Blame perversity for the worst kind of climate change denial

Posted on 31 December 2008 by Barry Brook

The self-proclaimed climate change sceptics (a.k.a. contrarians, non-greenhouse theorists, etc.) are, in the greater scheme of things, really nothing more than a  silly diversion. Spending too much time on them only results in a bruised head from excessive banging against recycled walls.

But as I’ve pointed out in a few recent posts, it is my firm belief that these climate cranks are not the real problem — not by a long shot. The biggest obstacle blocking meaningful action on climate change and securing a zero-carbon energy supply are those ‘well meaning’ people who on the one hand acknowledge the science of global warming and related problems of human impacts on Earth systems (often expressing their profound concern for the danger posed by worsening global change), yet on the other hand act in ways that indicate they understand or care nothing about its implications — or else they have constructed a form of self-delusion that ends up spawning the most damaging form of denial of all.

Whilst on my Xmas/New Year break, a family member showed me an interesting newspaper clipping that has further provoked my thinking about what causes this pervasive ‘denying while believing’ phenomenon. And the piece wasn’t about climate change — at least that was not its focus.

No, it was about the biggest news of 2008. As most of you would have already surmised, this was not global warming, environmental degradation or even the energy, water or food crises. Each of these got their fair share of attention, from time to time, but in the 2008 wash-up, all were swept away with the tide of media, political and societal interest (perhaps alarm or anxiety are better terms) surrounding the great global financial meltdown.

That’s what this newspaper article was about. It was called ‘Blame perversity for the meltdown‘, written by Fairfax columnist Leon Gettler (who has also written persuasively about global warming in other Op Eds). Please do read the original. But I think I can also illustrate nicely here how what Leon says about they psychology of managerial self-reward is equally applicable to our current bind in facing up to the climate crisis. The similarity of the two problems is, to me, quite striking. So let me paraphrase (with only a few key words/phrases changed, indicated in red, and some added hyperlinks):

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THE market failure surrounding climate change has been blamed on greed, fraud and deceit; but the question is, why have they become so entrenched?

What’s been at play is the little-explored area of organisational perversity, collusion and turning a blind eye. In her book, The Perverse Organisation and Its Deadly Sins, RMIT academic Susan Long argues that organisations and corporations can create perverse systems, of which there are several forms.

First, there is the state of primary narcissism, where certain interests are pursued at the expense of the general good, and others are turned into objects to serve certain ends.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Sceptics | 8 Comments »

Save a bit here, ship a whole lot there

Posted on 26 December 2008 by Barry Brook

coalcartoonHere’s some figures to make you queasy after all that rich Christmas dinner. As was reported recently, Australia’s bold new short-term greenhouse gas reduction target is to reduce carbon emissions by 4% on year 1990 levels by 2020.  What does that mean in real terms? Well, according to the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, our total emissions in that reference year were 552.6 Mt (million tonnes) of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-e), with 286.4 Mt of that coming from energy generation. In 2006 (the latest inventory year), it was 576.0 Mt, with a whopping 400.9 Mt of that now coming from energy.

So, our world-leading aim is to ‘only’ be emitting 530.5 Mt CO2-e by 2020 — a saving of 22 Mt on 1990 levels. Forgive me if I’m less than impressed.

But in reality, it’s far, far worse than that — actually, ridiculously so.

Why? Go read this news story. To quote Prime Minister Kevin Rudd:

“…$580 million of today’s investment will be used to expand capacity and rail corridors to service the Hunter, the Hunter Valley Coal mines, and of course their connection to the Port of Newcastle.”

The reporter then blandly notes that this investment will more than double the export capacity at Newcastle (New South Wales) from 97 to 200 million tonnes of coal a year.

Hmmmm. Let’s see — that’s an extra 103 Mt of coal being shipped out each year. Now, when you burn a tonne of coal, you yield about 3.6 tonnes of CO2 (since the carbon atom combines with 2 x oxygen atoms). So that’s $580 million of taxpayers money being channeled into a handout to the fossil fuel industry that will result in an additional 371 Mt CO2-e being pumped into the global atmosphere each year.

Oh, but silly me — it’s all heading offshore, so as the cartoon says, it’s no longer our problem. Easy as that! Never mind that this tidy little half-billion buck infrastructure by the Rudd government will ‘offset’ (read: cancel) our measly 2020 savings almost 17 times over…

But wait, there’s more! Actually, this was from earlier in the year, but the wound still smarts when you rub salt into it. In April 2008, ‘Environment’ Minister Peter Garrett gave the green light for a multi-billion dollar three-phase plan to expand the Wiggins Island Coal Terminal in Gladstone (Queensland), such that it will be able to export an additional 84 Mt of coal per year — a decision applauded by the Queensland State Government.

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Filed under: Emissions | 19 Comments »

Calls of urgency from climate scientists

Posted on 24 December 2008 by Barry Brook

Well, if you’ve been reading the BraveNewClimate blog regularly, then I’m sure you’ve certainly heard quite enough of my opinions on climate science and its policy implications this year! My thanks to all regular and occasional BNC readers for taking an interest in staying up-to-date with the latest issues on global warming — and perhaps even more importantly, in creating an online community here with your constructive and (almost always!) useful commentaries. I really do appreciate the feedback and discussion I get here — it is a major motivating factor in me doing the blog.

But as we approach Christmas 2008, I thought it an appropriate time to hear from some other scientists working on climate change.  So here is a selected collection of quotes that I thought most aptly described the mainstream science view on the deadly seriousness of the climate crisis:

“The current situation of the world in relation to the climate problem is that we’re in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog, and the fog is the scientific uncertainty about the details that prevent us from knowing exactly where the cliff is. The climate change sceptics are telling us that the fog is a consolation and that we shouldn’t worry because we’re uncertain about the details, but of course any sane person driving a car toward a cliff in the fog and knowing that the brakes are bad, that it takes the car a long time to stop, will start putting on the brakes, trying to slow the car, without knowing exactly where the cliff is but just in the hope that by putting on the brakes we’ll be in time to keep from going over the cliff. You don’t have to be sure that you can still avoid going over the cliff to put on the brakes, you want to do it in any case. And that’s what the world should be doing with respect to the emissions of greenhouse gases that are causing this climate problem. There’s a chance we’ll go over the cliff anyway but prudence requires that we try to stop the car.“

John Holdren (President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard, and Director of the Woods Hole Research Center — John is President Obama’s new science advisor), Feb 2007

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“The faster and deeper we cut our greenhouse gas emissions in the next 10 years, the better our chances of averting a tipping point…

We must close that gap (between the science and the policy-makers) and begin to move our energy systems in a fundamentally different direction within about a decade, or we will have pushed the planet past a tipping point beyond which it will be impossible to avoid far-ranging undesirable consequences.“

James Hansen (Head of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies)

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“The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming… and now as a sign of climate change, the canary has died.”

Dr Jay Zwally, glaciologist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Dec 2007

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Sceptics | 10 Comments »

Renewable energy cannot sustain an energy intensive society

Posted on 21 December 2008 by Barry Brook

At least that is the argument put forward by Dr Ted Trainer from the University of New South Wales. To quote:

It is commonly assumed that greenhouse gas and energy problems can be solved by switching from fossil fuel sources of energy to renewables.  However little attention has been given to exploring the limits to renewable energy.  The main problems are to do with the magnitude of the supply tasks that would be set and the difficulties that would be encountered integrating large amounts of intermittent renewable energy into supply systems. [I] argue that wind, photovoltaic, solar thermal and biomass sources, along with nuclear energy and geo-sequestration of carbon could not be combined to provide sufficient energy to sustain affluent societies while keeping greenhouse gas emissions below safe levels. The case is strongest with respect to liquid fuels and transport. [There are also strong] reasons why a “hydrogen economy” is not likely to be achieved.

So where is Ted coming from with such a dismal conclusion? Ted’s principal thesis is that itermittency of supply is the Achilles’ Heel of renewable energy when operating at the scale of complete, society-wide energy replacement. The problem is far worse if projected rates of economic and energy growth are factored in, and worse again if we try to imagine a scenario where the currently developing world nations attempt to achieve the same standard of living as those in the developed world.

Ted has put together a 37 page primer which summaries the content of his recent book published by Springer (Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society; Trainer, T 2007, 200 p.). With his permission I have made a PDF copy of this primer available for download here.

Some selected quotes from his primer help illustrate the basis of his arguments and the underpinning of his calculations (EJ = exajoules of energy, GW = gigawatt):

[R]enewable sources tend to be alternative rather than additive.  Therefore it is not a matter of having each renewable source carrying a fraction of the load all the time.  If we build one unit of wind power and one unit of PV power we would not necessarily have two more units of renewable energy capacity; sometimes we would have no more, e.g., on calm nights.  This means we might have to build two or even four separate systems (wind, PV, solar thermal and coal/nuclear) each capable of meeting much or all of the demand on its own, with the equivalent of one to three sitting idle much or all of the time.

…

It is evident from the graphs from Oswald et al., Coelingh, and Davey and Coppin that no matter how much wind capacity we added there would still be several times a month even in the best wind time of the year when more or less the whole X GW needed would have to come from coal or nuclear plant, and that we could cut carbon emissions to the very low required level only if we had perhaps 5X GW of wind capacity and dumped most of the energy it generated (or stored it very inefficiently as hydrogen.)  Clearly the gains from “over-sizing” the wind system would be savagely offset by the rise in total system capital costs, and it would not pay to have much more than X GW (peak) of wind plant, meaning plant capable of delivering on average about .25 of demand (or whatever the average wind system capacity fell to in view of the need to use very large areas.)

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Filed under: Renewables | 37 Comments »

Beyond peak oil – will black gold turn green?

Posted on 18 December 2008 by Barry Brook

I had meant today to post on probable limits to large-scale renewable energy, but that write-up needs a bit more time. So in the meantime, the following piece is timely — because it highlights some of the exciting prospects in the ‘green’ liquid fuels arena; provided that we can get our act together and should the R&D ‘gaps’ be closed [part of which simply requires more $$ -- something not obviously forthcoming in the CPRS cap-and-trade model for Australia, alas].

Below is a preface article I did for the most recent installment of Issues magazine, an Australian popular science that looks in-depth a key topics in the public arena. From their blurb: “Each quarterly edition is devoted to a single topic, providing extensive background information and opinions drawn from a variety of perspectives on themes of scientific, environmental, medical, legal, social and political significance.” The December 2008 issue is all about biofuels. Here’s my opening article:

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Prospects Beyond Peak Oil (original printable PDF can be downloaded here – it’s one of the two free articles available at the Issues website [along with Ian Lowe's])

As the world glimpses the bottom of the (oil) barrel, Barry Brook ponders alternative fuels.

The modern world depends upon a vast legion of invisible energy slaves – the equivalent of 200 human workers per person for developed countries [h/t to Michael Lardelli on this]. Like servants of the kings of old, they service our every whim. From the food we eat to the cars we drive, our lifestyles are propped up by cheap, readily available energy. Oil.

But what if that multitude of energy slaves started to slip away into the night? What if the river of black gold started to dry up? The dire consequences for the continued prosperity of civilisation hardly bear imagining. Yet that’s just what’s happening – right about now (give or take a few years).

It’s called “peak oil”. That’s the time when oil production reaches its maximum rate, despite the pull of the market demanding ever more supply. It’s the natural consequence of the ongoing depletion of any finite, non-replaceable natural resource. Exploitation of it can’t grow forever – it’s physically impossible. At some point, you start to run out.

Roughly speaking, peak oil is also the point at which we’ve used half of the world’s total extractable oil supply. At this stage, there is still have half left. But it’s the tough half. The light, sweet crude has basically all gone, and it’s time to suck out the heavy, sour stuff. That takes longer, costs more money and takes more energy inputs. That’s bad for growth.

Global oil production is currently stuck at about 85 million barrels a day. Serious energy analysts don’t expect it to ever climb much above that level. A method of supply projection known as “Hubbert linearization” (named after the analyst who successfully predicted the peak in American domestic oil production over a decade before it happened in 1970) suggests that there are about two trillion barrels of useable oil on Earth. That’s the reserves of oil that yield more energy from their use than it takes to extract, pipe and refine them.

We’ve used about one trillion barrels over the last 150 years. It will take a mere 50 years, if that, to use up the rest.

At this point, a peaking of oil-based energy supply (which is now), we have a few choices before us. We can watch modern society regress to a poorer and less productive state, as energy runs out. We can continue to burn up that remaining one trillion barrels and take the climate system on a rollercoaster ride the like of which humanity has never witnessed. Or we can find an alternative energy supply. Fast.

I’m optimistic that there are plenty of alternatives out there. For instance, in theory, we can run most anything off electricity. That includes land-based vehicles, though not aircraft. We can make plastics and pharmaceuticals out of plant-based products instead of petrochemicals. We can store unused renewable energy in compressed air “batteries”, molten salts, and in chemical forms such as hydrogen.

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Filed under: Emissions, Future, Renewables | 18 Comments »

Time to stop pretending on emissions reduction

Posted on 16 December 2008 by Barry Brook

So the final model of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme — Australia cap-and-trade system — has been released. It’s byline is ‘Australia’s ever-so-slightly-maybe Lower Pollution Future‘. Sorry, now I’m just being cynical.

There’s been plenty written about it over the subsequent 24 hours, including some comments from me here, here, here and here. I also hammered some points out in a few radio slots yesterday, but I’m not sure if the message is really getting through. A bunch of short but incisive comments from other scientists and economists is also available at the Australian Science Media Centre. They’re worth reading for (i) the diversity of issues raised and (ii) for the near unanimity of criticism of the targets and general model set forth.

The final scheme clearly rewards big polluters by handing them a swag of free permits, right up to 2020. The poor hard-done-by coal-fired power generators get the majority of these; $4 billion in the first 5 years alone — naturally (I’ll let you go figure that one out). It rightly provides significant compensation to low and middle income households, but sadly directs ~3% of the income generated into research and development on low-carbon energy technologies and energy efficiency. It sets a reduction target of 5% of 2000 levels by 2020, unless ‘all the major emitters come on board’, in which case the government says they’ll increase the cuts to 15%. In other words, Australia is only willing to move with the pack (actually, somewhere in the middle of the pack – you know, for extra safety). Global leaders? Forget it.

But in my opinion, the biggest problem is the sheer dishonesty about the science. If targets greater than 5% are impossible to implement on political grounds, then that’s the current reality. The government should be honest about this, and say:

‘This is as large a cut as we feel the community will accept, even though the science of climate change clearly show that we require much more. Accepting this current reality, our job, as government, is to now better inform you, the general public, of the seriousness of this issue, the short time frames for action, and the need for deeper cuts“.

But no. Instead we get artful political spin and greenwash, with the claim that Australia is doing something meaningful to avoid dangerous climate change and that the targets will miraculously allow us to go no higher than 450 ppm CO2. As the calculations in the Garnaut Review pointed out, this is simply false. It’s a shame the government has chosen to ignore a large swathe of the recommendations of that review, modest as they were.

I’ve opined on this further in a little piece I wrote for the Adelaide Advertiser. I’m not sure it if will end up appearing in the paper or not, but at least BNC readers can get to look at it.

With the Poznan climate conference now over, the Australian Government has announced its aim to cut greenhouse gas emission by up to 14% compared to 1990 levels by the year 2020 and 60% by 2050.

This is the centrepiece of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, which is another name for a cap-and-trade system for limiting Australia’s future carbon emissions, from 2010 onwards.

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Filed under: Emissions | 51 Comments »

Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) nuclear power – Q and A

Posted on 13 December 2008 by Barry Brook

It seems like something that only a crazed conspiracy theorist would come up with. A source of carbon-free energy that holds the potential to provide base load power for the planet for thousands of years hence, and which could be built along the existing transmission grid and even be housed within retrofitted coal-fired power stations. A process that could eat existing nuclear waste instead of needing to store it in highly secure vaults such as Yucca Mountain for hundreds of millennia. A technology that enjoyed large investments in R&D by government, only to have the funding zeroed for political reasons when close to large-scale demonstration — and then the scientists involved told not to publicise this fact.  Well that, in caricature, is the basic story of Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) nuclear power.

Perhaps it is too good to be true — almost everything that’s been hyped as ‘the future of…’ is, after all. But not everything — the exceptions to the ‘hype rule’ now dominate our modern technological society (home computers, mobile communications, satellite communications, etc.). So what if IFR is the real deal? Well, some very clever folks have been looking into this and conclude that it is — or at least worth pushing. As I described in an earlier post, Hansen is among them — at least in terms of seeing the value in giving this tech a fair go — and he’s certainly not alone. Mark Lynas for instance, author of ‘Six Degrees‘, has also pitched in.

There are some great resources out on the web, and a new book, for those of you who want to know more about IFR nuclear — in order to make your own informed judgement about whether you choose to advocate it. Steve Kirsch, a Californian entrepreneur who invented the optical mouse (and former nuclear agnostic), has written a great summary article about IFR here (h/t to JM) and a shorter Silicon Valley newspaper Op Ed here. Steve’s website provides a wealth of links to additional information on IFR and related developments. The PBC television programme ‘Frontline’ recently interviewed nuclear physicist and IFR co-developer Dr. Charles Till — the transcript is available here.

Kirsch summarises the key advantages of IFR as follows:

1. It can be fueled entirely with material recovered from today’s used nuclear fuel.

2. It consumes virtually all the long-lived radioactive isotopes that worry people who are concerned about the “nuclear waste problem,” reducing the needed isolation time to less than 500 years.

3. It could provide all the energy needed for centuries (perhaps as many as 50,000 years), feeding only on the uranium that has already been mined.

4. It uses uranium resources with 100 to 300 times the efficiency of today’s reactors.

5. It does not require enrichment of uranium.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Nuclear | 117 Comments »

Squeezing the marine nutcracker

Posted on 10 December 2008 by Barry Brook

I haven’t talked a lot about marine impacts of climate change on this website — mostly because it is quite thoroughly covered by Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg in his Climate Shifts blog and Dr Simon Donner on Maribo. But in short, the marine environment is under severe stress from chronic human impacts (over-fishing, dredging, pollution [e.g., chemical and oil spills], structural damage [e.g., dynamite fishing on coral reefs], traffic [boat strikes]. etc.) and a double-whammy from climate change. Assoc. Prof. Corey Bradshaw talked about this in detail here (slides and audio available).

A recent editoral in the peer-reviewed journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, by Prof Charles Sheppard of the University of Warwick, UK, spells out just how grim this ‘marine nutcracker’ is. Why does he use the nutcracker analogy? Because: “…coral reef calcification is squeezed, by temperature near the equator and by acidification from the poles“. Let me explain further, by some selected citation from the essay.

It is not farfetched to say that in the marine environment, coral reefs will be the first major ecosystem to be functionally extinguished because of climate change. Of course, many entire small areas of global systems have disappeared already for a number of reasons, from industrial pollution or coastal construction, and many areas of soft substrate have been totally obliterated (trawled for example). But a whole ecosystem with a pan-tropical span? Probably not…

…Warming which causes, firstly, widespread bleaching of corals and which is then sufficiently severe and persistent to cause subsequent widespread mortality was not really noticed until the 1970s. It began to be increasingly noticed from the 1980s, and now occurs with frequent if erratic occurrence. The years 1998, 2001/2 and 2005 were seminal. Several predictions (calculations are a better word) have been made that severity and frequency of such events will increase so that the sea temperatures which cause widespread mortality will become a near annual occurrence well within the lifetime of most people alive today. Some suggestions are that, on average – there are many local variations – this will be most severe across a tropical belt and will expand outwards. Some extrapolations (Sheppard 2003) showed that the timing of critical dates are nearest close to the equator, becoming later as one moves polewards, in some oceans at least…

…But most importantly perhaps, the argument that corals can perhaps move polewards a bit overlooks ocean acidification. The oceans are having to absorb more CO2 than ever before and, to date, half to two thirds of all CO2 generated since the start of the industrial revolution has been absorbed by the surface layers of the sea. It is, in fact, only the smaller portion which has not been absorbed by the ocean which causes our greenhouse effect and which is giving rise to all those conferences about global climate change and warming. That portion which has been absorbed, however, has changed the pH of the surface ocean by 0.1, which is a 30% increase in H+ ions [Ed: Hydrogen] (Royal Society, 2005). As a result, the complexities of the carbonic acid – bicarbonate – carbonate buffering system mean that calcification by marine life is increasingly curtailed…

In simple terms, marine systems, especially sensitive areas like tropical coral reefs, are being regularly ‘shocked’ by extreme heat wave events, which causes loss of symbiotic algae (microscopic plants that live in the tissues of the coral polyp and provide a source of nutrition) and eventually coral death (and the loss of other shell-forming organisms). Further, as the oceans absorb vast amounts of CO2, the surface waters acidify, which undermines the ability of reef-building organisms to produce skeletons of crystalline calcium carbonate (calcite and aragonite).

…To risk adding despair to the despondency, the time lags in the system mean that even if the problem of produced CO2 was solved immediately, and the atmospheric level started to drop today, impacts from acidification will continue for a few decades to come. What we have done already and what we do in the next, say, 20 years, will have an inevitability about it which, as far as we know, will be irreversible in human terms at least…

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Filed under: Impacts | 31 Comments »

Managing catastrophic climate risk – the six step plan

Posted on 7 December 2008 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Ian T. Dunlop.

Ian was formerly a senior oil, gas and coal industry executive. He chaired the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88, chaired the AGO Experts Group on Emissions Trading in 1999-2000 and was CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors from 1997-2001. He is a CPD fellow and is currently researching policy responses to climate change. He is deputy convener of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil.

The various reports of the Garnaut Review (i, ii, iii) contain extensive discussion on the risk implications of anthropogenic climate change, in particular differentiating between risk and uncertainty (iv). The Review emphasises the potential for extreme outcomes, noting that the latest science suggests the extent and impact of climate change may be occurring faster than previously anticipated, certainly faster than the median IPCC (v) estimates upon which most current policy proposals are based. It notes that, due to inherent complexity, much climate science is difficult to assess in terms of quantifiable probabilities, and hence is positioned toward the uncertainty end of the risk-uncertainty spectrum (vi).

These extreme outcomes would represent catastrophic failure at both a national and a global level, albeit the word catastrophe is rarely mentioned by the Review, apart from reference to the recent catastrophic climate change scenario developed by CSIS in the US (vii, viii). Catastrophic failure may be defined as “a sudden and total failure of some system from which recovery is impossible”.

The latest scientific information which has become available since the release of the IPCC 4th Assessment Report in 2007 suggest that the risks posed by climate change are now significantly worse than indicated in that Assessment; inter alia:

  • Rapid summer melt of Arctic sea ice, far greater than IPCC projections
  • Accelerating growth in human carbon emissions, above worst IPCC projections
  • Decline in natural carbon sinks
  • Large increase in projected sea level rise
  • Increased response to climate forcings, hence potentially greater temperature increases
  • Potential tipping point for loss of ice sheets lower than expected
  • Increased ocean acidification
  • Initial indications of Arctic seabed methane hydrate emissions

Despite the predictable resurgence of climate scepticism as the time for real action nears, political and corporate leaders nationally and globally now claim to have crossed the threshold in accepting that climate change is serious and requires urgent action. The Garnaut Review, to its credit, has gone far further than any other Australian study in acknowledging the dangers of extreme outcomes and the looming risk of climatic tipping points. International leaders are issuing similar warnings (ix, x, xi). In parallel, scientists re-iterate ever more urgently the need for rapid action (xii), most recently that the target for atmospheric carbon concentrations has to be reduced to less than 350ppm CO2 if dangerous climate change is to be avoided (xiii, xiv), rather than the 450-550ppm CO2e range currently favoured politically. Intelligence communities worldwide are factoring the implications of climate change, combined with energy security, into their strategic assessments – “business-as-usual is now an environmental security threat”. Medical authorities are planning for the public health impact that climate change will bring (xv). Leading international organisations are increasingly attempting to quantify the probabilities of catastrophic climate change (xvi), no longer casting it as high impact / low probability, but viewing it as having increasingly higher probabilities of occurrence.

Put bluntly, the potential for catastrophic impact from anthropogenic climate change is increasing rapidly. Strangely, the official Australian response largely ignores these warnings.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Future, Renewables | 11 Comments »

The smokescreen of outdated emissions reduction targets

Posted on 4 December 2008 by Barry Brook

In a week where the Poznan climate conference barely registers in the international media, two new reports on the climate crisis have been released in the UK. George Monbiot reviews them both, here and here for the Guardian. Talk about chalk and cheese.

One of the reports, developed by the Public Interest Research Centre, evaluates recent trends in human industrial activity and the response of the Earth system, and concludes that we’re near or beyond the climatic breaking point already. Nothing short of transformational change, at all levels of society, will be sufficient to avoid a calamitous outcome. World War II++ scale action where all resources necessary to fix the problem are devoted to it. The analysis and recommendations in this report draws inspiration from the Climate Code Red scenario developed by Melbourne-based businessmen David Spratt and Philip Sutton. Presented in an interesting, persuasive and very readable 50 pages, it’s worth getting hold of. You can download the Climate Safety report here. Get it. Read it. Spread it around. This stuff must be widely understood.

The other report is an official paper produced by the Committee on Climate Change called Building a Low Carbon Economy: the UK’s contribution to tackling climate change. You can get it here. As Monbiot points out, it’s a decent acknowledgment of the seriousness of climate change, and the authors argue strongly that the UK must make deep cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions: 80% reduction by 2050 (the current Australian target – a nation with a per capita emissions rate almost twice that of the UK – is a laughably inadequate 60%). You see, as is explained the Climate Safety report and elsewhere, even 80% cuts for a developed nation like the UK throws caution very much to the ever warming wind. This is because we are already over the ‘safe’ level of CO2, and with each incremental addition to the atmospheric pool of greenhouse gases, we edge closer (or perhaps well beyond) the point at which we set in train Earth system feedbacks that rapidly take the problem out of our collective hands.

The problem is somewhat analogous to this. Imagine you are riding a bicycle along a flat stretch of road. If you keep pedalling (emitting CO2 to the atmosphere), you maintain your forward momentum (continue accumulating excess CO2 in the atmosphere). If you take your foot off the pedals, your bicycle starts to slow due to wind resistance and friction with the road surface (natural carbon sinks), and eventually you stop (get back to a ‘safe’ level of CO2 that maintains a Holocene climate). Ideally, you’d also apply pressure to the brakes to make you stop faster (produce large volumes of biochar or enhanced weathering to geoengineer a rapid CO2 drawdown).

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Filed under: Emissions | 14 Comments »

Hansen to Obama Pt IV – Where to from here?

Posted on 2 December 2008 by Barry Brook

So what are the priorities for Obama, and indeed, for world governments, as they gather to discuss the next international treaty at Poznan this month? Can something meaningful be hammered out in Copenhagen in a years time? What are the implications of us collectively making a choice to do nothing, or at least very little? Can ‘politics as usual’ and international diplomacy be bold enough to make the critical decisions?

In this short concluding piece, the key options open to humanity – and the ‘no go zones’ -  are reviewed.

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Tell Barack Obama the Truth – The Whole Truth (Part IV of IV)

Dr James E. Hansen

Implications. All of the slack in the schedule for averting climate disasters has been used up. The time has past for ‘goals’, half-measures, greenwashing, and compromises with special interests. We have already overshot the safe level of greenhouse gases. Things are just beginning to crumble – Arctic ice is melting, methane is bubbling from permafrost, mountain glaciers are disappearing. We must move onto a different course within the next year or two to avoid committing the planet to accelerating climate changes out of our control. Geophysical boundary constraints are crystal clear: coal emissions must be phased out and emissions from unconventional fossil fuels (tar shale, tar sands, e.g.) must be prohibited.

Priorities for solving the climate and energy problems, while stimulating the economy are steps to: (1) improve energy efficiency, (2) develop and deploy renewable energies, (3) modernize and expand a ‘smart’ electric grid, (4) develop 4th generation nuclear power, (5) develop carbon capture and sequestration capability.

Prompt development of safe 4th generation nuclear power is needed to allow energy options for countries such as China and India, and for countries in the West in the likely event that energy efficiency and renewable energies cannot satisfy all energy requirements.

Deployment of 4th generation nuclear power can be hastened via cooperation with China, India and other countries. It is essential that hardened ‘environmentalists’ not be allowed to delay the R&D on 4th generation nuclear power. Thus it is desirable to avoid appointing to key energy positions persons with a history of opposition to nuclear power development. Of course, deployment of nuclear power is a local option, and some countries or regions may prefer to rely entirely on other energy sources, but opponents of nuclear power should not be allowed to deny that option to everyone.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Future, Nuclear, Renewables | 23 Comments »

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