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We are one month away from the COP-21, in Paris, that should change everything – and will probably change nothing relevant. But change does occur, even though in ways that often surprise us, and in ways we may not like to see. The past decade has been a period of enormous changes and, also, a decade of gigantic efforts aimed at avoiding change at all costs. It is one of the many contradictions of our world. So, let me try to tell the story of these difficult years.

– The acceleration of climate change. In 2005, climate change seemed to be still a relatively tame beast. The scenarios presented by the IPCC (at that time updated to 2001) showed gradual temperature increases and the problems seemed to be decades away – if not centuries. But 2005 was also the year when it became clear that limiting warming to no more than 2 degrees C was much more difficult than previously thought. At the same time, the concept that climate change is a non linear process started to penetrate the debate and the danger of the “runaway climate change” was more and more understood. The events of the decade showed the rapid progression of climate change. Hurricanes (Katrina in 2005, Sandy in 2012, and many others), the melting of the ice caps, the melting of the permafrost, releasing its deadly charge of stored methane, giant forest fires, entire states going dry, the loss of biodiversity, the acidification of the oceans, and much more. It was found that high temperatures affect humans more than it was believed and, as a last straw, that the negative effects on the human behavior of increasing CO2 concentrations are much more important than previously believed. We are discovering with horror that we are transforming our planet into a gas chamber and we don’t know how to stop.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate changes can kick in below 2°C limit

October 19, 2015

Climate changes can kick in below 2°C limit

Extensive melting of the snow on the Tibetan plateau could be a tipping point.
Image: katorisi via Wikimedia Commons

Sudden shifts in settled climates can occur long before global warming reaches the internationally-agreed safety level, European scientists say.

LONDON, 18 October, 2015 – Climate change could arrive with startling speed. New research has identified at least 37 “tipping points” that would serve as evidence that climate change has happened – and happened abruptly in one particular region.

And 18 of them could happen even before the world warms by an average of 2°C, the proposed “safe limit” for global warming.

Weather is what happens, climate is what people grow to expect from the weather. So climate change, driven by global warming as a consequence of rising carbon dioxide levels, in response to more than a century of fossil fuel combustion, could be – for many people – gradual, imperceptible and difficult to identify immediately.

But Sybren Drijfhout, of the University of Southampton in the UK and his collaborators in France, the Netherlands and Germany, are not so sure.

They report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they “screened” the massive ensemble of climate models that inform the most recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and found evidence of abrupt regional changes in the ocean, the sea ice, the snow cover, the permafrost and in the terrestrial biosphere that could happen as average global temperatures reached a certain level.

The models did not all simulate the same outcomes, but most of them did predict one or more abrupt regional shifts.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Duality in climate science

October 16, 2015

Duality in climate science

A commentary published in Nature Geoscience (online Oct. 2015)

Brief Abstract:
The commentary demonstrates the endemic bias prevalent amongst many of those developing emission scenarios to severely underplay the scale of the 2°C mitigation challenge. In several important respects the modelling community is self-censoring its research to conform to the dominant political and economic paradigm. Moreover, there is a widespread reluctance of many within the climate change community to speak out against unsupported assertions that an evolution of ‘business as usual’ is compatible with the IPCC’s 2°C carbon budgets. With specific reference to energy, this analysis concludes that even a slim chance of “keeping below” a 2°C rise, now demands a revolution in how we both consume and produce energy. Such a rapid and deep transition will have profound implications for the framing of contemporary society and is far removed from the rhetoric of green growth that increasingly dominates the climate change agenda.

DOI:10.1038/ngeo2559 http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2559.html

The commentary should also be available to all, including non-subscribers, via http://rdcu.be/eoQY (this may not download onto phones, iPads, etc.)

An open access and pre-edit pdf is available at: On the duality of climate scientists – pre-edit version of a submission to Nature – 2015 This pre-edit version is also copied below.

*****

On the duality of climate scientists:
… how integrated assessment models are hard-wired to deliver politically palatable outcomes

The value of science is undermined when we adopt questionable assumptions and fine-tune our analysis to conform to dominant political and economic sensibilities. The pervasive inclusion of speculative negative emission technologies to deliver politically palatable 2°C mitigation is but one such example. Society needs scientists to make transparent and reasoned assumptions, however uncomfortable the subsequent conclusions may be for the politics of the day.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Peak Oil will save us from Climate Change:” a meme that never went viral

October 13, 2015

“Peak Oil will save us from Climate Change:” a meme that never went viral

Image from “Peaksurfer“

The idea that peak oil will save us from climate change has been occasionally popping up in the debate, but it never really gained traction for a number of good reasons. One is that, in many cases, the proponents were also climate science deniers and that made them scarcely credible. Indeed, if climate change does not exist (or if it is not caused by human activities), then how is it that you are telling us that peak oil will save us from it? Add to this that many hard line climate science deniers are also peak oil deniers (since, as well known, both concepts are part of the great conspiracy), then, it is no surprise that the meme of “peak oil will save us” never went viral.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t ask the question of whether we have sufficient amounts of fossil fuel to generate a truly disastrous climate change. The debate on this point goes back to the early 2000s. At the beginning, the data were uncertain and it was correctly noted that some of the IPCC scenarios overestimated what we are likely to burn in the future. But, by now, I think the fog has cleared. It is becoming increasingly clear that fossil fuel depletion is not enough, by far, to save us from climate change.

Nevertheless, some people still cling to the old “peak oil will save us” meme. In a recent post on “Energy Matters“, Roger Andrews argues that:

All of the oil and gas reserves plus about 20% of the coal reserves could be consumed without exceeding the IPCC’s trillion-tonne carbon emissions limit.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The state of the climate movement

September 22, 2015

The state of the climate movement

This is the text of a talk I gave today at Save the Children as part of their #changehistory series, organised by Campaigns Director (and fellow GlobalDashboard contributor) Kirsty McNeill. Kirsty’s opening talk in the series is here; see also @changehistory on Twitter.

It’s the afternoon of 28 June 1988. NASA scientist Jim Hansen is testifying on global warming to Congress. Outside, it’s an oven. Temperatures are sweltering to an unheard-of high of 38 degrees Celsius. The legislators and journalists in the room are close to fainting.

It’s one of those moments when it all comes together. Next day, climate leads the New York Times. By September, 58% of Americans have heard of the greenhouse effect. Two months after that, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is set up. Global climate policy is born.

Now it’s 1990. In Geneva, the Second World Climate Conference is taking place. Margaret Thatcher – herself a chemist – is lavishing praise on the IPCC, which has just published its First Assessment Report. And as if to anticipate the Stern Review 16 years later, she’s interpreting the IPCC’s findings very much through a rational lens of self-interest – telling leaders that “it may be cheaper or more cost-effective to take action now than to wait and find we have to pay much more later”.

Already, the terms on which climate policy will play out over the next two decades have been set. This is to be a technocratic agenda. Climate change will be owned by a ‘priesthood’ of experts, with its own language, rituals, gatherings, and assumptions. NGOs can be admitted as members, but only if they’re willing to adopt the priesthood’s worldview and profess its creed.

As for the public, their job is to listen to the experts and then remember to turn out the lights. It’s certainly not to participate, much less wield power.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Much Would Zero Emissions Cost?

May 4, 2015

How Much Would Zero Emissions Cost?

In 2014 global carbon emissions totaled 32 gigatonnes (Gt). If you’re counting, that’s roughly 32 Gt too many. Yes, zero, near-zero, or net-zero is what we want, and soon is when we need it. Failure to achieve such goals by the end of the century will irreparably damage our planet and leave us dangerously susceptible to new and harsher climate conditions, at least according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The United Nations agrees, though several countries openly reject the target. Paris 2015 should produce some positive momentum, but anything legally binding is unlikely to materialize.

In an effort to better understand the zero goal, let’s try to put a price on it. More specifically – and for simplicity – how much would it cost for the world’s highest per capita emitter, the United States to achieve zero or near-zero emissions? To be clear, the following focuses on energy-related gas emissions, which are mostly CO2 and account for about 84 percent of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

Last year, US energy-related CO2 emissions were 5.4 Gt – relatively unchangedfrom the year before, though up 2.5 percent since 2012. By sector: electric power is responsible for roughly 38 percent of total emissions; transportation is second at 34 percent; and residential, commercial, and industry emissions account for 28 percent. By fuel: Petroleum is tops at 42 percent, followed by coal and natural gas at 32 and 26 percent respectively.

Of course, there is no simple solution to the problem at hand, but there is a simple idea: remove fossil fuels from the picture, and across all sectors. Note: that includes point-source systems equipped with carbon capture and storage, which – while not without their merit – are an unnecessary stopgap. It also means saying goodbye to petroleum-powered transportation as we know it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate change: can the Seneca effect save us?

April 26, 2015

Climate change: can the Seneca effect save us?

Nothing we do (or try to do) seems to be able to stop carbon dioxide from accumulating in the atmosphere. And, as a consequence, nothing seems to be able to stop climate change. With the situation getting worse and worse (see here for an example), we are hoping that some kind of international agreement can be reached to limit emissions. But, after many attempts and many failures, can we really expect that next time – miraculously – we could succeed?

Another line of thought, instead, has that depletion will save us. After all, if we run out of oil (and of fossil fuels in general) then we’ll have to stop emitting greenhouse gases. Won’t that solve the problem? In principle, yes, but is it going to happen?

The gist of the debate on the future of fossil fuel production is that, despite the theoretically abundant resources, the production rate is strongly affected by diminishing economic returns generated by depletion. This factor forces the production curve to follow a “bell shaped”, or “Hubbert,” curve that peaks and starts declining much before the resource runs out, physically. In practice, most studies that take into account the diminishing economic returns of productionarrive to the conclusion that the IPCC scenarios often overestimate the amount of fossil carbon that can be burned (see a recent review by Hook et al.). From this, some have arrived to the optimistic conclusion that peak oil will save us from climate change (see this post of mine). But that’s way too simplistic.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Essentials of Resilience in a World of Growing Chaos

April 14, 2015

The Essentials of Resilience in a World of Growing Chaos

By now, it ought to go without saying that the evidence is in – after all, global warming has been recognized by scientists for decades. The accelerated release of “greenhouse gases” since the dawn of the Industrial Age is now causing accelerated warming of the planet with multiple interacting deleterious effects. We just don’t have time to argue the scientific consensus vs. the propaganda of the growth economists and industrial apologists. It is what it obviously is. Far more important challenges than “climate deniers” lay ahead. Resilience will be the key to meeting those challenges.

The most urgent question today is what must be done now and in the near future to achieve major mitigation of carbon emissions. The second most urgent question is: What can we do to adapt to the inevitable effects of climate disruption already “in the pipeline”?Mitigation and adaptation go hand in hand, although adaptation without mitigation is akin to seeking a more comfortable collective suicide. Without rapidly reducing the release of greenhouse gases, conditions will become so extreme that humans and many other species will be unable to adapt and survive. The species-extinction rate is already extreme by evolutionary measure.

Mitigation and Adaptation

So, resilience must be understood as the ability to both mitigate the sources of climate change and adapt to climate disruption in just the right balance. This must be done in the context of improving knowledge of the climate changes that are already occurring. We know that some of the processes are also accelerating because of interactive positive feedback loops. But the methane and CO2 releases from nascent arctic permafrost melting are not yet accounted for in the current IPCC climate change models. We need to know and immediately act upon the most strategically important climate disrupting factors. We must choose those factors with both the greatest impact on climate and the most potential for rapid and radical mitigation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Media Coverage of Climate Science Is Stunting Climate Action, Especially in US

April 13, 2015

Media Coverage of Climate Science Is Stunting Climate Action, Especially in US

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change plays an enormous role in shaping how climate science gets translated into policy in countries around the world, but so does the media.

A new report finds that, while the IPCCcould have managed the rollout of itsFifth Assessment Report (AR5) better, lack of compelling coverage, especially in US media, is leading to less public demand for action and hence political will to adopt policies to deal with climate change.

The report, published in Nature Climate Change, examines how theIPCC’s release strategy around AR5 contributed to diminishing returns in terms of media coverage, as well as the ways media outlets chose to frame the issue and how that impacts public perception of climate issues.

Researchers with the University of Exeter studied print, broadcast, and online media in both the US and the UK and found that the biggest difference was that there is simply more climate coverage in the UK. A lot more: three times as many articles and five times as many broadcasts were dedicated to climate change in theUK as in the US.

There’s not just more climate coverage in the UK, but less divisive coverage, too, largely due to the fact that the climate is such a partisan issue in the US, which is not as true in the UK. (Although that’s changing quickly, as our colleagues atDeSmog UK investigate every day.)

The IPCC chose to release each of the three individual Working Group reports that make up AR5 sequentially, releasing WG1 (The Physical Science Basis) in Autumn 2013, with WG2 (Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability) and WG3 (Mitigation of Climate Change) released close together in Spring 2014.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Was Shell the First Big Oil Company to Publicly Accept the Science of Climate Change and its Consequences?

January 31, 2015

Was Shell the First Big Oil Company to Publicly Accept the Science of Climate Change and its Consequences?

The DeSmog UK epic history series investigates the divide that opened up between chief executives and shareholders who were anxious that company operations and profits could be undermined by climate change.

The heavy-handed attack from lobbyists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that arose during the 1990s presented a new risk: that the oilmen would become isolated from other leaders of industry.

As early as 1995, a deep divide began to open up between the chief executive officers and shareholders of major corporations in the United States and Britain who were anxious that their own operations and profits could be undermined by climate change.

The Delphi Group in London, a major investments advisor, published a landmark report that year, warning banks, insurers and institutional investors to immediately withdraw investments from oil and coal.

Mark Mansley, the report’s author, pointed out that “climate change presents major long-term risks to the carbon fuel industry [which] has not been adequately discounted by the financial markets.”

Major Threat

At the same time, Sven Hansen, vice-president of the Union Bank of Switzerland, spoke at a conference for finance capital: “Some of our clients are under major threat from climate change.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rising Temperatures on Land and Sea Made 2014 Hottest Year

January 18, 2015

Rising Temperatures on Land and Sea Made 2014 Hottest Year

High temperatures across most of the globe made 2014 Earth’s hottest year in records dating back to 1880, a government report showed.

The combined land and ocean temperature on the planet was 1.24 degrees Fahrenheit (about 0.7 Celsius) above the 20th-century average, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationsaid in a statement. An independent analysis by the National Aeronautic and Space Administration also found 2014 to be the warmest on record.

Rising global temperatures can lead to higher ocean levels, disruptions to global agriculture, the spread of tropical diseases and a change in weather patterns, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“Climate change is perhaps the major challenge of our generation,” Michael Freilich, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division in the Space Mission Directorate in Washington, said on a conference call with reporters.

The western U.S., parts of Russia, interior South America as well as most of Europe experienced record heat, NOAA said. Northern Africa, western Australia and parts of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans also were warmer.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What if the world can’t cut its carbon emissions? | Energy Matters

December 29, 2014

What if the world can’t cut its carbon emissions? | Energy Matters.

What if the world can’t cut its carbon emissions?

Posted on December 29, 2014 by Roger Andrews

Many people, including more than a few prominent politicians, accept that global warming must be limited to no more than two degrees C above the pre-industrial mean, or a little more than one degree C above where we are now, to avoid dangerous interference with the Earth’s climate. Let’s assume these people are right, that the 2C threshold really does represent the climatic equivalent of a cliff and that bad things will happen if we drive off it.

So how do we apply the brakes?

According to the IPCC by limiting cumulative future global carbon emissions to no more than 500 gigatons, and even then we would have only a two-thirds chance of success:

To have a better than two-thirds chance of limiting warming to less than 2°C from pre-industrial levels the total cumulative carbon dioxide emission from all human sources since the start of the industrial era would need to be limited to about 1,000 gigatonnes of carbon. About half of this amount had already been emitted by 2011.

Here we will ignore the one-third chance of failure and use 500 gigatons as the “safe” emissions limit. Can we stay below it? Figure 1 summarizes the current position. The black line (data from EDGAR) shows progress, or lack thereof, in cutting global emissions since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) started the ball rolling in 1992. The red line is a projection of the black line. The blue line, which intersects zero in 2117, amounts to 500 Gt of future carbon emissions. I assumed a linear decrease for simplicity but other pathways are of course possible:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

IPCC report is clear: We must clean up our act | Science Matters | David Suzuki Foundation

November 16, 2014

IPCC report is clear: We must clean up our act | Science Matters | David Suzuki Foundation.

It’s become a cliché to say that out of crisis comes opportunity. But there’s no denying that when faced with crises, we have choices. The opportunity depends on what we decide to do.

What choices will we make when confronted with the fact that 2014 will likely be the hottest year on record? According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, global land and sea temperatures up to September’s end tie this year with 1998 as the warmest since record keeping began in 1880. “If 2014 maintains this temperature departure from average for the remainder of the year, it will be the warmest year on record,” a NOAA statement says.

The world’s warmest 10 years have all been since 1998, and last year carbon dioxide levels rose by the highest amount in 30 years.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Synthesis Report, released November 2, summarizes three reports released over the past year on the physical science; impacts, adaptation and vulnerability; and mitigation. It offers a stark choice: Unless we quickly curtail our fossil fuel dependence, we face “further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.“

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

2014 Could Be the Hottest Year on Record. What’s the Plan, Canada? | David Suzuki

November 12, 2014

2014 Could Be the Hottest Year on Record. What’s the Plan, Canada? | David Suzuki.

It’s become a cliché to say that out of crisis comes opportunity. But there’s no denying that when faced with crises, we have choices. The opportunity depends on what we decide to do.

The world’s warmest 10 years have all been since 1998, and last year carbon dioxide levels rose by the highest amount in 30 years.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Is the Carbon Limit? That Depends Who You Ask by Fred Pearce: Yale Environment 360

November 6, 2014

What Is the Carbon Limit? That Depends Who You Ask by Fred Pearce: Yale Environment 360.
How much carbon can we safely emit into the atmosphere without the planet suffering dangerous climate change? It would be good to know. The world’s governments have agreed that “dangerous” should mean any warming above two degrees Celsius. And in recent reports, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has tried to translate that into a future carbon budget.

But too many different numbers are still floating around. We could have more than 500 billion tons of carbon that we could safely emit, or the real figure might be close to 100 billion tons — it depends on whose estimates you decide to accept.

The carbon budget looks to be one of the most critical single metrics for keeping planet Earth a safe place to live through the coming century. So it would be a good idea to get to the bottom of the discrepancies, especially since the countdown to dangerous climate change may be shorter than the lifetime of a new coal-fired power plant.

Here is an attempt to cut through the statistical fog.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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