Tag: sea level

Melting Point

Melting Point

Eric Dorfman is an ecologist.  He has been aware of the science of climate change since his doctoral student days in the 1990s but he credits Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth with inspiring him to make a larger contribution towards addressing the issue. Hence his book Melting Point: New Zealand and the Climate Change Crisis, published last September.

The book is not long, and is written in a relaxed style accessible to the general reader.  He begins with a brief overview of the global science, centring particularly on carbon sinks, carbon pumps and feedback loops as keys to understanding climate change. Debating whether climate change is real is senseless. Credible scientific opinion is unequivocal.  The risk of doing nothing in the face of the predicted consequences is foolhardy, and the problem is not beyond us.

Turning his focus to New Zealand he begins with the climate, pointing out that unlike Europe which is experiencing unprecedented weather patterns we are likely to see an intensification of the weather patterns we already have, much of it driven by an an intensification of the pattern of westerly winds and warmer sea surface temperatures.  He considers the effects of rising sea levels and details some of them; even one metre will cause an enormous and costly mess for the country – farmland around Invercargill inundated, salt water intrusion in many agricultural areas, water seep on to Wellington airport, Tamaki Drive under water, and much more.

He ranges through several aspects of New Zealand life explaining how they may be affected by the coming changes.  Primary production, human health, natural ecosystems and socio-economic impacts are the main areas considered. He offers something of a plug for organic farming as a goal, and has an intriguing look at farm animal alternatives such as beefalo, ostriches and emus, and angora goats. He explains the habitat constraints likely to be experienced by species both on land and in the sea, and the extinctions which may result. Human health is also likely to be affected, though less severely than in developing countries. Mosquito-borne and water-borne diseases are surveyed and psychological health considered. Likely impacts on the economy conclude with a positive reference to the previous government’s stance on carbon neutrality and emissions control.

Comparatively speaking we will fare better than most countries, though this is scant reassurance in a world mostly worse affected. For instance, Dorfman asks at one point how NZ will react to the arrival of most or all of the populations of small Pacific Islands such as Tuvalu as rising sea levels make their islands uninhabitable. A chapter on choices covers a familiar range from making personal emission reductions to engaging in political pressure.

The book is a reasonable and relatively gentle discussion around what may already lie ahead for New Zealand in the uncertain future into which climate change is launching us. That very uncertainty makes it difficult to be precise or trenchant, but it is important to be thinking ahead and realising that we are preparing a different world by our greenhouse gas emissions. Hopefully Dorfman represents a wide group of people who are doing just that.  Not that he is happy for us to continue along our present path.  Far from it. He rests what hope he can muster for the future on the decisions of international forums and the actions of superpowers and the author sees an important lobbying function for New Zealand in these arenas. One hopes he is not being too optimistic about New Zealand’s readiness to lobby.  We are getting mixed messages from government at present

Two tribes

Cheatin Heartland On the one hand, in New York, the Heartland Institute‘s climate crank talking shop, where scientists of the immense probity of Richard Lindzen were happy to share a stage with proven fabricators of data like Christopher Monckton, has drawn to a close. Terry Dunleavy, head honcho of NZ’s climate crank coalition has given his presentation, and no doubt Muriel Newman is happy that her NZ Centre for Policy Research sponsorship of the event has been fruitful. The crank blogosphere has loved the attention, and the great communicator himself (step forward Bob Carter) has been positively chortling about the event in his posts at Quadrant Online.

On the other hand, a proper conference, Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions is just getting under way in Copenhagen. Real scientists from all over the world, leaders in their fields, are gathering to present the latest research findings. The objective is to provide a comprehensive update to the findings of the IPCC’s 2007 report, so that policymakers can go into the final phase of negotiations for a post-Kyoto deal with a clear picture of what the science is telling us about the climate system. Conference organiser, Prof Katherine Richardson of the University of Copenhagen provides more background in this interview at Nature Reports: Climate Change.

I’ll be covering news from the conference as it emerges, but the big news from day one: expect sea level rise of at least a metre by the end of the century. BBC coverage here, plus TimesOnline, the Herald reprints an Observer preview, New Scientist, and the conference press release for day one.

Two other interesting stories from day one (which I will return to, at some point): the “tipping point” for complete loss of the Greenland ice sheet may be further off than thought, and a French researcher gave a dire warning about permafrost carbon emissions.

[Frankie]

Treating a Fever

Global Fever: How to Treat Climate Change

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.

Reelin’ in the year

IPYWMO.jpg The International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-8 formally draws to a close today, and when today arrives in Geneva there will be a press conference to mark the release of a summary report, The State of Polar Research [PDF], which covers some of the preliminary findings. [BBC report here]. In the run up to this event, there’s been a blizzard (…sorry) of stories from the teams working at both ends of the world, and they make fascinating reading. From huge pools of freshwater building up in the Arctic Ocean to new mountain ranges as big as the Alps under Antarctica, methane plumes off Siberia and the death knell for summer sea ice in the Arctic, there’s a lot to cover…

Continue reading “Reelin’ in the year”

Five feet high and rising!

Sea.jpg Yesterday, while dissembling, I had what I might loosely describe as a “bugger” moment. Yale’s Enviroment360 web site (which I plugged on its introduction last June) currently features an interview with Robert Bindschadler, a NASA ice expert who is working on the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers in West Antarctica. The “bugger” moment?

e360: And in the theoretical case that Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers completely dump into the ocean – obviously it’s not going to happen in the near-future – what kind of sea level rise would they contribute to?

Bindschadler: That portion of West Antarctica, that third that flows northward primarily through those two glaciers, has the potential to raise sea level 1½ meters. That’s sort of an upper bound, a worst case. But the time scale is what really matters. Some say that we won’t see these ice shelves disappear in our lifetime – I’m not so sure. I think we might well.

e360: Are you kidding?

Bindschadler: No, no at all.

Bindschadler looks to be about my age. He reports that the ice shelf is melting from the underneath at a rate of about 50 metres per year at the grounding line. And then, a little later, just to make me spill my tea on the keyboard:

e360: I know that the IPCC was saying maybe 1 ½ feet or a half-meter of sea level rise in the 21st century. Is it your opinion that we could be looking at significantly larger sea level rise?

Bindschadler: Yeah, I think there’s sort of an unspoken consensus in my community that if you want to look at the very largest number in the IPCC report, they said 58 centimeters, so almost two feet by the end of the century. That’s way low, and it’s going to be well over a meter. We may see a meter by the middle of the century.

e360: Oh my gosh.

Bindschadler: And if this behavior that we’re seeing in Pine Island, and even Greenland continues – and we don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t continue – well, over a meter by the end of the century, I think is almost certain.

How notably prim the interviewer is. I think I might have managed something a little more Anglo Saxon. A “meter by the middle of the century” is a very long way above most people’s worst case (though not, perhaps, Hansen’s), but it makes our vulnerability to sea level rise much more of a near-term danger than a comfortable reading of AR4 might suggest. It’s a fascinating article — goes into more detail about the WA ice sheet and PIG (yes, that’s what they call it) than anything else I’ve seen in the last few years. Recommended, but not if you have beachfront property.

Meanwhile, a workshop being held at VUW in Wellington is looking at Andrill results, and finding that the WA ice sheet shows signs of repeated meltbacks over the last five million years [Stuff]:

Professor Tim Naish, director of Victoria University’s Antarctic Research Centre […] is co-science leader of the $30 million Andrill project on the ice, with Professor Ross Powell from Northern Illinois University in the United States.

“Antarctica’s ice sheets have grown and collapsed at least 40 times over the past five million years,” Prof Naish said.

“The story we are telling is around the history and behaviour of the ice sheet … as an analogue for the future,” he said.

Not good news, it seems. Expect a rush of papers covering Andrill work over the next few months.

[Johnny Cash]