environment and ecology – Page 187

We’ve trashed the earth, so let’s go party…

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Put a little funk in your day with Scottish jazz musician Phil Bancroft‘s message from the future — a “pre-apocalyptic ironic dance number” entitled Too Late Now, So Party On. Phil says it’s a video “response” to the 10:10 red button video, but I think it’s a fantastic film with amazing production values and possibly the best tinfoil spaceship I’ve ever seen. The song’s first line says it all:

We’ve done it, we’ve trashed the earth, it’s too late now, so let’s go party…

Join Phil, wife Jude, Jazzer the cat and Jenny the dog as they escape the planet we trashed, and shake your funky thang. If that’s at all possible on a Tuesday during office hours. (More about Phil and his current project, Home Small As The World, here).

Tell it like it is

Whether denial of climate science was what the Americans thought they were voting for when they cast their ballots for many of the Republican candidates in the mid-term election, or whether they had other things on their mind, the end result is that the US now has an apparent majority of legislators who flatly deny climate change, or, if they don’t go that far, certainly deny the need to address it. It’s an extraordinary spectacle. The science is utterly clear, more so by the day. But the clearer it gets the more sure the denial becomes in that sadly mixed-up country. Their own government scientific institutions are to the forefront in the reporting of climate change. Their National Academies of Science produce regular accessible reports affirming the science and urging appropriate responses. Their universities provide a large number of scientists working productively on many aspects of the issue. Yet a substantial sector of their politicians are now confidently announcing that they don’t believe it’s happening. Suzanne Goldberg in the Guardian reports an investigation by a website run by the Centre for American Progress think tank which found 50% of the more than 100 Republican newcomers deny the existence of man-made climate change. An overwhelming majority, 86%, oppose legislation that would raise taxes on polluting industries.

“Climate is gone,” was Karl Rove’s comforting message to the attendees of a shale-gas conference in Philadelphia, Brad Johnson reports. Rove told them that the incoming Republican House of Representatives “sure as heck” won’t pass legislation to limit greenhouse pollution from fossil fuels.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post on Sunday Bracken Hendricks (pictured) put his finger on the radical nature of the conservatism which informs the Republican denial of climate science. It is conservatism at odds with itself.

“…far from being conservative, the Republican stance on global warming shows a stunning appetite for risk.

“…they are recklessly betting the farm on a single, best-case scenario: That the scientific consensus about global warming will turn out to be wrong. This is bad risk management and an irresponsible way to run anything, whether a business, an economy or a planet.”

It’s a very high risk, as he reminds readers:

“The best science available suggests that without taking action to fundamentally change how we produce and use energy, we could see temperatures rise 9 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States by 2090. These estimates have sometimes been called high-end predictions, but the corresponding low-end forecasts assume we will rally as a country to shift course. That hasn’t happened, so the worst case must become our best guess.”

The irony, he points out, is that the result would be not the rolled-back government that Republicans are currently espousing but a greatly expanded role for government:

“With temperature increases in this range, studies predict a permanent drought throughout the Southwest, much like the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, but this time stretching from Kansas to California. If you hate bailouts or want to end farm subsidies, this is a problem. Rising ocean acidity, meanwhile, will bring collapsing fisheries, catch restrictions – and unemployment checks. And rising sea levels will mean big bills as cash-strapped cities set about rebuilding infrastructure and repairing storm damage. With Americans in pain, the government will have to respond. And who will shoulder these new burdens? Future taxpayers.”

The sheer recklessness of denying climate change or the need for action to address it is breathtaking. It’s unfathomable considered alongside the caution with which the US guards itself against terrorism, for example. It’s so deeply irrational that one wonders if anything can shift it. Yet the deniers won enough of the votes. Small wonder that Stephen Schneider feared democracy couldn’t cope with the confusion in which the issue of climate change has been wrapped.

The Administration, which doesn’t deny climate science, appears to have lost its nerve or not know how to speak to the public about the matter. However there are encouraging indications that American scientists are ready to enter the bruising public arena to challenge the confident denial that is echoing in political circles. The LA Times reports today that there is rising support among climate scientists to establish a broad campaign to push back against the congressional conservatives who have vowed to kill regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

“The still-evolving efforts reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media. Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics…”

The American Geophysical Union plans to announce today that 700 researchers have agreed to speak out on the issue.

Another announced pushback intention comes from John Abraham of St Thomas University in Minnesota whom Hot Topic readers will recall received enormous support here when attacked by Christopher Monckton. He is pulling together a “Climate Rapid Response Team,” which includes scientists prepared to go before what they consider potentially hostile audiences on conservative talk-radio and television shows.

Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York explains:

“This group feels strongly that science and politics can’t be divorced and that we need to take bold measures to not only communicate science but also to aggressively engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists.

“We are taking the fight to them because we are … tired of taking the hits. The notion that truth will prevail is not working. The truth has been out there for the past two decades, and nothing has changed.”

If such developments take place on a large enough scale they could be very important. The public would better see just how strong the consensus is amongst those scientists who actually work on the issue. They would also realise the alarm that many of the scientists feel as emissions continue to rise. It’s all too easy for politicians to isolate distinguished figures like James Hansen and portray them as some kind of maverick, but phalanxes of scientists ready to speak out publicly would be a different matter. At least it would make it absolutely clear to the public that if they run with their denialist politicians on this issue they are rejecting mainstream science and exposing themselves to what the science sees as grave risks. I’m not sure that they as yet realise that is what they’re doing.

[Aaron Neville]

Licking lignite

Jeanette Fitzsimons raised the alarm in a recent Herald op-ed over Solid Energy’s plans for Southland lignite. A very justified alarm. She wrote of well-advanced plans to use more than 3 billion tonnes of economically recoverable lignite from three fields in Southland. Big plans, of which New Zealanders are hardly aware. First off is the transformation of lignite, by drying it, into briquettes for Fonterra’s milk-processing plants and for export. Only 100,000 tonnes a year in the pilot plant to be built next year, followed by a full-scale plant many times larger. Next are plans to convert lignite to diesel, with the claim that all New Zealand’s diesel could be produced this way. The third big plan is the conversion of lignite to urea.

It’s the increase in greenhouse gas emissions associated with this vast development that concerns Fitzsimons. Her article rests on the arguments of James Hansen that the use of coal must be phased out over the next couple of decades. And she’s not buying the claim of carbon compliance:

“Solid Energy says all the emissions will be ‘offset’. But increasing the amount of biological carbon that cycles between atmosphere and plants can’t compensate for putting more fossil carbon into the system, even if our ETS scheme pretends it can.

“Paying money is, in the end, not a get-out-of-jail-free card for increasing pollution.

“These huge lignite developments are close – Solid Energy intends to start building next year. Any hope we had of reducing our greenhouse emissions would be lost.”

Her conclusion is robust:

“As citizens, we need to refocus our domestic action to tell Solid Energy and the Government by every means available to us to keep the coal in the hole. Every tonne of lignite New Zealand keeps in the ground is 1.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide that doesn’t get into the atmosphere.”

I agree entirely, and wonder what is going on in the mind of the Minister of Energy and others in government as they contemplate the proposed activity of the government-owned company. It’s not as if there is any requirement for lignite in something essential like our electricity generation, no lingering imperative that we carry on using it until we can replace it with renewables. The only imperative in the proposed lignite exploitation is that we not leave any resource stone unturned in the drive to greater economic wealth.

I don’t know how much thought the Minister gives to the counter imperative that we take every step open to us to prevent the continuing build-up of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. There is perhaps a cautionary note in the reference to coal in the Draft Energy Strategy, but it’s far from specific:

“New Zealand’s extensive coal resources currently contribute to electricity supply security. Coal is also utilised by industry and is exported. Coal could potentially contribute to the economy in other ways, such as through the production of liquid fossil fuels, methanol or fertiliser such as urea.

“This potential is more likely to be fully realised if an economic way to reduce high levels of greenhouse gas emissions is found. Carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) will potentially be an effective way of utilising resources while reducing CO2 emissions.”

Moreover there’s nothing in Solid Energy’s plans which suggests that the lignite development is going to wait on CCS (if the technology is ever developed successfully). Meeting the slack requirements of the ETS is all they appear to have in mind, and that’s clearly no impediment to proceeding.

The Minister has a wide embrace. He welcomes every renewable energy development that comes along. In the same breath he waxes enthusiastic at the prospect of the discovery and urgent development of fossil fuel resources. If the Draft Energy Strategy is as close to his and the government’s philosophy as we’re going to get it appears the thinking is that we can fully exploit the fossil fuel resources while alternatives are being developed. And we should be getting on with it smartly while it’s profitable. It’s an opportunity which we would be foolish to miss. Indeed according to Chris Baker, CEO of the mining and exploration lobby Straterra, who followed up Jeanette Fitzsimons’ article the very next day, the lignite resource could be worth $3 trillion. He didn’t say to whom, but no doubt there would be trickle down.

How does this wealth stack up against the release of more atmospheric carbon as a result of exploiting the lignite? That’s a rhetorical question. It doesn’t matter how many trillions of dollars we gain if we lose a habitable world for our descendants in doing so.

If the government is serious about tackling climate change it should instruct Solid Energy not to pursue the lignite plans and relieve them of whatever dividend expectations that makes them unable to fulfil. If regulation is necessary it should legislate for it. It should tell the public that unless full carbon capture and storage technology is possible there can be no exploitation of the lignite fields because of the seriousness of the threat of increased greenhouse gases. That threat, it should explain, far outweighs the transient economic gain of fossil fuel development.

We can’t have it both ways. We can’t reduce emissions by increasing them. We can’t say we recognise the threat of global warming and at the same time expect to carry on with all activities which give rise to it. If Gerry Brownlee and the government think we can, they are deceiving themselves and us. Jeanette Fitzsimons is absolutely right. Keep the coal in the hole.

PS. Take a few minutes to send Gerry Brownlee an email to that effect. Remind him that he has a responsibility to the future. I’ve done so.

La modélisation du climat

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A little bit of French language practise for the weekend — an excellent visualisation of how climate models work, produced by the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, the leading French modelling group. Even if you can’t follow the commentary, the images are pretty much self-explanatory and very nicely done. There are more animations at the DSM Youtube channel.

Hat tip to Steve Easterbrook, who has a version with English subtitles, but we don’t need those, do we? 😉

Preparing for Climate Change

The global climate is changing. The impacts on human society are likely to be very serious. We would be foolish indeed not to plan ahead for coping strategies. Michael Mastrandrea and the late Stephen Schneider have produced a small book setting out what we can best do to be ready for what is in store. Preparing for Climate Change is one of the Boston Review Books, a series of “accessible, short books that take ideas seriously”.

It’s a thoughtful, well-organised piece of writing which leads the reader by steps through what is needed to prepare for what climate change will bring. The first step is to understand that global warming is for real. It’s under way and it is largely due to anthropogenic forces. However predicting its future course is difficult because of two things we don’t know — how much more greenhouse gases humans will emit and exactly how the natural climate system will respond to those emissions. The temperature rises we face will depend on the level of emissions, and the range of projections for the year 2100 that the IPCC has estimated on the basis of six different scenarios is very wide, from as low as 1.1 degrees to as much as 6.4 degrees. The latter could be catastrophic. The former looks increasingly likely to be well surpassed. But even a comparatively low level of temperature rise would bring damaging changes for some communities and ecosystems. Indeed the 0.75 degree increase of the past century is already showing some worrying impacts.

The authors then outline the key vulnerabilities that need to be taken into consideration. They include glacier loss, melting ice sheets, sea level rise, higher infectious disease transmission, increases in the severity of extreme events, large drops in farming productivity especially in hotter areas, the loss of cultural diversity as people have to leave their historical communities, and an escalating rate of species extinction. Many of these can already be witnessed in their early stages, and the book provides examples from various parts of the globe. Additionally, however, there is the possibility of “surprises”, fast non-linear climate responses which may occur when environmental thresholds are crossed. Some can be imagined, such as a collapse of the North Atlantic ocean currents or the deglaciation of Greenland or the West Antarctic ice sheets. But because of the enormous complexities of the climate system there is also the possibility of unforeseeable surprises.

In the face of inherent uncertainty we have to proceed by risk assessment and risk management as we make our policy decisions. Risk assessment is primarily a scientific enterprise. Risk management – deciding which risks to tolerate and which to try to avoid – is a political matter where values enter into play. However the relationship between the two is complicated by the uncertainties of the scientific predictions. These uncertainties will be reduced as research proceeds under normal scientific practice, but answers of some kind are needed well before this time. There are policy decisions to be taken before there is a clear consensus on all the important scientific conclusions. The authors discuss type I and type II errors at this point. A type I error will be committed if we act to mitigate climate change and discover that our worries prove exaggerated and anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions cause little dangerous change. A type II error will be committed if we delay action until greater certainty is established and in the process allow serious damage to occur. We have a choice as to which type of error it is better to avoid.

What actions does sensible risk management indicate? We know that reducing emissions will reduce the level of temperature increase that would otherwise occur, but we also know that further climate change will happen no matter how quickly we are able to reduce emissions. We must therefore both try to limit future emissions and at the same time adapt to what we cannot escape. Mitigation and adaptation must be complementary and concurrent.

The authors recognise some adaptation as autonomous; it is reactive in response to the impacts of climate change. However they consider it vital to also plan adaptation. Planned adaptation may be reactive, but the book lays stress on planning which is anticipatory, as for example in the protection of coastal infrastructure. Anticipatory adaptation is an investment, but one which may not be able to be afforded by poorer developing countries. The book notes that the Copenhagen Accord recognised this and included a commitment to provide resources for adaptation investment in such countries.

But adaptation measures can only go so far, and mitigation must be seriously pursued in tandem. Although the book focuses a good deal of its attention on how we can plan for adaptation it is clear that there must be a mix with mitigation measures adequate to keep adaptation manageable. The third more drastic response to climate change of geoengineering is briefly considered, and described as desperate: understandable, but not what the situation demands as a first response.

Whatever mix of mitigation and adaptation we adopt the authors are firm that equity issues must be part of planning. The needs of vulnerable and marginalised groups must be a prominent consideration when forming climate policy.

The question of vulnerability is faced in their final chapter. They see vulnerability assessment as an essential tool to inform the development of climate change policies. Exposure to stress, sensitivity to the exposure, and adaptive capacity are the three components which need to be considered. Mitigation reduces vulnerability by reducing exposure. Adaptation reduces vulnerability by turning adaptive potential into adaptive capacity. New Orleans before Katrina had quite high adaptive potential, but it was not realised and adaptive capacity was therefore low. Vulnerability assessment is a complex task and they argue for a close relationship between those on the ground in specific regions (bottom-up) and the climate-impact assessments of scientists (top-down). Again, questions of justice are high in their priorities. We must be sure that marginalised countries and groups are not ignored as we tackle the potentially dangerous, irreversible climate events ahead.

For those familiar with the subject the ground the book covers is probably not new. But the writers are authoritative and their treatment is well organised and logically ordered. It is also informed by a strong sense of humanity. Their book is an excellent short statement for the general reader and a useful summary analysis for those who appreciate a reminder of how the various elements fit together. Don’t be misled by the moderate tone or the acknowledgement of the uncertainty which must attend predictions of future change. The authors know they are writing of an urgent and pressing need to prepare in advance if we are to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

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