The environment – Page 129 – a sibilant intake of breath

The Met Office on the urgency of emission reductions

The Met Office is the official national weather service of the United Kingdom, subsidiary to the Ministry of Defence. Their website provides a wealth of information about climate change. For instance, they have projections based on in-house models, a PDF containing “the known facts about climate change.” One page on the site lists the six key facts about the issue of global warming:

Climate change is happening and humans are contributing to it
Temperatures are continuing to rise
The current climate change is not just part of a natural cycle
Recent warming cannot be explained by the Sun or natural factors alone
If we continue emitting greenhouse gases this warming will continue and delaying action will make the problem more difficult to fix
Climate models predict the main features of future climate

It is very refreshing to see this kind of thing from an authoritative source: providing comprehensible information on the strength of the scientific consensus. The head of the Met Office recently published an article in The Guardian stressing the urgent need to cut greenhouse gas emissions:

Even with large and early cuts in emissions, these projections indicate that temperatures are likely to rise to around 2C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. If action is delayed or is slow, then there is a significant risk of much larger increases in temperature. The uncertainties in the science mean that even if the most likely temperature rise is kept within reasonable limits, we cannot rule out the possibility of much larger increases. Adaptation strategies are therefore needed to deal with these less likely, but still real, possibilities…

Even if emissions start to decrease in the next two years and reach a rapid and sustained rate of decline of 3% per year, temperatures are likely to rise to 1.7C above pre-industrial levels by 2050 and to around 2C by 2100. This is because carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere will be around for many years to come and the climate takes some time to respond to these changes. Only an early and rapid decline in emissions gets anywhere close to the target of 50% reduction in emissions by 2050 put forward by the G8.

Contrast that with a world where no action is taken to curb global warming. Then, temperatures could rise as high as 7C above pre-industrial values by the end of the century. This would lead to significant risks of severe and irreversible impacts.

Clear, scientifically-informed, and forcefully expressed – we would be lucky to see climate change discussed in such a manner in some of the developed and developing nations less progressive on the issue than the United Kingdom has generally shown itself to be.

North/South historical versus future emissions

It is common to hear officials from developed states say things akin to this: “Yes, we are the ones who have historically done the most to create climate change – but we will be eclipsed by developing nations in the future.” While probably valid to some extent, there are many possible responses to this. There are arguments about who got rich how, as well as whose current per-capita emissions are high or low. What I am objecting to here is the curious methodology sometimes used to describe the developed/developing past/future dynamic.

Sometimes, states say both (a) developed states will continue to increase their emissions, in line with how they have been rising recently and (b) we will cut our emissions, according to our existing plan. If you step beyond that to compare your target future numbers with your business-as-usual projections for developing states, you make them look like a huge problem by comparison. One problem with this is that it is akin to saying the following: “I know I have been a problem gambler, but I have a plan to cut it down. I am going to halve my annual gambling losses in three years, and eliminate 80% of them in five. My buddy here, however, is a really compulsive gambler. He keeps losing more and more at an increasing rate. As such, his projected future losses are huge. Indeed, the amount I have lost so far is tiny compared to the amount he is going to lose in the future.” It is paradoxical because you are using the assertion that you will do better in the future to avoid present demands that you do more to reduce future emissions.

You are basically assuming that you can and will change, while others will not. No rich country government that has adopted targets for cutting emissions claims that cutting emissions requires cutting GDP. Nobody in power is touting a “stop climate change through recession” approach. As such, they must believe it possible to maintain economic growth while cutting emissions. While that may or may not be a valid assumption over various spans of time, it is an assumption that must be applied to developing states as well as developed ones.

In short, both developed and developing states need to cut emissions. The large probable future emissions from states like India and China are relevant to climate planning, partly insofar as concern about them could prompt useful transfers of wealth and low-carbon technology towards those states. At the same time, the wealth of the developed world – and the historical emissions that helped generate it – are also highly relevant. So too are the much larger non-climatic challenges being faced in the developing world. The developed world needs to start taking the kinds of steps necessary for actually hitting their 2020 and 2050 targets, in the process demonstrating to developing states how the transition can be accomplished in a politically acceptable way.

Bearded men and climatic doom

The Onion has a brief article that may seem uniquely pertinent to readers of this blog:

A man with a piece of food stuck in his beard is currently addressing an auditorium full of world leaders and prominent scholars on what seems to be the subject of global warming, sources are reporting. The food particle has been dangling from the man’s facial hair for more than an hour while he has mentioned such phrases as “sulfides,” “ice caps,” “immediately, otherwise we all may,” “underwater tomb,” and “of human life as we know it.” It was briefly dislodged during a particularly animated portion of the presentation in which complete global apocalypse was remarked upon, only to fall one inch and reattach to a lower portion of beard.

It joins such favourites as: U.N. Orders Wonka To Submit To Chocolate Factory Inspections and Fundamentalist Aesopians Interpret Fox-Grapes Parable Literally. My all-time favourite remains: Bush Regales Dinner Guests With Impromptu Oratory On Virgil’s Minor Works.

Parallels between AIDS and climate change

New research suggests that the AIDS virus first emerged in human populations about 100 years ago. That seems a bit surprising, given the way in which the impacts have exploded in the last few decades. The explanation is simply to consider the lag times and exponential growth curves involved. In 2007, 2.1 million people died of AIDS, from among the 33.2 who were infected. Despite improved access to antiretroviral therapies, the sheer extent to which the disease has spread means that the deaths in any recent year probably far exceed the combined deaths from the first few decades of the disease’s existence.

Disturbing parallels exist in relation to climate change. Once again, there is a lag between the cause (contracting HIV or emitting greenhouse gases) and the effects (destruction of the immune system or climatic change). Once again, the rate of growth in the underlying cause has been exponential. Thankfully, there is reason to hope that we are still not too far along the path, when it comes to climate change. It is like having discovered AIDS decades before we actually did – it would have allowed more time to develop and deploy treatments and encourage changed behaviours. It would also have made the peak in number of infections lower and sooner to arrive, before crossing over to the long and difficult slide towards elimination.

Geoengineering with lasers

This Economist article on geoengineering takes the same basic stance I have: that it is worth developing as a backup strategy, but that it is too dangerous to rely upon as an alternative to mitigation. That being said, they treat some of the options more generously than I would. On the basis of what I have read so far, ocean fertilization seems unlikely to work, and the secondary side-effects of sulfate injection seem too severe – not to mention how any geoengineering strategy that does not actually reduce carbon dioxide concentrations dooms to oceans to becoming ever-more-acidic for as long as we keep burning fossil fuels.

The strangest idea discussed in the article sounds like the kind of approach a Bond-villain would dream up:

Perhaps the most intriguing idea—which was published last year, though not discussed by the Royal Society—is to eject carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at the Earth’s poles, using the planet’s magnetic field. This may sound absurd, but oxygen already leaks out this way (the phenomenon is the subject of a paper just published by Hans Nilsson of Swedish Institute of Space Physics). Alfred Wong, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, proposes that a system involving powerful lasers and finely tuned radio waves could encourage carbon dioxide to take the same route. His calculations suggested that using lasers to ionise molecules of carbon dioxide, and radio waves to get them to spin at the correct rate, would cause those molecules to spiral away from Earth along the lines of magnetic force until they were lost for ever in space.

I have no idea whether this could actually work. Furthermore, implementing it meaningfully would require ejecting about 35 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year into space. That seems likely to have some weird consequences.

The frogs in the coal mine

A recent study conducted by the Zoological Society of London concluded that half of Europe’s amphibians could be extinct by 2050. There are two obvious ways to consider the news. Firstly, it is evidence of the enormously destructive effect human beings have on vulnerable ecosystems. Secondly, it raises questions about whether humanity itself will be able to survive the catastrophe is it creating. Amphibians have been around for 400 million years. While there have certainly been times in which a large proportion of them have died off, those times have been been listed among the catastrophic extinction events that have punctuated the history of life on Earth.

In short, the impact of the global economy is becoming comparable to that of major meteor strikes, mass volcanic events, large changes in sea level, and severe changes in atmospheric composition that have occurred in the past. For those who do not believe that humanity inhabits some special protected position in the cosmos, that seems like cause for very significant concern.

Gore on coal and civil disobedience

Al Gore has called on young people to resist the construction of new coal-fired power plants through civil disobedience. Certainly, this is not a time where we should be viewing coal as an acceptable option for electrical generation, and there have been well justified civil disobedience efforts in response to far less pressing issues than climate change. Nonetheless, it would send a rather more powerful message if Gore was willing to personally get his hands dirty on the matter. He may be reasoning that actually participating in some kind of direct action would reduce his influence, by making him easier to label as an extremist. Nonetheless, there is more than a touch of hypocrisy on calling on young people to do something that you think is right, but are unwilling to do yourself.

In any case, actions that expose just how climatically destructive coal is – as well as the simple fact that states like Britain are still planning to build more such plants – would probably be a useful element in our overall response to the climate challenge.

Video explaining runaway climate change

I have often spent time thinking about the danger of a tipping point into runaway climate change – particularly about the ways in which the concept can be conveyed to non-experts in a comprehensible manner. This eleven minute video does a good job. The script, with peer-reviewed references and additional information is at wakeupfreakout.org.

Here are some related prior posts:

I discovered the video linked above through this Gristmill post.

[Update: 4 February 2009] Here is a post on the danger of self-amplifying, runaway climate change: Is runaway climate change possible? Hansen’s take.

Graduating from Oxford

Given the following:

I am doing as much as possible to avoid air travel, due to the carbon emissions associated.
If I were going to fly, it would be (a) to deal with some kind of emergency or possibly (b) for an extended visit to a previously unseen part of the world.
You only get one chance to graduate at Oxford, either in person or in absentia.
There is no particular urgency in formally graduating.

Should I apply to have my name read in my absence and receive my diploma in the mail?

Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World

Canadian climatologist Andrew Weaver’s Keeping Our Cool provides an excellent and accessible introduction to climatic science. It also provides a great deal of useful information specific to Canada. As a result, if I had to recommend a single book to non-scientist Canadians seeking to understand the science of climate change, it would be this one. On the matter of what is to be done, the book is useful in a numerical sense but not particularly so in a policy sense. The discussion of economic instruments is superficial and the author basically assumes that a price of carbon plus new technology will address the problem.

The book covers climatic science on two levels: in terms of the contents themselves, such as you would find in textbooks and scientific papers, and in terms of the position of science within a broader societal debate. He accurately highlights the degree to which entrenched interests have seriously muddled the public debate, creating deep confusion about how certain we are about key aspects of how the climate works. Topics well covered by the book include electromagnetic radiation, time lags associated with climate change, the nature of radiative forcing, the nature and role of the IPCC, ocean acidification, the history of human emissions, the general history of the climate, climate modeling, aerosols, hurricanes, climate change impacts in general, permafrost, and the need for humanity to eventually become carbon neutral. One quibble has to do with the sequencing: while the narrative always flows well, the progression through climate science looks a bit convoluted in retrospect. That makes it a bit hard to find your way back to this or that piece of useful information. The book features some good numbers, graphs, and analysis that I have not seen elsewhere – such as a calculation of how much more carbon dioxide humanity can emit in total, given the desire to keep temperature change to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels and various plausible values for climatic sensitivity. A second quibble is that the graphics are all black and white and printed at a fairly low quality. Sometimes, that makes them hard to interpret.

On the matter of international and intergenerational equity, Weaver comes to appropriate conclusions (that we should be concerned about future generations and that the rich states that caused the problem need to act first in solving it), but he fails to examine the ethical and policy issues in great depth. That is a minor failing, given the major purpose of the book, but it would probably leave someone who read only this book with a somewhat mistaken impression about the scale of changes being advocated and the ease with which they might be achieved. The book exaggerates the difference between a carbon tax and a cap-and-trade system with 100% auctioning, and doesn’t pay sufficient attention to areas in which regulation have the potential to be more effective than taxes (building codes, transport standards, etc).

In general, Weaver’s book is a strong and useful introduction to climatic science. When it comes to the big questions about climate ethics, and the policy and technological measures that will permit the emergence of a low-carbon society, other authors have done better.