Book Review: Atmosphere of Hope: Searching for Solutions to the Climate Crisis

Atmosphere of Hope: Searching for Solutions to the Climate Crisis. by Tim Flannery. Published 2015.

as reviwed at:
Is There Still Hope?: A Climatologist’s Perspective. Michael Mann. L.A. Review of Books.

A MONUMENTAL CHALLENGE awaits us later this year in Paris. As time runs out in our battle against dangerous and irreversible climate change, many of us — and here I include myself: a climate scientist best known for the so-called “Hockey Stick” curve — regard the upcoming UN Climate Summit as potentially our last opportunity to achieve the necessary reductions in carbon emissions. 

It is against this backdrop, infused with urgency and anxiety, that I read Atmosphere of Hope, the latest contribution from environmental scientist Tim Flannery. 

Atmosphere of Hope is a successor to Flannery’s best-selling “climate change”-themed book The Weather Makers. Despite his optimistic-sounding title, Flannery comes across as more sober and less sanguine than he did in Makers, and perhaps even as a bit jaded. Some of his earlier optimism has eroded for obvious reasons: a consequence of a decade and a half of climate policy inaction, and of outright failure to achieve binding cuts in emissions at the 2009 Copenhagen summit. 

Yet the book does a remarkably good job of arguing that there is still hope for averting catastrophic climate change, typically defined as planetary warming in excess of 2oC (3.6oF) relative to pre-industrial time. Earth has thus far warmed about 1oC, and another 0.5oC is already in the pipeline. To be sure, the wiggle room is small. 

In fact, some pundits have already written off the task as impossible. In the journal Nature, Oliver Geden, head of the EU Research Division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, recently asserted that “the climate policy mantra — that time is running out for 2°C but we can still make it if we act now — is a scientific nonsense.” It is an odd and self-defeating claim, given that there is no physical obstacle to 2oC stabilization. Lack of political and collective societal will constitutes the only true obstacle to such stabilization. Insisting that the goal is no longer possible is dangerous insofar as it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, providing an excuse for politicians unwilling to support the dramatic actions needed. 

It is in confronting this softer, gentler form of denialism — the denial of hope — that Atmosphere of Hope shines. Flannery is no Pollyanna — he fully acknowledges the steep challenges and serious obstacles we face. So when he affirms that a path to averting catastrophic climate change remains in place, we know the conclusion is not reached capriciously. In excruciating detail, in chapter after chapter, he explains why averting catastrophe is indeed still possible. 

Flannery closely examines the relevant developments in renewable energy (wind, solar, geothermal); he describes what is already being accomplished, and how these technologies might be scaled up in the years ahead. Most readers will be surprised to learn that renewables are already providing 22 percent of global power generation. Countries like Germany are getting more than 30 percent of their power from renewables. The US, at 15 percent, has fallen behind the rest of the world. But even here there is reason for cautious optimism. The West Coast states and the Northeastern states — home to nearly a third of our population in total — are forming coalitions to tackle the problem. The Obama Administration’s new Clean Power Plan promises progress at the national scale by phasing out climate-unfriendly coal and replacing it with climate-friendly renewable energy. 

The president’s critics are fond of branding this new policy a “war on coal.” But the fact is that coal, the most carbon-intensive and climate-unfriendly source of power, is, as Flannery notes, already on the decline worldwide. Can that be a consequence of President Obama’s putative “war on coal”? No, in reality, there is no more a “war on coal” now than there was a “war on whale oil” in the mid-19th century, when it was forced off the market by petroleum. Technologies become antiquated, replaced by something more efficient, and hopefully “better.” As a colleague of mine is fond of saying, “the Stone Age didn’t end for want of stones.” And the fossil fuel age is ending not for want of fossil fuels. We have five times as much fossil fuels in proven reserves as would be needed to warm the planet beyond the 2°C limit. It isn’t scarcity, but necessity, that is ending “the age of fossil fuels.” 

Flannery explores the power of social movements and the growing role played by the individual citizen in raising awareness about the climate threat. Just a year ago, 300,000 individuals joined by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former US vice president Al Gore, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and other luminaries marched through the streets of New York City in the largest climate change demonstration in history. Similar marches took place in cities around the world. 

Following the New York march, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, representing the estate of John D. Rockefeller — who founded the oil empire that went on to become ExxonMobil — announced that it would be divesting itself of all fossil fuel holdings. That monumental development was part of a larger ongoing divestment campaign, spearheaded by climate change activist Bill McKibben, that has led to more than $50 billion worth of funds being withdrawn by more than 300 foundations and institutions around the US and the world. While its primary importance may be symbolic, the divestment campaign is founded on a simple truth: assuming we cannot possibly afford to tap all of the fossil fuels currently on the industry’s balance sheets, then their key assets — the massive fossil fuel reserves in their possession — must perforce ultimately be stranded. These fossil fuel companies are thus not only a bad investment for the planet, but a bad investment for the wary investor. 

Concerted action at the city and municipal level is fueling ground-up (as opposed to just top-down) policy progress. The mayors of several of the largest cities in the US — Los Angeles, Houston, and Philadelphia — have all signed on to an aggressive plan to cut emissions; the plan is known as the Mayors’ National Climate Action Agenda. 

But the key question is of course whether these developments are sufficient. Alas, perhaps not. Despite making remarkable progress toward a renewable energy-driven global economy, without additional measures we might not get there fast enough to avoid the 2oC warming threshold. Had we acted a decade and a half ago, when Flannery wrote Makers, the task would have been far easier, the transition to renewables far gentler. The irony is not lost on Flannery. 

Decades of inaction — the result of a public disinformation campaign funded by fossil fuel interests to dispute the growing climate threat — has made the task far more difficult. As Flannery explains, we might have to resort to other stop-gap measures. One of them falls in the realm of what’s sometimes called geoengineering: the intentional and additional manipulation of the Earth system in an attempt to reduce warming. Many of these schemes, like shooting reflective sulphur particles into the stratosphere to block some of the sunlight, or “fertilizing” the oceans with iron to increase carbon-scavenging algae, could actually make things worse. With geoengineering, the principle of “unintended consequences” reigns supreme. I concur with Flannery that we probably don’t want to go there unless we have no other choice. For the moment, we have other choices. 

Flannery speaks of a “third way,” referring to methods that directly remove carbon from the atmosphere and bury it for the long-term. Whether this is truly a third way is somewhat semantic. Seeding the oceans to remove carbon from the atmosphere, for example, is tampering with the Earth system, and I’m uncomfortable calling it anything other than geoengineering. There are less invasive alternatives, like burning biofuels with carbon capture and “open air capture” (e.g., building synthetic “super trees” that are a thousand times as efficient as “natural” trees in removing and burying atmospheric carbon). These methods try to get the carbon genie back into the bottle, fighting the laws of both thermodynamics and economics. As a result, they’re hard, and expensive. Nonetheless, as the cost of climate change damages continues to climb, these options might soon be on the table. 

Whether or not one considers these options “geoengineering,” and whether or not we place them in a separate category from more conventional approaches like incentivizing renewable energy, the challenge in the end remains the same. For them to work, we must put a price on carbon, whether through a carbon tax, cap-and-trade, fee-and-dividend, or by other means. In other words, market mechanisms lead us toward a solution only if we internalize the damage from burning carbon by way of a clear price signal. 

Flannery’s exploration of the climate change problem is comprehensive. He covers everything from the underlying basic science to the nitty-gritty details of prospective solutions. The book is at its best when laying out the latter. And, while Flannery understandably emphasizes his home country of Australia, he does a good job, too, of touching on projected impacts, politics, and policy advances in North America, Europe, and the rest of the world. If there are weaknesses, they lie in his discussion early on in the book of certain aspects of the basic science. 

At times, Flannery conflates types of uncertainty that are fundamentally different in nature. In several instances, for example, he attributes to “complexity” the fact that studies sometimes come to conflicting conclusions about certain climate change impacts. But that makes it sound like the uncertainties are an irreducible consequence of “complexity” (of chaotic behavior, for instance), when often it’s simply that we’re at the forefront of the science, and different reasonable assumptions or approaches lead to different answers. We’re still working toward a more thorough scientific understanding and more confident answers. A good example is the impact of climate change on hurricane behavior. 

When Flannery states early in chapter 1 that “no climate model can predict the future—simply because the future is impossible to predict,” I was disappointed not to see more nuance. Strictly speaking, the statement is incorrect. There are at least two primary factors contributing to current uncertainties in future climate projections. One is the uncertain nature of future human decision-making. Arguably, that uncertainty is irreducible. There is no way to determine how the politics of this issue will play out. But the other primary source of uncertainty is physical uncertainty (e.g., the current uncertainty in the precise role of amplifying mechanisms — “feedbacks” — that may increase the amount of future warming). With additional research and observations, that uncertainty can be diminished. So can uncertainties in regional climate projections that are a product of still imperfect representations of features of the climate system (e.g., the El Nino phenomenon). 

In discussing climate change impacts on drought, Flannery missed an opportunity to carefully distinguish between drought and low rainfall. The distinction is critical to understanding the current record drought in California, which is a result of both low rainfall and record warmth, the latter having led to increased evaporation from soils and virtually no snowpack, a triple whammy when it comes to freshwater availability.
Finally, I was perplexed by Flannery’s assertion that certain threats like worsening hurricanes and the drying of the Amazon have been “downgraded.” They haven’t. At best, the claim rests on an incomplete reading of the literature. While Flannery is correct that some studies have found that the number of hurricanes globally would decrease, this is highly misleading. Other leading analyses support an increase. But more importantly, when it comes to hurricanes, what is most relevant is what happens to the strongest storms, which do the vast majority of damage. The latest science suggests an increase in the most intense hurricanes. Missing from Flannery’s discussion of Superstorm Sandy is the key role that sea level rise has already played, in this case having increased coastal flooding by 25 square miles and damages of $8 billion. 

Flannery cites a 2013 study by the UK Met Office that questions the extent of drying of the Amazon, but ignores a more recent (2014) study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which concludes that “if drying continues across Amazonia, which is predicted by several global climate models, this drying may accelerate global climate change through associated feedbacks in carbon and hydrological cycles.” 

To me, Flannery’s concessions feel like an attempt to demonstrate balance by conceding that certain past predictions were exaggerated. The problem is that a more representative assessment of the literature indicates, at most, current uncertainty in those predictions. But uncertainty is not a reason for comfort. Hindsight makes this especially apparent: Arctic sea ice is decreasing faster than models had originally predicted, and the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheet are losing ice and contributing to sea level rise faster than expected. 

In the end, however, these (and other nitpicks) were only a minor annoyance for me. There are other places readers can turn for an in-depth and up-to-date discussion of the science. What Flannery provides — a convincing defense for the position that a path to averting catastrophic climate change still exists — is invaluable. 

With the world’s two largest emitters of carbon — the US and China — having engaged in a historic agreement to make substantial reductions in their own carbon emissions, the stage is now set. Will the rest of the nations of the world join in and help us reach the binding targets in Paris necessary to avert catastrophe? Will we tackle this problem in time? 

Flannery is cautiously optimistic. As am I.

Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State University and was recognized, with other authors, for contributing to the International Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. His most recent book, co-authored with Lee Kump, is Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change (Pearson/DK publishing, 2015).

Daily Climate Links: 4/26/2016

Climate Feedback Keeps Mainstream Media in Check, Seeks Funding on IndieGoGo. BigThink.

Climate change shouldn't be a divisive issue. There's an overwhelming amount of evidence showing our climate is warming due to human activity. Yet, one in two Americans don't believe climate change is caused by human activity. Part of this is due to misinformation spread through the mainstream media.

Campaigners call on fossil fuel bosses to properly back Paris Agreement. Business Green.

More than 75 civil society organisations have today published an open letter to the chairs of the world's largest publicly listed oil companies urging them to publicly endorse the goals of the Paris Agreement and ensure measures to keep temperature increases well below 2C are placed at the heart of their business plans.

...
Today's letter... argues the industry now needs to do more to ensure it remains compatible with the temperature goals set out in the Paris Agreement. 

"In advance of COP21, the majority of you signed a letter to delegates in which you said 'For us to do more, we need governments across the world to provide us with clear, stable, long-term, ambitious policy frameworks'," the letter states. "The historic agreement now being ratified delivers that policy framework. We now know that to limit climate change to below 2C, the majority of coal, gas and oil reserves must not be used... We have very little time but with united efforts across society, an increase in investment and with your company playing its part, the world can reach the Paris goal of a zero carbon economy."

Mitsubishi admits it has been cheating fuel efficiency data for 25 years. Sydney Morning Herald.

VW Presentation in ’06 Showed How to Foil Emissions Tests. New York Times.

Daily Climate Links: 4/25/2016

Climate change sceptics must be able to speak out. Financial Times. Apr 24, 2016.

Chilling speech on global warming. George F. Will, New York Post. Apr 24, 2016.

Climate DOESN'T change all the time, but deniers' excuses do. Tom Toles, Washington Post, Apr 25, 2016.

Carbon Pricing Becomes a Cause for the World Bank and I.M.F. New York Times. Apr 23, 2016.

Trudeau under growing pressure to lead charge for pipelines. Globe and Mail. Apr 24, 2016.

"...because we cannot keep 174 billion barrels of oil in Alberta locked in the [ground] and do nothing about it. This is wealth that was God-given to Canada, and so we have to take advantage of it." [said former PM Brian Mulroney]. 

Weekend Climate Links: 4/24/2016

Is a new temp record already locked in? Climate Crocks of the Week. Apr 23, 2016.

For James Hansen, the Science Demands Activism on Climate. Yale Environment 360. Apr 1, 2016.

The key players in climate change. New York Times. Apr 21, 2016.

To curb climate change, "we need to move everything" - investors. Thomson Reuters Foundation News. Apr 14, 2016.

Our Beleaguered Planet. Marcia Angell, The American Prospect. Apr 21, 2016.
The interaction of global climate change, poverty, affluence, and overpopulation

New report outlines climate change challenges on Canada's Arctic coast. CBC. Apr 18, 2016.

Non-linear events can affect climate change. Gwynne Dyer, The Border Mail. Apr 20, 2016.

A new dark age looms. William B. Gail, NYT. Apr 19, 2016.

Poor countries must find $4tn by 2030 to avert catastrophe, says climate study. The Guardian. Apr 22, 2016.

Unnatural selection. Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker. Apr 18, 2016.

Those ambitious global warming goals? The world may not know how to reach them. Chris Mooney, Washington Post. Apr 11, 2016.

Institutional investors must lead our transition to long-term sustainability. Jannis Sarra. Globe and Mail. Apr 2, 2016.

Renewable energy stumbles toward the future. New York Times. Apr 24, 2016.

In-depth: Experts assess the feasibility of ‘negative emissions’. Carbon Brief. Apr 12, 2016.

Timeline: How BECCS became climate change’s ‘saviour’ technology. Carbon Brief. Apr 13, 2016.

Explainer: The adoption, signing and ratification of the UN climate deal. Carbon Brief. Apr 19, 2016.

Scientists compare climate change impacts at 1.5C and 2C. Carbon Brief. Apr 21, 2016.

Scientists suggest appealing to human psychology to create solutions to climate change. Stanford News. Apr 13, 2016.

Society needs to better understand the economics of climate change, Stanford researchers say. Stanford News. Apr 14, 2016.

scientific articles:

Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming. Cook and Oreskes et al. IOP Science.

Daily Climate Links: 4/22/2016

Earth Day 2016.

Leaders Roll Up Sleeves on Climate, but Experts Say Plans Don’t Pack a Wallop. NYTimes. Apr 21, 2016.

The Exxon climate risk resolution and the transition to a low carbon economy. Edward Mason, via Responsible Investor. Apr 21, 2016.

Putting a price on carbon is a fine idea. It's not the end-all be-all. David Roberts, vox.

It has become conventional wisdom that a price on carbon is the sine qua non of serious climate policy. But it is worth keeping carbon pricing in perspective. It has become invested with such symbolic significance that it is inspiring some unhelpful purism on policy and magical thinking on politics.

VW's diesel crisis is now a global threat. Edward Niedermeyer, Bloomberg.

Pressure Drop: Exploring—and ignoring—climate chaos in the South Pacific. Simon Winchester, Lapham's Quarterly.

Naval officers of advanced rank are usually a circumspect group, their caution born of many years of doing battle with the caprices of the sea. But in March 2013 Adm. Samuel Locklear III, the American four-star flag officer who at the time was in charge of all American forces in and around the Pacific Ocean—328,000 Navy, Army, Marine, and Air Force personnel, stationed in docks and barracks and airdromes ranged around 52 percent of the planet’s surface—made an unusual pronouncement.  

Usually, and in common with his predecessors as the chief of U.S. Pacific Command, the admiral, just winding up his fortieth year with the senior service, would recite at briefings and at hearings on Capitol Hill from a Pentagon-approved hymn sheet of threats to regional peace. There were always, in the short term, the villainous generals of North Korea, the devious graybeards of China, and the architects of various territorial disputes involving pointless islands claimed by Japan on the one hand, and by Russia, South Korea, and China on the other, all likely to trigger some kind of a brouhaha sooner or later. There were also the manifold possibilities for mayhem from the jihadists or Maoists or others known to be bent on destabilizing matters in Jakarta, or Dhaka, or southern Mindanao, or a score of other Pacific places known for their feverish political dispositions.

But in the spring of 2013, these usual suspects were not for Admiral Locklear, and at a defense conference at Harvard that spring, he broke form. Political disputations were not, he said, the principal threat to his area of responsibility (which stretches from Karachi to San Diego, from Nome to Hobart, and includes 64 million square miles of sea). Most critical was, in fact, the climate.

Significant upheaval related to the warming planet, Locklear declared, “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.”

He promptly bolstered his claim. His staff officers—most especially his weather analysts—had detected significant changes in the frequency and violence of recent Pacific typhoons. “Weather patterns are more severe than they have been in the past,” he told his now-rapt listeners. “We are on super-typhoon twenty-seven or twenty-eight this year in the western Pacific. The average is about seventeen.” And such new typhoon clusterings suggest major changes to the climate in the region—changes that pose the greatest of all security threats in the region...

Daily Climate Links: 4/21/2016

Canada ranked 14th out of 16 on protecting the environment, Conference Board says. CBC.

A new report suggests Canada ranks 14th among 16 peer countries when it comes to environmental performance, with only the United States and Australia doing worse.
The report by the Conference Board of Canada on Thursday gives Canada a "D" grade based on nine indicators covering climate change, air pollution, and freshwater management.

Trudeau carries 'D' climate grade, oil support into UN Paris signing ceremony. Bruce Cheadle, Canadian Press.

$3.6trn investor coalition supports methane emissions limits ahead of Paris signing ceremony. Responsible Investor.

The U.S. and Canadian announcement, made on March 10, 2016, commits both nations to reduce oil and gas methane pollution by 40 to 45 percent over the next decade, and to put forth standards to achieve this goal.

The climate change generation gap. Dana Nuccitelli. The Bulletin.

A record number of Americans now view global warming as a serious threat and blame human activities as the cause. But there is apparently a generation gap out there when it comes to accepting the scientific evidence. And an ethnic gap, a gender gap, and a gap in political leaning—along with whether one can be considered one of society’s “haves” or “have nots.”

scientific articles:
Waste not, want not, emit less. Jessica Aschemann-Witzel. Science.

Daily Climate Links: 4/20/2016

The 'Absolutely Disturbing' New Normal: Earth Just Smashed Another Climate Record. Common Dreams.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Tuesday that March 2016 was the warmest March since records began in 1880.
It also marked an 11-month of streak of record-breaking global temperatures.
And at 1.22°C (2.20°F) above the 20th century average of 12.7°C (54.9°F), March 2016 distinguished itself from all 1,635 months on record by having the highest monthly temperature departure.

Flirting with the 1.5°C threshold. Climate Central.

the Paris agreement was to limit warming to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.”

however, the vast majority of temperature data that is reported is not compared to pre-industrial temperatures; for instance, NOAA, above, references current temp vs 20th century average and at other times compares vs 1981-2010 base period, while NASA takes "the change in global surface temperature relative to 1951-1980 average temperatures"

so, the Climate Central authors took raw data to try to correct for this, but even they are comparing to temperatures that are NOT pre-industrial; they use 1881 as their reference, but 1750 is the commonly-acknowledged start of the industrial era; there may not have been much temperature change from 1750  to 1881, but keep those different time periods in mind when reading about latest temperature records and comparing to IPCC goal

How Earth itself has dramatically upped the stakes for the Paris climate accord. Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis, Washington Post. 

Germans pay extra for clean energy — is it worth it? David Roberts, grist.

Got Denmark envy? Wait until you hear about its energy policies. David Roberts, vox.

Mitsubishi admits to flawed fuel emissions tests. BusinessGreen.

Electric Cars: Pros and Cons, and Unknowables. Yale Climate Connections.

The big buzz among car junkies these days involves AVs, autonomous or driverless vehicles. Forces behind it are numerous, including automakers' having lots to lose ... or gain. 

Scientist Quotes #1

"Climate change is coming at us faster, with larger impacts and bigger risks, than even most climate scientists expected as recently as a few years ago. The stated goal of the UNFCCC – avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate – is in fact unattainable, because today we are already experiencing dangerous anthropogenic interference. The real question now is whether we can still avoid catastrophic anthro-pogenic interference in climate. There is no guarantee that catastrophe can be avoided even we start taking serious evasive action immediately; But it’s increasingly clear that the current level of anthropogenic interference is dangerous: Significant impacts in terms of floods, droughts, wildfires, species, melting ice already evident at ~0.8°C above pre-industrial Tavg. Current GHG concentrations commit us to 0.6°C more."

John Holdren, Director, Woods Hole Research Centre, leading climate scientist, Nov 3, 2006.

"If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."
Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Nov 17, 2007.

Global climate change and other ongoing persistent global environmental problems "threaten humanity's very survival.... The need couldn't be more urgent ... to act now to safeguard our own survival and that of future generations."
UNEP GEO-4, 2007

"We have reached a point of planetary emergency,'' he said. "There are tipping points in the climate system, which we are very close to, and if we pass them, the dynamics of the system take over and carry you to very large changes which are out of your control."

James Hansen, Jun 24, 2008.

"The potential for runaway greenhouse warming is real and has never been more clear."
UNEP Year Book, 2009

"For humanity it's a matter of life or death," he said. "We will not make all human beings extinct, as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the right parts of the world and survive. But I think it's extremely unlikely that we wouldn't have mass death at 4C. If you have got a population of nine billion by 2050 and you hit 4C, 5C or 6C, you might have half a billion people surviving".

Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and joint chair in Energy and Climate Change at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester and School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. Nov 29, 2009.

in response to the question “what has to be done?” stated: 

“extremely rapid reduction in emissions … I would say, 80 percent within the next ten years or so … people like me have been looking at the evidence about this on a day to day basis and we have been doing it for years, and to look in to the abyss at this length is a daunting task.”

Andrew Glikson, paleoclimate scientist, Australia National University, July 2009.

“My view is that the climate has already crossed at least one tipping point, about 1975-1976, and is now at a runaway state, implying that only emergency measures have a chance of making a difference…”  

Andrew Glikson, 2010

"analysis suggests that despite high-level statements to the contrary, there is now little to no chance of maintaining the global mean surface temperature at or below 2°C. Moreover, the impacts associated with 2°C have been revised upwards, sufficiently so that 2°C now more appropriately represents the threshold between 'dangerous' and 'extremely dangerous' climate change."

Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, Nov 29, 2010.

"Humans have already set in motion 69 feet of sea level rise."

Jason Box, professor in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Jan 31, 2013.

"It is the summer sea ice loss passing point of no return, leading to unstoppable catastrophic Arctic Methane feedbacks sooner or later ... puts us in a planetary emergency today."
John Nissen. Arctic Methane Emergency Group. Dec 4, 2014.

"If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we're f'd."
Jason Box. Jul 7, 2015.

"We are in a kind of climate emergency now... It is becoming more and more urgent. Time has almost run out to get emissions down. That’s the real emergency."

Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Mar 14, 2016.

Feature Reference Articles #2

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading." 

Lao Tzu

Life is about to get much worse. David Zetland, Aguanomics. Mar 29, 2016.

These results are far more pessimistic than anything the IPCC has put out for three reasons. First, the IPCC operates by consensus, meaning that the most conservative estimates are used. Second, IPCC data and models are in "uncharted territory," so it is not easy to decide if natural systems are going to retard or reinforce man-made trends. Finally, the law of averages means that hundreds of co-authors will tend to agree on a business as usual, linear path of change, rather than the new normal, exponential path that Hansen et al. predict.

On a planet 4C hotter, all we can prepare for is extinction. Oliver Tickell, Guardian. August 11, 2008.

We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told the Guardian last week. At first sight this looks like wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to a 4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global warming on this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never spoke, "the end of living and the beginning of survival" for humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our extinction.

The collapse of the polar ice caps would become inevitable, bringing long-term sea level rises of 70-80 metres. All the world's coastal plains would be lost, complete with ports, cities, transport and industrial infrastructure, and much of the world's most productive farmland. The world's geography would be transformed much as it was at the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose by about 120 metres to create the Channel, the North Sea and Cardigan Bay out of dry land. Weather would become extreme and unpredictable, with more frequent and severe droughts, floods and hurricanes. The Earth's carrying capacity would be hugely reduced. Billions would undoubtedly die.

Watson's call was supported by the government's former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, who warned that "if we get to a four-degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a runaway increase". This is a remarkable understatement. The climate system is already experiencing significant feedbacks, notably the summer melting of the Arctic sea ice. The more the ice melts, the more sunshine is absorbed by the sea, and the more the Arctic warms. And as the Arctic warms, the release of billions of tonnes of methane – a greenhouse gas 70 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years – captured under melting permafrost is already under way.

To see how far this process could go, look 55.5m years to the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when a global temperature increase of 6C coincided with the release of about 5,000 gigatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, both as CO2 and as methane from bogs and seabed sediments. Lush subtropical forests grew in polar regions, and sea levels rose to 100m higher than today. It appears that an initial warming pulse triggered other warming processes. Many scientists warn that this historical event may be analogous to the present: the warming caused by human emissions could propel us towards a similar hothouse Earth. ...

What we’re doing to the Earth has no parallel in 66 million years, scientists say. Chris Mooney, Washington Post. Mar 21, 2016.

“If anthropogenic emissions rates have no analogue in Earth’s recent history, then unforeseeable future responses of the climate system are possible,” the authors write.

... 

... not only have we only begun to see the changes that will result from current warming, but there may be other changes that lack any ancient parallel, because of the current rate of change. “Given that the current rate of carbon release is unprecedented throughout the Cenozoic, we have effectively entered an era of a no-analogue state, which represents a fundamental challenge to constraining future climate projections,” the study concludes.

Humans to Go Extinct in Three, Two—  Ian Welsh. Jun 23, 2015.

This is the point where a sane species would be in a controlled panic. 

Which brings us to Laudato Si. The obvious issue with Luadato Si is Pope Francis sticking to current church doctrine against birth control. It is incontrovertible that every person has a carrying load for the planet. 

But Francis makes a great number of good points, starting with the fact that we are vastly wasteful. It is not that we have necessarily surpassed the Earth’s carrying capacity in theory (only in fact). Half the food in America, for example, is wasted. Suburbs are vastly wasteful. Lawns are idiocy. Most of our buildings use far more energy than they need to. Improved agricultural methods can produce up to ten times as much produce on the same amount of land, for less water. Urban indoor agriculture using LEDs is showing great promise. Centralized manufacturing, which requires concentrated power which cannot yet be provided by renewables could be decentralized even with out current tech, and within fifteen years or so we could radically decentralize it. 

And so on.  There are more good ideas than one could possibly list. These ideas would allow us to support our current population on much less land and allow the environment to renew itself. We could massively reduce carbon output at the same time, stop overfishing the seas, and everyone would still be fed, have a place to live, and so on. Yes, most suburbs would be a thing of the past, but the question of “suburbs” vs. “human survival” shouldn’t be a hard one. 

All of this would probably not be enough. 

Yeah, sorry. 

We’ve left it too late. The issue is the carbon and other hothouse gases already in the environment. They are so high that we will see release of methane from the arctic, both land and sea. This has already begun. It will continue. Even entirely stopping carbon tomorrow (which is impossible) likely wouldn’t be enough. Cutting carbon by half would definitely not be enough. 

We needed to be acting back in the 1980s when climate change science first became overwhelmingly likely to be true. 

We didn’t. An alien species studying our extinction, should it come to that, will only be able to conclude we did it to ourselves. 

What I’m seeing is that we are on the wrong side of a self-reinforcing cycle. 

We’re going to need geo-engineering. It’s messy and we’ll probably screw it up, but we don’t have much choice left. 

Because there is a chance that even doing everything right, we’ll still go extinct...

It's not climate change -- it's everything change. Margaret Atwood, medium. Jul 27, 2015.

...top warning signs... the transformation of the oceans. Not only are these being harmed by the warming of their waters, in itself a huge affector of climate. There is also the increased acidification due to CO2 absorption, the ever-increasing amount of oil-based plastic trash and toxic pollutants that human beings are pouring into the seas, and the overfishing and destruction of marine ecosystems and spawning grounds by bottom-dragging trawlers. Most lethal to us — and affected by warming, acidification, toxins, and dying marine ecosystems — would be the destruction of the bluegreen marine algae that created our present oxygen-rich atmosphere 2.45 billion years ago, and that continue to make the majority of the oxygen we breathe. If the algae die, that would put an end to us, as we would gasp to death like fish out of water... 

desire to deny these things or sweep them under the carpet so business can go on as usual, leaving the young folks and future generations to deal with the mess and chaos that will result from a changed climate, and then pay the bill. Because there will be a bill: the cost will be high, not only in money but in human lives. The laws of chemistry and physics are unrelenting, and they don’t give second chances. In fact, that bill is already coming due... 

There are many other effects, from species extinction to the spread of diseases to a decline in overall food production, but the main point is that these effects are not happening in some dim, distant future. They are happening now....

Can we change our energy system? Can we change it fast enough to avoid being destroyed by it? Are we clever enough to come up with some viable plans? Do we have the political will to carry out such plans? Are we capable of thinking about longer-term issues, or, like the lobster in a pot full of water that’s being brought slowly to the boil, will we fail to realize the danger we’re in until it’s too late?

The False Promise of Climate Adaptation. Thomas Homer-Dixon, Globe and Mail. Dec 7, 2015.
As the world warms, adaptation becomes a fool’s paradise

Scientific evidence from around the world has been accumulating relentlessly, and this evidence points to a clear conclusion: climate change is real, humans are causing it, and it’s an enormous threat. In response, the skeptics have fallen back to another argument, which goes like this: Despite nearly 30 years of climate policies and gabfests, the world’s carbon emissions are still soaring. This trend won’t stop for decades, because global energy systems can’t be changed fast. If we do try to cut emissions sharply, they say, the result will be economic calamity. In any case, warming’s impacts won’t be nearly as serious as alarmists suggest. So the sensible plan is to adapt. 

This argument starts with a truth, adds a dose of fatalism and two falsehoods, and then mixes in wishful thinking to produce an utterly misguided and shortsighted conclusion. 

It’s true that efforts to cut carbon emissions have failed dismally. There’s now virtually no chance that warming will be capped at two degrees Celsius, which is the aspirational target of climate negotiators. We’re currently heading for three degrees of warming and quite possibly four or more.

Paris plan is impressive – but why peddle fantasies with unreachable targets? Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Globe and Mail. Dec 14, 2015.

Indeed, in coming centuries the Paris Agreement on climate change will likely be seen as one of the most significant international documents in history, up there with the Peace of Westphalia, the Bretton Woods agreements and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

At long last, almost all the world’s countries have explicitly acknowledged that global warming is a staggering threat to our well-being and have laid out a plan – albeit, at best, a partial one – to respond to this threat. But the hard work is only beginning. 

Just how hard isn’t widely grasped. The magnitude of the challenge has been hidden partly by the Paris Agreement’s sunny aspirations and partly by technicalities known only to specialists.

Paris COP21: the worst deal in the history of global climate negotiations. C.J. Polychroniou,  OpenDemocracy. Dec. 16, 2015.

... What did world leaders do instead at the Paris climate change conference which was held from 30 November to 12 December 2015? They came up with an agreement which easily qualifies as the worst deal in the history of global climate negotiations. They drafted a pact which relies purely on voluntary action, thus representing a major step backwards from the Kyoto Protocol which imposes carbon emission limits on the parties that adopted and ratified the treaty. They produced a plan to keep rising temperatures at bay -- at a maximum of 1.5 celsius -- without providing financial assistance to poor nations so they can develop clean energy systems. Worse, they kicked the can down the road by not demanding any action until 2020.

However, accustomed to manipulating public opinion, world leaders sought to create a state of euphoria about the outcome of the Paris climate talks by using not merely hyperbolic language but even outright lies. President Obama hailed the pact as a development signifying “a turning point for the world,” while French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius described it as "legally binding." It is up to each one of us individually to decide which of the two leaders committed a greater insult to human intelligence.

As expected, the initial reaction on the part of the mainstream news industry was in strict adherence to the spirit of the statements made by leaders like Obama and others, describing the agreement as a deal representing, “the best chance to save the planet." 

The Paris COP21 climate agreement is simply hot air. We are no closer to averting a catastrophic climate change scenario than we were before the start of the Paris talks. In fact, the Paris agreement ensures that the problem of climate change remains unchecked. For it is the height of political hypocrisy to believe that the planet can be saved through a voluntary agreement among nations to reduce emissions and keep global warming at bay.  

A voluntary agreement has no teeth by default. Moreover, it is certain that nations like India, concerned as they are about poverty and development, are not going to accept any climate change deal without some type of financial compensation. This was surely the connotation behind the use of the term "climate justice" used by India's Prime Minister Modi. And, sure enough, there is nothing in the Paris treaty about mandatory payments to poor nations so they can help reduce emissions by adopting clean energy technologies themselves. 

The fact of the matter is that as long as poverty and unemployment remain severe problems for many countries around the world, let alone the existence of powerful interests represented by a fossil fuel-driven global economy, the struggle against climate change will naturally take a back seat. This is simply a fact, which some members and organizations of the environmental community refuse to acknowledge or accept.

The dynamics of national political culture also play a key role in our ability to avert or not a catastrophic climate change scenario. Indeed, a key reason as to why the Paris climate change negotiations shifted away from mandatory, top-down targets on carbon emissions output and adopted instead a voluntary approach to the climate change challenge is because a legally binding treaty that needed ratification by governments back home would have reduced substantially the chances of reaching any kind of an agreement. This is certainly the case for one of the world's biggest polluters, i.e., the United States. Any treaty on climate change that made its way to Capitol Hill would have been shredded into pieces by the Republican-controlled Congress. This is why Obama can claim the Paris COP21 agreement as a "turning point for the world" -- that is, because the deal does not have to go to the US Congress. 

As time goes by and the euphoria about the Paris agreement evaporates, it is certain that more and more people will realize that the political compromise made in Paris over mandatory emissions comes at a great cost. Our ability to control rising temperatures caused by carbon dioxide accumulated in the air has been greatly hindered. 

But there is more. As the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report points out, carbon emission cuts are not enough any more to slow down global warming. According to IPCC, we are headed with certainty towards an increase in temperatures by three degrees Celsius by 2100. Using complex mathematical models of the world's climate system tested against past climate data, scientists have concluded that three degrees of warming would spell an "environmental catastrophe" of uncontrolled consequences.

Climate: 7 questions on 2 degrees. John D. Sutter, CNN. Apr 24, 2015.

Humans never have lived on a planet that's 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) warmer than it was before we started burning fossil fuels, in the late 1800s, and climate experts say we risk fundamentally changing life on this planet if we do cross that 2-degree mark. 

"This is gambling with the planet," said Gernot Wagner, the lead senior economist at the Environmental Defense Fund and co-author of the book "Climate Shock." 

1. Where did the idea for 2 degrees come from?
One guy, it turns out. William Nordhaus, an economist at Yale.
Nordhaus, 73, proposed the 2-degree threshold in a 1977 (1977!) paper titled "Economic Growth and Climate: The Carbon Dioxide Problem." 

... 

2. How did 2 degrees become the international standard?
Science has continued to raise red flags about 2 degrees of warming. And that work has led policy experts to conclude that a 2-degree world is something none of us should want. 

"You need a judgment call for these things," said Carlo Jaeger, chair of the Global Climate Forum, who has written on the history of 2 degrees Celsius. "And this 2-degree thing was a judgment call that happened at the interface of science and policy."

James Lovelock: 'enjoy life while you can: in 20 years global warming will hit the fan'. James Lovelock. Guardian. Mar 1, 2008.

More alarming even than his apocalyptic climate predictions is his utter certainty that almost everything we're trying to do about it is wrong. On the day we meet, the Daily Mail has launched a campaign to rid Britain of plastic shopping bags. The initiative sits comfortably within the current canon of eco ideas, next to ethical consumption, carbon offsetting, recycling and so on - all of which are premised on the calculation that individual lifestyle adjustments can still save the planet. This is, Lovelock says, a deluded fantasy. Most of the things we have been told to do might make us feel better, but they won't make any difference. Global warming has passed the tipping point, and catastrophe is unstoppable.

...

This is all delivered with an air of benign wonder at the intractable stupidity of people. "I see it with everybody. People just want to go on doing what they're doing. They want business as usual. They say, 'Oh yes, there's going to be a problem up ahead,' but they don't want to change anything." 

Lovelock believes global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics. Britain is going to become a lifeboat for refugees from mainland Europe, so instead of wasting our time on wind turbines we need to start planning how to survive. To Lovelock, the logic is clear. The sustainability brigade are insane to think we can save ourselves by going back to nature; our only chance of survival will come not from less technology, but more.

A geophysiologist's thoughts on geoengineering. James Lovelock, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Nov. 13, 2008.

Abstract

The Earth is now recognized as a self-regulating system that includes a reactive biosphere; the system maintains a long-term steady-state climate and surface chemical composition favourable for life. We are perturbing the steady state by changing the land surface from mainly forests to farm land and by adding greenhouse gases and aerosol pollutants to the air. We appear to have exceeded the natural capacity to counter our perturbation and consequently the system is changing to a new and as yet unknown but probably adverse state. I suggest here that we regard the Earth as a physiological system and consider amelioration techniques, geoengineering, as comparable to nineteenth century medicine.

... 

Whatever we do is likely to lead to death on a scale that makes all previous wars, famines and disasters small. To continue business as usual will probably kill most of us during the century. Is there any reason to believe that fully implementing Bali, with sustainable development and the full use of renewable energy, would kill less? We have to consider seriously that, as with nineteenth century medicine, the best option is often kind words and pain killers but otherwise do nothing and let Nature take its course. 

... 

Had we heeded Malthus’s warning and kept the human population to less than one billion, we would not now be facing a torrid future. Whether or not we go for Bali or use geoengineering, the planet is likely, massively and cruelly, to cull us, in the same merciless way that we have eliminated so many species by changing their environment into one where survival is difficult.

New finding shows climate change can happen in a geological instant. Phys.org. Oct 7, 2013.

In a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Morgan Schaller and James Wright contend that following a doubling in carbon dioxide levels, the surface of the ocean turned acidic over a period of weeks or months and global temperatures rose by 5 degrees centigrade – all in the space of about 13 years. Scientists previously thought this process happened over 10,000 years.

Encyclical Letter: Laudato Si’. On Care for Our Common Home. Pope Francis. May 24, 2015.

Science and Politics Clash as Humanity Nears Climate Change Tipping Point. Greg M. Schwartz, EcoWatch. Mar 13, 2016.

Beyond 450: Why the IEA’s “Climate Scenario” Falls Short. Greg Muttitt. Oil Change International. Apr 6, 2016.

Breaking the tragedy of the horizon - climate change and financial stability. Speech by Mark Carney. Sep 29, 2015.

The Real Climate Censorship. George Monbiot. Apr. 10, 2007.

The drafting of reports by the world’s pre-eminent group of climate scientists is an odd process. For many months scientists contributing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tussle over the evidence. Nothing gets published unless it achieves consensus. This means that the panel’s reports are extremely conservative – even timid. It also means that they are as trustworthy as a scientific document can be. 

Then, when all is settled among the scientists, the politicians sweep in and seek to excise from the summaries anything which threatens their interests. While the US government has traditionally been the scientists’ chief opponent, this time the assault was led by Saudi Arabia, supported by China and Russia. 

The scientists fight back, but they always have to make some concessions. The report released on Friday, for example, was shorn of the warning that “North America is expected to experience locally severe economic damage, plus substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from climate change related events”. David Wasdell, an accredited reviewer for the panel, claims that the summary of the science the IPCC published in February was purged of most of its references to “positive feedbacks”: climate change accelerating itself

This Changes Nothing: The Paris Agreement to Ignore Reality. Clive Splash. Apr. 11, 2016.

Abstract 

At the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Paris, France, 30 November to 11 December 2015, an Agreement was reached by the international community including 195 countries. The Agreement has been hailed, by participants and the media, as a major turning point for policy in the struggle to address human-induced climate change. The following is a short critical commentary in which I briefly explain why the Paris Agreement changes nothing. I highlight how the Agreement has been reached by removing almost all substantive issues concerning the causes of human-induced climate change and offers no firm plans of action. Instead of substantive cuts in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as soon as possible, the intentions of the parties promise escalation of damages and treat worst-case scenarios as an acceptable 50:50 chance. The Paris Agreement signifies commitment to sustained industrial growth, risk management over disaster prevention, and future inventions and technology as saviour. The primary commitment of the international community is to maintain the current social and economic system. The result is denial that tackling GHG emissions is incompatible with sustained economic growth. The reality is that Nation States and international corporations are engaged in an unremitting and ongoing expansion of fossil fuel energy exploration, extraction and combustion, and the construction of related infrastructure for production and consumption. The targets and promises of the Paris Agreement bear no relationship to biophysical or social and economic reality.

Exposé | The 2º Death Dance – The 1º Cover-up. Cory Morningstar. Dec 10, 2010.

The Origins of 2ºC – Neoclassical Economist Bill Nordhaus 

The 2ºC temperature rise “target,” which is the only limit in the text of the ‘noted’ Copenhagen Accord, may well be one of the least understood cover-ups in history. The first suggestion to use 2° Celsius as a critical temperature limit for climate policy was not made by an esteemed climate scientist. Rather it was made by well-known neoclassical economist, W.D. Nordhaus, in a discussion paper of the prestigious Cowles Foundation. 

In 1977 Nordhaus stated: “If there were global temperatures more than 2 or 3° above the current average temperature, this would take the climate outside of the range of observations which have been made over the last several hundred thousand years.”
This temperature increase is in fact well outside of the natural limits of the past 10,000 years during which agriculture and civilization developed. It is also higher than has existed over the past couple of million years.

“A rich man’s cat may drink the milk that a poor boy needs to remain healthy. Does this happen because the market is failing? Not at all, for the market mechanism is doing its job – putting goods in the hands of those that have the dollar votes.” 

The author of the ice cold quote above is none other than our neoclassical economist and Yale University Professor Bill Nordhaus (Nordhaus and Samuelson, 2005), originator of the now infamous 2ºC threshold target that has come to dominate climate discussions and to dismiss all sensibilities as our Earth spins toward a terrifying, irreversible apocalypse. 

Today, this 2ºC target, largely defined as the maximum allowable warming to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate has replaced an almost unknown 1ºC target highlighted in the 1990 UN AGGG (United Nations Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases) report when climate change as a global issue was widely unknown. 

Nordhaus has been one of the most influential economists involved in climate change models and construction of emissions scenarios for well over 30 years, having developed one of the earliest economic models to evaluate climate change policy. He has steadfastly opposed the drastic reductions in greenhouse gases emissions necessary for averting global catastrophe, “arguing instead for a slow process of emissions reduction, on the grounds that it would be more economically justifiable.”

The Origins of 1ºC – United Nations 1990

In 1986, three international bodies, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), who had co-sponsored the Villach Conference in 1985, formed the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases (AGGG), a small international committee with responsibility for assessing the available scientific information about the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the likely impact. 

In 1990 the AGGG calculated what level of climate change our planet could tolerate, also referred to as “environmental limits.” These levels and limits were summarized in the document, “Responding to Climate Change: Tools For Policy Development,” published by the Stockholm Environment Institute. 

The targets and indicators set limits to rates and total amounts of temperature rise and sea level rise, on the basis of known behaviour of ecosystems. The AGGG report identified these limits in order to “protect both ecosystems as well as human systems.” The report states that the objective is: “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic [human made] interference with the climate system.” 

It adds: “Such a level should be achieved within a timeframe sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.” 

Thus the report requires limits to both the total amount of change and the rate of change.
Further, they warned that a global temperature increase “beyond 1 degree C may elicit rapid, unpredictable and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage.” A temperature increase of 2ºC was viewed as “an upper limit beyond which the risks of grave damage to ecosystems, and of non-linear responses, are expected to increase rapidly.” [For “non-linear,” read “runaway global climate change.”]

... 

Psychotic Delusion

In an address titled “Economic Issues in Designing a Global Agreement on Global Warming” presented by Nordhaus to the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Science (10-12 March 2009), Nordhaus argues that it is not legitimate to try to second guess the market, going so far as to propose that people may “come to love the altered landscape of the warmer world.” It is most revealing that the world’s foremost scientists on climate change who understand the terrifying risks we now face due to lack of action invited one the most influential voices calling for caution and moderation to give a keynote address. 

Nordhaus uses his own magical economical model to spit out the very best apocalyptic scenario he would like our governments to adopt – one, in Nordhaus’s skewed view, that strengthens the economy. If the world does nothing, Nordhaus believes, we will reach a temperature increase of 3.1ºC by 2100 (a gross underestimate by most standards) and 5.3ºC by 2200. Instead, he suggests, the world should choose to spend what allows the temperature to rise by 2.6ºC by 2100, increasing to 3.5ºC by 2200 (keep in mind that any temperature increase will eventually double for future generations due to the inertia of the climate system). He presents this scenario delusion, which supports atmospheric concentrations rising to approximately 700 ppm, despite the fact that scientists claim such temperature increases will be catastrophic beyond measure. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research states “Our survival would very much depend on how well we were able to draw down carbon dioxide to 280 ppm”.

Capitalism in Wonderland. Brett Clark, John Bellamy Foster and Richard York, Monthly Review.

In a recent essay, “Economics Needs a Scientific Revolution,” in one of the leading scientific journals, Nature, physicist Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, a researcher for an investment management company, asked rhetorically, “What is the flagship achievement of economics?” Bouchaud’s answer: “Only its recurrent inability to predict and avert crises.” Although his discussion is focused on the current worldwide financial crisis, his comment applies equally well to mainstream economic approaches to the environment—where, for example, ancient forests are seen as non-performing assets to be liquidated, and clean air and water are luxury goods for the affluent to purchase at their discretion. The field of economics in the United States has long been dominated by thinkers who unquestioningly accept the capitalist status quo and, accordingly, value the natural world only in terms of how much short-term profit can be generated by its exploitation. As a result, the inability of received economics to cope with or even perceive the global ecological crisis is alarming in its scope and implications. 

Bouchaud penetratingly observes, “The supposed omniscience and perfect efficacy of a free market stems from economic work done in the 1950s and 1960s, which with hindsight looks more like propaganda against communism than plausible science.” The capitalist ideology that undergirds economics in the United States has led the profession to be detached from reality, rendering it incapable of understanding many of the crises the world faces.

350 is the wrong target: put the science first. David Spratt, Climate Code Red. Jan 22, 2009.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute and climate adviser to German Chancellor and the EU, who likewise is one of Europe’s leading climate scientists. On 15 September 2008, David Adam reported:

Professor John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, told the Guardian that only a return to pre-industrial levels of CO2 would be enough to guarantee a safe future for the planet... He said even a small increase in temperature could trigger one of several climatic tipping points, such as methane released from melting permafrost, and bring much more severe global warming. ‘It is a very sweeping argument, but nobody can say for sure that 330ppm is safe,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it will not matter whether we have 270ppm or 320ppm, but operating well outside the [historic] realm of carbon dioxide concentrations is risky as long as we have not fully understood the relevant feedback mechanisms. 

So 350 ppm is the wrong target because 350 ppm CO2 cannot restore the Arctic ice to its full extent. The people who run 350.org probably now recognise that, because their language is changing. One of their slides used to say: “We need to be here: 350”, it now says “we need to be lower than: 350ppm”. McKibben now talks about 350 ppm as being “the upper limit”, and in a recent radio interview said pre-industrial levels might be the only safe zone. But it’s too late to advocate targets that are only a signpost towards the target we really need to get to. 

Sorry, Bill and the crew at 350.org, you’re wrong about 350 being our campaign target for 2009 and the lead-up to Copenhagen. The most important number of earth is 300. That’s what Hansen is saying, that’s what Schellnhuber is saying. There’s no point campaigning on an inadequate target. We only get one chance at this, and advocating targets that will still fail to fully solve the problem is the most de-mobilising action we can take. 

Target 300 puts the science first.

Arctic Sea Ice - Methane Release - Planetary Emergency. Arctic Methane Emergency Group. Dec 4, 2014.

AMEG’s Declaration

Governments must get a grip on a situation which IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has ignored. A strategy of mitigation and adaptation is doomed to fail. It will be impossible to adapt to the worst consequences of global warming, as IPCC suggests.

The Arctic must be cooled, ASAP, to prevent the sea ice disappearing with disastrous global consequences 

...

Current situation and gross omissions from IPCC 

The IPCC WG1, WG2 and WG3 assessment reports (AR5) make no mention of the downward trend in sea ice volume, and rely on models which fail to properly capture the processes of warming and melting. Furthermore they fail to mention the strong evidence that Arctic warming is already a driver of climate change in the Northern Hemisphere, compounding the effects of global warming.

Arctic warming and sea ice retreat is already having a serious impact on climate change across the Northern Hemisphere, which is affecting food production, food prices and food security. The latest WG2 report claims that the Arctic sea ice will be subject to ‘very high risks with an additional warming of 2 degrees C’. In fact, the September sea ice volume is already down 75% with a trend to zero by September 2016, suggests that the Arctic is heading for complete meltdown, which would be a planetary catastrophe. The loss of Arctic ecosystems and the climate implications of ice disappearance are in fact acute risks NOW as both ice and ice-dependent species are set to disappear within a matter of years.

These are catastrophic omissions. AR5 is supposed to provide the best analysis of the state of the planet and its future climate, on which governments can base policy for protection of citizens. These omissions are leading governments into a false sense of security about the future of our planet.

The only clear policy deduction from AR5 concerns the reduction of CO2 emissions by keeping within a carbon budget. Reductions alone have no chance of preventing catastrophes arising from Arctic meltdown. Intervention to cool the Arctic is an absolute requirement to prevent such catastrophes. There is no realistic alternative.

The concept of a carbon budget, espoused in AR5, hides the short-term consequences of various powerful feedback processes which get zero or scant attention in AR5. In particular, snow and sea ice albedo feedback seems to be totally ignored in the budget. And the mounting concentration of methane in the atmosphere is ignored. The real truth is that the carbon budget has already been spent. WG3’s limit of 450 ppm for CO2 equivalent has already been passed, even without taking into account albedo loss.

Governments must also address ocean acidification, whose threat has also been ignored in AR5. There is no alternative but to start a major campaign for CO2 removal (CDR). The latest WG3 assessment report suggests CDR as a possibility for offsetting emissions, but only in so far as for keeping within their carbon budgets of 450ppm CO2e and above, which would have catastrophic consequences for humanity, even without all the other overlooked positive feedbacks described above. CDR must be adopted, being the only possibility in order to stop the existing contribution to global warming of CO2 and ocean acidification.

Meanwhile there is the threat of Arctic methane emissions to burst above the gigaton level, totally ignored in AR5. And the AR5 projections of sea level rise are hopelessly optimistic if the sea ice disappears as rapidly as the trend indicates.

Daily Climate Links: 4/19/2016

March temperature. Arctic News.

At the Paris Agreement, nations committed to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. 

To see how much temperatures have risen compared to pre-industrial levels, a comparison with the period 1951-1980 does not give the full picture...  the global temperature rise from 1890-1910 was 1.58°C or 2.84°F. 

The temperature rise is even higher when looking at measurements from land-only stations... a Land-only anomaly of 2.42°C or 4.36°F. 

Taking into account that temperatures had already risen by some 0.3°C (0.54°F) before 1900, this adds up to a total temperature rise on land in March 2016 of 2.72°C (4.9°F) from the start of the industrial revolution.

Do You Care Enough About Future People to Leave Them a Livable Planet? Louis Putterman, evonomics. Apr 17, 2016.

El Nino: Feeling the heat. FT.

Climate justice movement shakes Canada's New Democratic Party. Richard Fidler, Climate and Capitalism. Apr 11, 2016.

complimentary webinar tomorrow:

THE NEW BOTTOM LINE: ESG as a driver of investment strategy and performance. Responsible-Investor.com.

Date: April 20th, 2016
Time: 10:00–11:00 EST

Discussion and Q&A:
• Portfolio management in transition: long termism, carbon risk, ESG
• It’s all about performance: ESG as a driver of investment strategy and performance
• Shock protection: using ESG analysis to mitigate downside risks
• The importance of access to accurate and transparent data

Daily Climate Links: 4/18/2016

Humans and El Nino team up to create record jump in CO2 pollution. Scientific American.

carbon dioxide concentrations reached 409.44 parts per million on April 9 at an air-sampling station atop Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, a rise of more than five ppm since the same date last year.

Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems. George Monbiot, Guardian.

Why companies like Google and Walmart are buying so much wind power. Washington Post.

El Nino is turning the Pacific Ocean's coral reefs into ghost towns. Popular Science.

Breaking free from fossil fuels. Project Syndicate.

We can phase out fossil fuels within a decade, study says. Motherboard.

Ban urges insurance industry to take leadership in climate change response. UN.


scientific articles:
Opportunities for advances in climate change economics. Burke et al. Science.

Photovoltaic materials: present efficiencies and future challenges. Polman et al. Science.