I suspect that if there are historians still around at the end of all this, they will look back to that story in the Independent on 23 September as an absolute watershed in human history. It marks a clear divide at the end of the long period just finished during which the population at large could regard the prospect of runaway climate change as just another hypothesis which, despite the odd disquieting signal (and later the slow but relentless stream of them), could be relegated to the realms of fantasy. Alongside so many others that emerged from odd quarters of the scientific community but turned out to be mumbo-jumbo at best, if not positively laughable with hindsight.
That option was never there for the scientist. But the lay person has a wonderful ability to disregard unpleasant uncertainties as if they were nothing but fictional, or even as if they had never been thought of at all. Somewhat akin to a gambler who, having placed bets on certain runners, is able to exclude all the others from his or her reality as if they did not exist, and maintain the focus of interest and attention exclusively on the progress of his or her chosen subjects.
Curiously, in practice it tends to work as long as they place safe bets on tried and trusted riders, and dark outsiders do not overturn the cosy predictability of normality too often. The occasional upset can be endured on the basis of the overall average. But it is at best no more than a coping strategy, and one that limits the practitioner to a restricted group of set responses - whilst completely preventing a more full and objective engagement. Or any at all in new developments that fall outside their self-defined safe boundaries.
Probably most people live their lives on a strategy more or less similar. But it is no more than a coping strategy, and one that is fundamentally flawed because should one of the possibilities that has been dismissed and is being ignored actually come to pass, not only are they completely unprepared for it, but it appears to come as a bolt out of nowhere and with the force of Thor's hammer. It wasn't really - its evolution and arrival were perfectly foreseeable to any who had been able to maintain objectivity, taken the trouble to look and observe. But to those who had blanked it out, that would be how events would appear. Nowhere is this more apparent than over climate change and the various other environmental threats pressing down on us from all sides.
Nor is it only the common person. When you look for it, this form of denial is manifest more or less universally. And most reprehensibly by those who hold power and would lead society.
On the one hand the world of business and economic interests seems unable to grasp the enormity of the threat that is upon us, and stumble on under the illusion that business as usual, or as close to it as can be approximated under the circumstances, will somehow get us through - and admirably. This stems from an extreme and irrational overvaluing of profit above, and more or less to the exclusion of, all else. Hence most of what are alleged to be imaginative business responses to climate change turn out to be little more than repackaging exercises designed to minimise real change to the fundamental model and the resulting bottom line, while putting a bright new and very saleable spin on what has always been offered. It ought by now be painfully apparent to all that economic activity has always been the main driver of environmental damage, so that very model is utterly bankrupt faced with something on the overwhelming scale of climate change, not least because it has been and remains the very cause.
Much the same goes for governments and the machinery that composes them. Politicians elected - laughably, as is apparent under the circumstances - for their vision, integrity and ability to lead, have proved over and over that they are afflicted by the very same symptoms as the person in the street, and seem incapable even to perceive the magnitude of the threat let alone respond to it, so prove completely inept at ordering a rational set of priorities, and intrinsically incapable of convincing, facilitating and inspiring society to restructure radically as is imperative in response.
Instead they downplay the priority and focus upon the tried and trusted, playing to - or more probably sharing - the anxiety of the mass over economic downturn. In part because they, like the folk in the street, have failed to manage their finances with prudence, left themselves exposed, so got caught hopping when the inevitable crunch happened along.
Far from being a greater disaster, recession is actually quite normal and not the huge threat it is made out to be. It is merely the other side of the economic cycle which follows growth as inevitably as low tide follows high, and can be charted just as visually. It should not, therefore, be such a big deal. Indeed it ought properly be an event anticipated and planned for in our lives, with as much certainly as we do for winter. If anything is currently remarkable, it is the length of the period of positive growth that has preceded the current downturn. So its end ought rightly to be cause for thanks and celebration for the boom we have enjoyed for so long and the wealth we have been able to accumulate as a result, rather than a churlish and mealy-mouthed angst that we don't have as much coming in today, and how can we possibly get buy/by? All that serves to reveal is the depths of our greed, together with our lack of prudence and economic management resultant from it.
Meanwhile those employed by the state for their expertise to guide governments along the process - the diplomats, civil servants, policy advisors and so on - seem almost equally lost in illusion. As a body they have failed to grasp that you cannot negotiate with Gaia (or with the environment, if you prefer). Nowhere is this more apparent than in the utterly narcissistic idea that the timing of the introduction of the replacement for Kyoto, which is absolutely critical for our survival, should be decided by diplomatic timetables fixed years ago for late next year to keep the diaries neat, and not by the real, physical urgency of what is happening on the ground, in the waters and in the atmosphere. Do they really think climate change is going to kick around outside the door waiting their decision because they and the politicians they serve are VIPs (Very Important Persons - there can be few titles more narcissistic) with hectic schedules to fulfil and too many calls on their time? And whatever defences they may throw up for this critical failure, is it not absolutely self-apparent that were it a war they were trying to avert, none of this timetable nonsense, this procedural protocol, would be allowed for one moment to impede attempts to broker peace. Yet no war yet fought has been as threatening to the future as climate change, and only an all-out nuclear Armageddon could be. It is but one more reflection of the critical failure of society to grasp even the bare essentials of the peril in which it lies, and of the denial that is rampant everywhere you look as a result.
Scientists never had this luxury. Once it became clear that methane was detectable in the Arctic waters in areas where it had never before been measurable, they could not simply disregard the prospect of runaway climate change as mere hypothesis. The methane was there, and methodology obliged them to ask from where was it coming, and why. Until those two questions have been answered, any hypothesis which postulates a plausible explanation has to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, in this case there are few if any, other than runaway climate change.
So scientists have been living with this possibility for a long time, watching intently for more evidence to understand better, and calling for caution and timely, proportionate action. May that the rest of society now come to its senses, and come and join them on the Arctic ice - in spirit at least.
Saturday 1 November 2008
Saturday 25 October 2008
Apocalypse shortly? We should know by next summer
Here is the news that we all hoped would never happen.
Guess we thought we would all get away with it. That it just wouldn't come to pass. Despite all the inevitability. That it would turn out to be no more than another apocalyptic scare story from those crackpot Earth scientists – the ones who were running around thirty years ago predicting arrival of the next ice age.
Or if it really is inevitable, not in our lifetimes. Or at least, for pity's sake, not until 2070 when we've had our best years and are about ready to depart this mortal coil.
Best of all, that it should be like all those other things you read about in the news that everyone gets so exercised about, but then just seem to dissolve and leave nothing. Nothing happens, then later people seem hardly to remember. The millenium bug, the asteroid that is going to hit, the killer bees. Perhaps avian flu. Things like that. Scary stories that spice life up and cause a big hoo-ha... but ultimately come to zilch.
Like positive feedback cutting in and spiralling climate change - more or less literally - into the stratosphere. Images of millions of tonnes of methane liberated from the sea floor, bubbling up to the surface in great plumes over vast swathes of ocean, making research vessels look like toy boats in some infernal hot tub with the jacuzzi turned up full... Ideas like that.
But of course that all remains incorrigibly hypothetical, because the tipping point has always been w a y over yonder.
If it is not totally mythical. Or so goes the thinking.
Well guess what...?
...No!
Yep.
Afraid so.
Or - if it isn't - it is something never before seen that just happens to bear the most uncanny likeness.
This is not science fiction. Nor is it the script from some topical TV drama.
It comes from an exclusive called, aptly enough, Exclusive: The Methane time bomb carried by the Independent on 23 September. The quote above is how it covered a rather breathless report by the leader of an international scientific expedition, made direct from the decks of the research vessel immediately it finished sailing the entire length of Russia's north coast.
Arguably this is the most important news story of all time - because it indicates, for the first time ever, a reasonable possibility of the arrival of conditions that will bring life as we know it shortly to an end, (including the two-legged ones - and history too, being an exclusively anthropocentric interest, also, for that matter). As such it deserves detailed examination, so here is a cheat sheet.
What we have here is more or less exactly what is predicted by the positive feedback model. So is that what is going on?
Well there seems to be a strong case in that direction. It would seem to be primary evidence that climate change has now got to such a magnitude that it is causing the melting of permafrost and methane hydrates on a large scale. First, the fit is near perfect. The Arctic as the hotspot for global warming is heating up tremendously – the latest figure is by an astonishing five degrees. The Arctic ice seems to be in terminal retreat with the consequence that yet more energy gets transferred to the system as it gives way to seawater – one of the most absorbant substances known. The tundra is certainly melting, and very quickly too. Methane has been detectable in the Arctic waters since 2003 or earlier whereas it was not present before, suggesting that the methane hydrates and permafrost have been under stress and starting to leak for some time. Yet we have not reacted.
Second, it is hard to postulate another explanation. There are no other sources of methane on this scale to look to, other than huge deposits of submerged, rotting material not presently known to exist. So it would seem likely that whatever is causing this is triggering release from the methane hydrates and the permafrost.
OK, so it looks like positive feedback, but are there credible alternatives to climate change as the cause?
Not really. One could postulate that that is being caused by a different mechanism unrelated to climate change, for instance:
The permafrost cap in these areas may have been fractured by seismic activity. But if that was the case, these plumes would have been observed since time immemorial.
A large but localised geothermal hotspot could have caused the melting. But again, that possibility has always been around, so why has this not been seen until now? You could argue that as a result of the temperature changes in the Arctic waters caused by climate change, the permafrost cap has now been weakened by thawing to a state where it is vulnerable to such hotspots, whereas before it was not. This does still not seem as likely though, as so far we have no evidence linking what is happening to hotspots. But it is coherent enough to deserve further scrutiny to see if it stands up.
There are no other obvious ones at present. Of these, only one seems to stand up to even mild scrutiny. And it still looks close to a no-hoper alongside the positive feedback model.
So is it positive feedback for sure?
Not yet. It can be considered positive feedback when it is known to be either triggering a runaway release of the stored methane; or it causes runaway effects elsewhere in the climate system. Neither of these have yet been proven. But it is clearly a strong signal that the first may already be in train; and that may well give rise to the second over a longer period.
The first could be observed fairly readily, so should be obvious by the end of next summer at latest. The second depends upon how catastrophic the effect. The more so the quicker it will become apparent.
So what next?
The Arctic Ocean is now be freezing over again with the onset of winter, which will impede research in the short term. It also gives rise to a number of possible scenarios overwinter. If the methane release continues unabated or at an increasing rate it may either be trapped beneath the ice in huge bubbles or reservoirs, or it may dissolve in the sea water and diffuse somewhat.
If the former, there will be a colossal release of trapped methane about next March when the sea ice begins to break up, which should prove interesting. Once liberated to the atmosphere it will add to forcing, possibly by a significant factor depending on how much is released. This could lead to a significant hike in temperatures, and possibly to positive feedback in that respect.
If the latter, the release will be more attenuated. But this will make little difference to the net amount released or to the climatic effects medium to long-term.
Alternatively the rate of methane release may slow up over winter. This could result from a reduction of biological activity if this is a factor in play, or other unforeseen changes as a result of falling temperature.
Could it stop altogether for the winter... or forever?
The problem here is to find a mechanism that would cause that to happen.
If, as seems likely, the release is being caused by a weakening of the permafrost cap caused by melting, the only mechanism likely to stop that is if the cap refreezes again, sealing itself in the process. But that seems most improbable under present conditions, which are giving rise to long-term and potentially irreversible melting, generally through the region.
Sea ice may reform in winter, but it does so at the surface, and in fairly thin plates. The only conceivable way for this process to affect permafrost lying on or below the sea bed would be if the entire body of water from surface to sea bed were to freeze. Whilst the depths involved are not explicitly stated in the report, we must assume sufficient depth for the research ship to pass – say five metres at absolute minimum. Given that sea temperatures have been rising, and freezing delayed by the increased area of open water and by the milder climate generally, it seems vanishingly unlikely this would happen, short of a catastrophically severe winter, or more convincingly, a succession of them. That, in turn, seems highly unlikely for the same reasons.
Methane – that's pretty nasty stuff – right?
The worst greenhouse gas arising naturally and in quantity. Here's a cheat sheet from the Independent. The bad new is it is about 20 times more potent as CO2 as a greenhouse gas. The good is that it decays after around 12 years. But it fails to mention that it probably decays to CO2, so that is only the start of the story. Also both those figures are quoted quite variably in the various papers relating to this story. For instance the lifespan has been quoted at between 6 and 20 years, depending on conditions.
That's serious. So how much of this stuff is there?
A definitive study was published in September entitled Vulnerability of Permafrost Carbon to Climate Change: Implications for the Global Carbon Cycle which tells just about everything you could want to know on this subject. This estimates the total soil carbon in the northern circumpolar permafrost zone to be 1672 petagrams (Pg; 1 Pg = 1 billion metric tons), with 277 Pg of that in peat-lands. This doubled previous estimates, which means all previous climate modelling will be way out in this respect.
To put it in context 1672 petagrams is considered to be twice as much as currently exists in the atmosphere:
Twice as much as is up there now – that's curtains!
Global average greenhouse gases are currently at 385 ppm CO2 equivalent. Hypothetically if all that carbon is released it would treble that to 1155 ppm.
Well it all depends on what happens - but it sure doesn't look reassuring, to put it mildly. On thawing there will be a big spike as the gases that are currently trapped by the permafrost cap are released in large quantity. But most of this carbon is held in biological material requiring decomposition by microbes to release it, which is considered to be the dominant continuous process. Fire is the dominant episodic one.
Clearly the result will depend on the amounts of methane released, and the rate at which it is. But when they say very rapidly, they mean just that. We now have data from Antarctic ice cores proving that this happened at least twice previously, and at astronomical rates.
1155 ppm CO2? Can you put that in context?
The European Carbon Trading Scheme wa hailed as a big success as the first working carbon trading scheme, with the cap set at 550 ppm CO2. But as it soon became clear this would make absolutely no difference to climate change other than being a quick road to the hot house, it wasn't such a success after all.
IPCC4 caused massive angst when it brought the figure down to 450 ppm at the start of 2007, but by that summer the science had moved on so fast that it was clear that wouldn't save us either.
Various authorities then suggested we needed to limit CO2 equivalent in the atmosphere to 425 ppm or 400 ppm.
The soundest thinking emerged this June when James Hansen, a monumental figure in climate science, brought the figure down again to 350 ppm. This was discussed at length by the pensive prognosticator in“Finding oil isn't the issue – it is whether we want to find it, burn it and all fry” . But it must be confessed with one omission – it failed to stress that the actual levels already stood above the 380 ppm mark – 30 ppm or more into the danger zone. Which only goes to suggest that we have simply been waiting for something to blow, which might go along way to explain why this is happening. It all fits Hansen's model perfectly.
To give it a time line, 100 Months is based upon an estimate on when we will pass 425 ppm CO2. That campaign commenced on 01 August, so we are currently in month 98. However as 425 ppm looks incredible as a safe limit, it is unlikely we have that long. But don't let that put you off the campaign – that aside it is a good campaign, one of the few positive things going on and is well worth supporting.
If you take 400 ppm CO2 as the red line, we currently stand at 385 ppm. Greenhouse gases have been growing at 2 ppm per year and appear to be accelerating slightly. In addition we now have this new and significant source of methane to add to that. Make your own estimates on that basis – but if you get to a figure of more than seven and a half years from now, you've cooked it.
How soon will we know?
Winter conditions will impede research, and the presence of ice will obscure large-scale surface observations. Divers and mini subs might still be able to check out the sub-surface activity and the sources of methane. Surface measurements of trapped methane build up should still be possible.
Despite that it is unlikely we will have a good idea before:
unless one or more proves to be catastrophic in scale, in which case we shall know all the sooner.
Further developments
Incredibly, only one.
Two days later, on 25 September, the Independent followed up with Hundreds of methane 'plumes' discovered . This story dealt with entirely unrelated research which had also just discovered the release of methane for the first time in a completely different part of the Arctic, this time off Svalbard in Norway. However the details are quite different.
At Svalbard there has been no prior investigation, the locations were much deeper, and the methane sources are not currently capped by permafrost. So it is conservatively assumed the process there has been going on for some 15,000 years. But this does not rule out that the scale is increasing in response to climate change, and clearly the researchers are onto that.
Unlike the first research it was able to confirm the source as methane hydrates degassing, in line with James Hansen's predictions.
Here is an extract or two.
And that - oddly enough - seems to be the entire media coverage to date on the most important news item in all of history.
It does not seem to have been picked up on by other periodicals. Nor has the Independent, which has to be praised for getting onto the story so fast, followed up. Searching has not brought up any scientific papers by the scientists quoted – which in itself is not unreasonable given that there are huge data sets to be crunched and analysed, conclusions to be tested and the paper itself to be produced.
But may leave you wondering why, if you missed the Independent stories first time around, you should have to be depending on a haplessly late story in the pensive prognosticator, a bottom of the heap blog, to bring you news which is arguably the most important in your life, critical to your entire future and a major factor in every decision you subsequently make. And the same for the world collectively.
But I leave that with you to ponder. And shall try to deal with the question as to how we should respond as individuals in the next instalment.
Stay happy
Sources
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-the-methane-time-bomb-938932.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/hundreds-of-methane-plumes-discovered-941456.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/steve-connor-the-ultimate-gas-leak-that-scientists-dreaded-938935.html
Guess we thought we would all get away with it. That it just wouldn't come to pass. Despite all the inevitability. That it would turn out to be no more than another apocalyptic scare story from those crackpot Earth scientists – the ones who were running around thirty years ago predicting arrival of the next ice age.
Or if it really is inevitable, not in our lifetimes. Or at least, for pity's sake, not until 2070 when we've had our best years and are about ready to depart this mortal coil.
Best of all, that it should be like all those other things you read about in the news that everyone gets so exercised about, but then just seem to dissolve and leave nothing. Nothing happens, then later people seem hardly to remember. The millenium bug, the asteroid that is going to hit, the killer bees. Perhaps avian flu. Things like that. Scary stories that spice life up and cause a big hoo-ha... but ultimately come to zilch.
Like positive feedback cutting in and spiralling climate change - more or less literally - into the stratosphere. Images of millions of tonnes of methane liberated from the sea floor, bubbling up to the surface in great plumes over vast swathes of ocean, making research vessels look like toy boats in some infernal hot tub with the jacuzzi turned up full... Ideas like that.
But of course that all remains incorrigibly hypothetical, because the tipping point has always been w a y over yonder.
If it is not totally mythical. Or so goes the thinking.
Well guess what...?
...No!
Yep.
Afraid so.
Or - if it isn't - it is something never before seen that just happens to bear the most uncanny likeness.
'"We had a hectic finishing of the sampling programme yesterday and this past night," said Dr Gustafsson. "An extensive area of intense methane release was found. At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane. Yesterday, for the first time, we documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface. These 'methane chimneys' were documented on echo sounder and with seismic [instruments]."
At some locations, methane concentrations reached 100 times background levels. These anomalies have been seen in the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea, covering several tens of thousands of square kilometres, amounting to millions of tons of methane, said Dr Gustafsson. "This may be of the same magnitude as presently estimated from the global ocean," he said. "Nobody knows how many more such areas exist on the extensive East Siberian continental shelves.
"The conventional thought has been that the permafrost 'lid' on the sub-sea sediments on the Siberian shelf should cap and hold the massive reservoirs of shallow methane deposits in place. The growing evidence for release of methane in this inaccessible region may suggest that the permafrost lid is starting to get perforated and thus leak methane... The permafrost now has small holes. We have found elevated levels of methane above the water surface and even more in the water just below. It is obvious that the source is the seabed."'
This is not science fiction. Nor is it the script from some topical TV drama.
It comes from an exclusive called, aptly enough, Exclusive: The Methane time bomb carried by the Independent on 23 September. The quote above is how it covered a rather breathless report by the leader of an international scientific expedition, made direct from the decks of the research vessel immediately it finished sailing the entire length of Russia's north coast.
Arguably this is the most important news story of all time - because it indicates, for the first time ever, a reasonable possibility of the arrival of conditions that will bring life as we know it shortly to an end, (including the two-legged ones - and history too, being an exclusively anthropocentric interest, also, for that matter). As such it deserves detailed examination, so here is a cheat sheet.
What we have here is more or less exactly what is predicted by the positive feedback model. So is that what is going on?
Well there seems to be a strong case in that direction. It would seem to be primary evidence that climate change has now got to such a magnitude that it is causing the melting of permafrost and methane hydrates on a large scale. First, the fit is near perfect. The Arctic as the hotspot for global warming is heating up tremendously – the latest figure is by an astonishing five degrees. The Arctic ice seems to be in terminal retreat with the consequence that yet more energy gets transferred to the system as it gives way to seawater – one of the most absorbant substances known. The tundra is certainly melting, and very quickly too. Methane has been detectable in the Arctic waters since 2003 or earlier whereas it was not present before, suggesting that the methane hydrates and permafrost have been under stress and starting to leak for some time. Yet we have not reacted.
Second, it is hard to postulate another explanation. There are no other sources of methane on this scale to look to, other than huge deposits of submerged, rotting material not presently known to exist. So it would seem likely that whatever is causing this is triggering release from the methane hydrates and the permafrost.
OK, so it looks like positive feedback, but are there credible alternatives to climate change as the cause?
Not really. One could postulate that that is being caused by a different mechanism unrelated to climate change, for instance:
The permafrost cap in these areas may have been fractured by seismic activity. But if that was the case, these plumes would have been observed since time immemorial.
A large but localised geothermal hotspot could have caused the melting. But again, that possibility has always been around, so why has this not been seen until now? You could argue that as a result of the temperature changes in the Arctic waters caused by climate change, the permafrost cap has now been weakened by thawing to a state where it is vulnerable to such hotspots, whereas before it was not. This does still not seem as likely though, as so far we have no evidence linking what is happening to hotspots. But it is coherent enough to deserve further scrutiny to see if it stands up.
There are no other obvious ones at present. Of these, only one seems to stand up to even mild scrutiny. And it still looks close to a no-hoper alongside the positive feedback model.
So is it positive feedback for sure?
Not yet. It can be considered positive feedback when it is known to be either triggering a runaway release of the stored methane; or it causes runaway effects elsewhere in the climate system. Neither of these have yet been proven. But it is clearly a strong signal that the first may already be in train; and that may well give rise to the second over a longer period.
The first could be observed fairly readily, so should be obvious by the end of next summer at latest. The second depends upon how catastrophic the effect. The more so the quicker it will become apparent.
So what next?
The Arctic Ocean is now be freezing over again with the onset of winter, which will impede research in the short term. It also gives rise to a number of possible scenarios overwinter. If the methane release continues unabated or at an increasing rate it may either be trapped beneath the ice in huge bubbles or reservoirs, or it may dissolve in the sea water and diffuse somewhat.
If the former, there will be a colossal release of trapped methane about next March when the sea ice begins to break up, which should prove interesting. Once liberated to the atmosphere it will add to forcing, possibly by a significant factor depending on how much is released. This could lead to a significant hike in temperatures, and possibly to positive feedback in that respect.
If the latter, the release will be more attenuated. But this will make little difference to the net amount released or to the climatic effects medium to long-term.
Alternatively the rate of methane release may slow up over winter. This could result from a reduction of biological activity if this is a factor in play, or other unforeseen changes as a result of falling temperature.
Could it stop altogether for the winter... or forever?
The problem here is to find a mechanism that would cause that to happen.
If, as seems likely, the release is being caused by a weakening of the permafrost cap caused by melting, the only mechanism likely to stop that is if the cap refreezes again, sealing itself in the process. But that seems most improbable under present conditions, which are giving rise to long-term and potentially irreversible melting, generally through the region.
Sea ice may reform in winter, but it does so at the surface, and in fairly thin plates. The only conceivable way for this process to affect permafrost lying on or below the sea bed would be if the entire body of water from surface to sea bed were to freeze. Whilst the depths involved are not explicitly stated in the report, we must assume sufficient depth for the research ship to pass – say five metres at absolute minimum. Given that sea temperatures have been rising, and freezing delayed by the increased area of open water and by the milder climate generally, it seems vanishingly unlikely this would happen, short of a catastrophically severe winter, or more convincingly, a succession of them. That, in turn, seems highly unlikely for the same reasons.
Methane – that's pretty nasty stuff – right?
The worst greenhouse gas arising naturally and in quantity. Here's a cheat sheet from the Independent. The bad new is it is about 20 times more potent as CO2 as a greenhouse gas. The good is that it decays after around 12 years. But it fails to mention that it probably decays to CO2, so that is only the start of the story. Also both those figures are quoted quite variably in the various papers relating to this story. For instance the lifespan has been quoted at between 6 and 20 years, depending on conditions.
That's serious. So how much of this stuff is there?
A definitive study was published in September entitled Vulnerability of Permafrost Carbon to Climate Change: Implications for the Global Carbon Cycle which tells just about everything you could want to know on this subject. This estimates the total soil carbon in the northern circumpolar permafrost zone to be 1672 petagrams (Pg; 1 Pg = 1 billion metric tons), with 277 Pg of that in peat-lands. This doubled previous estimates, which means all previous climate modelling will be way out in this respect.
To put it in context 1672 petagrams is considered to be twice as much as currently exists in the atmosphere:
Overall, this permafrost C[arbon] pool estimate is more than twice the size of the entire atmospheric C[arbon] pool, and it is more than double previous estimates of high-latitude soil C[arbon](Gorham 1991, Jobbágy and Jackson 2000). The 0–3 m permafrost- zone soil C[arbon] estimated here at 1024 Pg represents a large fraction of world soil C[arbon] stocks; global soil C[arbon] stocks from 0 to 3 m depth (peatlands not included) have been estimated to be 2300 Pg (Jobbágy and Jackson 2000).
Twice as much as is up there now – that's curtains!
Global average greenhouse gases are currently at 385 ppm CO2 equivalent. Hypothetically if all that carbon is released it would treble that to 1155 ppm.
Well it all depends on what happens - but it sure doesn't look reassuring, to put it mildly. On thawing there will be a big spike as the gases that are currently trapped by the permafrost cap are released in large quantity. But most of this carbon is held in biological material requiring decomposition by microbes to release it, which is considered to be the dominant continuous process. Fire is the dominant episodic one.
In combination with dry conditions or increased water infiltration, thawing and fires could, given the right set of circumstances, act together to expose and transfer permafrost C[arbon] to the atmosphere very rapidly. Lastly, fire can interact with decomposition by creating warmer soil conditions and deeper permafrost thaw, which in turn promote the loss of C[arbon] from increased microbial activity.
Clearly the result will depend on the amounts of methane released, and the rate at which it is. But when they say very rapidly, they mean just that. We now have data from Antarctic ice cores proving that this happened at least twice previously, and at astronomical rates.
1155 ppm CO2? Can you put that in context?
The European Carbon Trading Scheme wa hailed as a big success as the first working carbon trading scheme, with the cap set at 550 ppm CO2. But as it soon became clear this would make absolutely no difference to climate change other than being a quick road to the hot house, it wasn't such a success after all.
IPCC4 caused massive angst when it brought the figure down to 450 ppm at the start of 2007, but by that summer the science had moved on so fast that it was clear that wouldn't save us either.
Various authorities then suggested we needed to limit CO2 equivalent in the atmosphere to 425 ppm or 400 ppm.
The soundest thinking emerged this June when James Hansen, a monumental figure in climate science, brought the figure down again to 350 ppm. This was discussed at length by the pensive prognosticator in“Finding oil isn't the issue – it is whether we want to find it, burn it and all fry” . But it must be confessed with one omission – it failed to stress that the actual levels already stood above the 380 ppm mark – 30 ppm or more into the danger zone. Which only goes to suggest that we have simply been waiting for something to blow, which might go along way to explain why this is happening. It all fits Hansen's model perfectly.
To give it a time line, 100 Months is based upon an estimate on when we will pass 425 ppm CO2. That campaign commenced on 01 August, so we are currently in month 98. However as 425 ppm looks incredible as a safe limit, it is unlikely we have that long. But don't let that put you off the campaign – that aside it is a good campaign, one of the few positive things going on and is well worth supporting.
If you take 400 ppm CO2 as the red line, we currently stand at 385 ppm. Greenhouse gases have been growing at 2 ppm per year and appear to be accelerating slightly. In addition we now have this new and significant source of methane to add to that. Make your own estimates on that basis – but if you get to a figure of more than seven and a half years from now, you've cooked it.
How soon will we know?
Winter conditions will impede research, and the presence of ice will obscure large-scale surface observations. Divers and mini subs might still be able to check out the sub-surface activity and the sources of methane. Surface measurements of trapped methane build up should still be possible.
Despite that it is unlikely we will have a good idea before:
the scale of the release of methane during the sea ice break up is know (next spring);
open water will allow direct observation of the extent of the plumes over a large area (next summer);
the renewed scale of activity and whether this is accelerating significantly is clear (probably not until late summer).
unless one or more proves to be catastrophic in scale, in which case we shall know all the sooner.
Further developments
Incredibly, only one.
Two days later, on 25 September, the Independent followed up with Hundreds of methane 'plumes' discovered . This story dealt with entirely unrelated research which had also just discovered the release of methane for the first time in a completely different part of the Arctic, this time off Svalbard in Norway. However the details are quite different.
At Svalbard there has been no prior investigation, the locations were much deeper, and the methane sources are not currently capped by permafrost. So it is conservatively assumed the process there has been going on for some 15,000 years. But this does not rule out that the scale is increasing in response to climate change, and clearly the researchers are onto that.
Unlike the first research it was able to confirm the source as methane hydrates degassing, in line with James Hansen's predictions.
Here is an extract or two.
'Yesterday, researchers on board the British research ship the James Clark Ross said they had counted about 250 methane plumes bubbling from the seabed in an area of about 30 square miles in water less than 400 metes (1,300 feet) deep off the west coast of Svalbard. They have also discovered a set of deeper plumes at depths of about 1,200 metres at a second site near by. Analysis of sediments and seawater has confirmed the rising gas is methane...'
'An analysis of sediments taken from the seabed show that the gas is coming from methane hydrates – ice-like crystals where molecules of the gas are captured in "cages" made of water molecules, which become unstable as water pressures fall or temperatures rise.
'Professor Westbrook said the area surveyed off the west coast of Svalbard was very different to the area being studied by the Russian vessel because the water was much deeper and does not have a layer of permafrost sealing the methane under the seabed.
'It is likely that methane emissions off Svalbard have been continuous for about 15,000 years – since the last ice age – but as yet no one knows whether recent climactic shifts in the Arctic have begun to accelerate them to a point where they could in themselves exacerbate climate change, he said.
'"We were very excited when we found these plumes because it was the first evidence there was an active gas system in this part of the world. Now we know it's there we know we have to very seriously consider its effect."'
And that - oddly enough - seems to be the entire media coverage to date on the most important news item in all of history.
It does not seem to have been picked up on by other periodicals. Nor has the Independent, which has to be praised for getting onto the story so fast, followed up. Searching has not brought up any scientific papers by the scientists quoted – which in itself is not unreasonable given that there are huge data sets to be crunched and analysed, conclusions to be tested and the paper itself to be produced.
But may leave you wondering why, if you missed the Independent stories first time around, you should have to be depending on a haplessly late story in the pensive prognosticator, a bottom of the heap blog, to bring you news which is arguably the most important in your life, critical to your entire future and a major factor in every decision you subsequently make. And the same for the world collectively.
But I leave that with you to ponder. And shall try to deal with the question as to how we should respond as individuals in the next instalment.
Stay happy
Sources
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-the-methane-time-bomb-938932.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/hundreds-of-methane-plumes-discovered-941456.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/steve-connor-the-ultimate-gas-leak-that-scientists-dreaded-938935.html
Friday 17 October 2008
Arctic Meltdown - End of season report
Greetings
INTRODUCTION FOR NEW RECIPIENTS
If you are receiving one of these emails for the first time, we met (if only fleetingly) at the recent Wild Law weekend so have been added you to the distribution accordingly. Its purpose is flag up key issues relating to Wild Law, the precariousness of our position in the face of environmental threats and other information otherwise easily missed.The frequency is perforce very low, though there is likely to be a slight flurry of half a dozen or so in the short-term to catch up on several major developments.
Should you wish to get a better feel of what is involved, current and previous emails are posted on the pensive prognosticator where most of the traffic from the now defunct Wild Law forum hosted by forumality.com can also be found. All are welcome to post comments and discuss if so moved.
However if this is not to your wishes please let me know and I shall immediately remove you with apologies for the presumption.
PLAIN TEXT READERS
If you are reading this email as plain text and have difficulty locating links please view the blog copy posted at
http://pensiveprognosticator.blogspot.com
If you could also let me know I would be grateful, particularly if this expedient does not work well for you.
And so to the Arctic...
WINTER RETURNS
The arctic summer came to an end on 14 September when the thaw ceased and freezing conditions returned.
The ice is now reforming as the seas freeze and the snows fall, and assuming historical weather patterns continue to hold this will continue until next March, when the next thaw should commence.
This report summarises the main scientific conclusions at the season's end, where disquieting trends underly the superficial data on the extent of this summer's melt.
As this might have made for a rather dry read, it is worth noting that it also acts as as background for next email which contains developments of the gravest significance which broke at the end of September, and which rightly should have us all standing by at the emergency exits ready to abandon ship in short order. As it is so critical to our entire situation the intention is to get it to you as soon as I can.
All emphasis by bolding in the quotes which follow is mine.
ICE LOSS
In the end this summer's melt did not break the 2007 record, which is probably taken as reassurance that things aren't really so perilous after all in quarters where that is what people hope to believe. But it did come within 390,000 square kilometres or 9% of the all-time minimum, as these figures summarised by the International Polar Foundation in an article entitled Long Term Arctic Sea Ice Decline Continues show:
It all looks good until you realise that 2007 was 'perfect storm' conditions for melting, whilst this summer was for the most part somewhat unfavourable from that point of view. June and July were cool and cloudy, and the rates of melting indifferent. Nonetheless the 2008 September low was still 34% below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000, and only 9% shy of 2007.
The reality was exposed in August, when the summer finally got going, when the NASA Goddard Space Flight Institute reported the rate of melting was the fastest ever recorded - and at a gob-smacking rate, too:
The 2008 rate of melting represents an increase of 66% over the average quoted, and a massive 34% over what were unprecedented rates in 2007, as the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported on 02 October. One reason for this was the increasing vulnerability of the ice because with each year's losses, more and more of what remains is one year old ice at the start of the season. This simply does not have the thickness to resist melting conditions, so melts much faster than the perennial ice it has replaced.
Or, as they added:
And
To beef up on that point, we only have to consider this key quote from a University of Colorado press release from January (i.e. not including this summer's melt)
In fact the position at the end of this summer can best be appreciated by taking a look at the excellent images in the 24 September summary produced by NSIDC which illustrate graphically the extent of ice remaining, the predominance of young ice, and also the odd fact that the pattern of winds was partially responsible for the 2007 record not being broken this year. To qualify as ice, the sea has to contain a mere 15% of ice - there is not nearly as much as the raw figures quoted above suggest. This summer, the winds acted to disperse the ice over a large area of water, thus qualifying a greater area as ice, whilst in 2007 the opposite occured.
ARCTIC ICE SHELVES
The Arctic ice shelves faired very badly this year, and seem to be in terminal decline, as there is no foreseeable way they can recover short of the next ice age. Here is a repeat the BBC story reported in the last update which informs that:
And, by way of interpretation
The link has some telling before and after satellite images well worth a look too.
GREENLAND
Has also taken a big hit this year, and we found out that a lot more melting is going on there than we previously realised:
SMALL GLACIERS – NOT LARGE – ACCOUNT FOR MOST OF GREENLAND’S RECENT LOSS OF ICE, STUDY SHOWS
While 09 October the IPF brought brought us the story Satellite Data Reveals Extreme Summer Snowmelt and Record Number of Melting Days in Northern Greenland
LAST WORDS
Dr Walt Meier of NSIDC at Boulder, Colorado in an interview with the BBC
The NASA Goddard scientist previously quoted said
And two scientists here, quoted from a short and rather indifferent article by the New Scientist, which some might find useful nonetheless because it runs very quickly through the main drivers of ice loss.
From all of this is seems overridingly apparent that the loss of the Arctic is unstoppable and is likely to continue at an unprecedented rate. Unless we have a succession of extremely hard winters to beef up the perennial ice in a significant way - which in itself seems improbable because all the trends are in the opposite direction, as would be expected with global warming as it is - it seems likely that the next hot summer will cause loss of ice on a massive scale, and probably considerably more break up than we have so far seen. A few summers like that and there will be precious little left - with all the dire consequences that entails.
NEXT ISSUE
This summary has dealt with the physical extent of Arctic ice, which is critical for Earth's albedo, for the moderating effect on the planet's average temperature, for their role in the circulatory systems in the atmosphere and the ocean. It is also critical for being the sole habitat of animals like the polar bear and home to unique peoples such as the Inuits.
Yet for scientists considering climate change there remains another question which is perhaps the most loaded of all - the moderating effect on the surrounding environment. At the end of September the news no one ever wanted to hear broke in this area. Because of its potentially devastating nature I will cover it separately in the next newsletter and as quickly as practicalities make possible.
To close with something for the soul and the heart, here's a sublime lament for the Arctic, though he though he would have been entirely unconscious of that when he wrote it. Nice video too of what hangs in the balance. For those with 4.50 to spare out of the chaos.
With thanks for your attention
INTRODUCTION FOR NEW RECIPIENTS
If you are receiving one of these emails for the first time, we met (if only fleetingly) at the recent Wild Law weekend so have been added you to the distribution accordingly. Its purpose is flag up key issues relating to Wild Law, the precariousness of our position in the face of environmental threats and other information otherwise easily missed.The frequency is perforce very low, though there is likely to be a slight flurry of half a dozen or so in the short-term to catch up on several major developments.
Should you wish to get a better feel of what is involved, current and previous emails are posted on the pensive prognosticator where most of the traffic from the now defunct Wild Law forum hosted by forumality.com can also be found. All are welcome to post comments and discuss if so moved.
However if this is not to your wishes please let me know and I shall immediately remove you with apologies for the presumption.
PLAIN TEXT READERS
If you are reading this email as plain text and have difficulty locating links please view the blog copy posted at
http://pensiveprognosticator.blogspot.com
If you could also let me know I would be grateful, particularly if this expedient does not work well for you.
And so to the Arctic...
WINTER RETURNS
The arctic summer came to an end on 14 September when the thaw ceased and freezing conditions returned.
The ice is now reforming as the seas freeze and the snows fall, and assuming historical weather patterns continue to hold this will continue until next March, when the next thaw should commence.
This report summarises the main scientific conclusions at the season's end, where disquieting trends underly the superficial data on the extent of this summer's melt.
As this might have made for a rather dry read, it is worth noting that it also acts as as background for next email which contains developments of the gravest significance which broke at the end of September, and which rightly should have us all standing by at the emergency exits ready to abandon ship in short order. As it is so critical to our entire situation the intention is to get it to you as soon as I can.
All emphasis by bolding in the quotes which follow is mine.
ICE LOSS
In the end this summer's melt did not break the 2007 record, which is probably taken as reassurance that things aren't really so perilous after all in quarters where that is what people hope to believe. But it did come within 390,000 square kilometres or 9% of the all-time minimum, as these figures summarised by the International Polar Foundation in an article entitled Long Term Arctic Sea Ice Decline Continues show:
September 2005: 5.57 million km2
September 2007: 4.28 million km2
September 2008: 4.67 million km2
It all looks good until you realise that 2007 was 'perfect storm' conditions for melting, whilst this summer was for the most part somewhat unfavourable from that point of view. June and July were cool and cloudy, and the rates of melting indifferent. Nonetheless the 2008 September low was still 34% below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000, and only 9% shy of 2007.
The reality was exposed in August, when the summer finally got going, when the NASA Goddard Space Flight Institute reported the rate of melting was the fastest ever recorded - and at a gob-smacking rate, too:
'From August 1 to August 31, NASA data show that arctic sea ice extent declined at a rate of 32,700 square miles [84,693 km2] per day, compared to a rate of about 24,400 square miles [63,196 km2] per day in August 2007. Since measurements began, the arctic sea ice extent has declined at an average rate of 19,700 miles per day at the point when the extent reaches its annual minimum.'
The 2008 rate of melting represents an increase of 66% over the average quoted, and a massive 34% over what were unprecedented rates in 2007, as the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported on 02 October. One reason for this was the increasing vulnerability of the ice because with each year's losses, more and more of what remains is one year old ice at the start of the season. This simply does not have the thickness to resist melting conditions, so melts much faster than the perennial ice it has replaced.
Or, as they added:
'In March 2008, thin first-year ice covered a record high 73% of the Arctic Basin. While this might seem like a recovery of the ice, the large extent masked an important aspect of sea ice health; thin ice is more prone to melting out during summer. So, the widespread thin ice of spring 2008 set the stage for extensive ice loss over the melt season.'
And
“Warm ocean waters helped contribute to ice losses this year, pushing the already thin ice pack over the edge. In fact, preliminary data indicates that 2008 probably represents the lowest volume of Arctic sea ice on record, partly because less multiyear ice is surviving now, and the remaining ice is so thin.”
To beef up on that point, we only have to consider this key quote from a University of Colorado press release from January (i.e. not including this summer's melt)
'The team used satellite data going back to 1982 to reconstruct past Arctic sea ice conditions, concluding there has been a nearly complete loss of the oldest, thickest ice and that 58 percent of the remaining perennial ice is thin and only 2-to-3 years old, said the lead study author, Research Professor James Maslanik of CU-Boulder's Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research. In the mid-1980s, only 35 percent of the sea ice was that young and that thin according to the study, the first to quantify the magnitude of the Arctic sea ice retreat using data on the age of the ice and its thickness, he said.'
In fact the position at the end of this summer can best be appreciated by taking a look at the excellent images in the 24 September summary produced by NSIDC which illustrate graphically the extent of ice remaining, the predominance of young ice, and also the odd fact that the pattern of winds was partially responsible for the 2007 record not being broken this year. To qualify as ice, the sea has to contain a mere 15% of ice - there is not nearly as much as the raw figures quoted above suggest. This summer, the winds acted to disperse the ice over a large area of water, thus qualifying a greater area as ice, whilst in 2007 the opposite occured.
ARCTIC ICE SHELVES
The Arctic ice shelves faired very badly this year, and seem to be in terminal decline, as there is no foreseeable way they can recover short of the next ice age. Here is a repeat the BBC story reported in the last update which informs that:
'The ice shelves in Canada's High Arctic have lost a colossal area this year, scientists report.'
'The floating tongues of ice attached to Ellesmere Island, which have lasted for thousands of years, have seen almost a quarter of their cover break away.
'One of them, the 50 sq km (20 sq miles) Markham shelf, has completely broken off to become floating sea-ice.'
'As well as the complete breakaway of the Markham, the Serson shelf lost two sections totalling an estimated 122 sq km (47 sq miles), and the break-up of the Ward Hunt has continued.'
And, by way of interpretation
'Loss of ice in the Arctic, and in particular the extensive sea-ice, has global implications. The "white parasol" at the top of the planet reflects energy from the Sun straight back out into space, helping to cool the Earth.
'Further loss of Arctic ice will see radiation absorbed by darker seawater and snow-free land, potentially warming the Earth's climate at an even faster rate than current observational data indicates.'
The link has some telling before and after satellite images well worth a look too.
GREENLAND
Has also taken a big hit this year, and we found out that a lot more melting is going on there than we previously realised:
SMALL GLACIERS – NOT LARGE – ACCOUNT FOR MOST OF GREENLAND’S RECENT LOSS OF ICE, STUDY SHOWS
'The recent dramatic melting and breakup of a few huge Greenland glaciers have fueled public concerns over the impact of global climate change, but that isn’t the island’s biggest problem.
A new study shows that the dozens of much smaller outflow glaciers dotting Greenland’s coast together account for three times more loss from the island’s ice sheet than the amount coming from their huge relatives'
'...scientists at Ohio State University reported that nearly 75 percent of the loss of Greenland ice can be traced back to small coastal glaciers'
'Aside from Antarctica, Greenland has more ice than anywhere else on earth.'
While 09 October the IPF brought brought us the story Satellite Data Reveals Extreme Summer Snowmelt and Record Number of Melting Days in Northern Greenland
'The northern part of the Greenland Ice Sheet underwent extreme snowmelt during the summer of 2008, and large portions of the ice sheet experienced a record number of melting days
'Dr. Tedesco said that the melting, which lasted 18 days longer than previous maximum values and had a melting index three times greater than the 1979-2007 average, was "extremely interesting," as northern Greenland is usually much colder than southern Greenland, which experienced record melting in summer 2007.'
LAST WORDS
Dr Walt Meier of NSIDC at Boulder, Colorado in an interview with the BBC
'I think this summer has been more remarkable than last year, in fact, because last year we had really optimal conditions to melt a lot of ice.
'We had clear skies with the Sun blazing down, we had warm temperatures, and winds that pushed the ice edge northwards," he told BBC News.
'We didn't have any of this this year, and yet we still came within 10% of the record; so people might be tempted to call it a recovery, but I don't think that's a good term, we're still on a downwards trend towards ice-free Arctic summers.'
The NASA Goddard scientist previously quoted said
'Based on what we've learned over the last 30 years, we know that the perennial ice cover is now in trouble. You need more than just one winter of cooling for the ice to recover to the average extent observed since the measurements began. But the trend is going the other way. A warming Arctic causes the surface water to get warmer, which delays the onset of freeze up in the winter and leads to a shorter period of ice growth. Without the chance to thicken, sea ice becomes thinner and more vulnerable to continued melt.'
And two scientists here, quoted from a short and rather indifferent article by the New Scientist, which some might find useful nonetheless because it runs very quickly through the main drivers of ice loss.
'"We are now well outside the range of natural variability," says Meier. "It is clear from how low the ice extent has been recently, the significant long-term trend, and the way the ice-cover is responding to atmospheric conditions and ocean circulation, that we've entered an entirely new regime of the Arctic sea ice".
"I think most glaciologists would be very surprised if the Arctic went back to normal," agrees Graversen.'
From all of this is seems overridingly apparent that the loss of the Arctic is unstoppable and is likely to continue at an unprecedented rate. Unless we have a succession of extremely hard winters to beef up the perennial ice in a significant way - which in itself seems improbable because all the trends are in the opposite direction, as would be expected with global warming as it is - it seems likely that the next hot summer will cause loss of ice on a massive scale, and probably considerably more break up than we have so far seen. A few summers like that and there will be precious little left - with all the dire consequences that entails.
NEXT ISSUE
This summary has dealt with the physical extent of Arctic ice, which is critical for Earth's albedo, for the moderating effect on the planet's average temperature, for their role in the circulatory systems in the atmosphere and the ocean. It is also critical for being the sole habitat of animals like the polar bear and home to unique peoples such as the Inuits.
Yet for scientists considering climate change there remains another question which is perhaps the most loaded of all - the moderating effect on the surrounding environment. At the end of September the news no one ever wanted to hear broke in this area. Because of its potentially devastating nature I will cover it separately in the next newsletter and as quickly as practicalities make possible.
To close with something for the soul and the heart, here's a sublime lament for the Arctic, though he though he would have been entirely unconscious of that when he wrote it. Nice video too of what hangs in the balance. For those with 4.50 to spare out of the chaos.
With thanks for your attention
Tuesday 16 September 2008
Polar Meltdown Update
"These changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in balance for thousands of years are no longer present"
Greetings
On the hoof at present so this is very much on the fly, but here are the latest on the meltdown of the Arctic. Together with the happy news that the amount of greenhouse gases likely to be released by thawing tundra is twice as much as has been previously estimated, and may release twice the amounts currently in the atmosphere.
1 ENN: Lowest ever sea ice in Arctic - 15 September
This story relates how it is now touch and go that this summer's minimum will be even lower than last year's, and thus the lowest ever recorded. That measure relates to the surface area, important for the albedo effect, survival of the polar bears etc. Perhaps more importantly for the continuation of the Arctic, the article also reports that the volume of ice is now almost certainly at the lowest ever known.
2 ISF: Permafrost: Frozen Organic Carbon Might be a Bigger Threat Than Previously Thought - 15 September
'Scientists say the amount of greenhouse gases released by widespread thawing of permafrost could be equivalent to twice the current amount of CO2 in the world's atmosphere.'
Enough said. There are links to a short paper on the major international study that has reached that conclusion.
3 New Scientist: Massive Canadian Arctic Ice Shelf Breaks Away - 03 September
Chillingly, this article is documents the end of a era in geological terms, as it details the terminal and irreversible break up of the Arctic ice shelves together with the loss of unique and unstudied ecosystems, never to return. All happening in your lifetime...
If you are looking for evidence that things are happening faster than predicted, the loss of ice from Ellesmere Island this summer was ten times the scientific estimates made as recently as 30 July this year.
Of its original 9000 sq kms, only 800 kms remain.
That's all for now. Happily it seems to bring things up to date, on a quick browse.
All the best
Tuesday 2 September 2008
The Arctic becomes an island as ice melts
Hi again
It has been a while since an update on the meltdown of the Arctic (due to uncertainty about what was happening allied to a lack of connectivity), but having finally concluded the Climate Wars email just sent, I have just had time to turn up this.
Don't have much time to pontificate, but the Daily Telegraph of all papers seems to have had an exclusive on this story published on 31 August.
It reports the 'historic development' that
as the North-West and North-East Passages are now both open, detaching the Arctic from Europe, Asia and the Americas.
As well-informed as ever on climate change, The Telegraph states
Most scientists are of the opinion that the last ice age was considerably more recent, peaking around 11,000 years ago, but no doubt they have got it wrong.
It reports
As, heartbreakingly, it would seem have our original friends, the polar bears we all began aspiring to save, who
It has been more widely reported that this year's melt is now the second biggest ever, and we are waiting to see if the remaining melt, which usually ceases mid-September, will top the record, leaving the smallest extent of Arctic ice ever.
It may well do so, and as this was not a particularly favourable summer in terms of the factors influencing melting, the writing seems to be ever larger on the wall.
Well done The Telegraph for leading on this. On the bright side, if this report also marks the beginning of the paper's historic conversion at least the tide of public opinion is starting to turn in a positive direction.
Try your hardest, folks, whilst the possibility remains...
Be happy
It has been a while since an update on the meltdown of the Arctic (due to uncertainty about what was happening allied to a lack of connectivity), but having finally concluded the Climate Wars email just sent, I have just had time to turn up this.
Don't have much time to pontificate, but the Daily Telegraph of all papers seems to have had an exclusive on this story published on 31 August.
The Arctic becomes an island as ice melts
It reports the 'historic development' that
'The North Pole has become an island for the first time in human history as climate change has made it possible to circumnavigate the Arctic ice cap.'
as the North-West and North-East Passages are now both open, detaching the Arctic from Europe, Asia and the Americas.
As well-informed as ever on climate change, The Telegraph states
'shipping companies are already planning to exploit the first simultaneous opening of the routes since the beginning of the last Ice Age 125,000 years ago.'
Most scientists are of the opinion that the last ice age was considerably more recent, peaking around 11,000 years ago, but no doubt they have got it wrong.
It reports
'Prof Mark Serreze, a sea ice specialist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in the US said the images suggested the Arctic may have entered a "death spiral" caused by global warming.'
As, heartbreakingly, it would seem have our original friends, the polar bears we all began aspiring to save, who
'have been spotted off Alaska trying to swim hundreds of miles to the retreating ice cap.'
It has been more widely reported that this year's melt is now the second biggest ever, and we are waiting to see if the remaining melt, which usually ceases mid-September, will top the record, leaving the smallest extent of Arctic ice ever.
It may well do so, and as this was not a particularly favourable summer in terms of the factors influencing melting, the writing seems to be ever larger on the wall.
Well done The Telegraph for leading on this. On the bright side, if this report also marks the beginning of the paper's historic conversion at least the tide of public opinion is starting to turn in a positive direction.
Try your hardest, folks, whilst the possibility remains...
Be happy
Gwynne Dyer - Climate Wars
'US and UK military strategists have already started planning to deal with the threats posed by climate change: failed states, famines, floods, new warzones, and millions and millions of refugees'
Greetings
Rather a long time ago I stated an intention:
Clearly I've spun out hopelessly on that to date, but happily this fellow has spared us all the trouble. More happily still, being a strategic analyst of such eminent standing he is syndicated to 175 journals in 45 countries, he does so with an authority that is infinitely more credible than any layperson could ever hope to muster.
Which is just as well given the logical conclusions anyone considering the human and planetary predicament objectively and with clarity must inevitably come to.
Gwynne Dyer gave an interview on the Late Night Live show on ABC (by approximation, the equivalent of the BBC in Oz) on 26 August. The billing for the programme states:
It is the first I am aware of that someone of his stature and with access to the necessary privileged (ie classified) information has spoken out candidly and coherently on this subject, rather than partially and piecemeal.
The interview runs one by one through the main strategic risks such as food scarcity, water, mass migrations and so on, and analyses the likely geo-political effects on each region of the globe. As you would expect from a defence analyst, the tone is absolutely measured throughout, yet the conclusions are as sensational - read frightening - as any currently abroad.
As such it is an analysis of the deepest importance which I would encourage all to spare the 40 minutes necessary to listen to here.
But for the sceptical or more heavily pressed, a short yet telling report which went out on the Environmental Network News on 29 August can be found here.
As an appetite whetter, here is a snippet from the latter:
Inevitably he discusses James Hansen's critical role in alerting us to this and Hansen's current view that the safe limit for CO2 equivalent in the atmosphere is 350 ppm (covered with references in my email of 02 May entitled “Finding oil isn't the issue – it is whether we want to find it, burn it and all fry” - do ask if you would like it resent). According to this interview we are currently at 387 ppm. That is not a typo.
He also considers that the current consensus to be that 425 ppm is the ultimate threshold beyond which you may as well forget about a future because everything blows. It is pertinent to note here that the fourth IPCC report, which remains current in that all political solutions are based upon it but is now hopelessly out of date scientifically, considers 450 ppm to be the goal to be aimed for. That is not a typo either. Allow the implications of those figures to permeate your consciousness.
Also:
He also predicts the militarisation of the US border with Mexico within ten years.
The rest I leave for you.
In passing, I have had no success in downloading the podcast from ABC, but the streaming works perfectly via either channel offered; and there are a few inaccuracies in the ENN report - for instance the date of the broadcast, which is possibly something to do with the dateline.
Finally, in response to some very kind requests to make these discussions more widely available they have been posted on a rather rudimentary blog. It is still in beta and rather rough round the edges, but functional. All the material circulated over the last year or so is there (after a long list of vibes, hopefully to inspire, which speak of our predicament), including that originally posted on the now defunct Wild Law forum. In addition there is an RSS feed which, if you subscribe to it, has the advantage of alerting you to new postings automatically as they appear. All at
http://pensiveprognosticator.blogspot.com
Hope it helps
Stay happy
Greetings
Rather a long time ago I stated an intention:
'finally, if it remains possible, to draw the main environmental and geopolitical strands together to make some tentative predictions of the main factors likely to be at play, to give some indication of where we might be heading on present trends.'
Clearly I've spun out hopelessly on that to date, but happily this fellow has spared us all the trouble. More happily still, being a strategic analyst of such eminent standing he is syndicated to 175 journals in 45 countries, he does so with an authority that is infinitely more credible than any layperson could ever hope to muster.
Which is just as well given the logical conclusions anyone considering the human and planetary predicament objectively and with clarity must inevitably come to.
Gwynne Dyer gave an interview on the Late Night Live show on ABC (by approximation, the equivalent of the BBC in Oz) on 26 August. The billing for the programme states:
'US and UK military strategists have already started planning to deal with the threats posed by climate change: failed states, famines, floods, new warzones, and millions and millions of refugees'
It is the first I am aware of that someone of his stature and with access to the necessary privileged (ie classified) information has spoken out candidly and coherently on this subject, rather than partially and piecemeal.
The interview runs one by one through the main strategic risks such as food scarcity, water, mass migrations and so on, and analyses the likely geo-political effects on each region of the globe. As you would expect from a defence analyst, the tone is absolutely measured throughout, yet the conclusions are as sensational - read frightening - as any currently abroad.
As such it is an analysis of the deepest importance which I would encourage all to spare the 40 minutes necessary to listen to here.
But for the sceptical or more heavily pressed, a short yet telling report which went out on the Environmental Network News on 29 August can be found here.
As an appetite whetter, here is a snippet from the latter:
'there is a sense of suppressed panic from the scientific and military leaders.
"And it's not just the analysts. I spent the past year doing a very high-speed self-education job on climate change but I think I probably talked to most of the senior people in the field in a dozen countries," Dr Dyer said.
"They're scared, they're really frightened. Things are moving far faster than their models predicted. "You may have the Arctic ocean free of ice entirely in five years' time, in the late summer. Nobody thought that would happen until about the 2040s - even a couple of years ago." Dr Dyer says there is a sense of things moving much faster, and the military are picking up on that. He also says we will be playing climate change catch-up in the next 30 years. "The threshold you don't want to cross, ever, is 2 degrees Celsius hotter than it was at the beginning of the 1990s," he said.
"That is a margin we have effectively already used up more than half of. It would require pretty miraculous cooperation globally and huge cuts in emissions." And if the world does not decarbonise by 2050, you don't want to be there, according to Dr Dyer. "My kids will and I don't think that is going to be a pleasant prospect at all, because once you go past 2 degrees - and you could get past 2 degrees by the 2040s without too much effort - things start getting out of control," he said. "The ocean starts giving back to the atmosphere the carbon dioxide it absorbed.
That world is a world where crop failures are normal.'
Inevitably he discusses James Hansen's critical role in alerting us to this and Hansen's current view that the safe limit for CO2 equivalent in the atmosphere is 350 ppm (covered with references in my email of 02 May entitled “Finding oil isn't the issue – it is whether we want to find it, burn it and all fry” - do ask if you would like it resent). According to this interview we are currently at 387 ppm. That is not a typo.
He also considers that the current consensus to be that 425 ppm is the ultimate threshold beyond which you may as well forget about a future because everything blows. It is pertinent to note here that the fourth IPCC report, which remains current in that all political solutions are based upon it but is now hopelessly out of date scientifically, considers 450 ppm to be the goal to be aimed for. That is not a typo either. Allow the implications of those figures to permeate your consciousness.
Also:
'"[There will be] huge falls in the amount of crops that you can grow because there isn't the rain and it's too hot," he said. "That will apply particularly to the Mediterranean... and so not just the north African countries, but also the ones on the northern side of the Mediterranean. The ones in the European Union like Spain and Italy and Greece and the Balkans and Turkey are going to be suffering huge losses in their ability to support their populations.'
He also predicts the militarisation of the US border with Mexico within ten years.
The rest I leave for you.
In passing, I have had no success in downloading the podcast from ABC, but the streaming works perfectly via either channel offered; and there are a few inaccuracies in the ENN report - for instance the date of the broadcast, which is possibly something to do with the dateline.
Finally, in response to some very kind requests to make these discussions more widely available they have been posted on a rather rudimentary blog. It is still in beta and rather rough round the edges, but functional. All the material circulated over the last year or so is there (after a long list of vibes, hopefully to inspire, which speak of our predicament), including that originally posted on the now defunct Wild Law forum. In addition there is an RSS feed which, if you subscribe to it, has the advantage of alerting you to new postings automatically as they appear. All at
http://pensiveprognosticator.blogspot.com
Hope it helps
Stay happy
Tuesday 26 August 2008
Wild Law - holy grail sighted
Greetings
Poor connectivity has delayed getting this out, so if it turns out to be old hat, forgive me. Otherwise, this seems truly something to celebrate.
After all the years of questing rewarded only by fleeting but encouraging sightings of 'laws already in place that had some of the essential characteristics of Wild Law', miraculously the elusive grail has appeared in all its pristine glory.
The event occurred in the State of California on 22 July and has been widely witnessed. Thanks to Governor Arni Schwarzenegger (Republican) and a State Senator by the name of Joe Simitian (Democrat), we now have some real Wild Law in the form of Senate Bill 1399, albeit rather modest in scope.
Its purpose is to liberate trees and shrubs from previously existing controls over their existence and growth should they happen to cast shade on solar collectors installed after they were planted.
While this may not seem to be much, it would seem to be Wild Law pure and unadulterated as it effectively gives rights to plants, and does so over a whole raft of anthropocentric concerns which normally be expected to take precedence in consumerland.
Those wishing to make a pilgrimage to the site of where the miracle was revealed can visit The New York Times at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/us/23solar.html
However be aware that the yokels filing the report were entirely oblivious to the magnitude of the event they are covering, and completely overlook its significance in favour of rustic humour and grunge reporting of the unseemly dispute which happened to presage the incarnation of this measure.
A better account can be found at
http://origin.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_9961578?nclick_check=1
Braver souls undeterred by the experience of Sir Galahad may wish to try for a full revelation themselves, for whom a highlighted PDF of the legislation is attached (please email if you would like a copy). From the Wild Law perspective, the operative parts are:
Clean copies can be had from this link, where the evolution of the bill can also be found:
http://info.sen.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=sb_1399&sess=CUR&house=B&site=sen
As in the Grail mystery, let us hope that this may be followed with more and increasingly generalised sightings, and that it will herald in a age of renewed peace and harmony on Earth.
In passing there are a couple of other reasons to take heart from this story. The first is the phenomenal pace and scale at which California is setting about greening itself under Arni's leadership. That this can be done at all, let alone in the face of a federal administration hostile to the entire concept, speaks volumes of how much can be achieved given inspired and enlightened leadership and a reasonable level of popular support. Whilst this puts almost all other politicians currently in power to utter shame for their inertia, shortsightedness and most of all their inability or unwillingness to recognise that if economic interests are not subordinated to responding to environmental catastrophe the game is up for all of us, it also proves how fast things can change in a big way once the will is there. There are yet grounds for hope.
Following on from that is the inspiration to be drawn from Arni's miraculous conversion at the personal level. Quite leaving aside the Terminator and other movies, here is a man who has gone from thinking he was green whilst driving around in a gas (petrol) fueled Hummer when he first took up office, to being one of the most outstanding environmental leaders on the planet. Testimony to that is the extraordinary fact that he is apparently being cited for an environmental post in the next administration under either presidential candidate
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/us/politics/14schwarz.html
Whilst he still began with a good nose in front of most politicians, if Arni can do it, the possibility of epiphanies remains for all.
As to The Terminator, it would seem fairest to judge the man by his own standards. To quote the last article:
The Republican candidate for 2012? From recent experience, things can only get better!
Smile and be happy
steve
Poor connectivity has delayed getting this out, so if it turns out to be old hat, forgive me. Otherwise, this seems truly something to celebrate.
After all the years of questing rewarded only by fleeting but encouraging sightings of 'laws already in place that had some of the essential characteristics of Wild Law', miraculously the elusive grail has appeared in all its pristine glory.
The event occurred in the State of California on 22 July and has been widely witnessed. Thanks to Governor Arni Schwarzenegger (Republican) and a State Senator by the name of Joe Simitian (Democrat), we now have some real Wild Law in the form of Senate Bill 1399, albeit rather modest in scope.
Its purpose is to liberate trees and shrubs from previously existing controls over their existence and growth should they happen to cast shade on solar collectors installed after they were planted.
While this may not seem to be much, it would seem to be Wild Law pure and unadulterated as it effectively gives rights to plants, and does so over a whole raft of anthropocentric concerns which normally be expected to take precedence in consumerland.
Those wishing to make a pilgrimage to the site of where the miracle was revealed can visit The New York Times at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/us/23solar.html
However be aware that the yokels filing the report were entirely oblivious to the magnitude of the event they are covering, and completely overlook its significance in favour of rustic humour and grunge reporting of the unseemly dispute which happened to presage the incarnation of this measure.
A better account can be found at
http://origin.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_9961578?nclick_check=1
Braver souls undeterred by the experience of Sir Galahad may wish to try for a full revelation themselves, for whom a highlighted PDF of the legislation is attached (please email if you would like a copy). From the Wild Law perspective, the operative parts are:
Section 2 - which places restrictions on the amount of shade a tree or shrub may cast upon a solar collector; and
Section 6 – which exempts pre-existing trees and shrubs from the entire chapter.
Clean copies can be had from this link, where the evolution of the bill can also be found:
http://info.sen.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=sb_1399&sess=CUR&house=B&site=sen
As in the Grail mystery, let us hope that this may be followed with more and increasingly generalised sightings, and that it will herald in a age of renewed peace and harmony on Earth.
In passing there are a couple of other reasons to take heart from this story. The first is the phenomenal pace and scale at which California is setting about greening itself under Arni's leadership. That this can be done at all, let alone in the face of a federal administration hostile to the entire concept, speaks volumes of how much can be achieved given inspired and enlightened leadership and a reasonable level of popular support. Whilst this puts almost all other politicians currently in power to utter shame for their inertia, shortsightedness and most of all their inability or unwillingness to recognise that if economic interests are not subordinated to responding to environmental catastrophe the game is up for all of us, it also proves how fast things can change in a big way once the will is there. There are yet grounds for hope.
Following on from that is the inspiration to be drawn from Arni's miraculous conversion at the personal level. Quite leaving aside the Terminator and other movies, here is a man who has gone from thinking he was green whilst driving around in a gas (petrol) fueled Hummer when he first took up office, to being one of the most outstanding environmental leaders on the planet. Testimony to that is the extraordinary fact that he is apparently being cited for an environmental post in the next administration under either presidential candidate
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/us/politics/14schwarz.html
Whilst he still began with a good nose in front of most politicians, if Arni can do it, the possibility of epiphanies remains for all.
As to The Terminator, it would seem fairest to judge the man by his own standards. To quote the last article:
'Mr. Schwarzenegger also offered some praise for Mr. Obama, saying he disagreed with people who have criticized the senator as a flip-flopper.
'Someone has, for 20 or 30 years, been in the wrong place with his idea and with his ideology and says: “You know something? I changed my mind. I am now for this.” As long as he is honest or she ís honest, I think that is a wonderful thing.'
The Republican candidate for 2012? From recent experience, things can only get better!
Smile and be happy
steve
Friday 27 June 2008
"Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole"
Greetings
Here's the front page headline from today's Independent:
In fact the situation was reported briefly on-line by the International Polar Foundation on 24 June, though it would seem to be an exclusive as far as the British press goes.
The gist is that there is now considered to be a 50% or better chance that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer. Over the last month it has been melting even faster than last year's unprecedented losses.
Historically the bulk of the Arctic has been pack ice which has built up over several seasons - ultimately it can be regarded as a remnant of the last ice age - augmented around its periphery by single-season ice which forms in winter then melts again in summer.
Previously this formation and melting has been in balance, so that over time the size of the Arctic has been relatively stable within the seasonal variations the process entails.
At the end of this winter (March 2008) the overall area of the Arctic had actually recovered somewhat from the hammering it received last summer and was greater than at the end of winter 2007.
But by the end of May the ice had melted so rapidly that it was already back to where it had been at the same time last year. Hence the area under ice is currently reducing even faster than last summer.
The reason is that last summer's losses were so severe that, depending on reports, 65 to 70% or more of the Arctic pack is now single-year ice. This simply does not have the resistance to temperature of the much thicker multi-year ice. As a result it is expected that some 70% of the single-year cover will melt this summer, leaving open water all the way to the Pole.
Satellite measurements and field observations confirm all of this. The only uncertainty is the weather in July and August which will be critical.
The full reports can be found at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-no-ice-at-the-north-pole-855406.html
and
http://www.sciencepoles.org/index.php?/news/the_geographic_north_pole_might_be_ice_free_this_summer/&uid=1267
Meanwhile, here's something fortify and steel you, if not paint the future
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10BbpGKLXqk
People get ready
.
Here's the front page headline from today's Independent:
Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole
In fact the situation was reported briefly on-line by the International Polar Foundation on 24 June, though it would seem to be an exclusive as far as the British press goes.
The gist is that there is now considered to be a 50% or better chance that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer. Over the last month it has been melting even faster than last year's unprecedented losses.
Historically the bulk of the Arctic has been pack ice which has built up over several seasons - ultimately it can be regarded as a remnant of the last ice age - augmented around its periphery by single-season ice which forms in winter then melts again in summer.
Previously this formation and melting has been in balance, so that over time the size of the Arctic has been relatively stable within the seasonal variations the process entails.
At the end of this winter (March 2008) the overall area of the Arctic had actually recovered somewhat from the hammering it received last summer and was greater than at the end of winter 2007.
But by the end of May the ice had melted so rapidly that it was already back to where it had been at the same time last year. Hence the area under ice is currently reducing even faster than last summer.
The reason is that last summer's losses were so severe that, depending on reports, 65 to 70% or more of the Arctic pack is now single-year ice. This simply does not have the resistance to temperature of the much thicker multi-year ice. As a result it is expected that some 70% of the single-year cover will melt this summer, leaving open water all the way to the Pole.
Satellite measurements and field observations confirm all of this. The only uncertainty is the weather in July and August which will be critical.
The full reports can be found at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-no-ice-at-the-north-pole-855406.html
and
http://www.sciencepoles.org/index.php?/news/the_geographic_north_pole_might_be_ice_free_this_summer/&uid=1267
Meanwhile, here's something fortify and steel you, if not paint the future
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10BbpGKLXqk
People get ready
.
Major Wild Law Breakthrough
Greetings
After yesterday's good news, here is something wild for everyone to celebrate
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/26/humanrights.animalwelfare?gusrc=rss&feed=environment
Change can be that fast when the Tao is with it.
Let us hope the same for climate change - more on that soon.
Be happy
steve
After yesterday's good news, here is something wild for everyone to celebrate
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/26/humanrights.animalwelfare?gusrc=rss&feed=environment
Change can be that fast when the Tao is with it.
Let us hope the same for climate change - more on that soon.
Be happy
steve
Saturday 21 June 2008
Wither Environmental Law? Wither Thy Timbers?
This article was very kindly published in the June 2008 edition of e-law, the electronic bulletin of the UK Environmental Law Association.
To summarise our predicament it runs through the most salient scientific developments to the end of May, before going on to raise issues of the profession as to how to respond.
Given what is happening, each and every one of us should be asking those same questions with the utmost urgency - of ourselves as much as of society as a whole.
These are singular times we live in.
Shortly we will be the privileged witnesses of an event never before seen, possibly never before experienced in Earth's history. Within the next few summers it is now highly probable the Arctic will cease to exist as a physical presence, becoming ice free and navigable to the North Pole itself. This will be quite unprecedented in the history of humanity, quite possibly in the history of the planet also.
Most will already know that the Arctic lost 23% of its ice coverage in the last two summers. In addition, on 23 May startling new evidence emerged of large scale and wholly unexpected breakup of the ice. The BBC reported
'Dramatic evidence of the break-up of the Arctic ice-cap has emerged from research during an expedition by the Canadian military.
'One of the expedition's scientists, Derek Mueller of Trent University, Ontario, told me: "I was astonished to see these new cracks. It means the ice shelf is disintegrating”'
While in a report of a petition by the Centre for Biological Diversity for three seal species to join the polar bear on the endangered list because of habitat loss due to the speed of the Arctic meltdown, the Guardian stated
'The petition from the centre warns that surface temperatures in the Arctic are warming much faster than expected. The extent of sea ice in winter in 2007 was reduced to an area that most climate forecasts had suggested would be reached by 2070.
'Arctic sea ice is melting so rapidly that every ice-dependent marine mammal needs protection," said Shaye Wolf, a biologist who lead the petition.'
His call has been widely taken up. The New Scientist website carried 'Should all Arctic species be red-listed?'
'Habitats are changing so rapidly in the face of global warming that some conservationists argue many thousands more species should be listed as "endangered"'
Meanwhile...
At the other end of the planet something very similar is happening, at least locally - if you can call the sudden break up of 160 square miles local. Scientists were taken utterly by surprise by the sudden disintegration of a large chunk of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, confounding all scientific predictions, which was reported at the end of March.
In addition research released in January demonstrated that far from being stable or growing as is widely believed, the net loss of ice from Antarctica increased by around 75% in the ten years to 2006. The cause is considered to be accelerating glacial movement as a result of climate change.
This is particularly unfortunately as existing models - most critically including those used by the IPCC - have presumed the Antarctic ice sheets to be stable so have failed to take these losses into account. As a result it is now widely accepted that the predictions of sea level rise contained in the fourth IPCC report are seriously understated.
Getting more into the detail, the New Scientist reported
'Until recently, conflicting results have meant estimates of ice loss at the poles vary widely. Now an international team has used satellite data and climate modelling to show that, in the decade ending in 2006, annual ice loss from West Antarctica increased by 59 per cent while losses from the Antarctic Peninsula leapt by 140 per cent (Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo102). These results tie in nicely with recent results obtained by other methods, bringing consensus over ice loss a bit closer.'
While in a report on how this meltdown is releasing a soup of highly toxic chemicals which is ending up in the food chain, the same journal stated:
'average winter temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have warmed 6 °C the past 30 years, and glaciers now melt faster than they grow. '
Singular times for the polar regions and all they hold, then.
Singular times for the rest of the planet's biodiversity, too. The latest Living Planet Index was published on 16 May revealing that biodiversity has plummeted nearly a third in the 35 years to 2005. Perhaps it would be more accurate to rename it the Dying Planet Index. The Independent headlined 'an epidemic of extinctions' and quoted a spokesman for the LPI who said the decline was
' "completely unprecedented in terms of human history". "You'd have to go back to the extinction of the dinosaurs to see a decline as rapid as this," he added.
'And "rapid" is putting it mildly. Scientists say the current extinction rate is now up to 10,000 times faster than what has historically been recorded as normal.'
Clearly the fate of the rainforests are absolutely critical in global biodiversity. And the critical news here comes from none other than Brazil where May saw the resignation of Marina Silva, the environment minister, regarded as the guardian angel of the Brazilian environment in general and the rainforest in particular. This news was greeted with massive dismay internationally. She walked because environmental protection was routinely subordinated to economic interests, effectively as a matter of policy.
'The Latin American giant's supposed progress on environmental protection has unravelled in the past year as revelations of record levels of deforestation, violent land disputes and runaway forest fires have followed in quick succession. The worldwide boom in agricultural commodities has created an unparalleled thirst for land and energy in Brazil, and the result has been a potentially catastrophic land grab into the world's largest remaining rainforest. The Amazon basin is home to one in 10 of the world's mammals and 15 per cent of its land-based plant species. It holds more than half of the world's fresh water and its vast forests act as the largest carbon sink on the planet, providing a vital check on the greenhouse effect.
'Since President Lula won a second term Ms Silva found herself a lone voice in a government acutely aware that its own political future depended on the vast agribusiness interests she was trying to rein in. The final breakdown in her relationship with the President came after he gave the green light to massive road and dam-building projects in the Amazon basin, and a plan she drafted for the sustainable management of the region was taken from her and handed to a business-friendly fellow minister.'
Reuters added
'About 80 percent of the world's biodiversity is found in tropical forests, yet every minute 20 hectares (50 acres) of forest disappear, say experts.'
While in the Environmental Network News story 'Brazilian Companies Announce Global Warming Game Plan' it stated
'In a report released last month, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that, “by mid-century, increases in temperature and associated decreases in soil water are projected to lead to gradual replacement of tropical forest by savanna in eastern Amazonia.” The IPCC also warning that crop productivity in Brazil “is projected to decrease for even small local temperature increases” in tropical areas, “which would increase risk of hunger.”'
Thus fare the 'lungs of the planet'.
A different sort of lung is faring badly too. The New Scientist reported on 01 May that "dead zones" in the oceans containing too little oxygen for fish to breathe are growing as global temperatures increase.
'Warmer water dissolves less oxygen, so as temperatures rise, oxygen vanishes from oceans. Marine biologists are warning that if dead zones continue expanding, oceanic "deserts" could massively deplete marine life and fish stocks.
'Over the past 50 years, large volumes of ocean previously rich in oxygen have become "oxygen minimum zones" (OMZs) containing less than 120 micromoles of oxygen per kilogram of water. These are the concentrations at which fish, squid, crustaceans and other marine creatures begin to suffocate and die.'
On 23 May it was reported that acidification of the naturally alkaline oceans along the entire west coast of North America threatens the collapse of marine ecosystems. The reason is the process of marine calcification by which countless marine creatures critical in the food chain or as habitat (eg coral) build their skeletal body parts fails in an acidic environment.
Ocean acidification is, of course, a global, not a localised problem. The seas everywhere are becoming acidic because of the absorption of CO2, it being calculated that they have by now absorbed a third of all CO2 emitted since the start of industrialisation. Just to bear this out, the same problem was reported in Antarctica affecting the pteropods
'known as the "potato chip" of the oceans because they are eaten by so many species. Fish that feed on pteropods are eaten by bigger fish, seals and penguins, which are eaten by killer whales.'
Quite apart from the dead zones (which they have learned to effectively 'hold their breathe' to enter briefly) fish are on the edge too. A highly recommended report titled 'How the world's oceans are running out of fish', which demonstrates along the way how The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea has backfired in this respect at least, appeared in The Observer of 11 May.
'Is anyone not aware that wild fish are in deep trouble? That three-quarters of commercially caught species are over-exploited or exploited to their maximum? Do they not know that industrial fishing is so inefficient that a third of the catch, some 32 million tonnes a year, is thrown away? For every ocean prawn you eat, fish weighing 10-20 times as much have been thrown overboard. These figures all come from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which also claims that, of all the world's natural resources, fish are being depleted the fastest. With even the most abundant commercial species, we eat smaller and smaller fish every year - we eat the babies before they can breed.
'Callum Roberts, professor of marine conservation at York University, predicts that by 2050 we will only be able to meet the fish protein needs of half the world population: all that will be left for the unlucky half may be, as he puts it, 'jellyfish and slime'. Ninety years of industrial-scale exploitation of fish has, he and most scientists agree, led to 'ecological meltdown'. Whole biological food chains have been destroyed.'
Perhaps the birds, being so highly adaptable, are fairing better? In the latest revision of the Red List by Birdlife International
'1,226 species of bird are now threatened with global extinction - around one-in-eight of the world's bird species.'
The very obvious fact is that biodiversity across the board is in a very parlous state, and we are failing dramatically and wilfully to protect it:
'BERLIN (Reuters) 16 may- Nearly 200 governments will say next week they are unlikely to meet a target of slowing the rate of extinctions of living species by 2010, a failure which could threaten future food supplies.
'U.N. experts say the planet is facing the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago and some say three species vanish every hour as a result largely of human activity causing pollution and loss of habitat.'
'"We hope to give a wake-up call to humanity. We need an unprecedented effort to meet the challenge of biodiversity loss," convention Executive Secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf told Reuters in a telephone interview. He said consumption had reached unsustainable levels and humans were destroying the foundation of life. Without a change in behavior, feeding up to 9 billion people would be difficult.'
As if that was not enough, the largest ever study of the impact of climate change has concluded biology is already being influenced and that only life in the Antarctica has been spared – thus far. 90% of species and 95% of natural features have already been affected, and its destabilising influence - for instance as a result of the early arrival of spring - has been scientifically confirmed. The authors consider these effects to be human induced.
Of course the immediate cause of most of these disasters is greenhouse gas emissions (the ultimate one being human values). How are we faring there?
Very bad news on that front too, regrettably. The general presumption has been that given time, anthropogenic CO2 emissions would be absorbed by natural processes in the environment. The catch was no-one knew how long that would take. We knew it is longer than a decade, most had resumed a couple of decades or so; but given long enough it would all go away again into the oceans (to acidify them further), and by way of photosynthesis.
Unfortunately modelling by Matthews and Caldeira has now found this happy picture to be highly questionable, and probably entirely false. The model introduced a single pulse of C02 at the start of the simulation period.
'Pulse sizes of 50, 200, 500 and 2000 billion tonnes of carbon were used. The model was set to calculate global temperatures and atmospheric and ocean carbon dioxide levels over a simulated 500 years.
'At the end of that period, Matthews and Caldeira found that between 20% and 35% of the initial emission pulse remained in the atmosphere – even for the smallest emission pulse – with the remainder having been absorbed by land and ocean carbon sinks.
'The lingering carbon dioxide means that global warming persisted for the entire simulation. For the four different emission scenarios, global temperatures stabilised at 0.09, 0.34, 0.88 and 3.6 ºC above pre-industrial levels respectively.
'So far industrial emissions total around 450 billion tonnes. “Even if we eliminated carbon dioxide today we are still committed to a global temperature rise of around 0.8 ºC lasting at least 500 years,” says Caldeira.
'One of the reasons for the persistence is the slow response of oceans. “It takes a lot of energy to heat them up and then a long time for them to cool back down,” he explains.'
Unsurprisingly, given that rather rude awakening, there have been a spate of calls for much more radical action to cut greenhouse emissions with the utmost urgency before it is all too late. Perhaps most notable is a study by some of the most respected climate-policy researchers which takes on the prevalent economic advice to governments that it is more economically efficient to delay the introduction of remedial measures. It quantified the impact of every year of delay
'We should not wait to cut back on burning fossil fuels until we have developed greener technology to supply our energy needs, despite what many economists are advising their respective governments. Such a waiting game may have deadly consequences.
'The US administration often objects to emissions cuts on the grounds that it is cheaper to delay until low-carbon technologies are available. Now a study by some of the most respected climate-policy researchers has quantified the impact of every year of delay. It concludes that reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in subsequent decades will be far harder than we thought - not that anyone thought it was going to be easy in the first place. What's more, the team says that current delays mean the world is virtually certain to overshoot the limits of greenhouse gas concentration advocated by the European Union and many environmental groups. "It's a sobering assessment.'
Two studies reported in the New Scientist on 03 April predicted major increase in volcanic eruptions as a result of climate change. One study dealt with local activity resulting from an unloading of the crust as ice melts; the other predicted massive increase in seismic activity as a result of loading caused by rising sea levels. The latter is borne out by what happened in previous warm periods of the Earth's history.
Increased volcanism is not normally something to look forward to with relish, unless you happen to be a volcanologist. But could it just be the Hollywood style salvation at the last possible moment? Could a long, and admittedly difficult, volcanic night compensate for global warming, and save the day in an unlikely denouement?
Sadly not, it would seem from what was billed as a pioneering meeting about the Earth's 'long-neglected' "deep" carbon cycle.
'Carbon is locked away down in the Earth's crust: in magma and old carbonate rocks buried by plate tectonics, in fossil fuels like coal and oil, and in ice lattices beneath the ocean bed. It has long been assumed that this carbon was largely cut off from the surface, and could safely be ignored when analysing the effect of greenhouse gases on climate.
'Now it seems there may be much more "deep carbon" ready to spew out than we thought. This realisation could have profound implications for our climate, argues Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution, who organised the meeting at the institution's Geophysical Laboratory in Washington DC. "We may be on the verge of a transformational moment...'
Clearly a massive increase in volcanic activity will equate with a massive release of this deep carbon. Perhaps tellingly, the report was entitled 'Earth may hide a lethal carbon cache'. Enough said.
And so it goes on, almost unceasingly, it seems. Key signs of ecological collapse or critical alterations in earth processes – climate, global circulation and so on - arrive daily. With each it is becoming harder to escape the conclusion that catastrophic change is about to come crashing down upon us, and much more imminently than our complacency would want us to believe.
A key sign is that events are consistently running in front of the science. In the light of better knowledge, the science is constantly having to be revised upwards in terms of the severity of its predictions, critically over the scale and immediacy of what is coming down the tubes at us. In other words the magnitude of what is happening has been generally underestimated by a large margin.
This is partly a natural consequence of scientific caution and the need for hard data, but is deeply regrettable in that it has encouraged – or provided the necessary excuse for - society at large to remain in denial about what is happening, maintaining various unrealistic attitudes which justify, in their own minds at least, persisting in transparently anti-social behaviours. And anti-social to the point of being self-destructive. The endemic fatuous use of profligate vehicles is but one very obvious example.
But what is most disquieting is that despite these revisions, actual events on the ground are still continuously confounding the experts by coming in massively ahead of forecast, often on a scale of several decades. When this happens as consistently as it is, it points strongly to the conclusion that we have seriously underestimated the speed, the scale and the severity of what is happening at a fundamental level. In other words, we are carrying on in a fools paradise.
The very ideas that we have any leeway at all in which to act, that the catastrophe will not start to unroll until 2050 or after, are completely untenable when we have already seen the predictions for an ice-free Arctic advanced from a possible 2070 to a probable now in four years that UKELA has been running its Wild Law events.
Indeed, that an air of unreality is currently abroad would seem indisputable. As recently as 02 May the Independent reported that
'more than seven in 10 voters insist that they would not be willing to pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change'
'most Britons believe "green" taxes on 4x4s, plastic bags and other consumer goods have been imposed to raise cash rather than change our behaviour'
and
'two-thirds ...think the entire green agenda has been hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes.'
Astonishingly, and most disquietingly, 34 per cent
'believe that extreme weather is becoming more common but has nothing to do with global warming, while one in ten still believe that climate change is totally natural.'
What conclusion can environmental lawyers draw from this unfolding scenario, even as it stands?
A central tenet of Wild Law is that existing systems of legal protection for the environment are fatally floored so lead inevitably to its destruction. In the light of even this small sample of reports, drawn mainly from the last month, that would seem indisputable. Across the board biodiversity is collapsing, ecosystems appear to be poised on the point of permanent breakdown, natural resources of all types are being over-exploited to the point of absolute unsustainability. Worse still, all of this seems to be irreversible.
What we are seeing is a massive failure of environmental law in practice affecting most areas of its competence. In such exacting circumstances, one has to ask if the profession, on perceiving this and the danger that it poses, does not have an overriding ethical duty to speak out boldly and publicly to bring this literally catastrophic failure to the attention of society at large so it is fully aware of the peril and can begin to address it? To register the failing unequivocally with those who ultimately must formulate policy and law, including politicians, with the media, and through them with the public at large to whom it ultimately has a duty.
The other response that is demanded of the profession is to take a leading role in formulating a remedy. There is already the alternative put forward by the advocates of Wild Law. Its explicit purpose is to address this very problem, having embarked on a deep analysis of the root causes of the environmental disasters that stares us in the face, and having cast around as widely as it is possible to do in the search for alternative models that have worked. It has discovered these mainly amongst the traditional societies which, in many cases have endured - and endured sustainably - for far longer than industrial society. Frequently for longer than Western civilisation itself.
It therefore offers a possible way forward. It is not without downsides, but these are not necessarily insuperable. Wild Law is challenging because many of the ideas are, at first acquaintance at least, at odds with the prevalent values of consumer society, and because, by correctly identifying the root cause in a failure of governance, it would seem to require a shake up of the system so profound that many would be inclined to dismiss it as utopian - at least until the balloon really goes up and the panic sets in accordingly. At that point, when reality finally bites, necessity may open the minds and hearts to greater flexibility and more imaginative solutions than are currently admitted.
What it does offer is a coherent alternative, if not yet a fully formulated alternative. The problem at present is that it is moving forward far too slowly to keep pace with events, and urgently needs to make up ground by firming up on concrete and achievable options. It also needs to make ground in promoting itself as a viable, preferable, and indeed essential alternative, particularly in the world outside the profession.
For the remainder, who have yet to be convinced by Wild Law or consider it too romantic and hypothetical a proposition to ever be deliverable, an even more difficult challenge lies before them. For they are honour bound to put forward a better and more workable alternative instead. Again, this would be difficult under any circumstance, but it is all the harder given that the fundamental failure of our systems of governance is transparently at the heart of the problem that must be addressed. That may go to explain why alternative solutions seem, on superficial acquaintance at least, to be largely conspicuous by their absence. But to fail to do so is to abdicate responsibility.
Either way, what is imperative is to act. For there will be few fates in a post-ecological world more filled with pathos than to be a member of the profession that was charged with piloting the vessel who, when they knew the ship was heading for the rocks, neither spoke out nor acted.
Sources
Polar regions
North Pole could be ice free in 2008
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn13779-north-pole-could-be-ice-free-in-2008.html?feedId=climate-change_rss20
Vast cracks appear in Arctic ice
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7417123.stm
Call for three seal species to join endangered list
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/30/wildlife.arctic?gusrc=rss&feed=environment
Giant Antarctic ice shelf breaks into the sea
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/26/poles.antarctica?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews
Cracking up: the ice shelf as big as Northern Ireland
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cracking-up-the-ice-shelf-as-big-as-northern-ireland-800585.html?r=RSS
Loss of Antarctic ice has soared by 75 per cent in just 10 years
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/loss-of-antarctic-ice-has-soared-by-75-per-cent-in-just-10-years-769894.html
Ice loss is severe at both poles
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg19726393.700-ice-loss-is-severe-at-both-poles.html
Toxic release
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn13848-melting-glaciers-release-toxic-chemical-cocktail.html
Living Planet Index
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/an-epidemic-of-extinctions-decimation-of-life-on-earth-829325.html
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn13915-global-biodiversity-slumps-27-in-35-years.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/16/wildlife.biodiversity
Brazil
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/i-give-up-says-brazilian-minister-who-fought-to-save-the-rainforest-828310.html
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKN1342081320080514?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
Brazilian companies announce global warming game plan
http://www.enn.com/business/article/36420
Oceans
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn13818-growing-ocean-dead-zones-leave-fish-gasping.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-worlds-oceans-at-risk-from-rising-acidity-832846.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/tiny-snail-crucial-to-antarctic-life-may-be-wiped-out-784030.html
How the world's oceans are running out of fish The Observer, 11 May 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/11/fishing.food
Effects of climate change
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg19826564.400-life-feels-the-effects-of-a-changing-climate.html?feedId=climate-change_rss20
Red list for birds
http://www.rspb.org.uk/news/details.asp?id=tcm:9-189758
'U.N. experts to say 2010 biodiversity target elusive'
http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36415
Increasing volcanic activity
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn13583-melting-ice-caps-may-trigger-more-volcanic-eruptions.html
Hidden carbon
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg19826575.000-earth-may-hide-a-lethal-carbon-cache.html?feedId=climate-change_rss20
Public in denial
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-tax-revolt-britons-will-not-foot-bill-to-save-planet-819703.html
.
To summarise our predicament it runs through the most salient scientific developments to the end of May, before going on to raise issues of the profession as to how to respond.
Given what is happening, each and every one of us should be asking those same questions with the utmost urgency - of ourselves as much as of society as a whole.
These are singular times we live in.
Shortly we will be the privileged witnesses of an event never before seen, possibly never before experienced in Earth's history. Within the next few summers it is now highly probable the Arctic will cease to exist as a physical presence, becoming ice free and navigable to the North Pole itself. This will be quite unprecedented in the history of humanity, quite possibly in the history of the planet also.
Most will already know that the Arctic lost 23% of its ice coverage in the last two summers. In addition, on 23 May startling new evidence emerged of large scale and wholly unexpected breakup of the ice. The BBC reported
'Dramatic evidence of the break-up of the Arctic ice-cap has emerged from research during an expedition by the Canadian military.
'One of the expedition's scientists, Derek Mueller of Trent University, Ontario, told me: "I was astonished to see these new cracks. It means the ice shelf is disintegrating”'
While in a report of a petition by the Centre for Biological Diversity for three seal species to join the polar bear on the endangered list because of habitat loss due to the speed of the Arctic meltdown, the Guardian stated
'The petition from the centre warns that surface temperatures in the Arctic are warming much faster than expected. The extent of sea ice in winter in 2007 was reduced to an area that most climate forecasts had suggested would be reached by 2070.
'Arctic sea ice is melting so rapidly that every ice-dependent marine mammal needs protection," said Shaye Wolf, a biologist who lead the petition.'
His call has been widely taken up. The New Scientist website carried 'Should all Arctic species be red-listed?'
'Habitats are changing so rapidly in the face of global warming that some conservationists argue many thousands more species should be listed as "endangered"'
Meanwhile...
At the other end of the planet something very similar is happening, at least locally - if you can call the sudden break up of 160 square miles local. Scientists were taken utterly by surprise by the sudden disintegration of a large chunk of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, confounding all scientific predictions, which was reported at the end of March.
In addition research released in January demonstrated that far from being stable or growing as is widely believed, the net loss of ice from Antarctica increased by around 75% in the ten years to 2006. The cause is considered to be accelerating glacial movement as a result of climate change.
This is particularly unfortunately as existing models - most critically including those used by the IPCC - have presumed the Antarctic ice sheets to be stable so have failed to take these losses into account. As a result it is now widely accepted that the predictions of sea level rise contained in the fourth IPCC report are seriously understated.
Getting more into the detail, the New Scientist reported
'Until recently, conflicting results have meant estimates of ice loss at the poles vary widely. Now an international team has used satellite data and climate modelling to show that, in the decade ending in 2006, annual ice loss from West Antarctica increased by 59 per cent while losses from the Antarctic Peninsula leapt by 140 per cent (Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo102). These results tie in nicely with recent results obtained by other methods, bringing consensus over ice loss a bit closer.'
While in a report on how this meltdown is releasing a soup of highly toxic chemicals which is ending up in the food chain, the same journal stated:
'average winter temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have warmed 6 °C the past 30 years, and glaciers now melt faster than they grow. '
Singular times for the polar regions and all they hold, then.
Singular times for the rest of the planet's biodiversity, too. The latest Living Planet Index was published on 16 May revealing that biodiversity has plummeted nearly a third in the 35 years to 2005. Perhaps it would be more accurate to rename it the Dying Planet Index. The Independent headlined 'an epidemic of extinctions' and quoted a spokesman for the LPI who said the decline was
' "completely unprecedented in terms of human history". "You'd have to go back to the extinction of the dinosaurs to see a decline as rapid as this," he added.
'And "rapid" is putting it mildly. Scientists say the current extinction rate is now up to 10,000 times faster than what has historically been recorded as normal.'
Clearly the fate of the rainforests are absolutely critical in global biodiversity. And the critical news here comes from none other than Brazil where May saw the resignation of Marina Silva, the environment minister, regarded as the guardian angel of the Brazilian environment in general and the rainforest in particular. This news was greeted with massive dismay internationally. She walked because environmental protection was routinely subordinated to economic interests, effectively as a matter of policy.
'The Latin American giant's supposed progress on environmental protection has unravelled in the past year as revelations of record levels of deforestation, violent land disputes and runaway forest fires have followed in quick succession. The worldwide boom in agricultural commodities has created an unparalleled thirst for land and energy in Brazil, and the result has been a potentially catastrophic land grab into the world's largest remaining rainforest. The Amazon basin is home to one in 10 of the world's mammals and 15 per cent of its land-based plant species. It holds more than half of the world's fresh water and its vast forests act as the largest carbon sink on the planet, providing a vital check on the greenhouse effect.
'Since President Lula won a second term Ms Silva found herself a lone voice in a government acutely aware that its own political future depended on the vast agribusiness interests she was trying to rein in. The final breakdown in her relationship with the President came after he gave the green light to massive road and dam-building projects in the Amazon basin, and a plan she drafted for the sustainable management of the region was taken from her and handed to a business-friendly fellow minister.'
Reuters added
'About 80 percent of the world's biodiversity is found in tropical forests, yet every minute 20 hectares (50 acres) of forest disappear, say experts.'
While in the Environmental Network News story 'Brazilian Companies Announce Global Warming Game Plan' it stated
'In a report released last month, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that, “by mid-century, increases in temperature and associated decreases in soil water are projected to lead to gradual replacement of tropical forest by savanna in eastern Amazonia.” The IPCC also warning that crop productivity in Brazil “is projected to decrease for even small local temperature increases” in tropical areas, “which would increase risk of hunger.”'
Thus fare the 'lungs of the planet'.
A different sort of lung is faring badly too. The New Scientist reported on 01 May that "dead zones" in the oceans containing too little oxygen for fish to breathe are growing as global temperatures increase.
'Warmer water dissolves less oxygen, so as temperatures rise, oxygen vanishes from oceans. Marine biologists are warning that if dead zones continue expanding, oceanic "deserts" could massively deplete marine life and fish stocks.
'Over the past 50 years, large volumes of ocean previously rich in oxygen have become "oxygen minimum zones" (OMZs) containing less than 120 micromoles of oxygen per kilogram of water. These are the concentrations at which fish, squid, crustaceans and other marine creatures begin to suffocate and die.'
On 23 May it was reported that acidification of the naturally alkaline oceans along the entire west coast of North America threatens the collapse of marine ecosystems. The reason is the process of marine calcification by which countless marine creatures critical in the food chain or as habitat (eg coral) build their skeletal body parts fails in an acidic environment.
Ocean acidification is, of course, a global, not a localised problem. The seas everywhere are becoming acidic because of the absorption of CO2, it being calculated that they have by now absorbed a third of all CO2 emitted since the start of industrialisation. Just to bear this out, the same problem was reported in Antarctica affecting the pteropods
'known as the "potato chip" of the oceans because they are eaten by so many species. Fish that feed on pteropods are eaten by bigger fish, seals and penguins, which are eaten by killer whales.'
Quite apart from the dead zones (which they have learned to effectively 'hold their breathe' to enter briefly) fish are on the edge too. A highly recommended report titled 'How the world's oceans are running out of fish', which demonstrates along the way how The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea has backfired in this respect at least, appeared in The Observer of 11 May.
'Is anyone not aware that wild fish are in deep trouble? That three-quarters of commercially caught species are over-exploited or exploited to their maximum? Do they not know that industrial fishing is so inefficient that a third of the catch, some 32 million tonnes a year, is thrown away? For every ocean prawn you eat, fish weighing 10-20 times as much have been thrown overboard. These figures all come from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which also claims that, of all the world's natural resources, fish are being depleted the fastest. With even the most abundant commercial species, we eat smaller and smaller fish every year - we eat the babies before they can breed.
'Callum Roberts, professor of marine conservation at York University, predicts that by 2050 we will only be able to meet the fish protein needs of half the world population: all that will be left for the unlucky half may be, as he puts it, 'jellyfish and slime'. Ninety years of industrial-scale exploitation of fish has, he and most scientists agree, led to 'ecological meltdown'. Whole biological food chains have been destroyed.'
Perhaps the birds, being so highly adaptable, are fairing better? In the latest revision of the Red List by Birdlife International
'1,226 species of bird are now threatened with global extinction - around one-in-eight of the world's bird species.'
The very obvious fact is that biodiversity across the board is in a very parlous state, and we are failing dramatically and wilfully to protect it:
'BERLIN (Reuters) 16 may- Nearly 200 governments will say next week they are unlikely to meet a target of slowing the rate of extinctions of living species by 2010, a failure which could threaten future food supplies.
'U.N. experts say the planet is facing the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago and some say three species vanish every hour as a result largely of human activity causing pollution and loss of habitat.'
'"We hope to give a wake-up call to humanity. We need an unprecedented effort to meet the challenge of biodiversity loss," convention Executive Secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf told Reuters in a telephone interview. He said consumption had reached unsustainable levels and humans were destroying the foundation of life. Without a change in behavior, feeding up to 9 billion people would be difficult.'
As if that was not enough, the largest ever study of the impact of climate change has concluded biology is already being influenced and that only life in the Antarctica has been spared – thus far. 90% of species and 95% of natural features have already been affected, and its destabilising influence - for instance as a result of the early arrival of spring - has been scientifically confirmed. The authors consider these effects to be human induced.
Of course the immediate cause of most of these disasters is greenhouse gas emissions (the ultimate one being human values). How are we faring there?
Very bad news on that front too, regrettably. The general presumption has been that given time, anthropogenic CO2 emissions would be absorbed by natural processes in the environment. The catch was no-one knew how long that would take. We knew it is longer than a decade, most had resumed a couple of decades or so; but given long enough it would all go away again into the oceans (to acidify them further), and by way of photosynthesis.
Unfortunately modelling by Matthews and Caldeira has now found this happy picture to be highly questionable, and probably entirely false. The model introduced a single pulse of C02 at the start of the simulation period.
'Pulse sizes of 50, 200, 500 and 2000 billion tonnes of carbon were used. The model was set to calculate global temperatures and atmospheric and ocean carbon dioxide levels over a simulated 500 years.
'At the end of that period, Matthews and Caldeira found that between 20% and 35% of the initial emission pulse remained in the atmosphere – even for the smallest emission pulse – with the remainder having been absorbed by land and ocean carbon sinks.
'The lingering carbon dioxide means that global warming persisted for the entire simulation. For the four different emission scenarios, global temperatures stabilised at 0.09, 0.34, 0.88 and 3.6 ºC above pre-industrial levels respectively.
'So far industrial emissions total around 450 billion tonnes. “Even if we eliminated carbon dioxide today we are still committed to a global temperature rise of around 0.8 ºC lasting at least 500 years,” says Caldeira.
'One of the reasons for the persistence is the slow response of oceans. “It takes a lot of energy to heat them up and then a long time for them to cool back down,” he explains.'
Unsurprisingly, given that rather rude awakening, there have been a spate of calls for much more radical action to cut greenhouse emissions with the utmost urgency before it is all too late. Perhaps most notable is a study by some of the most respected climate-policy researchers which takes on the prevalent economic advice to governments that it is more economically efficient to delay the introduction of remedial measures. It quantified the impact of every year of delay
'We should not wait to cut back on burning fossil fuels until we have developed greener technology to supply our energy needs, despite what many economists are advising their respective governments. Such a waiting game may have deadly consequences.
'The US administration often objects to emissions cuts on the grounds that it is cheaper to delay until low-carbon technologies are available. Now a study by some of the most respected climate-policy researchers has quantified the impact of every year of delay. It concludes that reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in subsequent decades will be far harder than we thought - not that anyone thought it was going to be easy in the first place. What's more, the team says that current delays mean the world is virtually certain to overshoot the limits of greenhouse gas concentration advocated by the European Union and many environmental groups. "It's a sobering assessment.'
Two studies reported in the New Scientist on 03 April predicted major increase in volcanic eruptions as a result of climate change. One study dealt with local activity resulting from an unloading of the crust as ice melts; the other predicted massive increase in seismic activity as a result of loading caused by rising sea levels. The latter is borne out by what happened in previous warm periods of the Earth's history.
Increased volcanism is not normally something to look forward to with relish, unless you happen to be a volcanologist. But could it just be the Hollywood style salvation at the last possible moment? Could a long, and admittedly difficult, volcanic night compensate for global warming, and save the day in an unlikely denouement?
Sadly not, it would seem from what was billed as a pioneering meeting about the Earth's 'long-neglected' "deep" carbon cycle.
'Carbon is locked away down in the Earth's crust: in magma and old carbonate rocks buried by plate tectonics, in fossil fuels like coal and oil, and in ice lattices beneath the ocean bed. It has long been assumed that this carbon was largely cut off from the surface, and could safely be ignored when analysing the effect of greenhouse gases on climate.
'Now it seems there may be much more "deep carbon" ready to spew out than we thought. This realisation could have profound implications for our climate, argues Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution, who organised the meeting at the institution's Geophysical Laboratory in Washington DC. "We may be on the verge of a transformational moment...'
Clearly a massive increase in volcanic activity will equate with a massive release of this deep carbon. Perhaps tellingly, the report was entitled 'Earth may hide a lethal carbon cache'. Enough said.
And so it goes on, almost unceasingly, it seems. Key signs of ecological collapse or critical alterations in earth processes – climate, global circulation and so on - arrive daily. With each it is becoming harder to escape the conclusion that catastrophic change is about to come crashing down upon us, and much more imminently than our complacency would want us to believe.
A key sign is that events are consistently running in front of the science. In the light of better knowledge, the science is constantly having to be revised upwards in terms of the severity of its predictions, critically over the scale and immediacy of what is coming down the tubes at us. In other words the magnitude of what is happening has been generally underestimated by a large margin.
This is partly a natural consequence of scientific caution and the need for hard data, but is deeply regrettable in that it has encouraged – or provided the necessary excuse for - society at large to remain in denial about what is happening, maintaining various unrealistic attitudes which justify, in their own minds at least, persisting in transparently anti-social behaviours. And anti-social to the point of being self-destructive. The endemic fatuous use of profligate vehicles is but one very obvious example.
But what is most disquieting is that despite these revisions, actual events on the ground are still continuously confounding the experts by coming in massively ahead of forecast, often on a scale of several decades. When this happens as consistently as it is, it points strongly to the conclusion that we have seriously underestimated the speed, the scale and the severity of what is happening at a fundamental level. In other words, we are carrying on in a fools paradise.
The very ideas that we have any leeway at all in which to act, that the catastrophe will not start to unroll until 2050 or after, are completely untenable when we have already seen the predictions for an ice-free Arctic advanced from a possible 2070 to a probable now in four years that UKELA has been running its Wild Law events.
Indeed, that an air of unreality is currently abroad would seem indisputable. As recently as 02 May the Independent reported that
'more than seven in 10 voters insist that they would not be willing to pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change'
'most Britons believe "green" taxes on 4x4s, plastic bags and other consumer goods have been imposed to raise cash rather than change our behaviour'
and
'two-thirds ...think the entire green agenda has been hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes.'
Astonishingly, and most disquietingly, 34 per cent
'believe that extreme weather is becoming more common but has nothing to do with global warming, while one in ten still believe that climate change is totally natural.'
What conclusion can environmental lawyers draw from this unfolding scenario, even as it stands?
A central tenet of Wild Law is that existing systems of legal protection for the environment are fatally floored so lead inevitably to its destruction. In the light of even this small sample of reports, drawn mainly from the last month, that would seem indisputable. Across the board biodiversity is collapsing, ecosystems appear to be poised on the point of permanent breakdown, natural resources of all types are being over-exploited to the point of absolute unsustainability. Worse still, all of this seems to be irreversible.
What we are seeing is a massive failure of environmental law in practice affecting most areas of its competence. In such exacting circumstances, one has to ask if the profession, on perceiving this and the danger that it poses, does not have an overriding ethical duty to speak out boldly and publicly to bring this literally catastrophic failure to the attention of society at large so it is fully aware of the peril and can begin to address it? To register the failing unequivocally with those who ultimately must formulate policy and law, including politicians, with the media, and through them with the public at large to whom it ultimately has a duty.
The other response that is demanded of the profession is to take a leading role in formulating a remedy. There is already the alternative put forward by the advocates of Wild Law. Its explicit purpose is to address this very problem, having embarked on a deep analysis of the root causes of the environmental disasters that stares us in the face, and having cast around as widely as it is possible to do in the search for alternative models that have worked. It has discovered these mainly amongst the traditional societies which, in many cases have endured - and endured sustainably - for far longer than industrial society. Frequently for longer than Western civilisation itself.
It therefore offers a possible way forward. It is not without downsides, but these are not necessarily insuperable. Wild Law is challenging because many of the ideas are, at first acquaintance at least, at odds with the prevalent values of consumer society, and because, by correctly identifying the root cause in a failure of governance, it would seem to require a shake up of the system so profound that many would be inclined to dismiss it as utopian - at least until the balloon really goes up and the panic sets in accordingly. At that point, when reality finally bites, necessity may open the minds and hearts to greater flexibility and more imaginative solutions than are currently admitted.
What it does offer is a coherent alternative, if not yet a fully formulated alternative. The problem at present is that it is moving forward far too slowly to keep pace with events, and urgently needs to make up ground by firming up on concrete and achievable options. It also needs to make ground in promoting itself as a viable, preferable, and indeed essential alternative, particularly in the world outside the profession.
For the remainder, who have yet to be convinced by Wild Law or consider it too romantic and hypothetical a proposition to ever be deliverable, an even more difficult challenge lies before them. For they are honour bound to put forward a better and more workable alternative instead. Again, this would be difficult under any circumstance, but it is all the harder given that the fundamental failure of our systems of governance is transparently at the heart of the problem that must be addressed. That may go to explain why alternative solutions seem, on superficial acquaintance at least, to be largely conspicuous by their absence. But to fail to do so is to abdicate responsibility.
Either way, what is imperative is to act. For there will be few fates in a post-ecological world more filled with pathos than to be a member of the profession that was charged with piloting the vessel who, when they knew the ship was heading for the rocks, neither spoke out nor acted.
Sources
Polar regions
North Pole could be ice free in 2008
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn13779-north-pole-could-be-ice-free-in-2008.html?feedId=climate-change_rss20
Vast cracks appear in Arctic ice
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7417123.stm
Call for three seal species to join endangered list
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/30/wildlife.arctic?gusrc=rss&feed=environment
Giant Antarctic ice shelf breaks into the sea
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/26/poles.antarctica?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews
Cracking up: the ice shelf as big as Northern Ireland
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cracking-up-the-ice-shelf-as-big-as-northern-ireland-800585.html?r=RSS
Loss of Antarctic ice has soared by 75 per cent in just 10 years
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/loss-of-antarctic-ice-has-soared-by-75-per-cent-in-just-10-years-769894.html
Ice loss is severe at both poles
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg19726393.700-ice-loss-is-severe-at-both-poles.html
Toxic release
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn13848-melting-glaciers-release-toxic-chemical-cocktail.html
Living Planet Index
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/an-epidemic-of-extinctions-decimation-of-life-on-earth-829325.html
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn13915-global-biodiversity-slumps-27-in-35-years.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/16/wildlife.biodiversity
Brazil
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/i-give-up-says-brazilian-minister-who-fought-to-save-the-rainforest-828310.html
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKN1342081320080514?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
Brazilian companies announce global warming game plan
http://www.enn.com/business/article/36420
Oceans
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn13818-growing-ocean-dead-zones-leave-fish-gasping.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-worlds-oceans-at-risk-from-rising-acidity-832846.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/tiny-snail-crucial-to-antarctic-life-may-be-wiped-out-784030.html
How the world's oceans are running out of fish The Observer, 11 May 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/11/fishing.food
Effects of climate change
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg19826564.400-life-feels-the-effects-of-a-changing-climate.html?feedId=climate-change_rss20
Red list for birds
http://www.rspb.org.uk/news/details.asp?id=tcm:9-189758
'U.N. experts to say 2010 biodiversity target elusive'
http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/36415
Increasing volcanic activity
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn13583-melting-ice-caps-may-trigger-more-volcanic-eruptions.html
Hidden carbon
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg19826575.000-earth-may-hide-a-lethal-carbon-cache.html?feedId=climate-change_rss20
Public in denial
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-tax-revolt-britons-will-not-foot-bill-to-save-planet-819703.html
.
Friday 20 June 2008
“Finding oil isn't the issue – it is whether we want to find it, burn it and all fry”
Dear friends
Another contemplation for the holiday weekend, if it so grabs you.
This one deals with the most significant scientific developments since Easter. All adding to the alarming impression that we have missed or are missing the boat, unfortunately.
Nevertheless, within society as a whole there remains what seems to be an overwhelming sense that none of this is that important, that life on a world devoid of its north polar ice cap will carry on much as before, and that the environmental threats upon us are nothing we need concern ourselves with unduly. Certainly not enough to go to the inconvenience of changing our lifestyles, nor to take the trouble to understand sufficiently to react coherently. Or even objectively.
As that may prove to be a catastrophic or even fatal mistake, the intention had been to follow up the discussion of the grave implications of Tony Blair's international initiative with one dealing succinctly with why such assumptions appear unrealistic.
However with so many developments over the last month hinting ever more strongly that run-away global warming may already have set in, reporting those has had to take precedence, so it has had to be held over until next time
The aspiration is to continue the argument in later papers:
First by setting out what ought by now be obvious to anyone taking the space to step back and think about it - that there is simply not going to be a scientific or technological solution to climate change. There is no quick fix that will rescue us from our fate as the chips go down ever more weightily against us, and the possibility of one emerging are slight.
Then one to point out what is now equally apparent. There is not going to be a political one either.
It will then remain to explore a little more what is preventing us - somewhat akin to suicidally - from reacting intelligently, coherently, and with sufficient vigour, when under galvanising threat.
And finally, if it remains possible, to draw the main environmental and geopolitical strands together to make some tentative predictions of the main factors likely to be at play, to give some indication of where we might be heading on present trends.
All Inshallah as they say in Islamic circles, including major developments, catastrophic events and more mundane happenings not interceding.
The 07 April Guardian led with a story so important it ought - rightly, in an objective world - be sufficient on its own to convince anyone that we cannot go on like this a moment longer, and are being utterly self-destructive by doing so.
It reports a paper published by a most eminent group of climate scientists which the newspaper describes as “a startling reappraisal of the threat”.
It suggests that we have grossly underestimated the scale of the problem, and calls for a major downward revision in C02 limits if
The situation is as dire as that.
The source of the paper is absolutely unimpeachable. Its lead author, James Hansen, is as big as it gets in climate science. He is head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, was one of the first to bring the climate crisis to the world's attention in testimony to Congress in the 1980s, and has been at odds with the Bush administration over climate change to the extent of having accused the White House and NASA of trying to censor him.
Hansen has steadily revised his analysis of the scale of the global warming and was himself one of the architects of the 450ppm target which is the holy grail of current negotiations, considered politically to be the resolution of climate change. Of that he now says
The fundamental reason for his reassessment is what he calls "slow feedback" mechanisms which are only now becoming fully understood (discussed briefly in my previous email).
The paper predicts that a rise in atmospheric CO2 levels to the EU limit of 550 ppm – currently the most stringent on the planet - would cause the Earth to warm catastrophically - by 6 degrees Celsius instead of 3 degrees as currently thought. (To remind everyone again, there is a significant school of opinion which holds that a 2 degree rise is enough to bring civilisation as we know it to an end.) And that even a 450 ppm limit, which is proving so intractable to negotiate because of opposition by the US and others, would nevertheless lead eventually to complete meltdown and a 75 metre rise in sea levels.
Hansen now regards as "implausible" the view of many climate scientists that the shrinking of the ice sheets will take thousands of years:
Depending on which baseline you take, this amounts to an overnight lowering of the bar under which we are trying to do a very ungainly limbo by 18% on the already ambitious, possibly politically unachievable, target of 450ppm; and by a staggering 36% in the case of the EU 550 ppm limit.
It is widely recognised that the latter figure was never going to work, but nonetheless it enjoys a certain popularity. It is an agreement, at least, and having an agreement that is not going to remedy the problem or save us is seen as progress nonetheless, and a positive thing. Better an unworkable agreement than none at all. If nations have managed to ratify a treaty on a hopeless goal they are comfortable with, they are much better disposed to going on to revise it for something that might possibly work at some later date as yet uncertain. Or so the thinking goes.
Well lets hope so!
These are chess-like moves in the realms of grand diplomacy which are intended - hopefully - lead to the right agreement in the end. The problem remains that the players of such games are used to setting the timing with reference to themselves and not much else. Unfortunately Nature is on the other side of the table in this one, and she is not much impressed with their proposed solutions, nor their imperiousness over timing, nor their game playing.
The main cause for alarm is the scale by which the bar has dropped overnight, and the tiny size of the gap we are left to squeeze through if we are going to come out of this debacle more or less in one piece.
It is particularly disquieting because it was never looking likely that we were going to make it under even the highest of these limits, not least because we are doing almost nothing concrete to achieve it; while the 450ppm limit remains utterly hypothetical more or less to the point of fantasy. Nothing has been negotiated; the negotiations look as if they are hopelessly stalled before they have even started as a result of intractable national and factional differences and a general disposition of small-mindedness; and are so far from achieving anything at all that will actually deliver concrete, measurable changes that the entire proposition might as well be treated as hypothetical – at least until it proves otherwise.
Now, on top of that, we are confronted with science which shows that in addition to the political improbability of these negotiations resulting in any significant concrete effect in the small amount of time in which it remains possible to do anything to affect the outcome – i.e. our fate - their goal is entirely futile anyway, and we must now somehow find a way to crank the screws down another 18 or 36% to have even a chance of scraping through.
It is starting to look more and more like hoping for miracles to expect this stuff to be negotiated, ratified and yield the necessary results in time under prevailing attitudes.
Disquietingly, the only eventuality foreseeable that is likely to change that is a catastrophic chain of events of one sort or another, devastating enough to shake the global electorate sufficiently to their senses.
But by then it will inevitably be too late....
Hansen's claims on sea level rises were more or less vindicated by researchers meeting at the European Geosciences Union conference who reported the pace at which sea levels are rising is accelerating, that we should expect higher sea levels than the IPCC predict, and that we should expect 0.8-1.5 metres rises over this century.
Due to melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets, and warming water, which together could displace tens of millions of people. The conclusions result from a new prediction of sea level rises which takes into account ice dynamics for the first time.
The latest IPCC report took no account of ice dynamics – the more rapid movement of ice sheets due to melt water which could markedly speed up their disappearance and augment sea levels. This effect is now expected to generate around one-third of the future rise in sea levels, according to an American researcher quoted.
The rise would not be uniform around the globe and more research is needed to determine the effects on individual regions. Inevitably the hardest hit will be the developing nations in Africa and Asia who lack the infrastructure to build up flood defences. Countries like Bangladesh, where almost all the land surface is a within a metre of the current sea level.
Doesn't look good for a lot of other places, either. Those living in the Netherlands know it and have been mindful for generations. Inhabitants of the overcrowded British Isles, for instance, may wish to take account of the fact that approximately one third of its current land mass is maintained by drainage, pumping, and sea defences of one sort or another.
Those were the words of none other than Sir Nicholas Stern, warning that the disquieting predictions of his high-profile 2006 review of the future effects of global warming underestimated the risks, and that climate change poses a bigger threat than he had realised.
Stern said that new scientific findings showed greenhouse gas emissions were causing more damage than was then understood. He cited last year's reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and new research which shows that the planet's oceans and forests are soaking up less carbon dioxide than expected.
He said that increasing commitments from countries to curb greenhouse gases now needed to be translated into action. Indeed.
But who is listening? The same week Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, said the lack of such action by developed countries was likely to deadlock and derail attempts to seal a new global climate treaty at the crucial meeting in Copenhagen next year - aiming for the 450ppm limit discussed above.
The 2006 Stern Review, which was conducted for the UK government, was credited with shifting the debate about climate change from an environmental focus to its economic impacts. It said the expected increase in extreme weather, with the associated and expensive problems of agricultural failure, water scarcity, disease and mass migration, meant that global warming could swallow up to 20% of the world's GDP, with the poorest countries the worst affected. The cost of addressing the problem, it was then thought, could be limited to about 1% of GDP, provided it started on a serious scale within 10 to 20 years.
Clearly this timing, at least, must now be considered obsolete as far too relaxed. Last year the IPCC said steps to curb emissions were needed by 2015 if the worst effects of global warming were to be avoided. Since, experts have warned that the Arctic and Antarctic are losing ice much faster than thought, and that the sea level rise could be more severe than the IPCC suggested. Other studies, focusing on how greenhouse gases are swapped between the land, sea and atmosphere, have suggested that the speed and strength with which serious climate change will strike has been underestimated.
All of these reports are major revelations in their own right. Collectively, just as they stand, they present a predicament of the utmost gravity.
But perhaps the most disquieting thing that characterises them all is the universal reference to the pace of change being faster than had been previously predicted and to be speeding up. Quite apart from the sheer magnitude of the phenomena being discussed - which is strongly persuasive in itself - it is exactly what you would expect if run-away climate change is starting to cut in; if the tipping point has already been passed.
Which brings us back to the opening quote. If one did not know otherwise, one would be forgiven for presuming that the source was the kind of person dismissed as some variety of eco-nut. Or perhaps me.
Happily, though, it turns out to have an unimpeachable one. None other than Dieter Helm, the UK energy advisor – Mr Energy himself in these parts. The Guardian of 15 April reported him saying
So now we know. When it comes down to it, it is a straight choice between dispensing with the vehicle and frying in the future.
As if we didn't before...
The anecdotal impression, North West of London, is the inhabitants are plumbing almost unanimously for the latter, based on their observed behaviour since being made aware of the choice.
Perhaps that is only to be expected in a land in which big fry-ups form a pivotal part of the national cuisine. And perhaps its psyche also, if such a thing actually exists.
One is only left to wonder: 'Have their brains been fried, too?'
Stay happy
References
1 The Hansen Paper
Climate target is not radical enough – study
The Guardian Monday 07 April 2008 p1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/07/climatechange.carbonemissions
2 Sea levels 'will rise 1.5 metres by 2100'
Newscientist.com Special Report Climate Change 16 April 2008
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn13721-sea-levels-will-rise-15-metres-by-2100.html
3 I underestimated the threat, says Stern
The Guardian Friday April 18 2008 p15
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/18/climatechange.carbonemissions
4 Surprise discovery off coast of Brazil may confound the oil and gas doom -mongers.
The Guardian Wednesday 15 April 2008 p27
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/16/oil.brazil
.
Another contemplation for the holiday weekend, if it so grabs you.
This one deals with the most significant scientific developments since Easter. All adding to the alarming impression that we have missed or are missing the boat, unfortunately.
Nevertheless, within society as a whole there remains what seems to be an overwhelming sense that none of this is that important, that life on a world devoid of its north polar ice cap will carry on much as before, and that the environmental threats upon us are nothing we need concern ourselves with unduly. Certainly not enough to go to the inconvenience of changing our lifestyles, nor to take the trouble to understand sufficiently to react coherently. Or even objectively.
As that may prove to be a catastrophic or even fatal mistake, the intention had been to follow up the discussion of the grave implications of Tony Blair's international initiative with one dealing succinctly with why such assumptions appear unrealistic.
However with so many developments over the last month hinting ever more strongly that run-away global warming may already have set in, reporting those has had to take precedence, so it has had to be held over until next time
The aspiration is to continue the argument in later papers:
First by setting out what ought by now be obvious to anyone taking the space to step back and think about it - that there is simply not going to be a scientific or technological solution to climate change. There is no quick fix that will rescue us from our fate as the chips go down ever more weightily against us, and the possibility of one emerging are slight.
Then one to point out what is now equally apparent. There is not going to be a political one either.
It will then remain to explore a little more what is preventing us - somewhat akin to suicidally - from reacting intelligently, coherently, and with sufficient vigour, when under galvanising threat.
And finally, if it remains possible, to draw the main environmental and geopolitical strands together to make some tentative predictions of the main factors likely to be at play, to give some indication of where we might be heading on present trends.
All Inshallah as they say in Islamic circles, including major developments, catastrophic events and more mundane happenings not interceding.
The 07 April Guardian led with a story so important it ought - rightly, in an objective world - be sufficient on its own to convince anyone that we cannot go on like this a moment longer, and are being utterly self-destructive by doing so.
It reports a paper published by a most eminent group of climate scientists which the newspaper describes as “a startling reappraisal of the threat”.
It suggests that we have grossly underestimated the scale of the problem, and calls for a major downward revision in C02 limits if
"humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed".
The situation is as dire as that.
The source of the paper is absolutely unimpeachable. Its lead author, James Hansen, is as big as it gets in climate science. He is head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, was one of the first to bring the climate crisis to the world's attention in testimony to Congress in the 1980s, and has been at odds with the Bush administration over climate change to the extent of having accused the White House and NASA of trying to censor him.
Hansen has steadily revised his analysis of the scale of the global warming and was himself one of the architects of the 450ppm target which is the holy grail of current negotiations, considered politically to be the resolution of climate change. Of that he now says
"I realise that was too high."
The fundamental reason for his reassessment is what he calls "slow feedback" mechanisms which are only now becoming fully understood (discussed briefly in my previous email).
The paper predicts that a rise in atmospheric CO2 levels to the EU limit of 550 ppm – currently the most stringent on the planet - would cause the Earth to warm catastrophically - by 6 degrees Celsius instead of 3 degrees as currently thought. (To remind everyone again, there is a significant school of opinion which holds that a 2 degree rise is enough to bring civilisation as we know it to an end.) And that even a 450 ppm limit, which is proving so intractable to negotiate because of opposition by the US and others, would nevertheless lead eventually to complete meltdown and a 75 metre rise in sea levels.
Hansen now regards as "implausible" the view of many climate scientists that the shrinking of the ice sheets will take thousands of years:
"If we follow business as usual I can't see how west Antarctica could survive a century. We are talking about a sea-level rise of at least a couple of metres this century."
Depending on which baseline you take, this amounts to an overnight lowering of the bar under which we are trying to do a very ungainly limbo by 18% on the already ambitious, possibly politically unachievable, target of 450ppm; and by a staggering 36% in the case of the EU 550 ppm limit.
It is widely recognised that the latter figure was never going to work, but nonetheless it enjoys a certain popularity. It is an agreement, at least, and having an agreement that is not going to remedy the problem or save us is seen as progress nonetheless, and a positive thing. Better an unworkable agreement than none at all. If nations have managed to ratify a treaty on a hopeless goal they are comfortable with, they are much better disposed to going on to revise it for something that might possibly work at some later date as yet uncertain. Or so the thinking goes.
Well lets hope so!
These are chess-like moves in the realms of grand diplomacy which are intended - hopefully - lead to the right agreement in the end. The problem remains that the players of such games are used to setting the timing with reference to themselves and not much else. Unfortunately Nature is on the other side of the table in this one, and she is not much impressed with their proposed solutions, nor their imperiousness over timing, nor their game playing.
The main cause for alarm is the scale by which the bar has dropped overnight, and the tiny size of the gap we are left to squeeze through if we are going to come out of this debacle more or less in one piece.
It is particularly disquieting because it was never looking likely that we were going to make it under even the highest of these limits, not least because we are doing almost nothing concrete to achieve it; while the 450ppm limit remains utterly hypothetical more or less to the point of fantasy. Nothing has been negotiated; the negotiations look as if they are hopelessly stalled before they have even started as a result of intractable national and factional differences and a general disposition of small-mindedness; and are so far from achieving anything at all that will actually deliver concrete, measurable changes that the entire proposition might as well be treated as hypothetical – at least until it proves otherwise.
Now, on top of that, we are confronted with science which shows that in addition to the political improbability of these negotiations resulting in any significant concrete effect in the small amount of time in which it remains possible to do anything to affect the outcome – i.e. our fate - their goal is entirely futile anyway, and we must now somehow find a way to crank the screws down another 18 or 36% to have even a chance of scraping through.
It is starting to look more and more like hoping for miracles to expect this stuff to be negotiated, ratified and yield the necessary results in time under prevailing attitudes.
Disquietingly, the only eventuality foreseeable that is likely to change that is a catastrophic chain of events of one sort or another, devastating enough to shake the global electorate sufficiently to their senses.
But by then it will inevitably be too late....
“The IPCC numbers are underestimates”
Hansen's claims on sea level rises were more or less vindicated by researchers meeting at the European Geosciences Union conference who reported the pace at which sea levels are rising is accelerating, that we should expect higher sea levels than the IPCC predict, and that we should expect 0.8-1.5 metres rises over this century.
Due to melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets, and warming water, which together could displace tens of millions of people. The conclusions result from a new prediction of sea level rises which takes into account ice dynamics for the first time.
"For the past 2,000 years, the sea level was very stable," They rose just 2 cm in the 18th century, 6 cm in the 19th century and a greater 19 cm last century. "It seems that rapid rise in the 20th century is from melting ice sheets"
The latest IPCC report took no account of ice dynamics – the more rapid movement of ice sheets due to melt water which could markedly speed up their disappearance and augment sea levels. This effect is now expected to generate around one-third of the future rise in sea levels, according to an American researcher quoted.
The rise would not be uniform around the globe and more research is needed to determine the effects on individual regions. Inevitably the hardest hit will be the developing nations in Africa and Asia who lack the infrastructure to build up flood defences. Countries like Bangladesh, where almost all the land surface is a within a metre of the current sea level.
"If [the sea level] rises by one metre, 72 million Chinese people will be displaced, and 10 percent of the Vietnamese population”
Doesn't look good for a lot of other places, either. Those living in the Netherlands know it and have been mindful for generations. Inhabitants of the overcrowded British Isles, for instance, may wish to take account of the fact that approximately one third of its current land mass is maintained by drainage, pumping, and sea defences of one sort or another.
“Emissions are growing much faster than we'd thought, the absorptive capacity of the planet is less than we'd thought, the risks of greenhouse gases are potentially bigger than more cautious estimates and the speed of climate change seems to be faster."
Those were the words of none other than Sir Nicholas Stern, warning that the disquieting predictions of his high-profile 2006 review of the future effects of global warming underestimated the risks, and that climate change poses a bigger threat than he had realised.
Stern said that new scientific findings showed greenhouse gas emissions were causing more damage than was then understood. He cited last year's reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and new research which shows that the planet's oceans and forests are soaking up less carbon dioxide than expected.
He said that increasing commitments from countries to curb greenhouse gases now needed to be translated into action. Indeed.
But who is listening? The same week Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, said the lack of such action by developed countries was likely to deadlock and derail attempts to seal a new global climate treaty at the crucial meeting in Copenhagen next year - aiming for the 450ppm limit discussed above.
The 2006 Stern Review, which was conducted for the UK government, was credited with shifting the debate about climate change from an environmental focus to its economic impacts. It said the expected increase in extreme weather, with the associated and expensive problems of agricultural failure, water scarcity, disease and mass migration, meant that global warming could swallow up to 20% of the world's GDP, with the poorest countries the worst affected. The cost of addressing the problem, it was then thought, could be limited to about 1% of GDP, provided it started on a serious scale within 10 to 20 years.
Clearly this timing, at least, must now be considered obsolete as far too relaxed. Last year the IPCC said steps to curb emissions were needed by 2015 if the worst effects of global warming were to be avoided. Since, experts have warned that the Arctic and Antarctic are losing ice much faster than thought, and that the sea level rise could be more severe than the IPCC suggested. Other studies, focusing on how greenhouse gases are swapped between the land, sea and atmosphere, have suggested that the speed and strength with which serious climate change will strike has been underestimated.
'Last October, scientists warned that global warming will be "stronger than expected and sooner than expected", after a new analysis showed carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere much more quickly than predicted.'
All of these reports are major revelations in their own right. Collectively, just as they stand, they present a predicament of the utmost gravity.
But perhaps the most disquieting thing that characterises them all is the universal reference to the pace of change being faster than had been previously predicted and to be speeding up. Quite apart from the sheer magnitude of the phenomena being discussed - which is strongly persuasive in itself - it is exactly what you would expect if run-away climate change is starting to cut in; if the tipping point has already been passed.
Which brings us back to the opening quote. If one did not know otherwise, one would be forgiven for presuming that the source was the kind of person dismissed as some variety of eco-nut. Or perhaps me.
Happily, though, it turns out to have an unimpeachable one. None other than Dieter Helm, the UK energy advisor – Mr Energy himself in these parts. The Guardian of 15 April reported him saying
'the world is not running out of oil; much exists under the now melting ice caps.
“Finding oil isn't the issue – it is whether we want to find it, burn it and [as global warming increases] all fry”'
So now we know. When it comes down to it, it is a straight choice between dispensing with the vehicle and frying in the future.
As if we didn't before...
The anecdotal impression, North West of London, is the inhabitants are plumbing almost unanimously for the latter, based on their observed behaviour since being made aware of the choice.
Perhaps that is only to be expected in a land in which big fry-ups form a pivotal part of the national cuisine. And perhaps its psyche also, if such a thing actually exists.
One is only left to wonder: 'Have their brains been fried, too?'
Stay happy
References
1 The Hansen Paper
Climate target is not radical enough – study
The Guardian Monday 07 April 2008 p1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/07/climatechange.carbonemissions
2 Sea levels 'will rise 1.5 metres by 2100'
Newscientist.com Special Report Climate Change 16 April 2008
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn13721-sea-levels-will-rise-15-metres-by-2100.html
3 I underestimated the threat, says Stern
The Guardian Friday April 18 2008 p15
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/18/climatechange.carbonemissions
4 Surprise discovery off coast of Brazil may confound the oil and gas doom -mongers.
The Guardian Wednesday 15 April 2008 p27
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/16/oil.brazil
.
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