‘The climate system is particularly challenging since it is known that
components in the system are inherently chaotic; there are feedbacks
that could potentially switch sign, and there are central processes
that affect the system in a complicated, non-linear manner. These
complex, chaotic, non-linear dynamics are an inherent aspect of the
climate system.’ (IPCC TAR s14.2.2.1 -
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/504.htm)
‘Modern climate records include abrupt changes that are smaller and
briefer than in paleoclimate records but show that abrupt climate
change is not restricted to the distant past.’ (Abrupt Climate
Change: Inevitable Surprises, 2002, NAP, p19 -
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=19).
There is a new theory of ocean/climate states (http://
www.nosams.whoi.edu/PDFs/papers/tsonis-grl_newtheoryforclimateshifts.pdf)
which confirms that climate on decadal timescales is an emergent
property of complex and dynamic Earth systems. 'You go from a cooling
regime to a warming regime or a warming regime to a cooling regime.
This way we were able to explain all the fluctuations in the global
temperature trend in the last century,' Anastasios Tsonis said. "The
research team has found the warming trend of the past 30 years has
stopped and in fact global temperatures have leveled off since 2001.'
So is climate predictable to the year 2100? Not if there is another
abrupt climate shift in the next decade or so, one a few decades after
that and so on. Chaos theory explains why there has been no warming
since 1998 as well as other puzzling aspects of the modern climate
record.
Global surface temperatures stubbornly refuse to rise. Thus the
battle is lost and it will be another generation or two before any
action is taken on greenhouse gases. A great loss since chaos theory
also shows the reality of climate change (rather than global warming)
and of climate risk.
I believe that there are three real human questions about climate.
1. Should we continue to change the composition of the atmosphere?
No.
2. What is the cheapest and most effective way to transition
economies? It is something that I call the organisational and
technological path - it is said by economist Bjorn Lomborg's
Copenhagen Consensus Group to be 300 times more cost effective than
cap and trade methods.
Organisational methods could include such things as this geo-
engineering proposal (
http://www.nosams.whoi.edu/PDFs/papers/tsonis-grl_newtheoryforclimateshifts.pdf)
involving afforestation of deserts in Africa and Australia. A mega
project in greening the Sahel has potential not only to sequester
carbon but to bring safe water, sewerage, power, education and health
services to the heart of Africa. The proposal would have some
ecological show stoppers in Australia - but a project to restore
carbon stores to pre-European levels in Australian soils has as well
productivity, fire risk and conservation benefits
There are a number of technologies that are available and in use, are
10 years or less away or can be delivered within 20 years. Thin (and
therefore cheap) solar panels are a dream source for many of the
world's poorest who don't have adequate energy supplies. Generation 4
nuclear plants have a 40 year development history and are being built
and operated now. A new model designed at Los Alamos - the US
government laboratory famous (or infamous) for the first atomic bomb -
will be available commercially from 2013. Generation 4 nuclear plants
can't melt down, are modular and flexible, can't be used for weapons
production, use a range of nuclear materials (conventional nuclear
waste, uranium, thorium and recycled weapons plutonium) providing
virtually limitless fuels, burn two orders of magnitude more
efficiently than conventional reactors and create much shorter lived
wastes (hundreds of years rather than hundreds of millennia). Endless
energy for endless purposes through clever fuel processing and
materials. The Gen 4 International Forum – in intergovernmental
forum - has a technology roadmap for 6 different designs for different
purposes to be delivered by 2030. In the interim there are Gen 3 and
3+ technologies to go on with. These are cost effective in many
locations and applications - and indeed there are hundreds of these
plants ordered or under construction.
Geothermal, wind farms, solar concentrators, algal biofuels, oil
recovery from waste, co-generation, carbon efficiency, coal to gas
conversion, coal seam methane production to name a few more examples.
There are technologies available now that are cost effective and
others where costs are coming down and technologies are improving.
This is not market magic - but the inevitable outcome of the rapid
rate of technological innovation. Instead of spending trillions on
carbon regulation - spend, mostly by the private sector, a fraction of
that on research and development and create better and cheaper energy
options for the world.
3. What does the science say?
I have always missed the point of science that needs to be definitive
and scary. Climate science is necessarily more synthesis than the
more objective process of hypothesis and analysis.
Ideally science having done the job of provisionally warning of
potential problems – and technology and organisation having changed
the policy trajectory - can return to being explorations at the
boundary of ignorance of the universe around us.
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