Hi Alvia, Thanks for the reference to Daivd Appell's article. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/dec/12/environment-climate-change-poznan which you quote (see appended email).
I agree with David that there is not a "sense of crisis", but I think there should be, and strongly disagree with the following statement: "Those claiming we are near some kind of catastrophic tipping point simply have no science to back up their claims." Wrong. There is very clear science to back up this possibility. There are clear signs that the whole Earth system is tipping into a new super-hot state, due to the very large pulse of anthropogenic CO2 put in the atmosphere. Hansen suggests a global tipping point could be reached by 2016, unless action is taken: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2007/2007-06-01-01.asp And this is tantamount to a planetary emergency: http://www.cleanenergy-project.de/2008/04/29/tipping-point-%E2%80%A2-perspective-of-a-climatologist-james-hansen/ Within this overall tipping of the Earth system, taking place over decades, there may be individual, quicker acting, tipping points, helping the Earth system along its way. We can consider a number of individual tipping points, with ref to Prof Tim Lenton's paper: http://researchpages.net/ESMG/people/tim-lenton/tipping-points/ 1. The summer disappearance of Arctic sea ice "A more convincing case can be made that climate warming may have caused the Arctic sea-ice to pass a tipping point. Certainly the area coverage of both summer and winter Arctic sea-ice are declining at present, summer sea-ice more markedly, and the ice has thinned significantly over a large area. Elegant analysis has shown that positive ice-albedo feedback (the warming due to changing from reflective ice to dark ocean surface) dominates over external forcing (the global warming signal) in causing the thinning and shrinkage since around 1988. This suggests the system may already be undergoing a non-linear transition toward a different state with less Arctic sea-ice (perhaps none in summer)." 2. The Greenland ice sheet "The tipping element that consistently emerges as having the closest threshold (in terms of global warming) and the least uncertainty in this is (irreversible) melt of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS). Paleo-data reveal that the GIS shrunk considerably during the last interglacial. Models also indicate that above a local warming of ~3 °C above present the Greenland ice sheet will go into net mass loss and shrink to a much smaller size (perhaps disappearing altogether). The corresponding global warming (accounting for polar amplification) is estimated at 1–2 °C. The IPCC (2007) give a more conservative range of 1–4 °C. Others have estimated <1 °C. Their case may be bolstered by observations indicating that the ice sheet is already in net mass loss and the rate of mass loss has accelerated in the last decade. The timescale for the ice sheet to melt is at least 300 years and often given as roughly 1000 years. However, given that it contains 7m of global sea-level rise the corresponding contribution to sea-level can dwarf other contributors." 3. The WAIS "The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is thought to be less vulnerable to warming than the Greenland Ice Sheet but a threshold could still be accessed this century. The setting is quite different, with most of the WAIS grounded below sea-level. The WAIS has the potential to collapse if grounding line retreat causes ocean water to undercut the ice sheet and trigger further separation from the bedrock (a strong positive feedback). This suggests that it is warming ocean water rather than a warming atmosphere that may pass a critical threshold, a point bolstered by the fact that for surface melting to occur, there would need to be ~8 °C warming of the surface atmosphere at 75–80 °S to reach the freezing point in summer. The corresponding global warming depends on the Antarctic polar amplification factor (which varies a lot between models for the 21st century but is likely much smaller than that for the Arctic). The threshold for ocean warming is estimated at 3–5 °C. A worst case scenario is for collapse to occur within 300 years, with a total of 4–6m of global sea-level rise." 4. The Amazon "One region that would suffer drying is the Amazon, and more persistent El Niño conditions have been predicted to cause dieback of the Amazon rainforest under 3–4 °C global warming in the Hadley Centre model. A recent study nesting a regional climate model within a different GCM also predicts Amazon dieback due to reductions in precipitation and lengthening of the dry season. When different vegetation models are driven with similar climate projections they also show Amazon dieback. However, other climate models predict different precipitation trends and therefore do not produce dieback. Rainforest loss itself leads to reductions in precipitation, so land-use change could be a trigger, as well as climate change. The transition time is of the order of decades and the impacts include widespread loss of biodiversity." 5. Methane from permafrost "North from the boreal forest lies the tundra, but as already discussed, melt of the permafrost and associated methane release – and on longer timescales, replacement of the tundra by boreal forest – are expected to be quasi-linear responses and therefore not tipping elements." However, the global warming from massive methane release would trigger further release, in a runaway global warming event - perhaps not a tipping point, but a point of no return. And David Lawrence is not as sanguine about the timescale, see below. 6. Domino dynamics "Current mechanistic understanding suggests that there are more positive causal connections between tipping elements than negative ones. In the worst case scenario, this raises the alarming possibility of ‘domino dynamics’ in the climate system where tipping one element encourages tipping the next and so on. However, lest the reader be panicking, there are also notable negative interactions between tipping elements that could produce ‘self-regulation’ scenarios. Furthermore, Earth history indicates that transitions of the whole Earth system are rare." "Continuing... if the GIS starts to melt the ensuing sea level rise will encourage grounding line retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Furthermore, if there is a collapse of the THC promoted by GIS melt this would tend to warm the Southern Ocean also encouraging disintegration of the WAIS. Hence there is the possibility of domino dynamics between the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. " The release of methane is likely to be triggered by the loss of Arctic sea ice, according to David Lawrence: http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2008/permafrost.jsp Similarly the disintegration of GIS is likely to be promoted by the loss of Arctic sea ice, partly because of the albedo effect, but also because the sea ice forms a physical barrier to the glacier outlets. 7 Timescale The shortest timescale is likely to be for the Arctic sea ice summer disappearance, which then can have a domino effect on methane release and Greenland ice sheet disintegration. The Climate Safety report says that "many scientists are now predicting an ice-free summer Arctic by somewhere between 2011 and 2015." The refs below are from the full report, downloadable from: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/12/414238.html [15] Kathryn Young, “Canada’s Inuit facing ‘cultural genocide,’ says Arctic expert”, Canada.com, 23 November 2007. Available online at: http://www.canada.com/cityguides/winnipeg/info/story.html?id=886e1d36-01c8-4ef6-8d60-a9460b815f62&k=34394 [16] Steve Connor, “Scientists warn Arctic sea ice is melting at its fastest rate since records began”, Independent, 15 August 2007. Available online at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-warn-arctic-sea-ice-is-melting-at-its-fastest-rate-since-records-began-461632.html. [17] Andrew C. Revkin, “Retreating Ice: A blue Arctic Ocean in summers by 2013?”, International Herald Tribune, 1 October 2007. Available online at: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/01/sports/arcticweb.php. Cheers from Chiswick, John ----- Original Message ----- From: Alvia Gaskill To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2008 10:31 PM Subject: [geo] Time to Call In Klaatu and Gort? http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/dec/12/environment-climate-change-poznan Let's get real on the environment. After the failure in Poznan, it's time to be honest: the world is not going to be cutting greenhouse gases anytime soon David Appell guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 The world's environmental leaders have spent the past two weeks meeting in Poznan, Poland, pretending that they're carrying on the fight against global warming first addressed by the Kyoto Protocol. You recall the Kyoto Protocol. It was never ratified by the United States – defeated 95-0 in the US Senate in 1997, in fact – and has proven just as ineffective elsewhere around the world. It was supposed to be first step in the world's cutback of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that are warming our atmosphere. The hard truth be told, essentially none of those who signed onto the treaty have been able to cutback their greenhouse gas emissions. People – surprise, surprise – demand to be warm at the cheapest prices. Developing countries like China and India have ignored it completely, with their emission rising at 6% to 8% a year. China now emits more greenhouse gases than even the United States. Carbon dioxide emissions, which were increasing about 1% a year in the 1990s, are increasing about 3% percent a year in this decade. Leaders all across the world, including Barack Obama, continue to look straight into the camera and proclaim that they are going to solve the global warming crisis – by 2020, or 2050, or 2100 or … sometime soon. The world desperately needs to get serious, including President-elect Obama, Europe's leaders and every UN bureaucrat who dined handsomely in the evenings in Poznan. The truth is, the world is not going to be cutting greenhouse gases anytime soon. If ever. There are simply no reasonable alternatives. Wind power is too scant. Nuclear power is too controversial. Solar power is stuck in a dream world. It gets a little better every year, but it will never be good enough. Nuclear fusion is hopeless, perpetually 25 years in the future. Not one of us – you, me, Obama or the greenest activist anywhere in the world – is willing to live without the comforts fossil fuels provide us – heat, light, instant hot food, convenient transportation, modern agriculture and airplane travel. There are too many factors pointing strongly in the wrong direction: the demonstrated refusal of western countries to sacrifice in the face of the climate problem they created; the insistence of developing countries that they be able to live at least as well as the US and Europe and their unwillingness to cut back greenhouse gas emissions as long as first world countries – who largely created this mess – refuse to do so. The lack of any reasonable alternatives, and our lack of interest in developing them, further hinders the ability to find a solution. We are never going to live as cheaply as we possibly can, especially here in the US, and we simply do not have the wisdom to sacrifice for the sake of those who will live decades ahead of us. From the time we landed on the Atlantic coast and pushed westward, it is simply not bred in the American bone. Obama will not change this. Americans will not accept large increases in what we pay for gasoline and electricity. President-elect Obama says he is going to solve the financial crisis, the healthcare crisis, the infrastructure crisis, the energy crisis, the climate crisis and perhaps even the intolerable shortage of magic pixie dust. The man is quite the optimist. But let's not be completely stupid. Our problems, especially the climate crisis, are not going away anytime soon. The alternative technologies we need to reduce our carbon emissions to essentially zero – what scientists are now telling us is necessary – simply aren't there, and won't be anytime soon. Nor is the sense of crisis really there. Those claiming we are near some kind of catastrophic tipping point simply have no science to back up their claims. Those expecting that we are going to reduce our atmosphere's carbon dioxide content to 350 parts per million are naïve activists perhaps living off the donations to their organisations. In any case, they are dreaming in la-la land. There is no crisis that will change our minds – not heat waves in France, not Katrina, not the disappearance of Arctic ice up north. We want what we want, and our species is lousy at planning for the future. Even the world's climate organisers do not hesitate to fly thousands of miles to Poland and live high on the hog. Given this, what can we do? Be realistic, first of all. Let's fund geo-engineering research to the hilt, exploring how we can someday modify our planet's natural systems to produce a slight atmospheric cooling. It is our destiny. But most of all, let's open our eyes and begin to be honest. You will fly to Jamaica this winter instead of cutting your greenhouse gases. Fine. Can we please accept this and begin to move on? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
