The Emissions Trading Scheme Review committee has released the first batch of submissions it has received — those made by organisations and individuals who have already made their presentations to the committee. There are some heavy hitters in there: from New Zealand’s science and policy community there’s the Climate Change Centre (a joint venture between the University of Canterbury and Victoria University of Wellington, plus all the Crown Research Institutes – from NIWA to AgResearch), VUW’s Climate Change Research Institute, and GNS Science, and from the world of commerce, we have the Business Roundtable‘s “evidence”. Why the quote marks? Because the Roundtable’s submission is a fact-free farrago of nonsense.
Category: Climate science
Blenheim biochar gets global attention
Carbonscape, the New Zealand company working on making charcoal from a microwaving process discussed here and here on Hot Topic, has just announced that they are one of only five companies to make the shortlist in a global competition, the Financial Times’ Climate Change Challenge.
The competition seeks the most innovative solution to the effects of climate change. The winner, to be chosen by Financial Times readers and a panel of judges will receive a US$75,000 prize, sponsored by Hewlett Packard, to help bring their service to market. I notice Richard Branson, IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri and Jonathon Porritt among the eight judges.
This is hardcore
The last time that atmospheric CO2 levels were as high as today, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) regularly retreated or collapsed, causing sea level rises of up to 7 metres according to the first analysis of the first ANDRILL core, published in Nature today. The ANDRILL (Antarctic Geological Drilling) programme, a joint effort by scientists from New Zealand, Italy, the USA and Germany, drilled a 1,280 metre core from the seabed under the Ross Ice Shelf. It’s the longest and most complete drill core recovered from Antarctica, and was made possible by drilling technology developed by a team at the Antarctic Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington led by Alex Pyne.
The two Nature papers [1. Obliquity-paced Pliocene West Antarctic ice sheet oscillations, Naish et al, Nature, 19 March 2009 doi:10.1038/nature07867, and Modelling West Antarctic ice sheet growth and collapse through the past five million years, Pollard and DeConto, doi:10.1038/nature07809] focus on the “warm Pliocene” between two and five million years ago when CO2 levels were around 400 ppm. This is considered a good analogue for where our climate is headed, and the consequence, according to Professor Tim Naish of VUW, joint science head of ANDRILL, is that if we reach 550 ppm CO2 and a resulting 3ºC increase in global temperature, then large parts of the WAIS could melt on timescales of the order of centuries, and be completely gone within a thousand years.
The ANDRILL core documents 38 advances and retreats of the ice sheet, and suggests that during the warm Pliocene the key driver could have been the “obliquity” cycle in the earth’s orbit around the sun — a 40,000 year tilt in the Earth’s axis towards and away from the sun that affects the length of summers at the poles. New modelling of the ice sheet[2. Pollard & DeConto] confirms the link with the obliquity cycle, and suggests that the primary mechanism is melting of the base of the ice sheet by warm oceanic waters — a process that has already started.
In other WAIS news, a British team reports on the success of their robot submarine, Autosub, which made voyages of up to 110km under the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, recording temperature and salinity, and providing valuable data about melting at the glacier grounding line.
More coverage: Nature commentary by Phillipe Huybrechts, Science Daily, the Telegraph, AP and Reuters.
[Pulp]
Visionary road maps
Here’s a way to map the climate change “debate” that goes a million miles beyond the simplistic for and against view beloved of sceptics and Climate Debate Daily. Click in the Flash animation above and you can access a Debategraph view of the issues around climate change (the buttons below allow you to access various map tools — the green button opens underlying information in a pop-up window). It’s a sort of cross between a mind map and a wiki, allowing you to add and develop ideas and viewpoints. Produced by Debategraph in collaboration with the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute, the IQ2 Green Festival on Climate Change and The Independent the idea is to build the map as a public, international resource in the run up to the crucial Copenhagen meeting in December. Click on the central “climate change” circle, and then the details viewer (green button) to read more). David Price, co-founder of Debategraph, explained in an email:
The goal is develop the map iteratively to a point at which it represents genuinely rich and comprehensive public resource; so any recommendations of people on the science and/or policy side who you think might be interested in the visualization approach and in contributing to the map will be very welcome.
I think this is a fascinating way to look at the issues around climate change — to map the arguments in a manner that conveys the complexity of the issue, and avoids the constant need to restate the obvious. Changes you make here at Hot Topic will be reflected at all other sites embedding the map. Have a play, explore, and let me know what you think in the comments. If there’s enough interest, I’ll embed the map in its own page so that it’s only one click away from the front page. Could be a fantastic tool, especially for PolSci students… 😉
(Six) Things on my mind
The Copenhagen climate conference — Climate change: global risks, challenges & decisions — closed yesterday, and work has now begun on producing a summary document — scheduled for publication in June. In the meantime, delegates have drawn up a preliminary list of six key messages, which were handed to the Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the closing session. They are (in full, because I think they’re important and worth reading):
- Climatic trends: Recent observations confirm that, given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised. For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived. These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts. (my emphasis)
- Social disruption: The research community is providing much more information to support discussions on “dangerous climate changeâ€. Recent observations show that societies are highly vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change, with poor nations and communities particularly at risk. Temperature rises above 2ºC will be very difficult for contemporary societies to cope with, and will increase the level of climate disruption through the rest of the century.
- Long-term strategy: Rapid, sustained, and effective mitigation based on coordinated global and regional action is required to avoid “dangerous climate change†regardless of how it is defined. Weaker targets for 2020 increase the risk of crossing tipping points and make the task of meeting 2050 targets more difficult. Delay in initiating effective mitigation actions increases significantly the long-term social and economic costs of both adaptation and mitigation. (my emphasis)
- Equity dimensions: Climate change is having, and will have, strongly differential effects on people within and between countries and regions, on this generation and future generations, and on human societies and the natural world. An effective, well-funded adaptation safety net is required for those people least capable of coping with climate change impacts, and a common but differentiated mitigation strategy is needed to protect the poor and most vulnerable.
- Inaction is inexcusable: There is no excuse for inaction. We already have many tools and approaches – economic, technological, behavioural, management – to deal effectively with the climate change challenge. But they must be vigorously and widely implemented to achieve the societal transformation required to decarbonise economies. A wide range of benefits will flow from a concerted effort to alter our energy economy now, including sustainable energy job growth, reductions in the health and economic costs of climate change, and the restoration of ecosystems and revitalisation of ecosystem services.
- Meeting the challenge: To achieve the societal transformation required to meet the climate change challenge, we must overcome a number of significant constraints and seize critical opportunities. These include reducing inertia in social and economic systems; building on a growing public desire for governments to act on climate change; removing implicit and explicit subsidies; reducing the influence of vested interests that increase emissions and reduce resilience; enabling the shifts from ineffective governance and weak institutions to innovative leadership in government, the private sector and civil society; and engaging society in the transition to norms and practices that foster sustainability.
This seems to me a very good summary of the climate problem: it’s worse than we thought, we need to act now, and we’ve got the tools to do it. Now all we need is the willpower and the commitment. Politicians, are you listening? Inaction is inexcusable.