The policies of the next governments of the global community need to hear in a loud voice what we the everyman need to tell them. We need the information about the science in clear understandable language that will help us make the right decisions. regarding our future.
(Commenter Michael Mott at RealClimate.)
The problem with the IPCCâs paper Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis â Summary for Policymakers ( pdf – hereafter referred to as SPM) is that it really needs to be read very carefully and interpreted if not by experts certainly by people with some background and understanding of the literature of climate change. It is not easy reading. For example, when trends are given particular attention needs to be given to the baselines, the intervals and how they are derived. They shift around a bit throughout the document.
Yes, the pictures do tell a story, but not the emotional story we saw on the first episode of the TV series Planet Earth where polar bears swam endlessly looking for sea ice from which to hunt seals. Back on land a tired and hungry large male tried to cull a sea lion cub. Defeated by the size, intelligence and solidarity of these huge animals, injured by their fearsome tusks, the exhausted polar bear lies down to die.
This is science, not emotional anecdotes but solid, conservative science. Science which backs up the science of the Stern Review. What emerges is a global crisis in the making, not quite as scary as the Stern Review, but scary enough. You can reasonably conclude, I think, that the future biosphere is in play.
The IPCC context
The SPM is the first of a series of an IPCC publishing program in 2007 associated with the Fourth Assessment Report. There will be three working party reports:
1. The Physical Science Basis
2. Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
3. Mitigation and Climate Change
Then there will be a Synthesis Report summarising the other three, highlighting robust findings and key uncertainties.
The SPM may be considered unusual in that the summary is issued in February while the report on which it is based is due in May. This does not mean that the supporting science is trimmed to fit the conclusions. It simply means that the full report, already in draft form and unofficially available on the net, is being edited before release.
The full Fourth Assessment Report will cover the same ground as the Stern Review final report, including the economic implications, but the approach is more conservative. I understand the cut off for scientific papers to be considered by WP1 was 2005. The process is one where drafts are prepared and issued for comment (30,000 in this case). Comments are considered and the final draft considered and accepted by the participating governments at a meeting. The process yields full consensus based on the scientific literature at the cut-off date, whereas Stern could go with the flow and include reports of new studies up until the end of the writing process at his own discretion.
Anthropogenic causation
Significantly, the likelihood of recent warming being anthropogenically caused has been upgraded from likely (> 66%) in TAR (Third Assessment Report 2001) to very likely (>90%). There are two further categories – extremely likely (>95%) and virtually certain (>99%). I understand that the probability assessment was reduced a notch because of China. Thatâs the way the IPCC process works. They need consensus, not a majority view.
Emissions
Current concentrations of CO2 (379ppm in 2005) far exceed what is revealed in the ice core record in the last 650,000 years (180 to 300ppm). CO2 from fossil fuels has increased from 6.4 Gt per year in the 1990s to 7.4 in 2000-2005. Thatâs 15.6% up on last decade, so the trend is clear. The graph of the last 10,000 years is more like an ice pick than a hockey stick. It heads stright up at the end.
The extra carbon in the air traps heat in the planetary system, 80% of which is absorbed by the ocean. This leads to a forcing of the climate over and above natural variations.
Radiative forcing
Solar radiation forcing as a natural variation is less than half the factor found in TAR and is considered to have little relevance.
CO2 forcing has increased 20% from 1995 to 2005.
Net radiative forcing is 1.6 watts per square metre. But this figure would be 2.8 watts (75% higher) if China and others were not doing a sterling job in polluting the planet.
Global temperature
Here there are choices about how you present the statistics. This graph gives an overview of how things have gone from 1850 to 2000. SPM says that there has been a 0.76 increase from the mean of 1850 â 1899 to 2001 â 2005. But if they had taken the 5-year average at about 1920 as the base they could have found the same increase in a shorter time span.
In SPM they say that the linear trend for the last 50 years of 0.13 per decade is nearly twice that of the last 100 years. But the NASA GISS people tell the story differently telling us that:
Global warming is now 0.6°C in the past three decades and 0.8°C in the past century. â¦[T]here was slow global warming, with large fluctuations, over the century up to 1975 and subsequent rapid warming of almost 0.2°C per decade.
And show quite starkly in the graphics where it is happening most â the Arctic, northern latitudes and central Africa. The SPM is more conservative in its presentation.
Still they do tell us that Arctic temperatures have increased at double the global average in the past century and the top of the permafrost layer has increased by up to 3C since the 1980s.
In looking at the future SPM does envisage a 0.2C per decade increase for the next two decades. But future emissions and hence radiative forcings and consequent temperature increases depend strongly on how many people there will be on earth and on what they do. SMS outlines six scenarios of how the future will unfold. These scenarios derive from the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios, 2000. The box at the end of SPM explaining the scenarios is taken over directly from the TAR. Factors such as the rate of economic growth, population trends, convergence or heterogeneity between human societies, the degree of social equity, the prevalence of the service and information sectors and the carbon intensity of activities vary with each scenario.
Plenty of grist here for economists, sociologists, futurologists and such. Pick your scenario and then read out the likely temperature and sea level rise (Table SPM-3). Here is the read-out for temperature change from 1980 â 1999 (effectively 1990) to 2090 â 2999 (2095):
B1 1.8 (1.1 â 2.9)
A1T 2.4 (1.4 â 3.8)
B2 2.4 (1.4 â 3.8)
A1B 2.8 (1.7 â 4.4)
A2 3.4 (2.0 â 5.4)
A1F1 4.0 (2.4 â 6.4)
The full range is clearly 1.1 to 6.4, but these results are commonly quoted in the press as a range of 1.8 to 4.0 and sometimes compared with the TAR range of 1.4 to 5.8, giving the impression that things are at least not getting any worse and maybe a bit better. Unfortunately this impression is reinforced in the graphic (Figure SPM-5) which doesnât plot the A1F1 scenario and moves the zero line to 2000.
You could get huge arguments about which scenario will be closest but I reckon they are all a bit alarming. Hereâs why.
Stern and James Hansen benchmark their discussion of future temperatures to pre-industrial levels. Hansen considers that dangerous anthropogenic interference (DAI) (pdf) cuts in at 2C above pre-industrial levels. If you want a quick look at what this means go to Table 3.1 in Chapter 3 and Figure 2 in the full executive summary of the Stern Review. Things like the onset of irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet, the weakening of natural carbon absorption, a 20 – 30% decrease in freshwater availability to many millions, reduced crop yields in significant areas, destruction of coral reefs, millions subject to coastal flooding and 15 to 40% of all species facing extinction. If you go to 4C things really start to go pear-shaped.
Now go back to the table of temperatures and add at least 0.6C to each value to bring them into line with Stern and Hansen. Thereâs not much on offer below 2C.
SPM has firmed on the notion that a doubling of CO2 (540ppm) will give rise to about 3C temperature change and accept that we should aim to stay below 450ppm. That gives us 35 years if emissions are not increasing. Which they are.
Stern found that to keep CO2 below this level, emissions would have to peak in the next 10 -20 years and fall at a rate of at least 1 – 3% thereafter. The time to act is now. This need for urgent action is implied but not explicit in SPM.
Sea levels
Here the impression has been given to the casual reader with mal-intent that the SPM reduces the upper limit of sea level rise from 88C to 59C. Ian Macfarlane and Malcolm Turnbull both fell for this one, as did Jennifer Marohasy. Nexus 6 has a neat post sorting out Marohasy. The short version is that the IPCC panel decided that there was insufficient refereed literature identifying longer-term trends to establish a scientific consensus on dynamic shifts in ice sheets, as distinct from straight melting. The TAR calculations did include some ice-sheet movement, while the SPM does not.
SPM makes it clear that if we keep on warming, Greenland will eventually melt resulting in a 7 m rise and:
The corresponding future temperatures in Greenland are comparable to those inferred for the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago, when paleoclimatic information suggests reductions of polar land ice extent and 4 to 6 m of sea level rise.
In conclusion we need to remind ourselves that the SPM is but the first of a series of documentation and addresses only the physical science basis of climate change. Discussion of impacts, adaptation, vulnerability and mitigation are still to come. Yet it is clear that we are dealing with a significant existential challenge to the human race, its standard of civilisation and the biosphere generally. Over 200 nation states working separately within their own boundaries and in their own interests is not going to be sufficient. Indeed we may need a new form of political economy, one that privileges the long-term public interest rather than one that is geared to supply (but not satisfy) individual, short to medium term consumer-based wants.
If we find new ways of relating to the planet, to each other (by this I mean the whole human race, dispensing with the notion of the âOtherâ?), to other species then we may in fact achieve a new identity. This may be a necessary condition of the survival of our civilisation.
(That rant was partly inspired by an article by Geoffrey Barker in the AFR yesterday, who referred to Robyn Eckersleyâs The Green State. I was also drawing on Zygmunt Bauman.)
Finally the above was not intended as a review. Rather I aimed at an introduction to the main ideas and findings, catering also for long-suffering dialup users with a reluctance to follow up links. By now there is plenty about on the internet, of course. As a selection, there is RealClimate with huge commentary thread, Quiggin was out of the blocks early, Tim Flannery on The World Today and Lateline, finally Greame Pearman on the 7.30 Report.
“What emerges is a global crisis in the making, not quite as scary as the Stern Review, but scary enough. You can reasonably conclude, I think, that the future biosphere is in play.”
It most certainly is, Brian. Agree that the paper is pitched to undergrads and up. The polar bears starving because of habitat (ice-shelf) loss is a potent image, as is the death by starvation of an emaciated, top of the food chain, Great White Hunter. Images of Polar bears perched desperately on a drifting, melting iceberg were described last week by Rush Limbaugh as “Not a problem, they’re just playing like kittys in a litter boxâ?, so Big Oil via their media shills are desperate to nullify and deny the obvious, and boost profits uber alles.
Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” is also a good way of getting the message out. 50,000 copies of the Doco were rejected by US School Boards a couple of weeks back because school authorities felt that the “Inconvenient Truth” was just a tad too eponymous. Its main theme clashed with the “environmentally friendly” propaganda already supplied to said schools by Big Oil via their front company subsidiaries. The dice are loaded. Always have been.
“Living With War”, is one thing, but there won’t be too much quality of biospheric life, “After The Garden Is Gone”. Guaranteed: there will be many more than “Four Dead In Ohio”.
Species extinctions are accelerating. Closer to the Tourist Dollar at home, the Great Barrier Reef is in mortal peril for the creatures than live in and depend on it for survival.
The prospect of Al Gore as US President, and Bob Brown with balance of power in the Senate here, offers some hope that two Kyoto non-signatories will get with the planetary program.
Some time back the present Australian Of The Year referred to us(Homo Sap.) as Future Eaters.
The time has passed for a Qwik-Eze indigestion fix. The planet has aggressive bowel cancer and all the surgeons are playing golf.
Thanks, Brian. It’s great to get a summary like this rather than have to rely on journos to filter it through the spin.
Yes, Mark, the SPM is quite hard to read and extract policy implications for the average pollie not familiar with the concepts and themes of climate change. There is a comment from a Canadian climate change policy advisor on the RealClimate thread complaining about the difficulty of explaining graphs, tables, trends and projections. But his biggest problem is explaining why global warming is a problem when it’s -19C outside!
The plight of polar bears doesn’t matter to everyone, but there are so many observations these days that point in the GW direction. For example, while we were having snow in summer last November brown bears were not hibernating because the temperature was 10 – 12C above normal. They were worrying the bejesus out of people looking for food.
In the Netherlands last autumn they had a day in October that was hotter than any recorded for the 300 years they have been keeping records. Not only that but the whole autumn season averaged about 3C above normal.
Last month I heard about a place in Siberia where the temperature was 40C above normal for that time of the year. That is 5C rather than -35C.
This exceptionality is strongly linked to global warming and climate change, but particular events are not. Btw the connection between GW/CC and droughts is only more likely than not according to SPM (>50% but not >66%).
But generally the further north you go the more obvious GW is.
The polar bear is a potent and apposite symbol today in a number of ways.
The artistic and philosophical evocation of the polar bear by Eskimo and pre-Eskimo cultures demonstrates their clear affinity with this wild animal. The adaption of these two different species to the Arctic was parallel, as will be their possible demise – the polar bears within perhaps a couple of decades, if not sooner.
The 2004 “Arctic Climate Impact Assessment Impacts of a Warming Arctic” directly links the threatened extinction of the polar bear and loss of the ancient culture and lifestyle of thousands of Inuit peoples. This major international scientific study spelt out in great detail that this was because of climate change caused by human activities elsewhere.
The physics is simple. More emissions means more atmospheric warming and more warming speeds up climate change and makes it more difficult to reverse and means more, and eventually, exponential species extinction. Yet every day global emissions of greenhouse gases are increasing, especially in the world’s largest, richest and most technologically advanced economies.
For those who who prefer to revel in sublime language, and still get the science, Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams is the goer.
Greta,
I couldn’t get your link to work ? [img]http://img116.exs.cx/img116/934/z0tdntknw.gif[/img]
neither did my smiley ! [:-(]
Here’s the link
http://books.guardian.co.uk/commonground/story/0,,1547227,00.html
thanks Mark
No probs!
There were double https in Greta’s link.
Best thing to do with this comment plugin is just paste the link in with no syntax.
About an hour ago I read that the temperature in the Arctic had risen by 4C. Can’t remember where now.
Flannery was passionate about the nanuk in his book. In this interview he says:
The IPCC acknowledge these recent developments but are only willing to say that it might be ice-free in the summer towards the end of the century.
Common sense tells you though that it doesn’t look good.
Greta, I’d often wondered where the polar bears were during the last interglcial and came to the conclusion that they must have evolved since then.
Brian, polar bears apparently moved into the Arctic only very recently, sometime in the middle or late Pleistocene Age. A population of brown bears, the prevailing theory goes, becoame isolated in Siberia, and quickly evolved into polar bears.
The problem when presented in this way, Brian, appears to be overwhelming. I had a similar feeling on leaving one of Flannery’s lectures last year.
It is a tragedy that there are enough people who understand the problem for it to be widely disseminated, but not quite enough people for a consequent politics of meaningful action.
But maybe there is still time. Not for the polar bears, of course, who will at least survive in zoos, but maybe there is time to avoid total catastrophe. It’s just I don’t feel so optimistic on this. Carbon trading is seen as a panacea. It’s not. It’s full of deficiencies. It’s more about creative accounting than reducing emissions.
It’s got so that, recently, I’m finding myself, out of desperation, drawn to opinions that Climate Change is wrong. In fact I think there is more chance that the science has got Global Warming wrong than that our species has sufficient cooperative abilities to conquer this danger if it is actually correct. Neither of those chances are very high, of course.
I haven’t given up hope, wbb, though I take your points. People and governments and even corporations are hardly the rational actors of economic theory, and take a long time to shift perceptions and even perceive long term interests outweighing short term inertia and gain. Honestly, I think the eclipse of climate change denialism is a very significant step forward. Whether it’s too late or not, I don’t pretend to know, but I hope not.
I gotta go to bed, wbb, but I’m pretty pessimistic too. I was trying to grasp for something at the end of the piece about new identities, but I don’t think it is going to happen. So yes, a better chance may be that the science is wrong. That or a magical techno fix is turned up by Branson’s US$25m for someone to find a way of scrubbing the CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Some years ago one bloke in a vigorous stoush on Radio National said that in 50 years time the human species may well be gone only to be remembered by a layer of toxic slime in the fossil record.
I think we’ve exceeded our design capacity in trying to create a civilisation that blankets the planet without destroying it.
It’s got something to do with the paradox of hierarchical organisations which allow us to achieve magnificent feats, but the head gets separated too far from the feet. About as dumb as a dinosaur, if truth be known.
Maybe the bonobos will take over and do a better job. They are said to be
and
Make love not war!
$25? Is that all? What a tight bastard.
Sorry Brian. Only joking.
Merthyr Bowls Club has never been the same since all the aspirational yuppies started hanging out there once they found out Branson visited when he was in Brisbane! ‘Twas much better when it was just the old blokes and assorted New Farm natives.
Maybe I’m being too cynical, but I can’t take Branson too seriously on these issues.
And Brian, maybe I’m being too optimistic or jejeune, but I think that you’re doing your bit by deconstructing the science for those of us who aren’t across it or don’t have the time or scientific bent. I really wouldn’t understand the power of citizen activism on this. Gore thought that pollies wouldn’t act til the people demanded they get serious. I think that time has arrived.
Yes, Mark, I’d agree with that. But there are a few problems.
This GW/CC stuff works on large timelines. It will take hundreds if not thousands of years to turn the ship around. We are very unlikely to take drastic enough action to avoid dangerous effects and tipping points which carry the warming further no matter what we do.
Then there are all the problems about whether what we so is just tokenistic or window dressing. wbb said that only California and Sweden, I think, are truly taking an approach that might measure up. Or something along those lines.
Then who is going to meaningfully put the brakes on China and India who are way out of control?
I’m just listening to Flannery on Breakfast about what we need to do and what he’s going to tell the AWU.
The pity is that we almost certainly have the knowledge, but creating the will tends not to happen until people see things going pear-shaped around them and then it’s too late because of the timelines. This is worse in Asia. They put up with astonishing pollution of the air (leaving aside rivers and groundwater). But ironically if they clean it up (the aerosol issue), global warming becomes significantly worse.
Yeah, sleeping didn’t cure it. I’m still pessimistic.
Thanks, GregM, I’ve fixed it. I think Branson is partly sincere, but air travel, although a minor cause of emissions in the scheme of things, but is dreadful in itself and is increasing fast as air fares drop. A single fare to London is something like the equivalent of driving a car for a year. Branson is concerned about those schemes being proposed where everyone has a personal carbon credit card. Then you’d have to pay for x trees to be planted when you book your flight (and we all hope a bushfire doesn’t burn them).
Another cause for pessimism is that Global Warming is the great-grandmother of all collective action/”Tragedy of the Commons” problems. Each individual actor in the global commons (whether a country, a corporation, and industry workforce or an individual) is liable to ask – not unreasonably – why they should incur considerable costs to reduce their emissions when they only contribute a fraction of the problem and their contribution to the solution will be swamped by the actions of others or by systemic trends and effects “in the pipeline”.
On that bleak note it’s back to the proofreading.
Human rights law nationally and internationally is a rather wan flower these days, but this in an interesting development.
The InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights (Organisation of American States) agreed last week to hear an unprecedented challenge to US policy on greenhouse gas emissions. A delegation representing Inuit peoples from the US, Canada, Russia and Greenland (some 167,000 people) will argue that global warming is destroying their way of life and that the US is responsible.
The case stems from a petition submitted in December 2005 by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. It documented the existing, ongoing, and projected destruction of the Arctic environment and the culture and hunting-based economy of Inuit caused by global warming.
The impacts of climate change, caused by acts and omissions by the US, it is argued, violate the Inuit’s fundamental human rights protected by the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and other international instruments. These include their rights to the benefits of culture, to property, to the preservation of health, life, physical integrity, security, and a means of subsistence, and to residence, movement, and inviolability of the home.
The petition asked the Commission to:
“Make an onsite visit to investigate and confirm the harms suffered by the named individuals whose rights have been violated and other affected Inuit;
“Hold a hearing to investigate the claims raised in this Petition;
“Prepare a report setting forth all the facts and applicable law, declaring that the United States of America is internationally responsible for violations of rights affirmed in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and in other instruments of international law, and recommending that the United States:
“Adopt mandatory measures to limit its emissions of greenhouse gases and cooperate in efforts of the community of nations – as expressed, for example, in activities relating to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – to limit such emissions at the global level;
“Take into account the impacts of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions on the Arctic and affected Inuit in evaluating and before approving all major government actions;
“Establish and implement, in coordination with Petitioner and the affected Inuit, a plan to protect Inuit culture and resources, including, inter alia, the land, water, snow, ice, and plant and animal species used or occupied by the named individuals whose rights have been violated and other affected Inuit; and mitigate any harm to these resources caused by US greenhouse gas emissions;
“Establish and implement, in coordination with Petitioner and the affected Inuit communities, a plan to provide assistance necessary for Inuit to adapt to the impacts of climate change that cannot be avoided;
“Provide any other relief that the Commission considers appropriate and just. ”
The full text of the 163-page petition is available here.
http://inuitcircumpolar.com/files/uploads/icc-files/FINALPetitionICC.pdf
An 8-page summary is available here.
Thanks for the post, Brian!
Thanks, Kim.
Greta I was vaguely aware of the issue you raise. Thanks for the detail.
Your last link doesn’t work. I went to “edit” and found that http:// was repeated. fixed that, but it still doesn’t work.
I found the Inuit Circumpolar Council site, but can’t find the stuff you refer to.
Brian, it was reported in UK Independent 9/2/07. This blog has story and links.
http://www.celsias.com/blog/2007/02/12/inuit-take-complaints-to-washington/
Rather than leave this on an entirely depressing note, people like James Hansen, Gore and Stern say that the worst can be avoided if we act now. There is a penalty for procrastination, however.
Stern says:
And:
I gather the aim of reducing carbon emissions by 60% by mid-century is to reduce emissions to a point where the earth system can absorb all emissions. Just two points.
First, advanced countries will have to do better than that to allow develoiping countries to grow.
Second, some damage may have been done to the earth system’s absorptive capacity.
There I go again!