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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