Philip Sutton, co-author with David Spratt of Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action, will be in Brisbane on Tuesday 17 March.
Meet the author – Philip Sutton – Climate Code Red – the case for emergency action (hosted by the Queensland Greens)
Venue: Avid Reader bookshop, Boundary Street, West End, Tuesday 17 March, 2009, 6pm for a 6.30pm start.
We face a climate emergency. Meet Philip Sutton, co-author of Climate Code Red – the case for emergency action (Scribe 2008) and hear him being interviewed on the couch by Queensland Greens veteran campaigner, Drew Hutton.
Hear from one of Australia’s most courageous and hopeful analysts of the climate crisis – the most recent science and the way we need to respond to return to a safe climate.
Serious climate–change impacts are already happening. Large ice-sheets are disintegrating. The Arctic sea ice could be entirely absent in summer from as early as 2013 leading to a jump in Arctic and sub-Arctic temperatures and committing the Greenland ice sheet to full melting. Billions of tonnes of carbon currently in permafrost and ocean stores in the Arctic region are on the brink of being liberated into the atmosphere, taking the climate out of human control.
It is no longer a case of how much more we can ‘safely emit’, but whether we can stop emissions and produce a deliberate cooling before the Earth’s climate system reaches a point beyond any hope of human restoration.
These imperatives are incompatible with ‘politics as usual’ and ‘business as usual’ – we face a sustainability emergency that urgently requires a clear break from the politics of compromise. Failure is not an option.
Philip is adamant that there is still a feasible way through to a safe climate. He will outline the physical changes that can and must be made to restore a safe climate.
Galvanising society to act and driving the physical change fast enough is more challenging. But a 10 year transition to rebuild our economy seems feasible if society goes onto an emergency footing. This means that the next 2-3 years are the critical time for getting to ‘yes’. Controversially, Philip argues that right across our political divides people need to join together in a “constructive revolt” to break out of business-as-usual.
Philip will speak of his motivation for writing the book including the inspiration of his father and grandfather who fought in wars that threatened the communities of their generations.
This is the problem
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,547976,00.html
previously the submerged permafrost had not been mentioned. Now it seems that submerged permafrost is the key that will unlock all of the methane stored in the Arctic. Driven by ice sheet retreat the shallower waters of the arctic are warming towards above zero. This really does mean the end of life as we have come to know it. This man has been trying to alert the world to the threat for many years
http://ifs.massey.ac.nz/outreach/mathnews/centrefolds/21/Aug1981.shtml
I am inclined to believe his fears above any politicians dismissals.
Good interview in three parts with Phil.
http://globalpublicmedia.com/sustainability_emergency
And after you hear him talk about just how fooked we are likely to be, grab several pints of green beer.
It would be good to have some idea of the actual impacts of large-scale Arctic methane release on the future temperature trajectory. Of course, that depends strongly on how much methane there is to be released, and how long it takes to be released. There is nothing in the public discussion to tell a person whether it is more likely to take five years or five hundred years. Nonetheless, it is essentially impossible to have a rational discussion about such catastrophes unless we have *some* numbers. It might be possible to do this in MAGICC, the climate simulator used by Garnaut and many others. I’d suggest using the Worldwatch trajectory as a baseline, and then trying out several scenarios defined by quantity of Arctic methane and rate of release. (I’m sure I saw somewhere ~350ppm CO2e as an upper bound on quantity.) The objective would be to see how much more difficult it becomes to maintain a strong mitigation scenario, one with low targets (<400ppm CO2e, let’s say), the only sort we should be interested in. Throw in some assumptions about the cost and efficacy of aerosol geoengineering as a short-term palliative, and further assumptions about how quickly powerful air-capture technologies can be developed, and we might be looking at some models of the real future.
When it comes to constructive revolutions it pays to know what you’re talking about. Libertarian socialists created the best periods of rapid human evolution in Makhnovista Ukraine and civil war Spain so if we closely study these vast ‘field trials’ then we will be far better equipped to deal with these stark new realities we face.
The new great depression is actually a giant plus because it cuts emmissions and takes us psychologically back far closer to revolutionary Spain 1936. Everything we need to deal with the future lies in the past – and so long as we have the internet then anyone can access these vital lessons that thousands of anarchists died for.
Go too strongly with the issue and with too much alarm may end up making people think the issue is too much and beyond doing anything. They may get the sense that it is just too late, that too much is required in too short a time frame. Make people feel helpless and they will be.
The next position to be held by the conservatives will be, let us not waste money on trying to stop the inevitable. Let us instead plan and invest and learn how to change to ‘prosper’ in the world that is to come…blah.
Yawn. Yet another doomscreaming catastrophist making a quid off the gullible.
Read Ian M Banks instead.
It’s just as believable.
MarkL
Canberra
I don’t know whether you ever studies any basic science MarkL, but try the following:
1. Take a closed system
2. Burn things in it
3. See if the temperature increases
Is this really so hard to get your head around? There are a lot of complex isues, but the basic model is this.
I tend to think your average year 8 student would get it.
Your average Year 8 student tends not to be an idealogue.
That has happened already Thomas Paine – the last class of ratbag is the “it’s too late already and it’s going to happen and possibly ain’t that bad anyway unless you’re poor so no need to change”
The first 2 classes of ratbag being “nothing is happening and/or it’s cooling so no need to change” and “something is happening, but it ain’t our fault because it wasn’t our fault when climate changed other times so no need to change”
Most denial websites run with the first two and some now have all three – the only consistent part is the conclusion “no need to change”. As you can see, it escapes them that their starting positions are mutually exclusive, but that doesn’t seem to worry many.
Most denialism is just a cynical delaying strategy funded by those accumulating a lot of money from unsustainable and unregulated pollution. Very few are stupid enough to actually believe it these days.
Mitchell,
I “modified” and ran the MAGICC scenarios that Garnaut used for the temp published in the report, although the major gases were projected by Treasury/ABARE. Getting a handle on permafrost methane is a bit difficult at the moment, because although the upper limits can be bounded somewhat, the numbers are still pretty uncertain and the timing definitely.
The trajectory that colleagues of mine developed and we published last year in Global Environmental Change (August) is a sobering high growth path, similar to that later used by Garnaut (their scenarios squibbed a bit on growth). I’m happy to send the paper onto anyone interested. Email me at my.name at vu.edu.au
The trouble with this pathway (not really affected by the current downturn in global growth) is that if we want to target anything below 500 ppm equivalent we already require an overshoot scenario, where concentration os of GHGs hit a high then come back down as emission reduce below natural sinks and sequestration. Artic methane in effect raises that minimum. My view is not that we should be debating whether 300, 350, 400 or more ppm Co2 equivalent is suitable for stabilisation. This question is almost irrelevant. The key policy question is to map a path to overshoot and as quickly as possible.
Only once on the downhill run, will the bottom become at all visible.
Code Red does a pretty good job on impacts, but it’s changing pretty fast as we all know, and not for the better.
sorry, raises that minimum, not raides.
It’s raining in Victoria. Clouds do work after all.
[I fixed it, Roger, the spelling not the rain - Brian]
How viable is it to attack CPR obstructionists through legal means?
I tend to think that anti-environmentalists need to be shutdown. Someone who removes a “Nasty U-Bend Ahead” sign from a mountain road is guilty of manslaughter.
When are we at the point where can’t afford for any more warning signs to be defaced.
Yep wbb. I think they’re the equivalent of those who used to hand out blankets laced with smallpox.
All the lies that lead to delay will cause the early deaths of millions. At a remove. Some people reckon they can get away with it – pride and ego above the welfare of others.
Last week I spoke at a cities at risk workshop in Bangkok (offset travel). A large proportion of Asian people live in low-lying megacities. In-country migration is a phenomenon that Australians can hardly grasp; the Pearl River delta region in China has gone from about 5 to 80 million people in under 20 years. Millions are exposed to flooding and rising sea levels, in addition to the risks associated with poor infrastructure and rudimentary planning.
We’re committed to climate changes occurring to about 2030. Not after, if we act now. Meantime, we adapt like crazy. I don’t see the denialists running around raising money for disaster mitigation for these people at risk.
Someone should tell Auntie. Today my ears were assaulted by Aynsley Kellow giving a lecture courtesy of the Institute for Public Affairs on the new ABC RN program Fora Radio saying that we were getting the “wrong stuff” from climate change science, that dissident voices were being shut down, and that we needed an IPCC B team to put an alternate view.
He also questioned the qualifications of climate science spokespeople. By his own criteria it seems he is in no position to make such a judgment.
Paul, do you think that Drew Hutton can hold up his end on this topic? The mouth is always in motion, but…
I love how they’re “dissidents” now.
Dissenters against an overwhelming body of scientific evidence are actually called “wingnuts”. Get your terminology right.
The way that it looks like it will shape up is with shallow waters on the Siberian coast warming to above zero in the next few summers enabled by elimination of the summer sea ice, the submerged permafrost will thaw immediately (hands up anyone who has defrosted the fridge and put the ice in the sink to make it melt quickly) releasing the methane from the submerged peat very rapidly. Because this initial release will be massive the methane concentration in the Arctic weather cell will become huge in relation to the rest of the atmosphere, and will circulate there ,just as the flurocarbons do in the antarctic, raising air temperatures which will increase the thaw rate or the above water level permafrost. At the moment massive fresh water runoff from those northern Russian rivers is flowing out towards western Europe and is keeping the Atlantic conveyor sinking in its regular place. But once the bulk of the land ice has melted, accelerated by the Artic cell methane concentration which will be sustained by the permafrost thaw, and the fresh water run off has reduced, the Atlantic Conveyor Current will be able to punch higher into the Arctic ocean and start to soften the methyl hydrates on the sea floor. This is the super critical point. It is like lighting a solid fuel booster rocket, you have to wait until all of the fuel has been burnt, there is no stopping it. It is not just the amount of methane, it is the rate of release and the atmospheric concetrations at any one time. The fossil sea shell record seams to indicate that when such an event is triggerred the atmosphere changes dramatically in just a few years.
That is my inexpert opinion of how this whole thing can go horribly wrong, based on my reading of the science over some decades. Every bit of new science seems to make this more probable.
Meanwhile, back in Canberra, our Lawyer leaders are making judgements about our future in what has to be a vacuum of scientific knowledge. For the greater good, of course. Who’s greater good I need to know.
BilB,
what qualifications do you reckon would get one on the IPCC B team? First, you need an international sponsor. The IPCC is instituted under the WMO and UNEP, and has an international treaty backing it up.
The rules of the IPCC are that they have to use refereed literature and grey literature, if the latter is submitted to the technical units and made publicly available. This is to catch the growing material on adaptation, especially in developing countries, where practical measures are being taken to deal with a changing climate.
And qualified authors.
So, it seems, the B team will require idealogues who don’t require evidence as authors (lots of emeritus professors who have never published a scholarly paper on the science central to climate change), to rely on literature that would be rejected by 95% of international journals (excepting some fringe publications set up to deliberately avoid scholarship), rumour and innuendo, newspaper articles (the Opposition Organ would be a main source) and think-tank tomes.
The final outcomes of which are signed off by governments. Hmmmm.
Next up we’ll all be queuing up at the opera house, avidly waiting to listen to a mass farting recital.
Sorry Brian,
that comment should have referred to yours, not to BilB.
BilB, not sure the methane clathrates are linked to methane in permafrost soils in a perfect storm of emissions.
There may be a way to check this out. If the previous ice-age was long enough to build up methane in permafrost soils, then a similar event(s) may have happened during the warming period. I would have a very detailed look at the gases in ice cores between 20k years ago and 10k. We know the warming was not regular, and the sea level rise was certainly not regular. My colleagues who do such work may have an idea. I will ask.
Roger J,
The permafrost and the hydrates are 2 seperate storage systems. But if you read that article that I linked, The Russian scientist has shown that the above sea level peat bog permafrost is at -12 deg C and is only releasing methane from the 1 million ponds and lakes, where as the submerged peat bogs (those that have become submerged as sea levels have risen with the ice retreat, are now at -1 to -1.5 deg C. What I see is that one methane source will unlock the other which will lead to the release of the third, the hydrates (from my memory of the scientific american article 13 trillion tonnes potential release).
Population knockdowns and extinctions occur best with a rapid change of environment. Governments of the world would be completely overcome with the potential environmental change rate if the Russian methane deposits are released quickly.
Here is how one eminent scientist is thinking about the situation
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/africa/news/article.cfm?l_id=1&objectid=10364503
Roger, no probs. I have a suspicion that the earth hasn’t had a good clean out of methane since the PETM spike 55 mya. As I understand it the stuff builds up over time through the action of micro life-forms. So the situation could now be more dangerous than in previous interglacials.
BilB, I know nothing about the mechanisms, but the size of the problem is humungous. A recent study found that the methane in northern permafrost (not just Siberian) is more than previously thought and amounts to double the carbon in the atmosphere at present. Meanwhile another study showed that the Siberian permafrost contains 500 billion tonnes of carbon (the CO2 equivalent would be 1,835 gt). Once the thawing is underway it is thought to be irreversible. (This contrasts with the ice sheets, which have obviously partially melted during past interglacials and then come back.)
North of the permafrosts you have the methane hydrates under the ocean (unknown quantity) but the warming in the Western Arctic is 3.5 times the global average. In 2008 scientists found “more than 250 plumes of leaking methane bubbling up along the edge of the continental shelf northwest of Svalbard.”
South of the permafrost in soils that are not frozen there is plenty of methane. A modelling study found that 4C warming in Northern Manitoba would release 86% of the stored carbon.
The bottom line is that atmospheric methane after being stable for nearly a decade started to rise in 2007 and 2008. But it’s not just from the northern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere is leaking too, but I know not from where.
All that is contained in a neat summary in the UNEP year Book 2009 (download chapter 3) where you can check the references and read about other nasties to fill in your day.
No-one knows whether the current methane leaking is a spike or the beginning of a trend, but guess what, if the latter the case could be terminal for civilisation as we know it. We could be in 4C territory within a generation or two which Hansen terms a “different kind of world”, where even the elites may not find living too pleasant. Not the least because the temp increase almost certainly wouldn’t stop there.
So there is a pretty good case for Sutton and Spratt’s notion of putting the world on a war footing to beat this thing. Or give it a good shot.
BTW I believe that stronger monsoons in the Northern Indian Ocean have come close to stirring up methane beds there.
Roger @ 18, from memory he mentioned such warriors as Lomberg, Roger Pielke Jr, Castles and Henderson in the lecture.
And Roger Jr is the only one who has published what I would call legit scholarly articles.
Castles and Henderson tried to convince us the world was on a B1 (low) pathway because of International Energy Agency projections.
It turned out those projections were wrong and the IEA is now publishing high emissions data through improved linkage with developing country statistics and better projections.
And Lomborg is a condradiction of logical phallussies (arguments that are cock-ups).
These guys can’t even get their own disciplines right, let alone others.
aaargh – published on climate change, that is. Better stop posting. Too busy thinking about the other things I have to do (on climate change get some of this stuff published myself)
Does anybody else find this a rather scary quote? It sort of reads like ‘I know that there is a big problem out there, and anybody who doesn’t agree with what I want to do about it must be shoved out of the way – for the greater good.’ It doesn’t seem all that compatible with democracy.
“Does anybody else find this a rather scary quote?”
Nope. The thing that scares me is global warming, and the actual possibility of an extinction event associated with a massive global release of methane.
Oh, and people with their heads up their ass when we’re facing a global challenge unlike any we’ve known before.
You know, giant corprorations pumping out climate-warming fumes which the public later has to pay to clean up never seemed that compatible with liberal democracy to me either. Its supposed to operate on amrket principles (your costs are factored into price, rather than submerged) and on the harm principle (do what you like, unless it harm others).
Well said Lefty E.
The problem is the deniers just have to sow the seeds of doubt sufficiently to give governments and individuals the excuse for not acting, or not acting sufficiently strongly.
Most in Australia are so pampered they (and their governments)need very little excuse to keep their ‘heads up their arses’, so the deniers do not need logic or evidence on their side, just the thinnest veneer of plausibility.
The weirdest thing is that right now, when we need to radically adapt to probably catastrophic climate change, we have a golden opportunity to switch to investing in “greenfields” technologies world-wide, with massive state support if necessary to push-start industry, that might just rescue us all from the Global Financial Crisis.
The only problem is our overpaid and brainless CEOs and other “business leaders” are such a bunch of whiney cowards, without entrepreneurial backbones, unable to see the opportunities and take the risks that capitalism needs and should encourage. They are all state welfarists now. Pitiful.
Kevin Rudd needs to be forced to read the substance of Brian 21 out loud on national television. This way he might actually hear the words and realise that he is accountable to the Australian People for what ever action is taken next, and the public will know what kind of reaction to look for.
I fail to see how any responsible leader could read that information then say “uhuh, now where were we?”
[BilB, that was me @ 22 BTW! - Brian]
yeah, I heard that new Galileo as well, Brian, and spent the whole time he was on shouting at my radio. (The second half of the show, with Naomi Wolf, was much better value, btw.)
Why does the ABC keep giving these pricks breathing room? I expect it of the Opposition Oragn, but the ABC has a charter which obliges them to be accurate.
Galileo. Wasn’t he the guy who dropped the feather and the cannonball and they had exactly the same impact?
And because he and Lavoisier were hung by the French Inquisition of the Revolutionary Catholic Church from the leaning tower of guillotine, facts are fiction and the underdogs will triumph against the great conspiracy of truthists?
Brian wrote:
Short answer: yes. Long answer: I would say that as a matter of comradely duty, but did anything Drew say or write during his tenure as Queensland Greens Climate Change spokesperson give you cause for concern about his grasp of the issue?
7 Lefty E
Go outside during the day.
Look up.
See that bright thing?
Feel any energy input from it?
Tell me again about the planet being a closed system. it even adds mass per annum due to space borne matter entering it. (Look up at night when in the country – those bright streaks are what is adding the mass). Closed system indeed.
Any Year 8 kid knows it’s not.
MarkL
Canberra
… and MarkL gets the Bjorn Lomborg Award for completely missing the point.
MarkL was joking, right?
Either way, it was the funniest post for quite some time – and no YouTube link, so extra points for degree of difficulty.
So I’d give it 8.5 on the David Brent smirkometer.
LE’s hypothetical reminds me of something I’ve long wondered about.
To what extent, and by what methodology, has the effect been quantified on global climate of the simple heat created by the doing and burning of so many things. And how, if at all, is this factored into modeling?
It might throw a spanner in the ointment a tad, because alternative energy sources to fossil fuels would likely produce just as much extra heat (though less CO2 which can’t hurt).
[/naive theorisin']
Why yes I do see it, MarkL … and I think it may the only bright thing out there.
FDB walk around the streets in the busiest industrial area on a cold day and see what you can intuit about your theory. Then wait til the sun comes out from behind a cloud.
Sure, wbb, but I’m wondering how the tiny global difference in additional heat from friction, burning shit etc compares with the effect of extra back-radiation from anthropogenic CO2. And whether its tininess has actually been factored in.
The effect will always be miniscule compared with the effect of direct radiation from the sun, of course. As is the greenhouse effect.
Order of magnitude estimate quickly show that all of the heat generated by humans is absolutely insgnificant compared to the daily insolation.
It is only through modification of the atmosphere that these activities have an impact
These are quite different.
The heat output of human activities is many orders of magnitude less.
By contrast the natural greenhouse effect on Earth is a little over 30°C. So an anthropogenic effect of 1°C (currently) to say 4-5°C (future) is a significant fraction of the natural level.
Roger @12, I’m looking at your paper, and I don’t see how you can describe the part from 2030 to 2100 as the “lowest emissions path possible after 2030″ (section 3.2). Roger’s paper describes a scenario in which the new phase of high global growth exhibited by the world economy in the pre-GFC 00s continues to 2030, and then a period of emissions mitigation runs from 2030 to 2100. Among the conclusions is that “The unchanged policy path to 2030 and minimum emissions path beyond implies atmospheric concentration level of over 900 ppm CO2-e and warming of 2.2–4.7 °C by 2100.” But this “minimum emissions path” is pretty slack – once they decide to act, developing countries then take 20 years to stop increasing their emissions, and thereafter reduce their emissions at a rate of less than 1% per year! Given those assumptions it is not so surprising that you still end up with almost 750 ppm CO2 in 2100, but I would hope it is also obvious that that is not the maximum rate of emissions reduction possible, even given that 2030 starting point.
FDB @37, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island#Relation_to_global_warming – and if you’re keen go to IPCC AR4 and look up the references. The generic thermal output of mechanized urban civilization is estimated to be adding a few thousandths of a degree per decade to global warming. So it’s a factor but about a hundred times smaller than the greenhouse warming.
MarkL should be clever enough to know that the earth has cooled considerably over the last 55 million years. During this time the bright thing in the sky has gotten warmer. So there must be something else going on. I wonder what!
mitchell, your first link is broken.
Mitchell,
I didn’t set up those assumptions – they’re the minimum emissions path set for those assumptions (levelling off then negative for three groups of countries) and energy elasticity. A very aggressive 2010MEP has been tried out that produces an overshoot. I agree, the language – words like lowest possible – needs to be qualified as conditional.
The key to these is not so much the first group of countries to level and cut, but the second – big developing emitters. If the first group goes harder, the second group is more likely to follow. If the developed countries are slow, then so will the others be (Kevin?).
It’s difficult when testing mitigation – a normative target you will try and get as low as possible. A pragmatic target, testing what might be likely and hedging for adaptation, is much more difficult and is problematic. Do we prepare for the worst?
If mitigation policy is poor, perhaps.
mitchell @ 42, I played about a bit with the code in your link. This is as close as I got.
Unless you are at a university or something I think you have to pay, or email Roger as invited @ 12.
Roger, is this the same paper? It has the same title, same authors (but one extra) and the same figures.
Paul @ 33 asked:
I wasn’t aware that he was ever climate change spokesperson as such, Paul. I’ve had the opportunity of voting for Drew about 11 times at three different levels of government and heard him on the meeja for about 40 years on green issues. He always had plenty to say, but I had the impression that he wasn’t always fully on top of his brief, which would be difficult, it must be said.
I can’t be more specific, sorry, so forget what I said. If you reckon he’ll be fine I’m sure he will be. I’ll try to get along.
Brian,
the cfses paper is a working paper. The other is a journal paper, and has been changed to take on reviewer comments. A sub is needed to get to it. Because it’s so long (basically two papers, one on scenarios, one on risk), I had to cut as much possible. Hence the lack of qualifiers, as Mitchell noted.
I joined this group a month ago, and we will be developing this work. Happy to hear comments from the floor.
One of the key themes of Climate Code Red is underscored by this report.
“The heat output of human activities is many orders of magnitude less [than the greenhouse effect].”
Thanks, I just wanted to know.
Geez, it’s getting hard to ask a question about climate without being taken for a denialist.
Thanks for asking FDB. I’d been wondering exactly how big a factor it was.
Paul, the Climate Code Red mob with their initial report The Big Melt were ahead of the curve in that they worked out the implications of Hansen’s recent research before the great man himself.
It is interesting that in 2006 Lovelock was considered an extremist and way out there. Now what he was saying looks increasingly realistic.
The current issue of the print version of the New Scientist has an article describing the 4C world as a realistic probability and in terms almost straight from Lovelock. There is also an article about geoengineering as something we need to urgently research because it will almost certainly be needed. The current online issue is onto parts of the Amazon reaching a tipping point as a matter of fact story. When I blogged about that a couple of years ago a lot of people thought I was being alarmist.
I’ve just found the 4C article. Don’t miss this map which shows the habitable parts almost exactly where the ice sheets were in the last big freeze, which was exactly what Lovelock said. The text tells us that if we go to 4C it probably won’t stop there for reasons I in part outlined @ 22.
BTW the map isn’t adjusted for sea level change.
Happy days. I’ll seeya tonight.
To put some numbers to it, total consumption of fossil fuels per year is something like 10 x 10^18 J, which is a daily consumption of ~3 x 10^16 J.
By comparison, the daily insolation at the top of the atmosphere is about 1.5 x 10^22 J, or 500 000 times greater.
спасибо за статью… добавил в ридер
I get your message, Pankiv. After viewing the map from Brian@51, it is time to start learning to speak Russian, or Canadian, the 2 future centres of human civilisation.
With nearly every government in the world structuring for Global Warming Change Action undershooting, and Kevin Rudd leading that charge, I have decided that all future efforts (mine) will be addressed at future world adaption. This is a mammoth task, especially considering the atmosphere of denial and negativity in which it will needed to be performed. Planning whole new communities along with the complexity of support structure (Brian’s map @51 shows that nearly the entire world’s industrial belt will become wasteland) that will be required at the only safe position of 160 feet above the current sea level, will the new world challenge. Moving to higher ground is an absolute must for many cities even under the unrealistically conservative IPCC vision. But 20 years from now when the full implications of the global rearrangement have become undeniable and entire countries realise that they face oblivion, the shit fight will really begin. And the European continent may not be the place to be.
Have there been any models done of what the world might be like with the worst case 15 degC temperature rise? What does the climate become at that point?
Well, BilB, Hansen believes that if we mine all the tar sands, which the Canadians have embarked on, we really won’t have to worry. Under those circumstances he thinks we will truly cook the planet as a “dead certainty” to the extent that the seas boil away. There is no way back from there.
You need to know that he cut his teeth early in life studying the atmosphere of Venus.
The earth has been to the place of massive methane release before and seems to spring back after a few hundred years. The question is does that cause global cloud cover reflecting the suns energy into space, causing a partial cool down? I am trying to think what the progression of events might be. There is a survivable position for each level, but the progression must be known because infrastructure investemnt becomes more critical in a rapidly changing scenario. For instance in a baren baking inland Australia scenario massive solar farms with underground communities supporting them would be a workeable, and very liveable prospect where the very cover of large tracts of land with refective solar callectors provides the long term insulation against heat inundation. But then in a globally clouded scenario wind power and solar thermal towers may be the go.
One of my study communities is Angra do Reis in Brazil. Here you see a style of community development that is more probable for our future world. Huddled communities where foot transport over shorter distances is a far better model and inter community public transport is far more efficient.
Right now it is certain that many cities around the world will have to move. My favourite city of Christchurch NZ being one of them. So the question is how far to move. Responsible government would would be making those decisions now, acquiring land and pre planting long growth vegetation (trees for major parks), in forest form if necessary with view to thinning as plans were drawn up. Then the next question is what form of development to promote in view of all of the mistakes that have been made, mistakes that built the mess that we are now in. There will be much sadness for loss as we move into the next 50 years, but much promise of a new way of living as well. And plenty of time to castegate the idiot politicians who are now locking us in the future that we must face.
BilB, the scale of investment needed to cope with a 4C plus environment with massive desertification and 75 metres sea level rise is far higher then the cost of mitigation. I can’t see how you would get a constituency for that ahead of standard mitigation or geoengineering.
Certainly it has been hot before, but Hansen is aware of what has happened over the last 700 million years and I am merely giving you his opinion. The last truly massive methane release was the PETM spike 55 million years ago (google it at Wikipedia – my connection is sludge right now) where the carbon was released over thousands of years and took 100,000 to 200,000 years to repair, not a few hundred years. The thought is that the repair work was done via the decay of rocks, a very slow process.
But well before 15C we could run a bit short of oxygen to breathe. I’ve been meaning to post about this and maybe I should put it to the head of the queue.
Scientist David Karoly on the links between climate change and bushfires: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/bushfires-and-climate/#more-654
Brian, what I am suggesting is that governments have failed already. Mitigation will be ineffective as it is managed with the intent of preserving prosperity first, and fixing the problem second. It is like asking the rich to solve poverty. Geo engineering will be equally ineffective for the same reason compounded as the cost to governments of coping with the increasing damage of extreme weather events absorbs what free funding is available. Somewhere into the process insurance companies will progressively withdraw from property cover and the mounting losses bleed away government funding flexibility. The increasing environmental refugee problem will further diminish government’s ability to manage responses. As all of these pressures mount, further global economic instability surges will cripple international attempts to apply geo engineering solutions, which will be further crippled by international indecision.
The future will be managed on an individual basis 40 years from now. Shanty towns will start to appear as they did in the great depression. This time formed by growing numbers people, uninsured against the various pestilences that global warming will bring, and having lost their property forge their own solutions as the government becomes progressively less able to perform.
That is my thinking now. It would take a dramatic change of position from our governemnt for me to see the future differently. With rud hell bent of a clean coal and CCS future with a huge 20% of renewables the Earth’s future environment is on its own. Following your links I came to
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36873
In the future those oil slicks will be bubble streams of escaping CO2.
BilB @60: “Geo engineering will be equally ineffective for the same reason compounded as the cost to governments of coping with the increasing damage of extreme weather events absorbs what free funding is available.”
Geoengineering through aerosols is pretty cheap – tens of billions of dollars per year, rather than trillions per year. Another decade of warming and *many* people will favor it as a short-term countermeasure. And you don’t need international cooperation to do it – it’s an act well within the budget of every great power. Meanwhile, most of the OECD is already gearing up for moderate emissions reductions in the coming decade. Not enough to get us off the path to an ice-free planet, but traversing that path is a thousand-year process. I think it *extremely* unlikely that short-term warming (to 2050, say) will so overwhelm civilization that it cannot mount a serious program of decarbonization, aerosol cooling, and drawdown of atmospheric carbon.
The endgame for the era of runaway climate change is advanced nanotechnology. If it doesn’t kill us, it should make air capture fast, cheap, and voluminous. (About a thousand mountains of diamond, each one kilometer cubed in volume, should do the trick.) But it remains to be seen whether we can uncork that particular genie without doing ourselves in.
I sure hope that you are right, Mitchel. I think that within the next 10 years we will have enough indication of what the rate of change might be.
No. 38 LeftyE
Dude, you have to broaden your social circle away from all-leftist anti-scientific religious reactionary AGW-dogma true believers.
So, having noticed the sun for the first time, do you still think that the planet is a closed system? (Hint: the sun is not a part of the planet)
Oh, FYI Lake Superior is freezing over for the second time in 10 years. Normal average is once per 20 years. Curse that glowball warmenating!
MarkL
Canberra
MarkL, when painting a floor, my advice is to try to do the doorway last.
Suffice to stay, if that big bright thing seen today was also there yesterday, and still there tomorrow, we might – fairly – consider it part of the ’system’ under consideration.
Then, if we systematically and exponentially add known greenhouse agents to the atmosphere … well, maybe our grade eight friend could fill the rest in for you.
It ain’t rocket science! Which is probably a good thing for our purposes.
What is it you have against scientific method, btw? Are a religious sort, or just suspicious of book-learnin’?
Before you get too carried away there, MarkL, take look at
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36972
this (courtesy of LeftE59’s link above, which I incorrectly accredited to Brian in my #60 comment) shows how the rapidly warming polar region gives the effect of a general cool down when warm air over the pole pushes colder air away from the pole. This is the freezer door effect. If you open the freezer door the outflow of chilled air will give you a cooling effect, while the freezer itself has begun to thaw. You have to take a whole system view to properly evaluating what is going on.
Weeel, I am glad that you have finally noticed this patter. It proves that you CAN learn. But that’s not quite what you said, is it, oh grand master of science?
How ARE those Lefty Experiments burning petrol and diesel in the trailing Trojan points going, anyway??
Your definition of a closed system is… the universe. Well argued, that!
But now we regress from including the sun in the closed system to discussing the biosphere. Boy, you ARE a genius! The Ptolomaic models of the universe with the sun on a crystal sphere is where you are apparently arguing from. That’s just a tad outdated, now, child.
Oh, BTW? The energy absorption spectrum of CO2 is well over 90% filled at 20ppm. At 40ppm, it’s over 97%. So you could take it up tomorrow to 1500ppm and it would make zero difference in energy retained by CO2 (oh, and all plantlife would rejoice, and 1000-1500ppm was what we evolved in, too).
But you did not know any of that, did you? Or that CO2 is only a trace gas, or that 95% of the total greenhouse effect is produced by water vapour.
Thanks for admitting that ‘your purposes’ are entirely political, and not science based. Rare to get an AGW reactionary dogmatist to ever admit that.
I suspect I am several degrees ahead of you, and projection is never a pretty thing. Probably why you do it so often.
But DO keep on chanting your AGW-religogibber mantras, it is deeply entertaining.
Anyhoo, must off to work, as amusing as clubbing baby seals is. Now clap your flippers like a good seal.
MarkL
Canberra
That’s not true, because what is important is the vertical stratification of the atmosphere. Although CO2 bands may be saturated near the ground, there are layers higher up where they are not saturated, which is where the effective radiating surface is. Increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration saturates the bands at these higher levels in the atmosphere raising this effective radiating surface even higher into the atmosphere, and this is what increases the GReenhouse effect.
I smell panic in those high pitched whelps, MarkL, and naturally, it gratifies my evil lefty, small-s stalinist bloodlust.
Let’s be frank, shall we. You’re smart enough to know that the scientific evidence is – in all likelihood – warning us of an unprecedented peril. You, and a lot of the professional denialists, intuit this full well as anyone. You arent actually so daft not to wonder whether the demonstrably increasing rate of cyclones, bushfires, droughts have a basic cause in human activity.
What concerns you, as a conservative, are the political implications of taking action. I sympathise in a way – it must be disconcerting to find the ideological certitudes – so recently victorious against the cold war foe – of an unregulated market, long-distance trade, growth at all costs, the modernisation paradigm economic development driving political liberalism, to the ‘end of history’ – might in fact turn out be leading us to an irreversible environmental (and recently, economic) disaster. Just like productivist, industrial state socialism would have too.
Maybe its starting to look like we in the West aren’t so clever after all. Maybe our paradigm is fatally limited. It works, but it cant last. And you worry some recrudescent leftists will turn climate action into some trojan horse for global socialism, or world government, or some similar evil. Or even if green social democrats hold the day, regulation of the market will have to come back into vogue if we are to act in time.
And ideologically, you just dont like that idea.
Well, fine. But you better get ready, because millions of us aren’t going to take this hapless drift to a truly unlivable future for our descendants lying down. Lets hope its a fair fight, democratically resolved, and we all get along with some mutual respect retained in the process.
But please – let not pretend you’re arguing from some sort of ’scientific’ perspective MarkL. If you didn’t even realise that one of the projected implications of global warming is a new ice age in certain parts of the northern hemisphere, then frankly, you just been following the basics of the scientific projections. And if you cant see that our day by day, year by year insolation is effectively a system constant – rather than some sort of random exogenous variable – then we just dont share a basic frame of reference, old chum, and I cant help you.
And before you bother with “solar flares yada yada”, see Brian at 43, and for that matter, just about every other piece of scientific evidence on the question.
MarkL @ 63:
Why is that supposed to mean something and this nothing:
Real scientist Richard Heim, meteorologist with NOAA’s National Climactic Data Center explains:
You need to broaden your perspective from that blue blob on North America (image from
here). It’s not the whole world.
So tomorrow we see the government’s CPRS legislation. Which, if legislated, will lock in emission rises for Australia, not reductions. Despite Garnaut condemning it as a political compromise. [link]
And evidence that our oceans are becoming acidic.[link]
Certainly looks like a Code Red emergency to me – with no indication that the government is actually prepared to do anything effective about it. We will see on Tuesday.