Author: Bryan Walker

Deep Water

We know that sea level rise is an inevitable consequence of the global warming that our continued burning of fossil fuels is causing. What we don’t know is how much to expect and how soon to expect it. Journalist Daniel Grossman in his Kindle Single Deep Water: As Polar Ice Melts, Scientists Debate How High Our Oceans Will Rise explores the momentous issue by looking at the work of three scientists who study the past history of elevated sea levels to get a better understanding of what is likely ahead for humanity. Grossman writes from a close acquaintance with climate science and his ability to distil the science in readily understandable form for the general reader is outstanding.

Paul Hearty, “talented and cantankerous”, is a geologist who has argued from his studies of inter-glacial periods that if the Earth warms by two degrees the huge glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica could substantially melt in a short space of time. His field work in the Bahamas and Bermuda, which he regards as a relatively stable region geologically, has led him to the conclusion that in the warm interglacial 400,000 years ago (Stage 11) sea level rose by as much as around 19 metres. Paleoclimatologist Maureen Raymo doesn’t share that view but it was Hearty she invited in 2009 to collaborate in field work with her in Western Australia seeking evidence of sea level rise in the Pliocene. Grossman travelled with them as journalist and gives a lively account of the expedition.

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Nick Smith: another fossil fuel fail

MP Nick Smith in a NZ Herald opinion piece this week uses the fracking debate to advance the cause of fossil fuel mining. He claims that fracking is important in the development of geothermal energy and then moves seamlessly to the notion that we are desperately in need of unconventional natural gas in order to save us from falling back on coal, which we will otherwise “inevitably burn”. In defending fracking he manages to nicely couple the fossil fuel natural gas with a renewable energy source, geothermal.

It’s not my purpose to argue here about fracking as a technology. What is dismaying about Smith’s article is the complacency with which he advances the cause of natural gas. Writing enthusiastically of the huge unconventional shale gas resources in the US, he claims gas emits one-third the greenhouse gas emissions of coal. I know its emissions are lower, but it was news to me that they were as low as that. I could find no source to substantiate that figure. A little over half is the best figure I have been able to locate, and there are big questions about methane leakage in the fracking process. However let that pass. The real issue is the unrestrained pursuit of unconventional fossil fuels, which as James Hansen has reminded us often enough will mean game over for the climate.

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Cold Cash, Cool Climate

I’m no entrepreneur, but I enjoyed reading energy scientist Jonathan Koomey’s book Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-Based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs. It’s comforting to be reminded that not everything in the mitigation of climate change depends on governments, that there is a lively creativity abroad in the entrepreneurial world which can take up the challenge without waiting on the interminable processes of governmental negotiation or the rigidities of big business.

Koomey makes much of this. He records that in his experience it is those who carry the entrepreneurial spirit who are most comfortable with rapid change and least tolerant of fossilised thinking.  “Their whole purpose in life is to intensify and encourage what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called ‘creative destruction’, and they are famously scornful of the phrase ‘it can’t be done’.” 

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Kerry Emanuel: the role of reason

The reign of climate change denial in the US Republican Party is an extraordinary spectacle, hard to credit in an educated modern democracy. It’s also a very sad spectacle in view of the prominent role the US plays in contributing to climate change and the potential leading role it could play in mitigating it. I often wonder what members of the party who take science seriously and understand climate change make of the phenomenon. A recent podcast interview with noted atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel, a former registered Republican, indicates that for him at least it has meant becoming an Independent of conservative inclination.

Emanuel was a keynote speaker last year at a New Hampshire conference run during the Republican primaries by a group of Republican voters upset by their party’s anti-science rhetoric. As a result he was subjected to a torrent of particularly nasty hate mail, as reported on Mother Jones.

The interview I’m reporting in this post was conducted by Chris Mooney, author of The Republican Brain. On the science Emanuel says the kind of things we hear from many climate scientists. But it’s always worth being reminded that such statements represent a very wide body of scientific opinion. I’ve picked out a couple of examples from the interview.

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McKibben: naming the enemy

“It has become a rogue industry, reckless like no other force on Earth. It is Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our planetary civilization.”  These are the words Bill McKibben uses to describe the fossil-fuel industry in a recent striking article in Rolling Stone which has received wide attention. It’s well worth reading, not least for the elegant lucidity of its prose. This post is not intended as some kind of summary, but rather as a reflection on McKibben’s notion that we need to recognise that we are up against a formidable enemy.  He moves to this declaration by considering three numbers.

The first is 2o Celsius, the level of warming which is widely accepted politically as not to be exceeded. Scientifically it can’t be regarded as a safe level of warming, and it’s certainly not so regarded by McKibben, but ”political realism bested scientific data, and the world settled on the two-degree target”.

The second number is 565 gigatons, which is the amount of carbon dioxide scientists estimate can still be added to the atmosphere by mid-century and give us a reasonable (80%) hope of staying below two degrees.

The third number is 2,795 gigatons, which is the amount of carbon already contained in the proven coal and oil and gas reserves of the fossil-fuel companies, and the countries that act like fossil-fuel companies. “In short, it’s the fossil fuel we’re currently planning to burn.” And it’s five times more than we can burn and have any hope of staying within two degrees of warming.

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