasantly transformed, that I am more worried about. The generic point of comparison would be the dystopian rather than the apocalyptic fantasy.
Yeah I agree Klaus. But I happen to think that certain parties on the pro-AGW side of the debate are as bad the denialists. The thing is we don’t really know what will happen for certain.
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To the best of our information the smart money is not on doing nothing. But these quasi-religious schpiels (’road to perdition’ etc) piss me off. Behind it is the idea that our economic activity is inherently evil or something. I’ve had so many conversations with the mind-numbingly stupid who fantatize about life in Agrarian Society (without ever having worked even on a modern farm) and the message is always pseudo-religious and eschatological.
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The bottom line is we’ve come to a point where we need to consider our impact on the ecology. I do believe we need to change. I’ve believed that since I was in high school. But I don’t think this kind of talk helps. It just sounds hysterical.
Brian
Great and informative post as yours invariably are.
This is OT but I couldn’t resist sending this link from The Times (London). It’s about airlines flying virtually passenger-free flights (including airlines hiring actors to masquerade as passengers) so they can keep their landing slots at Heathrow.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/news/article4340518.ece
The magic of capitalism! I’ve sent something similar with this link to crikey.
Paul H
Paul H, that’s amazing. My brother tells me that air travel is now the cheapest it ever was and is ever going to be. In 2 months and 2 days time I’m heading over there (not England, but thereabouts) for a spell, so Adrien won’t have to put up with me.
Adrien, it really doesn’t matter what you think of me, but I gather your objection is actually aesthetic. So you then indulged yourself in a story about what happened in your honours year which, while interesting, was strictly irrelevant.
You know the drill. If you think Hansen’s central paper Climate change and trace gases is crap, then it’s open to you to argue that in the appropriate forums. No-one yet has, although not too many people have worked out the implications yet. I think that Spratt and Sutton got there before Hansen himself, first in The Big Melt and then in Climate Code Red, linking it with other research and spelling out what they think needs to be done. Note the challenge they put at their site - either endorse or refute Hansen’s call.
If and when you’ve disposed of him you then still need to deal with the challenges thrown up by Macintosh and Woldring, plus Sheehan, Jones et al, because they rely on more traditional notions of climate sensitivity.
So I’m saying to you, I didn’t find your emotional reaction particularly helpful. I accept that Klaus K settled you down, thanks KK, but your initial reaction was I think a problem.
BTW I have heard that 70,000 years ago according to modern DNA studies there weren’t too many of us on the planet, perhaps as few as 2,000. Certainly it wasn’t a cake walk. I think we came through because of our capacity to act cooperatively in small groups, mostly of about 100. I’m not arguing for a return to that situation, but because GW and CC is a problem of the global commons the whole 6.6 billion going on 9 billion need to cooperate to fix it. I’m really not sure we’ve got it within us, whatever ‘it’ is.
Sorry, I think I’ve got a bit of SOL tonight.
Brian, the only thing I could find to disagree with was your description of Gwynne Dyer as a she. The beard rather gives it away…..
In the Green paper thread someone mentioned that 10 years of Howard meant that we haven’t really had the national conversation about AGW yet. People have heard of it and know its bad but the number 350 doesn’t mean particularly much to them, let alone the name James Hansen. The prospect of having to pay more for their power and buy a 4-cylinder is probably beginning to change that though.
In environmental history terms, its astounding how often humans will run straight over the edge of a cliff without seeing it coming - any number of early Mesopotamian societies, Easter Island, more recently the Aral Sea. We’ve never had the scientific knowledge like we have now, but it doesn’t feel like it’s changing things much. There have probably always been James Hansens at all of these junctures but I suspect the reaction he gets is the same one they all got.
Doom & gloom indeed…
Brian, congrats (sort of) on being a grandad. My kids are unlikely to reproduce, as autism runs in the family (my grandfather, my father, me, two out of three sons), and they’re a bit cautious. It’s still a bastard.
Thanks, David. I always have to put on my optimistic persona when I’m dealing with people who are walking somewhat blithely into the future. That’s a bit unfair to my daughter, actaully, but you know what I mean.
aussieoskar, are you sure that beard isn’t a fake?
I assumed it was my Teutonic ignorance that made me think he was a she. So I asked my wife, whose people hail from Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, Devon and thereabouts, spelling out the name for her. She said, it’s a she of course. Well…
On your environmental history thing, I was impressed with Ronald Wright’s 2004 Massey Lectures A Short history of Progress which I heard, then bought and read.
This review gives a lot of the ideas. I’d have to say that the highlighted bit is somewhat overdone. Certainly Wright is aware of our aggressive tendencies, but I heard him stressing in a interview that for 98% plus of our evolutionary history we lived in groups of up to 30 or 40 adults, perhaps 100 counting kids, and our outstanding feature was our cooperation. We were aggressive to outsiders, and he suspects that we did in the Neanderthals.
It is through agriculture and civilisation that we organised into heirarchies, where the elites had power over others and were able to protect themselves from the adverse effects of the environment going pear-shaped until collapse.
His ideas are similar to Jared Diamond’s, but less verbose.
Here’s another blog review with a very perspicacious comment from me at the end of the thread.
As to Jared Diamond, this one is about as brief as he gets.
I don’t think one can get too optimistic about our chances. Wright says they didn’t have the knowledge in earlier times, but now we do. We still have the problem of elites who can buffer themselves from the effects. And it’s not natural for us to act in the interests of the whole of the human race. Not if you look at our history.
In the foyer of a buiding in Manchester Street in Christchurch NZ (my favourite city) is a bronze panel with a line on it and the explanation says that this is twenty one feet above sea level. So in about 50 years time, to read that sign a person will be chest deep in sea water and it will mean that one of the most beautiful botanical gardens in the world is gone forever, along with the entire city of 400,000 people who got to enjoy it for a time.
The city may have the foresight and strength to relocate a lot further inland……………………But how far?
Hey, BilB, 21 feet is a bit of a stretch. Hansen’s best guess is about 2 meters by 2100.
Have you tried this magic map thing?
At 7 meters Christchurch is a mess, at 2 meters not so bad. The world should come to it’s senses before it gets that bad. One worrying thing for me was two reports on security and climate change I read a year ago. The German one was full of the need to strengthen international institutions and to assist weak countries so that we don’t have state failure.
The American one took for granted that there would be social breakdown at home in the mighty US of A, that the powerful would look after themselves and arbitrage what they did from there. They took it as read that no-one in Europe would come to the aid of the Dutch.
Roger at 3 I can live with the differences you and I have about targets etc. I always need to know the targets and as much as possible about the terrain long the way, and am happy to constantly update at frequent intervals. My wife has a more intuitive approach and is way better than I am at process. But my spatial judgement is better, although she picks up visual cues better and her reactions are much faster than mine. She has left-right confusion. We can’t do the navigate/drive thing either way. Other than that we get along fine.
So it takes all sorts, there is more than one way to skin a cat, and other associated cliches.
This surprises and puzzles me. The IPCCC said we have been getting a small amount of sea level rise from both Greenland and Antarctica for decades. I’ve read a number of articles reporting net ice mass loss increasing forom 90 cubic kilometers to 150 in recent years and at least one that said over 200. I’ve just checked and found that you did comment on my Greenland/Antarctica post where I had a graph showing the increase, but didn’t correct me.
Barry Brook also commented, but only on Antarctica.
So please explain! or have I missed something?
I really think we are kidding ourselves if we think some of the major beneficiaries of our current way of doing things (politicians and business leaders), the ones who travel thousands of kms every year by plane, who get driven everywhere, who eat the most carbon intensive foods, who have the biggest houses, etc etc and most of whom are not going to be around when the shit really hits the fan are going to feel any great need to do anything about this unless we make them. That gives us years, and quite likely decades of inaction to address the reality of things being much worse than we thought they were.
I’d always thought Gwynne Dyer was a man, and that it was a masculine name. But, not an expert.
The question for me is, having done what I think I can, for now, in terms of mitigation (my life is reasonably low carbon, and otherwise offset, and I do a bit of (pointless) politicking where I can), what are optimal adaptation strategies?
One adaptation that comes to me that is against mitigation is that I should get out and see all the great low-level stuff before it goes. Venice, Kakadu,everglades, what else should be on a must see list the next ten years? (only half facetious).
I think a greater degree of self-sufficiency could be called for, just like in the Depression. Chooks? Gardens?
I wonder what will happen to financial systems? It’s all very well getting wealthier on paper, but if it’s built on a bit of a house of cards then that doesn’t help. Should I put more money in super, given that my retirement is still long enough away that significant effects will already be here?
Probably investing in skills and education is wisest. A biodiesel distillery? A small tractor? A horse and cart? Land (at inflated prices)?
Cynics (adrian?) please note I’m not wearing sackcloth, I’m not looking forward to this, and I’m not suggesting civilisation will collapse. But. It looks pretty rough from where I sit.
Yes, dj, what I said at 16 about Ronald Wright. He sees democracy as our only hope, but I keep saying that a big storm over New York with a new Orleans plus plus result, which apparently almost happened once recently and is likely to happen again as 1 in 100 year events become 1 in 3 years, as I’m told they will, would concentrate a lot of minds.
Brian, my view, shared by many colleagues, is that there is already large and rapidly accumulating body of empirical and direct observational evidence for accelerated melting of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets, occurring now.
First, Hansen et al.’s papers are based on direct observations, both of current atmospheric changes and glacial/interglacial records (see J. Hansen et al., Roy. Soc. London, 16 January, 2007; J. Hansen et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 101,16109, doi10.1073/pnas.0406982101 (2006); J. Hansen et al., Science 308, 1431, 2005. As he noted, the great advantage of using past information of ice sheet dynamics is that, whilst we can never be certain that models include (and realistically represent) all relevant processes, we can be sure that observed geophysical responses to climate change, in the real world, do – thus providing a fundamental basis for calibration.
Recent glaciological studies in Greenland, indicating internal ice sheet fracture (mullion) dominated dynamics (Bamber et al., 2007, ‘Rapid response of modern day ice sheets to external forcing’ Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Vol 257, p 1–3). The internal collapse of ice sheets, coupled with outflow glaciers, and the reduced albedo caused by vast pools of surface melt water, result in accelerated loss (see Steffen K., Huff R., 2002. A record maximum melt extent on the Greenland ice sheet in 2002. Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado at Boulder, CO 80309-0216)] and Steffen K., Nghiem S.V. Huff, R. and Neumann G. 2004. The melt anomaly of 2002 on the Greenland Ice Sheet from active and passive microwave satellite observations. Geophysical Research Letters, 31 (20), L2040210. 1029/2004GL020444). The 2007 melt reached the greatest extent yet, beating 2005 which had already smashed the 2002 melt.
Satellite gravity and microwave measurements indicate a doubling of Greenland ice melt areas per decade (NASA 2006; Greenland ice loss doubles in past decade, raising sea level faster, news release, 16 Feb. http ://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/ Nasa News/2006/2006021621 775.html). Rates of ice loss of the Greenland ice sheet have increased, involving an increase in spring melt area of 16% from 1979 to 2002. Satellite scanning of the Antarctic ice sheet during the period from April 2002 to August 2005 found that its mass decreased at a rate of 152±80 cubic km per year. Most of this mass loss came from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. GRACE-based estimates identify ice loss of 77±14 km3/year in the West Antarctic and a gain of 80±16 km3/year in Enderby Land in the East Antarctic. Due to sparse distribution of measurement stations in Antarctica, the balance between ice melt and snow fall is not clear. However, a recent review of this topic in Science (Shepherd & Wingham 2007, 315, 1529-1532 DOI: 10.1126/science.1136776) concluded: “…much of the loss from Antarctica and Greenland is the result of the flow of ice to the ocean from ice streams and glaciers, which has accelerated over the past decade. In both continents, there are suspected triggers for the accelerated ice discharge—surface and ocean warming, respectively—and, over the course of the 21st century, these processes could rapidly counteract the snowfall gains predicted by present coupled climate models.”
The IPCC 2007 documents a near doubling of sea level rise from 0.18±0.05 cm/year in 1961-2003 to 0.31±0.07 cm/year in 1993-2003, and combined melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets of 0.019 cm/year to 0.041 cm/year. The IPCC states: “The remainder of the ice loss from Greenland has occurred because losses due to melting have exceeded accumulation due to snowfall.”
The ice core palaeorecord of Greenland goes only to the last interglacial in Greenland? (Willerslev et al. 2007, Science 317, 111-114, DOI: 10.1126/science.1141758). Some have argued that Vostok and EPICA ice cores from internal and marginal parts of East Antarctica provide “evidence” that no significant melting occurred during the interglacials. However, the point is irrelevant. The East Antarctic ice sheet is believed to be comparatively stable, whereas concern hinges on rapid melting of the West Antarctic, where the base of the ice sheet lies beneath sea level, and on Greenland, where accelerated melting is taking place across large parts of the ice sheet.
As you have noted, an accelerated melting of continental ice sheets is hardly surprising, given the extreme reduction in Arctic sea ice extent from 5.6 million square km in September 2005 to 4.13 million square km in September, 2007 (http://nsidc.org/ accessed October, 2007).
In Climate Code Red (http://www.climatecodered.net/), there is an excellent summary of the current climate change scenario in the following terms: (1) Climate change impacts are happening at lower temperature increases and more quickly than projected by the IPCC; (2) the Arctic’s floating sea ice is headed towards rapid summer disintegration as early as 2013, a century ahead of the IPCC projections; (3) The rapid loss of Arctic sea ice will hasten the disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet, and a rise in sea levels by even as much as 2-5 metres by the turn of this century is possible.
Given the accelerated increase in the level of greenhouse gases, mean global temperatures (particularly at high latitudes, where temperatures have increased at three times the global average), the current reduction of the Arctic sea ice (22% over the last 2 years), pole-ward migration of climate zones and weather systems (cf. as is affecting southern Australia), and the role of anthropogenic emissions (some 320 billion tons of carbon since the industrial revolution), the spectre of rapid meter-scale sea level rise (Rahmstorf 2007, Science 315, 368) is a major source of concern. It is the current unprecedented observations, and accelerating trends – not just the modelled projections – which now speak clearly on the scope and urgency of this problem.
Also there is this report from Zwally et al, 2006, which clarifies Roger’s point about the ’switch’ from gain to loss: http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/SFgate/SFgate?&listenv=table&multiple=1&range=1&directget=1&application=fm06&database=%2Fdata%2Fepubs%2Fwais%2Findexes%2Ffm06%2Ffm06&maxhits=200&=%22C14B-03%22
“During the last year, various estimates of the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet have been published, including estimates of an accelerated mass loss during approximately the last five years. However, some of the results are not consistent with each other, with some estimates differing by more than a factor of two. From 1992 to 2002, the Greenland mass balance was slightly positive (+11 ± 3 Gt/yr) as shown by a combination of radar satellite altimetry and airborne laser surveys (ATM). This is consistent with a reinterpretation of the ATM results (-8 Gt/a) for approximately the same time period, but differs considerably from the estimate (-82 Gt/yr) derived using the mass flux approach for the year 1996. Although the Greenland ice sheet was close to balance overall in the 1990’s, it was thinning significantly below the Equilibrium Line Altitude (ELA) (-42 ± 2 Gt/yr) and growing inland (+53 ± 2 Gt/yr). Since 2000, some Greenland glaciers have accelerated, as shown by InSAR measurements of ice outflow velocity and seismic measurements of ice-quakes. A mass flux estimate using InSAR data suggested the balance became negative by 202 Gt/yr in 2005, which is in agreement with an estimate of 215 Gt/yr from GRACE data. However, a smaller net loss of 110 Gt/yr from an improved higher-resolution analysis of GRACE data for 2003 to 2005 is consistent with new results (105 Gt/yr) from repeat-track analysis of ICESat data for 2003 to 2005. The new GRACE and ICESat results both shown an increase in thickening at higher elevations and an increase in thinning at lower elevations. The new results are also consistent with the estimates of the increase in ice outflow from the InSAR measurements of acceleration of some outlet glaciers. Therefore, we believe the mass balance has changed from being close to balance in the 1990’s to a significant loss of approximately 105 Gt/yr, which is now giving a 0.3 mm/yr contribution to sea level rise.”
That’s a swimming idea of putting a line across a central building to show where the sea level could be. It’s a sharp, simple powerful way of bringing and keeping the need for personal action top of mind.
One in every town and city?
Yes I like it. In fact, if the City of Melbourne’s CH2 was a bit closer to the sea, it would be a likely candidate. But it doesn’t get its feet wet at even +14m. Maybe a sculpture in Docklands - except VicUrban refuses to hear a thing about sea level rises. The best way to get something going there would be to get a complicit artist to put up a big pole with rings on it, then get some others to explain what each of the rings meant.
That inspired me to send an email to the Docklands Authority:
Brian -
My ‘emoptional’ reaction was nothing of the sort. And my anecdote was not irrellevant.
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There are three aspects to ‘Green ideology’ Brian.
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The first, and oldest, is the love of nature aspect. This manifests as the conservation movement, the resistance to development of natural habitats simply because we like them. I subscribe to this. Strongly.
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The second, the topical one, is the scientific/economic aspect. This states that human economies may place stress on the natural systems of the planet in such a way as to make it tough for those economies and ecologies in general to sustain themselves. Again I subscribe to this and believe that it is the only one to which everyone should - critically, cautiously and in all sobriety.
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The third is a melange of half-baked paganism and mutant eschatology that essentially recycles ancient hysteria and applies self-righteous peasant witlessness in order to conjur up some kind of universal spirtual-moral system that makes human economies not just problematic but evil. One may see this in a variety of discursive modes. There are moderate and radical (deep Green) variations.
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The common theme however is to disregard the benefits of modern life, amplify the inconveniences and traumas associated with it, daub on some half-baked bollocks viz batshit druidry and then have the temerity to use scientific data to justify this as a compulsory morality. This is the mentality that thinks the best way to make people conscious of their footprint is to throw a bucket of paint at passing four wheel drives.
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Result: people hate Greenies and wanna turn the world into a car park.
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Now before you explode in protest I know that’s not the main topic of your post. The main topic is to provide heaps of data stressing danger. That’s fine. I’m neither a denialist nor even particularly interested in subjecting the AGW hypothesis to skepticism. My principles are listed above.
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What I do object to is the use of all this apocalyptic language. It might even be apt considering but it’s counter-productive and associates those with legitimate rational concerns (ie you and me) with this easily ridiculed lentil stew of brain-farts. This does not help.
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I’m sorry that taking the opportunity to point that out is ‘not helpful’. ‘Not helpful’ is one of the standard left-wing responses to discourse which isn’t Orthodox. The others are ‘conservative/fascist’ and ‘ignorant’.
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Such rigidity is helpful?
Good post. It prompts me to remind you and your readers that there are just a few major things that can be done immediately to make massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. They were summarised by Dr. Pachauri (IPCC chairman): ‘Don’t eat meat, ride a bike, shop frugally’.
The first one is the main one. Livestock raising accounts for a fifth of global emissions and 70% of all agricultural land. However it can account for far more than a fifth of the solution through not only diet change and the immediate reduction of land clearing and animal methane emissions but also the concerted, publicly supported transformation of livestock farming to carbon sequestering reforestation/afforestation.
I’m yet to find the figures for how much carbon can be sequestered by this, but considering that around 15% of our emission now is from land clearing, concerted vegetation of all viable land must be able to switch our global emission into global sequestration.
While emissions from energy and transport will be difficult to mitigate as they are wound up in the way we live, a plant-based diet can be effected immediately without social or economic consequences (beyond the cosmetic).
We’ll save money on our public health bill too, as the three lead killers in Australia have been directly linked to meat consumption.
More on the environmental and climatic toll of diet.
Brian @ 12.12
If the sea level gets to one meter the game is over because the runaway effect is in play. The ice melt is revving up, tundra methyl hydrate is releasing its methane as the Russian Steppe permafrost disappears, and if the Atlantic conveyor does not break down, then warm currents will release some of the 13 trillion tonnes (I think that is the figure) of methyl hydrate from the arctic sea floor. With that amount of methane in the atmosphere the temperature lurches upwards in just a hand full of years. As it has done a number of times in the past.
It is anyone’s guess as to how rapidly this process will develop. I would love to be wrong and I will be only to please to look stupid if we are all over reacting. But react I will, because the end result of acting, that is changing to a solar powered electric non carbon future, is all good. Not just good…it is extremely good.
Adrien, thanks for your considered reply. It is much more helpful than your earlier response. I was guessing with “aesthetic”, I considered ‘emotional’, which is not intrinsically bad or a problem in my view. It is problematic to label things. But an emotional reaction initially can inhibit rational perception for a while.
The basis of my “green” (we’ll call it that for convenience) philosophy is not well-captured by any of you categories. I think we’ll leave that for another day.
The “not helpful” business was introduced first by you in this comment. I’m thinking that, in the light of what you say, it was the Gwynne Dyer little story that set you going. I thought of about four different ways of starting the post and at least four different titles. I went for something scary because what we are dealing with is scary. Let’s recap what we are dealing with.
On a standard concept of climate sensitivity (short-term Charney feedbacks) we’ll get 3C warming (midpoint) and about a 5% chance that it’ll be 4.8C. That will give us a problematically acidic ocean (not sure how bad, as I haven’t researched it yet, but bad) and even at 3C get us into some very unpleasant and dangerous effects.
Now we know that we are tracking well ahead of that scenario. Macintosh and Woldring say if we work hard we might be able to limit it to 660ppm. Look at the chart. The midpoint is crook, but we’ve got a 1 in 20 chance of hitting 6C. That will give you an ice-free world and sea level rise of 75-80 meters. Have a look at the last image (in yellow and brown) on this post.
By one estimate I’ve read the inhabitable parts of the globe at 6C would be roughly equivalent to what was under ice in the last ice age. St Louis in the US, London in Britain, but it would be under the waves.
Now Sheehan, Jones et al tell us that if we try really hard after 2030 we might limit CO2e to 900ppm. It’s off the chart.
Hansen tells us that long-term feedbacks are now cutting in and the proper value of climate sensitivity for 560ppm is 6C. That’s the midpoint. God knows what he’d say you’d get with 900ppm.
Adrien, I reckon words can’t describe how crook it’s looking, but I reckon words like “apocalyptic” and “perdition” will have to do.
What say you?
Alstair, did you see this article by Geoff Russell, Peter Singer and Barry Brook on Garnaut’s failure to deal with methane.
Barry, I think the Spaminator grabbed your comment at 23, but let the one at 24 through today. When I took off out the door I forgot to do a last check, so I’m not sure how long it was there. Anyone interested in Greenland should make sure they read both.
Thanks for your detailed comments.
I hadn’t been aware that the pattern of growth in the inland to offset melt, slippage etc at the edges had been sufficient to roughly create a balance in the 1990s.
Here is a series of images from NASA.
Here’s a graph from World Climate Report.
1999 was a bad year. I don’t like the trend line, but my experience with trend lines comes from share prices. It seems to show a step up from 1995, possibly a consolidation from 2004 and who knows what comes next, but early 1990 values seem to be well behind us.
wilful, at 21, interesting ruminations. Not sure I can help in my state of weariness, but travel is good if you buy quality offsets, isn’t it?
No, I don’t invest in airlines.
This all could be cause for some seriously depressing thoughts, and given a fair degree of trust in the information a response of thanks for it being provided and the big effort of compiling it is carried, yet it isn’t the full story of course.
What this information does is essentially beseech us (humanity) to reduce or eliminate the negative, because it’s about the negatives. This is not a criticism, Brian, by any means, merely to suggest albeit briefly another perspective.
Existing right now in the world is an extensive pool of economic study re the task. This study identifies the problem areas - the negatives. However, running through its phrases and themes is also tremendous opportunity - distilled in small or large parts, these are the positives.
“The market” is largely relied upon to address CC. But how does this process work, in the first instance? The early step requires that opportunity be identified.
Isn’t there a case here for the creation and presentation of reports, papers and films - as with the negative - which identify and detail the opportunities? In all their similar power? Something of such content it jump-starts the market process, rather than waiting for a lapse or stress to occur before “the market” identifies opportunity, by bringing forth awareness.
If the CC problem is neutered successfully, “the market” will end up doing things like establishing university courses, and to serve those, high school curricula, to feed people ultimately into vocations that is achieving this success. That itself is a long process, having resulted from the market in the very first instance identifying opportunity: a process which itself takes stress and lapses, and considerable time, to begin.
Interestingly, the framework (for success) is here already.
So too is the stress and lapse- so the impulse is already here. My suggestion is that we will see, through forces already existing in the market, that is, for reward, papers, reports, films and much more which identify and sell this once-in-a-lifetime (no joke) vast and various opportunity.
If this reasoning holds, it would mean a jump-start towards resolving a problem such as we’ve never seen before. (”Human self-interest and greed” works in mysterious ways…)
Robert, I’m literally heading for the door, but my reaction to your comment is very positive. What was that Chinese thing about how they represented disaster or something?
No time, must go. Cheers.
(Cheers, Brian. An addition):
And (if) having swallowed the positive, the comment above is actually rude to the vast concerted efforts around the world over many, many years already made towards solving Climate Change. This is the ‘framework’ mentioned above. Apologies are duly given, and the “jump-start” is suggested in this vast, existing positive context.
No doubt those (corporations, governments, groups and individuals) who have applied themselves to success understand the nature of momentum. The context here, then, can be allowed: that we are only just starting.
Give it five years - after the jump-start - and you’ll have not only greater reason to be depressed, but far greater reason to be inspired.
Let the powerful need for humanity to live on, even if through greed and self-interest, and I believe we will succeed.
Brian - What I tend to think is that if you use words like apocalyptic then there’s a certain resignation and hyperbole that leaves you open to the highly skilled spinners of well-crafted merde coming from the other way. Whatever will be will be. I hear a bit of argument as to what that will be and my guess is we don’t know for sure but it’s probably a good bet to assume the worst and deal with that.
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At the end of the day there’s only the question of what we can do and when and if and how we’re going to do that.
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The eshatological/religious aspect of environmentalism gets my goat and has for a very long time. I’ve done things in the past like spend three hours talking an activist out of setting fire to forest due to be logged because “we want to show people that we loved it so much we were willing to destroy it”. That sort of thing. I’m unable to regard it as much other than an exercise in self-righteous stupidity only in aid of general alienation. But I spat the dummy a bit. Strictly speaking my first post was irrellevant.
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I should like you to articulate your version of green politics or ideology, whatever, sometime. Eschewing my categories kindles my curiosity.
Adrien, I’m glad you made that comment. I had been thinking that I have to take some responsibility for your reaction.
My working title for the piece was “Losing our way”. Maybe it should have been something like “Consideration of the implications of recent research pursuant…” When writing these things you look for attention grabbers or a ‘hook’ because in the long run we are trying to attract eyeballs. Certainly we don’t want to bore people to sobs.
Usually I’m wary of imagery, metaphors, analogies etc because they often don’t fit completely and can distort or mislead. In this case I thought there fit was pretty good. And when I put together the stuff that made up the post I was actually personally shocked.
I also wondered about using the ‘haiku’ at the end. I took down the little book of haiku my daughter gave me when she lived in Japan, read a few proper haiku and thought “Gawd that’s awful”. The listener who sent it in was responding to someone who had been complaining about wind farms upsetting the brolgas. Her message was, “If we don’t have wind farms there won’t be any brolgas”.
On the green philosophy thing, I’m not sure my ‘philosophy’ would pass muster with Paul Norton, who lectures on stuff like green politics. But as a result of our interchange I had been thinking about a post setting down a few thoughts. It might happen, might not. So much to do!
Thanks for the link.
On the subjects of unexpected feedbacks and methane, this is also worrying.
Brian, Haiku is cool
To express your floating thoughts
Without crapping on.
On green philosophy
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I tend to think its mixed up with things to which it has no intrinsic link. A lot of people who come from the old Comm Party or were disillusioned by the ALP joined the Greens. There’s nothing wrong with that per se. However if you do come from that neck of the woods and wish to contribute to ‘green politics’ I think it’s important to recognize a few things.
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One is that the Left had successes and failures during the 20th century. One of the failures is a certain assumption of the moral correctness of the policy position. Of course the Left aren’t alone in this error.
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However when I hear, as I did when involved with the Greens, that so and so shouldn’t attend an Education Policy forum because s/he had notions contrary to the stated policy that the only way forward is to cut monies to the private sector and ignore say the fact that some people have a choice between a defunct public school and a private school, well then I’m out. It’s not that the stated policy is wrong it’s just that one shouldn’t be excluded for disagreeing with it.
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And what does that policy have to do with environmental sustainability? It’s actually the classic Left position on education. That’s fair enough but it’s nothing to do with sustainability. The logic is simply that classic left policy is the green policy and that’s that. Is it?
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I don’t believe that’s true. I think the Greens would’ve been better off scrapping the political spectrum. They could then start with problems and work toward solving them from a range of worldviews. This would achieve two things. 1. Avoid the usual waste of energy that results when people with different worldviews clash, 2. create new solutions that don’t come from the standard positions. This is a wasted opportunity. Starting from the premise that sustainability can only be accomplished with policies that fire salvos at the private sector or at the Right precipitates the usual ideological battles. The result as we have seen is that many on the Right refuse to take environmental problems seriously because of where those who do come from.
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Naturally you can’t avoid political battle altogether. But one should avoid scraps that are unproductive. One should also, where sustainability is concerned, adopt the views, paradigms and perspectives of those with the expertise to do some good. I remember seeing a list of a University Greens club - 95% Arts students. That’s fine. I was an Arts student myself. But my excellent literacy or knowledge of the history of French cinema won’t contribute much to designing an industrial system that lasts.
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The Greens could do with engineers and economists who would provide policy tools vital to sustainability. My suggestion to the president of the club that she should court such students was met with the facial expression that indicates the presence of a busted sewage pipe.
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Of course I should point out that they do have scientists etc. I just think the discourse and posture of many associated with green politics is alienating. Unecessarily so.
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What profit our righteousness if the result is simply an entrenched ideological warfare that results in nothing much getting done? A sign in a wasteland 1000 years hence saying - here lies the dust of stupid monkeys but some of us were right?
Adrien, I’ve got a standard text on political ideologies with a chapter on ‘ecologism’ I’d like to read, plus a longish post on the ethics behind climate change mitigation.
So when I get to do a post, my views may have changed.
I’ve also been reading some of Mark’s draft thesis, which has a lot to say about utopias. Suffice it to say at this stage that I don’t think utopias exist anywhere, not in the past, the present or the future. Actually he also has a fair bit to say about the issue of time in the flow of history.
It’s hard to find a place to stand where there’s a firm footing, to find a voice and then to pick a path through the thicket. I think Mark’s done it for his purpose. I might just have to make a few assumptions.
But on utopias, many either think that they existed in the past, or are achievable in the future, or as in Fukuyama we live in the best of all political economies and history has in effect ended. I think Mark has found a way of ending endism. I would just say the we are always becoming and that utopias only exist in the political and social imaginary.
That’s all a bit abstract maybe, so I’m not sure how I’ll pitch the post when I get to it.
Apocalyptic
Yeah man, apocalyptic
Apocalyptic
Adrien wrote:
That is a problem with the Right, not the greens. Why blame the greens for the classic short-sightedness of right politics?
Brian
No you are lying*.
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Utopias do exist. In people’s minds. And for some individuals sometimes. I think Hitler lived in a Utopia from 1933-1943. The reality slwly came crashing back in. Zru ze vallz of ze bonker. It vaz ze Peeble’s fault. Zey did not hef enough boys to bamb ze Rossians.
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*Standard GMB riff not meant to be taken literally.
david R -
Denialism is a problem mainly of the Right true. Altho’ I think you’ll find a few (very) old school lefties also poo-pooing the green movement. Hobsbawn writes it off as eshatological hyteria. He ain’t a Tory. That said I’m not talking of denialism: a refusal to accept the facts as presented to you.
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One should remember that few us endeavour to really research the facts. I have met many concerned about AGW whose sole source of information is An Inconvenient Truth. Now as broadly accurate as this is said to be (haven’t seen it) it isn’t a rundown of the whole story and can’t be. Those who preach its virtues to me dismiss any criticism of it as unethical without listening to them. Not everyone but a significant lot.
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It is the habit of the ideologically committed to disregard the views of the Other Side as inherently nefarious. It is an obligation of such committment. One of my core political principles is that this is barbarian and should be relegated to history.
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Just becauise the Right might boast a healthy range of batshit loons doesn’t mean you’re free to ignore those on your side. And I’m not talking just about batshit loons here. I’m talking of a tendency to couch environmental policy debate in moral terms: ie you’re immoral if you’re skeptical.
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If you’re truly skeptical then you’re doing your duty as a citizen of a democratic polity. A duty few care to attend to sufficently these days in my view. I am skeptical. I know that AGW is an hypothesis not a fact. I also know the smart money ain’t on ignoring this particular hypothesis; like evolution a lot backs it up and not much refutes it.
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But just ’cause someone aims to do something about it doesn’t make ‘em right. Clive Hamilton isn’t batshit. But he’s an evangelcal environmentalist to a significant extent and therefore, in my view, he’s in error.
Adrien wrote:
Tosh. If you can’t take or leave a policy position on it’s merits, you shouldn’t bother pretending you are rational.
Dismissing green policies on practical grounds is fine, dismissing them because, well, they’re those blasted watermelons who want to shut down industries and live in the scrub on lentils, well, that’s just plain stupid.
Dismissing Clive Hamilton because you make incorrect assumptions about his motivitation is just as stupid. Either be rational, take things on their merits, or just admit you’re partisan. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being so on philosophical grounds.
Sorry, that last comment was me.
Adrien, a word on utopias.
My investigations so far indicate that the central argument is around the relationship humans are seen to have with the rest of nature. You’ll note I said “the rest of nature” not “with nature”. Therein already lies an ideological position.
Our views on this do seem to differ in line with political philosophy, although there are all sorts of variations.
When I said utopias don’t exist except in the political and social imaginary, I was saying they don’t exist except in the mind. I was thinking in part of arcadian dreaming, where some groups undoubtedly did better than others, but the mob who learnt how to get a quick feed by driving mammoths over a cliff were way off the pace. Also from the little I’ve read it seems that life expectancies were typically way below the worst in modern world.
As for Hitler finding his utopia, it illustrates how dangerous utopias are when they become a totalising philosophy that exclude all other possibilities. When you have the truth and are convinced that everyone else is in error in a way that is a threat to your position, you have the makings of mayhem.
Countries that have a special mission in the world can be problematic and when promulgating capitalism and liberal democracy as the ultimate form of political economy.
I’d better stop there, or I’ll risk derailing the thread, but the problem with ecology is that it has come to the point where our long-established mainstream views are a threat. The problem then becomes how you seek to leverage change which involves a paradigm shift. I’d suggest the ecoterrorism isn’t the way to go. That would be repeating mistakes of the past.