R.I.P. Will Steffen

Will Steffen’s crucial climate ideas on “Hothouse Earth”, tipping cascades and non-linearity. David Spratt, Climate Code Red. Feb. 1, 2023.

(go to Spratt's article at Climate Code Red for active links)


The eminent Australian climate scientist, and former Labor government advisor and head of climate at ANU, Will Steffen, who died early this week from complications following cancer surgery, will be remembered for some of the big, crucial ideas he and his collaborators contributed to the understanding of the Earth System, particularly planetary boundaries, climate tipping point vulnerabilities and cascades, risk and nonlinearity, and the “Hothouse Earth” scenario.

Particularly in the last few years, Steffen was very clear and forthright in communicating the threat and the dynamics of the climate system, and the trajectory towards collapse:

"Given the momentum in both the Earth and human systems, and the growing difference between the ‘reaction time’ needed to steer humanity towards a more sustainable future, and the ‘intervention time’ left to avert a range of catastrophes in both the physical climate system (e.g., melting of Arctic sea ice) and the biosphere (e.g., loss of the Great Barrier Reef), we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse … That is, the intervention time we have left has, in many cases, shrunk to levels that are shorter than the time it would take to transition to a more sustainable system.”

More recently, Steffen and others asked:

“Could anthropogenic climate change result in worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction? At present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic. Yet there are ample reasons to suspect that climate change could result in a global catastrophe.”

And in a recent book chapter, "The Earth System, the Great Acceleration and the Anthropocene", he recognised that climate change was already dangerous:

"It is clear from observations of climate change-related impacts in Australia alone – the massive bushfires of the 2019–2020 Black Summer; the third mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in only 5 years; and long-term cool-season drying of the country’s southeast agricultural zone – that even a 1.1 °C temperature rise has put us into a dangerous level of climate change.”

Steffen was the key scientific climate advisor to the 2007-2013 Australian Labor government. In that role I often disagreed with his political advocacy, and told him so. Will’s advocacy stuck pretty rigidly to the 2°C, 450-ppm-CO2 goal that was de rigueur in global and national policy-making circles in those days, even as the science was already clear that it was a dangerous goal, and Jim Hansen had persuasively outlined the case for a goal of under 350 ppm, which had been adopted around the world by some more progressive parts of the climate movement.

But Steffen was far from alone amongst scientists around the world who become jammed between politics and science, in the struggle for balance between research knowledge and wanting, or sounding, to be politically relevant to governments either in denial or unwilling to grasp the size of the task.

At the same time, Steffen was keenly aware in 2008 that “the scientific community is underestimating the speed at which the climate is changing”, warning that the world's sea levels could rise by up to four metres by the end of the century.

And whilst Ross Garnaut’s 2008 report for Labor on climate change had contemplated the 450 ppm and 550 ppm goals (with short-term warming of around 2°C and 3°C respectively), Steffen in a 2009 report for the climate change department had recognised that 550 ppm (a doubling of the pre-industrial CO2 level) could lead to 6°C of warming:

“... when ice extent is treated not as a forcing but as a climate system response, so that both fast and slow feedbacks are included, the climate sensitivity approximately doubles (Hansen et al. 2008). Therefore, the eventual temperature rise in response to a doubling of CO2 is at least 3C and likely up to 6C, depending on the behaviour of the slow feedbacks.”

Many scientists and collaborators have already expressed their sorrow at the death of Will Steffen and paid tribute to his legacy, for example here and here and here.

Steffen’s passing is a great loss to climate understanding and advocacy in Australia, and to the research community at a global level. I will remember his work particularly for publications over the last fifteen years that dealt with system-level analysis of climate change, boundaries, risks and dynamics. In no particular order, some key papers and contributions in which he was either lead author or a co-author include the following:


1. “Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against” (2020)

Authored by Timothy Lenton, Johan Rockström, Owen Gaffney, Stefan Rahmstorf, Katherine Richardson, Will Steffen and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, this paper was the first peer-reviewed paper (to my knowledge) to recognise the climate emergency as constituted by existential risks: “We are in a climate emergency… this is an existential threat to civilization” and “the evidence from tipping points alone suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute”.

The paper pointed to “biosphere tipping points which can trigger abrupt carbon release back to the atmosphere.. Permafrost across the Arctic is beginning to irreversibly thaw and release carbon dioxide and methane… the boreal forest in the subarctic is increasingly vulnerable.”

The authors said that:

“the clearest emergency would be if we were approaching a global cascade of tipping points that led to a new, less habitable, ‘hothouse’ climate state. Interactions could happen through ocean and atmospheric circulation or through feedbacks that increase greenhouse-gas levels and global temperature. Alternatively, strong cloud feedbacks could cause a global tipping point. We argue that cascading effects might be common. Research last year analysed 30 types of regime shift spanning physical climate and ecological systems... This indicated that exceeding tipping points in one system can increase the risk of crossing them in others. Such links were found for 45% of possible interactions. In our view, examples are starting to be observed.”

The conclusion to be drawn from all of this is that the threat, the risks, are overwhelming. And it is a slap to conventional economic modelling of climate risks, when they write that:

“If damaging tipping cascades can occur and a global tipping point cannot be ruled out, then this is an existential threat to civilization. No amount of economic cost–benefit analysis is going to help us. We need to change our approach to the climate problem.”

2. “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene” (2018)

With Steffen as lead author, this paper known colloquially as the “Hothouse Earth” paper, and one that captured the public imagination, was downloaded 270,000 times in just the first few days after publication.

A “Hothouse Earth” scenario is described, in which system feedbacks and their mutual interaction could drive the Earth System climate to a point of no return, whereby further warming would become self-sustaining (without further human perturbations). This “Hothouse Earth” planetary threshold could exist at a temperature rise as low as 2°C, possibly even in the 1.5°C-2°C range.

Steffen also said that: “even if the Paris Accord target of a 1.5°C to 2.0°C rise in temperature is met, we cannot exclude the risk that a cascade of feedbacks could push the Earth System irreversibly onto a ‘Hothouse Earth’ pathway.”

In other words, even 1.5°C of warming could be so dangerous that further warming would become self-sustaining; a warning seemingly ignored by policymakers and most advocates.


3. Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios (2022)

This paper published last year by ten authors, including Steffen, cannot be underestimated in bringing together a high-level analysis of the need for climate research to focus on the worse-case high-end possibilities:

• “Prudent risk management requires consideration of bad-to-worst-case scenarios.” We know that temperature rise has “fat tails”: low-probability, high-impact extreme outcomes. Large uncertainties about dangerous surprises “are reasons to prioritize rather than neglect them.” Thus “a thorough risk assessment would need to consider how risks spread, interact, amplify, and are aggravated by human responses”.
• “Climate damages are likely to be nonlinear” and result in an even larger risk tail. There are feedbacks in the carbon cycle and potential tipping points that could generate high greenhouse concentrations that are often missing from models.” There are even more uncertain feedbacks, which, in a very worst case, might amplify to an irreversible transition into a “Hothouse Earth” state [including] “recent simulations suggest that stratocumulus cloud decks might abruptly be lost at CO2 concentrations that could be approached by the end of the century, causing an additional ∼8 °C global warming. Large uncertainties about dangerous surprises are reasons to prioritize rather than neglect them.”
• Feedbacks and future warming: Declining emissions does not rule out … extreme climate change [due to] feedbacks in the carbon cycle and potential tipping points that could generate high greenhouse concentrations that are often missing from models. Examples include Arctic permafrost thawing that releases methane and CO2 , carbon loss due to intense droughts and fires in the Amazon, and the apparent slowing of dampening feedbacks such as natural carbon sink capacity. These are likely to not be proportional to warming… instead, abrupt and/or irreversible changes may be triggered at a temperature threshold. Particularly worrying is a “tipping cascade” in which multiple tipping elements interact in such a way that tipping one threshold increases the likelihood of tipping another.

4. "A safe operating space for humanity" (2009)

Led by John Rockstrom and Will Steffen, with 27 others (including Hansen and Schellnhuber), this landmark paper proposed that a safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide should not exceed 350 ppm:

"We propose that human changes to atmospheric CO2 concentrations should not exceed 350 parts per million by volume, and that radiative forcing should not exceed 1 watt per square metre above pre-industrial levels. Transgressing these boundaries will increase the risk of irreversible climate change, such as the loss of major ice sheets, accelerated sea-level rise and abrupt shifts in forest and agricultural systems. Current CO2 concentration stands at 387 p.p.m.v. and the change in radiative forcing is 1.5 watts per square metre. There are at least three reasons for our proposed climate boundary. First, current climate models may significantly underestimate the severity of long-term climate change for a given concentration of greenhouse gases. Most models suggest that a doubling in atmospheric CO2 concentration will lead to a global temperature rise of about 3°C (with a probable uncertainty range of 2–4.5°C) once the climate has regained equilibrium. But these models do not include long-term reinforcing feedback processes that further warm the climate, such as decreases in the surface area of ice cover or changes in the distribution of vegetation. If these slow feedbacks are included, doubling CO2 levels gives an eventual temperature increase of 6°C (with a probable uncertainty range of 4–8°C). This would threaten the ecological life-support systems that have developed in the late Quaternary environment, and would severely challenge the viability of contemporary human societies."

5. “Human impacts on planetary boundaries amplified by Earth system interactions” (2020)

In this paper, Lade, Steffen et al surveyed and provisionally quantified interactions between the Earth system processes represented by the planetary boundaries and investigated their consequences for sustainability governance and identified a dense network of interactions between the planetary boundaries. The resulting cascades and feedbacks predominantly amplify human impacts on the Earth system and thereby shrink the safe operating space for future human impacts on the Earth system. The three key findings for policymakers were:

• Interactions are crucial to understanding the planetary boundaries and humanity’s impacts upon them. For example, biophysically-mediated interactions have almost doubled direct human impacts on the planetary boundaries.
• Most interactions we found were amplifying, meaning that impacts on one planetary boundary lead to increased impacts on other planetary boundaries. Cascading of human actions through multiple components of the Earth system complicates governance of the Earth system. On the other hand, these interactions offer substantial scope for synergies: if impacts on one planetary boundary are decreased, impacts on other planetary boundaries may also lessen.
• Interactions between planetary boundaries lead to trade-offs between the boundaries. For example, interactions between agricultural activity and carbon emissions mean that high levels of both cannot be maintained. On the other hand, these trade-offs offer humanity some freedom in choosing how to navigate to a safe operating space.

6. Model limitations

Will Steffen was clear about the limitations of models and a quantification fetish when dealing with hard-to-project non-linear change and “Hothouse Earth” possibilities, for example in this Guardian article from 2018:

“I think the dominant linear, deterministic framework for assessing climate change is flawed, especially at higher levels of temperature rise. So, yes, model projections using models that don’t include these processes indeed become less useful at higher temperature levels. Or, as my co-author John Schellnhuber says, we are making a big mistake when we think we can ‘park’ the Earth System at any given temperature rise – say 2°C – and expect it to stay there”.

“Even at the current level of warming of about 1°C above pre-industrial, we may have already crossed a tipping point for one of the feedback processes (Arctic summer sea ice), and we see instabilities in others – permafrost melting, Amazon forest dieback, boreal forest dieback and weakening of land and ocean physiological carbon sinks. And we emphasise that these processes are not linear and often have built-in feedback processes that generate tipping point behaviour. For example, for melting permafrost, the chemical process that decomposes the peat generates heat itself, which leads to further melting and so on.”

This is important because so much policymaking has been based on a goal of climate getting towards 2°C and then assuming that could become stable, when in fact the paleoclimate history suggest that 2°C is not a point of system stability, but a signpost on the road to a much hotter 3–4°C outcome.

And with William Knorr in The Conversation, Steffen warned that due to model limitations, we will not know exactly how the climate crisis will unfold until it’s too late.

Finally, Steffen’s capacity to communicate clearly and succinctly is well encapsulated in an interview with The Intercept when he said getting greenhouse gas emissions down fast has to be “the primary target of policy and economics” with something “like wartime footing”.

That sounded to me like a very short, effective description of the climate emergency.

Is humanity dying?

Is humanity dying? Christian Mihatsch, Climate reporter, June 9, 2019.

The climate crisis is becoming increasingly apocalyptic. It is unlikely that our civilization will end soon — but possible. And this possibility is still receiving too little attention.

The perception of the climate problem is currently changing rapidly. The term "climate change" is increasingly being replaced by "climate crisis", and instead of "warming", what will probably prevail is "climate overheating" or a similar term. But is it appropriate to speak of the end of our civilization or even the extinction of humanity?

Some of the most important climate movements are doing just that. Extinction Rebellion is already carrying extinction in its name and the movement's first call is: Tell the truth and explain the state of emergency.

Fridays for Future's Greta Thunberg also clearly states what options humanity has: "Either we choose to preserve our civilization or we do not." And addressing world leaders, Thunberg says: "I want you to panic."

But is there really a reason to panic? The IPCC says that overheating can theoretically be stopped at 1.5 degrees. The IPCC reports are considered the "gold standard" of climate science because they summarize the findings of thousands of studies.

But the reports are also criticized, for example, because of their language. Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, ex-head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and an IPCC author, says that among IPCC authors a trend has developed "to err on the side of least drama". So you may present a better situation than exists in order not to sound alarmist.

The “probability obsession" of the IPCC

In addition, the IPCC assumes that warming will continue in a linear fashion. However, many climate models show that warming is accelerating. The difference: Instead of 2040, the 1.5-degree threshold will be reached in 2030 (see diagram).

In addition, the IPCC does not take into account feedback processes such as permafrost thawing, which may [will] cause climate overheating to increase.

According to Schellnhuber, however, the biggest drawback is the IPCC's "probability obsession" because it means not enough attention is paid to the most dangerous developments: "Calculating probabilities has little meaning in the most critical areas, such as the thawing of permafrost or the possible collapse of entire states."

In addition, the damage of, for example, the collapse of our civilization cannot be quantified. A recent study by the Australian think tank Breakthrough states: "A risk is usually calculated by multiplying the probability of an event by the expected damage, but if the damage can no longer be quantified, this method breaks down."

But even in the quantifiable realm, one underestimates the risk by focusing on relatively probable warming and masking worst-case scenarios. For these damages increase exponentially (see chart below).

Unlikely, but catastrophic

Schellnhuber calls for less attention be paid to "probabilities" and more to "possibilities". "This corresponds to the scenario planning in the economy, where the consequences of possible developments are examined, which seem unlikely, but have far-reaching consequences."

That's exactly what the authors of the Breakthrough study, David Spratt and Ian Dunlop, have done, developing a scenario that will raise the climate by three degrees by 2050. That's not extreme. For the 30 years to the middle of the century, there is a five percent chance that the climate will warm up by 3.5 to 4 degrees.

How sensitive is the climate to the warming of the atmosphere
(climate sensitivity) and what are the consequences?
The probability (likelihood) multiplied by the damage (impact)
gives the risk (risk). The light blue bar shows that very
unlikely developments are the biggest risk.
(Graphic from the study).

To show how this can happen, Spratt and Dunlop tell a "story": In the coming decade, the climate crisis is still receiving too little attention, and emissions will continue to rise until 2030, only to decline thereafter. Then it is already too late and the climate warms by 2050 by three degrees.

In retrospect, scientists then find that several tipping points have been reached, such as the thawing of permafrost and droughts in the Amazon rainforest. One-third of the earth is now too hot for at least 20 days a year to allow people to survive outdoors. Food production is no longer enough to feed all people, and there are more than a billion climate refugees.

As I said: The probability of this development is around five percent. 

[MW: nope: its higher... this estimate of probability is based on the IPCC stuff, which, as mentioned above, is plagued by "conservatism" and "scientific reticence"... how can you properly calculate the probabilities if you ignore the positive feedback effects that you can't include in your models because you don't understand them well enough yet?! next gen climate models are increasingly showing that ECS, or earth climate sensitivity, is higher than previously assumed. see the Ian Welsh article posted June 16 about everything happening faster, in a bad way, than scientific consensus said it would. UN is always too optimistic (in the same way the consensus of economists always is)]

Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg invoke such scenarios with their apocalyptic language. Still, it is more likely that our civilization will not end and humanity will not die out. 

[says you, and your optimism bias, i.e. wishful thinking not based on facts... but under business as usual, we are f'd; and even if we transform everything NOW (As Naomi Klein says, This Changes Everything), it may still be too late due to tipping points, in particular methane release from permafrost and seafloor] 

Nevertheless, it is possible if our protection from climate change continues to be only half-hearted.

These "possibilities" must be given more attention, says Schellnhuber: "This is especially true when it comes to the survival of our civilization."

Existential climate-related security risk. David Spratt and Ian Dunlop, Breakthrough Institute. 

A scenario approach

Understanding climate-driven security risks relies on climate impact projections, but much knowledge produced for policymakers is too conservative. Because the risks are now existential, a new approach to climate and security risk assessment is required using scenario analysis.

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.