Baird's Cancun Position: "All Oars in Water -- Except for Canada's"

John Baird, notorious for his anti-Kyoto antics, is at it again. According to the Globe, the

"...Environment Minister says Canada will be pressing for an approach that leaves no one out, that demands all 'oars in the water'...."

But Canada is in no position to lecture anybody about "oars in water". Having promised to reduce carbon emissions in Kyoto and done nothing about it since then (actually increasing emissions significantly), Canada would have very little credibility when trying to convince other countries to "do as we say but not as we do".

Moreover, since the Industrial Revolution, the rich, industrialized countries like Canada have emitted most of the carbon. Much of it is still in the atmosphere, harming the climate. The fact that countries like China and India have become major emitters on an annual basis recently is not nearly as significant as Baird and Co. would have you think. Even setting aside their much lower emissions per capita, it would be many years before China's and India's share of the accumulating carbon in the air equals that of countries that had been at it for centuries. Confusing flows (annual emissions) with stocks (accumulated pollutants) is such a basic, blatant error that it is clearly nothing more than an excuse for further inaction.

Insisting on this unreasonable position is a sure way to sabotage progress at Cancun -- developing nations are already warning that the talks are in danger. Nothing would please the fossil fuel special interest groups than the collapse of negotiations for at least one more year. For the planet, on the other hand it is total accumulated carbon that matters.

Dr. James Hansen states that

"...we must reduce the [accumulated] CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 ppm in order to avoid disaster for coming generations.

"Humans have caused carbon dioxide to increase from 280 ppm in 1750 to 387 ppm in 2009. 387 ppm is already in the dangerous range. Such a reduction is still practical, but just barely [bolding in original]"

He also warns that

"Continued unfettered burning of all fossil fuels and other human-caused climate changes will cause the climate system to pass tipping points, such that we hand our children and grandchildren a dynamic situation that is out of their control.

"If we continue down this path, by the end of this century envision a future where:

• droughts, heat waves, and forest fires of unprecedented ferocity

• 20% of Earth’s species—about two million species—will be extinct or on the way to certain extinction

• a rapidly rising sea level, with more coming out of humanity’s control

• frontal (cyclonic) storms with hurricane-like winds, which, with rising seas and storm surges, will devastate thousands of coastal cities

But that does not have to be our future [bolding in original]."

We must act now. Obstructionism must not carry the day.

[Important Notice]

James Hansen and Climate Change - on TVO Big Ideas, TODAY Sat. and Sun., 5pm Eastern, or Download Online

Check out this very informative and sobering presentation. Hansen is a leading client scientist at NASA, who has been very outspoken about the hazards of doing nothing.* He gives detailed rebuttals to climate change deniers/skeptic claims, warns about being in the danger zone already, and explains the risk of reaching sudden points of irreversible change. On the plus side, he also states that it not too late to act.

The video is already available to download from the TVO show's video podcast feed http://feeds.tvo.org/tvobigideasVideo

Direct link to video file: http://feeds.tvo.org/~r/tvobigideasVideo/~3/DPxmIcuqSF0/007559_480x270_512k.mp4

Note: MP4 video with MP4 audio, Size 215MB, Length 53:30 (MM:SS), Resolution 480x270. May need to adjust brightness/contrast/saturation for best results, depending on your display settings and visual preferences. Subtitles do not seem to be included.

It should be available eventually for viewing online (Flash player, no big MP4 download needed) via their Past Episode page at http://www.tvo.org/TVOsites/WebObjects/TvoMicrosite.woa?bigideas_pastepisodes

(H/T Sudbury Steve.)


* See Storms of My Grandchildren - a call to action for more about Dr. Hansen's book, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.

[Important Notice]

Climate Worsening Faster Than Predicted - But Canada "Voting for Apocalypse" at UN Talks

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Sounds nice -- until you think about it:

• Record high temperatures in the 30 C range in Eastern Canada -- in Early October -- Rest Of Month Warmer Than Average Throughout Canada
  

"... Enjoy it while it lasts, because you 'know what's ahead.'" --Environment Canada's David Phillips

Sure, there's some cold weather ahead this winter -- but what about a few years from now? Could we have more of this:

"'We've got an invisible disaster going on [in Toronto and area],' Mr. Phillips said, adding that the ground in some parts of the region has become so dry that it isn't able to absorb water any more, and that young trees may not make it to spring.'"

Source: Gandhi, U. (Sept 26, 2007). Weather continues to set records. Globe & Mail, p. A15, via Gale Group or Globe & Mail (subscription/payment required for either one - public library may provide free access to Gale).

The global headlines are grim:

• Arctic thaw may be at "tipping point"

"OSLO, Sept 28 (Reuters) - A record melt of Arctic summer sea ice this month may be a sign that global warming is reaching a critical trigger point that could accelerate the northern thaw, some scientists say.

"'The reason so much (of the Arctic ice) went suddenly is that it is hitting a tipping point that we have been warning about for the past few years,' James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Reuters.

The Arctic summer sea ice shrank by more than 20 percent below the previous 2005 record low in mid-September to 4.13 million sq km (1.6 million sq miles), according to a 30-year satellite record. It has now frozen out to 4.2 million sq km."

• "Pollution 'beyond worst-case scenario': Global economic growth boosts greenhouse-gas levels faster than predicted, expert says"
  

'"...the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that can potentially cause dangerous climate change,' Flannery told the broadcaster yesterday. 'We are already at great risk of dangerous climate change, that's what these figures say. It's not next year or next decade, it's now.'

"Flannery, whose recent book The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth made best-seller lists, said the data showed the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions had reached about 455 parts per million by mid-2005, well ahead of scientists' previous calculations.

"'We thought we'd be at that threshold within about a decade, that we had that much time,' Flannery said. 'I mean, that's beyond the limits of projection, beyond the worst-case scenario as we thought of it in 2001,' when the last major IPCC report was issued."

• See also Climate change happening faster, scientist says
  

• 10-year forecast a grim one: scientists - Half of next decade will be warmest on record

"Global warming will slow briefly in the next year or two, but then charge ahead, making at least half of the years after 2009 warmer than at any other time in recorded history, British scientists claim [...] [in a study published] in Science, a major journal scientists rely on to judge and announce top discoveries."

• Humid enough for you? Blame global warming, scientists say

Apparently, it's the heat -- and the humidity!

• Drought catastrophe stalks Australia's food bowl

Meanwhile,

• Nations backing off on greenhouse cuts

"The European Union and many developing nations such as China and India want industrial states to use the stringent 25-40 percent range to guide future talks to force a shift away from fossil fuels, blamed by U.N. reports for stoking global warming.

"But Russia, Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland objected to setting the stringent range in negotiations about extending the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, the main plan for fighting global warming that runs to 2012, delegates said.

"'The lower the stabilization level (of greenhouse gases) achieved, the lower the consequent damages,' the draft said. It mentions the option of 25-40 percent cuts but drops a previous reference to them as an indicative guide for future work.

"'This is voting for the apocalypse,' said Stephanie Tunmore of environmental group Greenpeace. 'The 25-40 percent range is needed to help avert dangerous climate change' such as more powerful storms, rising seas and melting glaciers, she said.

"'Japan is willing to let the typhoons roll in and the water flow onto its coastal land. Switzerland is committed to melt all its remaining glaciers,' environmentalists said in a newsletter" [bolding added].

Apparently, "Canada's New Government" is willing to let much of the Maritime Provinces be washed away, Arctic ice to melt even faster, and the rest of us to suffer from drought!

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One Degree of Desperation (Or, What if NASA's James Hansen is Right Again?)

NASA scientist James Hansen's 1988 warnings about climate change have proved to be largely correct (realclimate.org). The IPCC has recently estimated relatively slow sea level rise this century (18–59 cm, with a midrange of 20–43 cm). But Hansen suggests in a scientific paper that 5 meters per century would be a more realistic estimate. He add in the same paper that

"The threat of a large sea level change is a principal element in our argument (Hansen et al 2006a, 2006b, 2007) that the global community must aim to keep additional global warming less than 1 °C above the 2000 temperature, and even 1 °C may be too great. In turn, this implies a CO₂ limit of about 450 ppm, or less" [emphasis added]. [1]

Or else, it's "Goodbye Miami", as New Scientist says on a recent cover. Their map of Florida in 2007 and 2107 would come as a shock to the many Canadians who are familiar with South Florida's sunny shores. It gets worse: as Michael Le Page points out,

"Without mega-engineering projects to protect them, a 5-metre rise would inundate large parts of many cities - including New York, London, Sydney, Vancouver, Mumbai and Tokyo - and leave surrounding areas vulnerable to storm surges. In Florida, Louisiana, the Netherlands, Bangladesh and elsewhere, whole regions and cities may vanish. China's economic powerhouse, Shanghai, has an average elevation of just 4 metres" (New Scientist, "If sea level rises by 5 metres..." [near bottom of page; emphasis added]).

For the devastating effects on Canada's Maritime Provinces, see my previous blog post.

Hansen and his co-authors write in another recent scientific paper [2]:

"With GHGs continuing to increase, the planetary energy imbalance provides ample energy to melt ice corresponding to several metres of sea level per century

[...]

"The gravest threat we foresee starts with surface melt on West Antarctica and interaction among positive feedbacks leading to catastrophic ice loss.

[...]

Our concern that BAU [Business As Usual] GHG scenarios would cause large sea-level rise this century (Hansen 2005) differs from estimates of IPCC (2001, 2007), which foresees little or no contribution to twenty-first century sea-level rise from Greenland and Antarctica. However, the IPCC analyses and projections do not well account for the nonlinear physics of wet ice sheet disintegration, ice streams and eroding ice shelves, nor are they consistent with the palaeoclimate evidence we have presented for the absence of discernable lag between ice sheet forcing and sea-level rise.

"The best chance for averting ice sheet disintegration seems to be intense simultaneous efforts to reduce both CO2 emissions and non-CO2 climate forcings. As mentioned above, there are multiple benefits from such actions. However, even with such actions, it is probable that the dangerous level of atmospheric GHGs will be passed, at least temporarily. We have presented evidence (Hansen
et al. 2006b) that the dangerous level of CO2 can be no more than approximately 450 ppm. Our present discussion, including the conclusion that slow feedbacks (ice, vegetation and GHG) can come into play on century time-scales or sooner, makes it probable that the dangerous level is even lower.

"Present knowledge does not permit accurate specification of the dangerous level of human-made GHGs. However, it is much lower than has commonly been assumed. If we have not already passed the dangerous level, the energy infrastructure in place ensures that we will pass it within several decades" [bolding added; italics in original].

Among other things, Hansen and his co-authors have a plan to save the Earth:

"...a feasible strategy for planetary rescue almost surely requires a means of extracting GHGs from the air. Development of CO2 capture at power plants, with below-ground CO2 sequestration, may be a critical element. Injection of the CO2 well beneath the ocean floor assures its stability (House et al. 2006). If the power plant fuel is derived from biomass, such as cellulosic fibres... grown without excessive fertilization that produces N2O or other offsetting GHG emissions, it will provide continuing drawdown of atmospheric CO2" [2] [bolding added].

In other words:

• Take more CO2 out of the air than we are putting in.
• Use biomass fuels to remove CO2 from the air.
  
• Don't let the CO2 from the biomass go back into the air, for a new crop of plants to absorb (the conventional biofuels cycle). We don't want the CO2 to be released at all, as that would provide no net reduction.
• Instead, sequester the CO2 at source, right from the power plant.
• Put it below the ocean floor, where it would be safe forever.

Sadly, world leaders had been giving up even on the IPCC's milder recommended target of holding the warming at 2 degrees C. How would they react to Hansen's target of 1 degree C or less? George Monbiot thinks that if people understood the implications, there would be a massive movement to demand immediate action, but he notes that most people go about their business as if there is no prominent scientist predicting a major planetary disaster.

On the other hand, some environmentalists are sceptical about CO2 sequestration and storage, and an international convention may regulate any materials stored in or under the ocean.

But what if there's even a 10% chance that Hansen is right about the potential damage if we do not follow his proposals? Multiply that 10% chance by the forecast amount of damage, and you still get an awesome risk!

Is it time for both politicians and environmentalists to start taking his latest research very seriously?


______________

[1] James Hansen, 2007. Scientific reticence and sea level rise, Environ. Res. Lett. 2 (April-June 2007) 024002, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/2/2/024002 (via newscientist.com)

[2] James Hansen et al, 2007. Climate Change and Trace Gases. Philiosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - A. Vol 365, pp 1925-1954. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2007.2052. [PDF] screen pages 25-26 of 30 (via monbiot.com)

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