My review of Broecker and Kunzig’s book Fixing Climate drew attention to the work of Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University who has been working on ways of scrubbing CO2 out of the atmosphere for sequestration. Lackner considers sequestration the harder problem of the two and believes that the only method adequate in the long-term is mineral sequestration, achieved by hurrying along the natural process geochemical weathering whereby rocks react with CO2, removing it from the air to form limestone and other carbonates.
Author: Bryan Walker
Treating a Fever
William Calvin, emeritus professor in medicine of the University of Washington in Seattle, has written many books for the lay reader in the course of his career, most of them concerned with the human brain. But for a quarter of a century he has been following climate science literature closely, talking with its practitioners and writing articles for the public. Now he has produced a book on the subject: Global Fever: How to Treat Climate Change. He likens himself to a GP reporting on the results of the tests and analysis of the specialists and helping the patient understand the treatment options.
He is keen on analogy and quotes a memorable passage from poet Robert Frost on the metaphorical nature of thinking. Overheated frogs, things going pop, slippery slopes, creeps and leaps, domino effects, feedback loops, vicious cycles are some of the metaphors pressed into service in the major concern of the book – how one thing leads to another in climate change.
The book does not attempt a systematic account of modern climate science, the broad findings of which are taken as fully established. Rather it focuses on trying to explain what Calvin calls the principles of acceleration which are at work in climate change – the “how” of things, the underlying mechanisms. Feedback loops alter the normal cause and effect sequences, leading to reactions out of all proportion to the stimulus. Neurophysiologists (Calvin’s profession) study nerve and muscle cells with positive feedback mechanisms that help things to happpen very quickly. So climate change is often not, in the manner of a dimmer switch, proportional to the provocation. It is more like the ordinary switch where a little more pressure will bring sudden change. Gradual warming is an inadequate metaphor. Surprises are involved.
In a chapter on drought he shows how feedbacks are naturally a part of the process – for example over a tropical forest about half the rainfall comes from what recently evaporated from the leaves upwind. No evaporation means less rain. Things get worse. Drought is part of the normal instability of climate, but in the US most models agree in predicting that the dryness of the 1930s Dust Bowl will return to the American Southwest by midcentury – and for a very long time. He has some vivid pictures of the dust storms of the 1930s.
Another chapter discusses the climate creep whereby higher global temperatures lead to a widening of the tropic’s Hadley Cell movement of air which means dryer air for a further degree or two of latitude in the areas where deserts already exist. Major cities become vulnerable to spreading desertification — San Diego, Los Angeles, Cairo, Tel Aviv, Cape Town, Perth and Sydney. This isn’t just gradual warming for the places concerned, but a massive change.
In discussing ice he looks at the way it is not only melting but moving on Greenland, and points out that collapse, not melt, is the operative concept. We would have centuries up our sleeves if Greenland melted simply from surface run-off. It is one of the seriously incomplete aspects of the IPCC report that its estimate of sea-level rise depended mostly on melt run-off and thermal expansion of the ocean.
These are but a few of the matters Calvin discusses in his explanations of why and how we’re in trouble. Along the way he offers a very good short explanation of climate models and also of the comprehensive processes by which IPCC reports are prepared. His chapters are short and nuggety, not attempting to be comprehensive, not always strong on continuity, but packed with suggestions for better understanding the phenomena of climate change. His early pre-college experience in journalism and photography is reflected in the many pictures, diagrams and maps which accompany his discussions. Quotations from a wide variety of scientists and writers stud the text and give a good sense of the large community of people working in the climate science field.
When he’s finished with explaining how things are going wrong he turns his attention to what we need to do to turn things around by no later than 2020, his latest date for stopping the growth in emissions. In spite of his awareness of how rapidly things can worsen in climate terms he is an optimist. He considers that, once we understand what’s what, progress in addressing it can be rapid. When tempted by pessimism he recalls the progress he’s seen in medical science in his lifetime. He also pins hope on religious leaders coming to see that climate change is a serious failure of stewardship and our present use of fossil fuel as a deeply immoral imposition on other people and unborn generations. Their arguments will trump the objections of the vested interests, just as they did when slavery was ended in the 19th century. And the developed nations already have the technology to achieve within ten years a substantial reduction in their fossil fuel uses. He allows for a wide range of possibilities here, but selects three as the most likely to produce rapid turnaround – energy efficiency, hot rock energy and nuclear generation. Hot rock energy, for those who haven’t encountered it, takes advantage of hot and dry granite below the sedimentary rocks. It can be drilled, and the further down the hotter it gets. Water is injected, returns as steam for a turbine, and is subsequently recirculated. In recommending nuclear power generation he refers to improvements in safety and efficiency since the industry first started, and also looks ahead to the fourth generation reactors which will increase efficiency enormously. Finally, along with carbon-free generation we also need continent-wide low-loss DC transmission lines.
Different writers have different proposals for the best technologies, and the array can appear bewildering. But it also means that there are plenty of options and most of them can at least contribute towards the solution. Calvin is mainly concerned that we act quickly, and he turns to analogy again, the same one that we now hear from many quarters – arming as for a great war, doing what must be done regardless of cost and convenience.
Appendix: The passage Calvin quotes from Robert Frost is very striking. Worth pondering:
[All] thinking is metaphorical, except mathematical thinking. What I am pointing out is that unless you are at home in the metaphor, unless you have had your proper poetical education in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere. Because you are not at ease with figurative values: you don’t know the metaphor in its strength and its weaknesses. You don’t know how far you may expect to ride it and when it may break down with you. You are not safe in science; you are not safe in history.
Juggling science and denial
In light of Charles Chauvel’s parliamentary question — brought to our attention yesterday in a comment — I thought I should buy a copy of Investigate magazine (against the grain though it goes) and have a look at the John Key interview.Â
Investigate‘s question, was, as might be expected, heavily loaded, talking about the “fast becoming…open revolt in the scientific community about whether humans are contributing significantly to global warming at all,” and asking what care is being taken “to ensure that climate change theory is accurate and how New Zealand is going to be affected if it is wrong?”
Keep it subdued
In my review of Climate Code Red a couple of posts back I mentioned the authors’ view that one of the limitations of the IPCC system is the pressure from vested interests harboured by some countries. An interesting example of the effects of such political pressure has come to light in the New York Times. It concerns the exclusion from the last IPCC report of an updated diagram of climate risks, known as “burning embers”. The 2001 report included the diagram and the planned 2007 version of the diagram would have shown the increased level of estimated climate risks since then.
All the diagram does is illustrate in graphic form the levels of risk estimated for a number of categories such as risks to unique and threatened systems, risks of extreme weather events, and so on. There is written description of the risks, but the graphic presentation was disallowed.
Several authors of the report now say that they regret not having pushed harder to include the diagram. Some scientists thought it too subjective, but apparently the main opposition to its inclusion came from officials representing the United States, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, who thought the colourful diagram was too incendiary.  Continue reading “Keep it subdued”
Climate Code Red
This week I watched a short video clip of climatologist James Hansen inviting people to join an act of civil disobedience on March 2 at the Capitol Power Plant in Washington DC which powers Congress with coal-based energy. In his laid-back but serious way he remarks it is hard to realise that climate change is an emergency. This is the realisation that Melbourne-based authors David Spratt and Philip Sutton invite in their book Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action. The book was launched in July 2008 by the Governor of Victoria, Professor David de Kretser and has been commended by Hansen himself and many others. It was also the basis of a 52-page advocacy report Climate Safety (pdf) issued by the Public Interest Research Centre in the UK in November and commented on warmly by George Monbiot, Mark Lynas, Fred Pearce and many others.
The authors paint a sombre picture. They point out that the predictions of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change in its report last year are already being shown as too conservative. The loss of Arctic sea ice, thought likely to take a century, appears to be happening in a much shorter space of time. Rapid sea ice disintegration will mean less reflectivity, greater regional warming, and permafrost melt with release of uncertain levels of carbon dioxide and methane.
The way in which the pace of climate change can quicken as its early effects trigger amplifying consequences is carefully explained for the general reader. Thus we face the possibility of faster disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet than has before been thought likely, vulnerability in the West Antarctic ice sheet, and the likelihood of much higher sea rises than anticipated, as well as widespread species and eco-system destruction.
The authors lament the limitations of the IPCC system, ascribing them partly to pressure from vested interests harboured by some countries, partly to the long process of gathering the information from published material and the early cut-off date for reports, and partly to scientists being uncomfortable with estimates based on known but presently unquantified mechanisms. It adds up to a process so deficient as to be an unreliable and even misleading basis for policy-making.
The book looks at what the atmospheric targets for a safe climate need to be. Where we are now, if methane and nitrous oxide are included, is equivalent to 455 parts per million of CO2. They estimate this indicates a global temperature rise of 2.1 degrees centigrade, at present delayed by the heat being used to warm the oceans (minus 0.6 degrees) and the short-term net cooling effect of aerosols (minus 0.7 degrees) to give today’s warming of 0.8 degrees.
They discuss the target of two degrees of global warming regarded by some as tolerable. To stop at two degrees probably means a CO2 equivalent level of 400 ppm. We have already exceeded that level, but the climate system’s inertia would enable us to not exceed two degrees if we returned to 400 ppm after an overshoot.
But in their view two degrees is too dangerous, and the three degrees cap effectively being advocated by Australia’s government and others is a recipe for devastation. The book looks at what a safe climate means and what action is required to achieve it. A safe climate includes such features as: retaining the full summer Arctic sea-ice cover, the full extent of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and the full extent of the mountain glacier systems, including the Himalayas and the Andes; maintaining the ecological health and resilience of the tropical rainforests and coral reefs, with no loss of area or species; maintaining the health and effectiveness of the natural carbon sinks; capping ocean acidity. To do this we need to cool the globe we have heated.
At this point they introduce the 2008 paper (pdf) by Hansen and others which considers a CO2 level of 300-325 ppm may be needed to restore Arctic sea ice to its area of 25 years ago. They note that this would also be a reasonable boundary for achieving the other features of a safe climate.
Since the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is already too high we must not only stop its emission but also draw carbon out of the atmosphere. Some geo-engineering with aerosols may be temporarily required, but only as a complement to ceasing emissions.
So far as the science is concerned we have an emergency. At this point the authors turn from the science to the political action required. Political pragmatism collides with scientific necessity. Current political targets are reckless. The book explores and rejects all the reasons given for inadequate responses ranging from hopelessness through claimed uncertainty to the impossibility of a full solution. Compromise will not do. There is no lack of technical or economic capacity to cut greenhouse gas emissions to close to zero, only of political and social will. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere can be reduced by greatly enhancing natural sinks such as tree and other biomass planting on a large scale and by agricultural charcoal stored in soils. But such measures are unlikely under politics as usual. The authors counsel moving into emergency mode to produce the economic restructuring needed, using the example of wartime US when the economy was rapidly turned to service the war effort. Against those who protest that action on climate change will cause economic harm they note that in wartime US unemployment fell, wages grew faster than inflation and company profits boomed.
The book pulls no punches, and that is probably its chief value. It assembles the latest science and shows how we are preparing a possibly cataclysmic future if we carry on as usual. It makes it clear that the threat can’t be countered by partial measures, as many politicians still seem to think. To those who declare it impossible that the political world will ever gather enough resolution for the steps required it replies that politicians will find resolution enough if they recognise we face an emergency. In other words, the economics and politics must be guided by the science, which is stark and inescapable.
A slightly off-topic postscript: The Heartland Institute also saw the Hansen videoclip mentioned at the beginning of this review. Here’s their excited response:
“Demands for the firing of NASA astronomer and global-warming fear-monger James Hansen are spreading rapidly through the World Wide Web.
“Hansen’s latest escapade – a YouTube video in which the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences invites the public to “please join us” in forcibly occupying a D.C.-based coal-burning power plant – resulted in The Heartland Institute Monday calling attention to the growing chorus of voices urging President Barack Obama to fire Hansen. The astronomer has a tawdry record of doctoring climate data to fit his theory that the Earth is in a global-warming crisis, and he has demanded that scientists who disagree with him face a Nuremberg-style trial.”
Mark Bowen’s Censoring Science, recently reviewed on Hot Topic is obviously still relevant.