Catastrophic Climate Change may be Inevitible unless Drastic Steps are Taken : Melbourne Indymedia

The report was prepared by the Carbon Equity Project, and surveys climate data released by scientists in the last couple of years. Examining the risks and probabilities of catastrophic changes to the climate, the report concludes that annual greenhouse gas reductions of 4 to 5% a year must begin by the end of the decade if we are to have a reasonable chance of preventing disaster.

“This report is frightening. It looks at the latest scientific data released this year that shows many key climate changing events are happening more rapidly or sooner than expected. The earth’s capacity to absorb carbon is decreasing and feedback mechanisms are accelerating. It means we have to do more sooner to cut emissions” said Cam Walker, Friends of the Earth Australia.

David Spratt, the report author, said “Even current proposals for significantly reducing emissions, such as those in the Stern Report, may not be enough to prevent catastrophe. We can’t let the planet warm any further or we face a very real chance of runaway climate change." According to Spratt the IPCC report "does not include much of the recent science reviewed in this report. It also downplays the risk as it represents a consensus of all scientists, many whom are influenced by their governments,” he said.

“The debate over the existence and cause of climate change is over. The danger is that we now fail to recognise how much danger we are in and how little time we have. A plan for reducing emissions that does not match the science is of no help, in fact it is flirting with catastrophe”, concluded Cam Walker.

According to the report, the world is anually producing double the atmospheric carbon that the earth's carbon sinks can absorb. If emissions continue at the present rate, by 2030 the world will be producing five times the biosphere's carbon sinks capacity and catastrophic climate change will be unavoidable.

James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and one of the world's most eminent climate scientists, says that "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". He warns that Global warming of two to three degrees would produce a planet without Arctic sea ice, a catastrophic sea level rise in the pipeline of around 25 metres, and a super-drought in the American west, southern Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa. "Such a scenario threatens even greater calamity, because it could unleash positive feedbacks such as melting of frozen methane in the Arctic, as occurred 55 million years ago, when more than ninety per cent of species on Earth went extinct"

With a current world population of 6.2 billion people, global atmospheric carbon emissions average 1.27 tonnes per capita, with the eath's capacity to absorb carbon currently at 0.62 tonnes per capita, decreasing to 0.32 tonnes per capita by 2030. The report concludes that radical programs need to be introduced by Governments to greatly reduce per capita carbon emissions below the ability for earth to absorb atmospheric carbon.

== Stern Report presents a Conservative assessment ==

The report summarises Sir Nicholas Stern's key messages from his Review on the Economics of Climate Change prepared for the British Government and published October 2006 and assesses that "these impact assessments appear to be conservative.":

"Climate change threatens the basic elements of life for people around the world – access to water, food, health, and use of land and the environment. On current trends, average global temperatures could rise by 2–3°C within the next fifty years or so, leading to many severe impacts, often mediated by water, including more frequent droughts and floods.

• Melting glaciers will increase flood risk during the wet season and strongly reduce dry-season water supplies to one-sixth of the world’s population, predominantly in the Indian sub-continent, parts of China, and the Andes in South America.
• Declining crop yields, especially in Africa, are likely to leave hundreds of millions without the ability to produce or purchase sufficient food – particularly if the carbon fertilisation effect is weaker than previously thought, as some recent studies suggest. At mid to high latitudes, crop yields may increase for moderate temperature rises (2 – 3°C), but then decline with greater amounts of warming.
• Ocean acidification, a direct result of rising carbon dioxide levels, will have major effects on marine ecosystems, with possible adverse consequences on fish stocks.
• Rising sea levels will result in tens to hundreds of millions more people flooded each year with a warming of 3 or 4°C. There will be serious risks and increasing pressures for coastal protection in South East Asia (Bangladesh and Vietnam), small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and large coastal cities, such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Calcutta, Karachi, Buenos Aires, St Petersburg, New York, Miami and London.
• Climate change will increase worldwide deaths from malnutrition and heat stress. Vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever could become more widespread if effective control measures are not in place. In higher latitudes, cold-related deaths will decrease.
• By the middle of the century, 200 million more people may become permanently displaced due to rising sea levels, heavier floods, and more intense droughts, according to one estimate.
• Ecosystems will be particularly vulnerable to climate change, with one study estimating that around 15 – 40% of species face extinction with 2°C of warming. Strong drying over the Amazon, as predicted by some climate models, would result in dieback of the forest with the highest biodiversity on the planet.
• The consequences of climate change will become disproportionately more damaging with increased warming. Higher temperatures will increase the chance of triggering abrupt and large-scale changes that lead to regional disruption, migration and conflict.
• Warming may induce sudden shifts in regional weather patterns like the monsoons or the El Niño. Such changes would have severe consequences for water availability and flooding in tropical regions and threaten the livelihoods of billions.
• Melting or collapse of ice sheets would raise sea levels and eventually threaten at least 4 million Km2 of land, which today is home to 5% of the world’s population."

The Friends of the Earth report says that "these impact assessments appear to be conservative. More recent research on positive feedback mechanisms suggests that the greatest effect may be changes in the long-term functioning of the carbon cycle: diminishing carbon sinks (both soil and ocean), increased CO2 production and the release of long-stored greenhouse gases (permafrost methane) may combine to increase global temperatures at a rising rate."

==Ice Sheet Melting and Sea Level Rises ==

One of the significant events talked about repeatedly in the report is the triggering of the meltdown of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Aleady there is increased seismic activity in the Greenland ice sheet and evidence the ice sheet is starting to melt at a much increased rate. The report warns that we may face sea level rises of 7 metres from Greenland, possibly at the speed of a metre every 20 years.

James Hansen notes that "Ice sheet disintegration starts slowly but multiple positive feedbacks can lead to rapid non-linear collapse" and than "equilibrium sea level rise for ~3°C warming (25±10 m = 80 feet) implies the potential for us to lose control" because "we cannot tie a rope around a collapsing ice sheet"

The report quotes a draft 2007 paper by Hansen and fellow researchers warning: "We foresee the gravest threat from the possibility of surface melt on West Antarctica, and interaction among positive feedbacks leading to catastrophic ice loss."

The Greenland ice sheet melting would also start to float the Antarctic ice sheets off their base. Even a one metre of sea level rise from Greenland melt would be devastating.

== Salt Water Threat from Rising Sea Levels ==

The report states that the 2006 Conference of the International Association of Hydrogeologists concluded that rising sea levels will also lead to the inundation by salt water of the aquifers used by cities such as Shanghai, Manila, Jakarta, Bangkok, Kolkata, Mumbai, Karachi, Lagos, Buenos Aires and Lima.

"The water supplies of dozens of major cities around the world are at risk from a previously ignored aspect of global warming. Within the next few decades rising sea levels will pollute underground water reserves with salt... Long before the rising tides flood coastal cities, salt water will invade the porous rocks that hold fresh water... The problem will be compounded by sinking water tables due to low rainfall, also caused by climate change, and rising water usage by the world's growing and increasingly urbanised population." (Pearce 2006)

Other issues raised by the report include:

* melting permafrost releasing methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than CO2.
* Increased mobilisation of Organic Carbon
* Increasing Ocean Acidity
* Algae extinction, loss of ocean biodiversity and reduction of the ocean as a CO2 sink and disruption to the algae production of dimethyl sulphide and its impact on cloud cover

== Worst Case Scenario ==

A worst case nightmare scenario is painted of a temperature rise of 8℃ above pre-industrial levels, which would result in the planet being habitable only from the latitude of Melbourne south to the south pole, and northern Europe, Asia and Canada to the north pole. Everything in between would be desert and uninhabitable, billions of people would not be able to survive.

The report concludes that "we cannot wait decades for promised new solutions such as clean coal, and measures adopted at the Kyoto rate are simply too little, too late. Painless voluntary reductions, the drip-by-drip implementation of more efficient and renewable technologies and carbon trading will not do enough, soon enough. Constraining carbon emissions requires major economic structural adjustment: state regulation for low-carbon policies and practices, the virtual elimination of high-carbon luxury goods, and wholesale
redevelopment of housing and transport."

But rather than end on this, David Spratt has looked in depth at the path Britain is taking in combatting climate change.

The British Environment minister David Miliband says "the challenge we face is not about the science or the economic ... it is about politics". Carbon credits, he says, "limit the carbon emissions by end users based on the science, and then use financial incentives to drive efficiency and innovation" and are necessary because "essentially, by 2050 we need all activities outside agriculture to be near zero carbon emitting if we are to stop carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere growing".

While reports are being prepared for the British government on how carbon rationing might be implemented, the Blair Government is continuing with airport extensions and extensive road building, activities which actively promote carbon emissions.

How soon First World Governments regulate carbon emissions and restructure for a low carbon emission economy will ultimately determine the extent of the looming climate catastrophe. While they dither with whether to develop a nuclear power industry such as in Australia, or on developing clean coal technology (also Australia), valuable time is lost on development of low impact renewable energy production, transport alternatives, curtailing carbon emissions by business and eliminating third world poverty who will bear the effects of climate change disproportionately.

The 27 page report, 'Avoiding Catastrophe', is available from http://www.carbonequity.info or http://www.foe.org.au

Admittedly I am not fully versed with the ins and outs of a carbon trading system, but I cannot see how carbon trading will adequately address the problem.

It seems to me that it will encourage a hierarchy of carbon use. People and industries who can afford to pay the premium associated with carbon producers having to buy carbon offsets will still get to indulge in any polluting practices they care to while the less affluent will endure a form of carbon poverty. I would have thought that getting people who can afford it to move away from carbon intensive products would be better than allowing them to buy it if they are willing to pay enough.

It also appears that most of the carbon offset mechanisms relate to plantations but these are not without there own set of environmental and social problems (especially water consumption). Often the products from plantations only have a short useful life anyway. You grow trees for ten years then make paper and within a very short time the paper is in a landfill emitting methane and carbon. Why should that be treated as a carbon credit when it is not addressing the climate change issue in a meaningful way?

Isn't it better to establish a regulatory system that directly penalises carbon producers and rewards carbon neutral or negative producers? It seems a far more efficient and direct approach compared to a market based approach which is loose and slow. Haven't we learned yet that the markets are not always right?

To get an idea of what urban inundation chaos looks like see this profound photo gallery show on YouTube here set to music over 4 or 5 minutes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59Fo959fgC4

This was from a sudden event to be sure, whereas 'a metre sea rise per 20 years' as suggested above is comparatively slow. Mind you I think its more like 12 metres in 10 years (5 to 15 years away a real chance says Prof Flannery). But even so, between these predictions, sudden storm surge on a raised base sea level can be just as chaotic as for New Orleans hit by Katrina.

No wonder FoE in flat Melbourne there in Brunswick are taking an interest. It's all pretty flat there and those tram lines won't take the salt for very long.

And it's also why an overall ban with minor exceptions (craft, the odd radial saw mill) on native forest logging is the better policy if only for carbon store.

Since the national forest campaign ran off the rails some 7 years ago, there has been about 66 million tonnes of woodchips (11 years by 6 million tonnes, this is conservative, its at 8Mt pa currently) exported by the Howard Govt from this carbon store ex East Gippsland, Eden, Tasmania. That was a very big loss for the climate and for the ecology generally.

It is also why The Wilderness Society got it right.

Carbon trading is merely designed to delay action on climate change. It is a diversion. An entertaining, and profitable, diversion for big business who stand to make fortunes on the margins. All ultimately paid for by the taxpayer (in both senses), in yet another instance of big vested interest passing liabilities to the public.

In my introductory plant physiology course back in 1988, nearly all the planetary implications of rising levels of atmospheric CO2 that are widely canvassed now were addressed. Those at the forefront of the field then would have had a growing awareness of the issues for some time. My point in mentioning this is that an educated estimate of the timeline of effects was pretty much sorted then, yet nothing has substantially been done to stop the problem. In another 20 years I confidently predict still that too little will have been done to effect the survival of even a relatively few people. There will be schemes and scams and much denial and blaming; and it will be all too late.

It is too late now. Lovelock and Vonnegut are right on this. Humans had effectively terminated themselves by the mid 90's.

"No wonder FoE in flat Melbourne there in Brunswick are taking an interest. It's all pretty flat there and those tram lines won't take the salt for very long."

What kind of idiot are you Tom? Let's look at your stupidity in detail. FoE is in Fitzroy not Brunswick so you are about 5km minimum out or a start. Brunswick's elevation is about 50m above sea level, FoE about 40m. Are you suggesting climate change will necessitate the use of gondolas as transport around Fitzroy in the next few years? Even worst case scenarios do not even come close to that in the next hundred years.

And why are you so obsessed with sea level rises when issues like reduced rainfall, dwindling water supplies, crop failure etc. are immediate concerns that already have purchase on the public imagination? It's strange that you would focus so much energy on an aspect that will have a questionable impact and seems remote compared to other impacts. 60cm over a century and you're conjuring comparisons with Katrina in New Orleans? Yeah that's really going to galvanise public opinion around the need for decisive and immediate action! You sound like a complete moron.

You then go on to suggest that TWS "got it right". The fact that their policy looks good in the current circumstances is a matter luck rather than foresight or good management.

If the "national forest campaign ran off the rails some 7 years ago" you can blame the neo-liberal social and economic policies of TWS and it's hangers on. The people who were forced out of the campaign because they didn't subscribe to the TWS et al neo-liberal vision for timber and fibre production were some of the brightest and most effective activists involved in the issue. None of the people who were ostracised and forced out supported logging in high conservation value forests, clearfelling or woodchipping, but neither did they support the notion that we could continue to consume and produce at current rates, let alone escalating ones, by replacing one bad system with another bad system.

The idea that timber and fibre production for consumer culture can be sustained indefinitely by artificial systems is flawed and the numerous problems associated with plantations have proved that point. Environmental problems, and climate change in particular, continue to vindicate those who advocated timber and fibre production systems that protected, restored and replicated natural systems.

The idea that humans can monopolise and transform the landscape with anthropocentric intent and practices is still evident even in some of these so-called "green" groups. Those who believed that consumption and production levels should be defined by nature's capacity to provide and not our capacity to consume are still out here but we won't be lobbying for, and helping to implement, the neo-liberal agenda.

If stopping all logging in native forest is necessary to stop the worst abuses then so be it, I can live with that. But, at least be consistent and challenge the excesses of extreme capitalism wherever they occur. Otherwise, it's like you're a doctor who treats a patient with metastatic cancer by cutting the patients foot off and putting it in a freezer. You're not treating the cancer so much as catering to your own foot fetish. The patient will die unless the treatment is wholistic and appropriate.

Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis.

In an interview with "Hospodárské noviny", a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions:

Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?•

A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.• This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.•

Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions...•

A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.

• Q: But you're not a climate scientist. Do you have a sufficient knowledge and enough information?•

A: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrally opposite.• Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don't appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about the climate change.• Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.•

Q: How do you explain that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media view the global warming as a done deal?•

A: It is not quite exactly divided to the left-wingers and right-wingers. Nevertheless it's obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.•

Q: If you look at all these things, even if you were right ...•

A: ...I am right...•

Q: Isn't there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that Man is demolishing the planet and himself?•

A: It's such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.•

Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?•

A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media so I expect a certain economical erudition from you. My book will answer these questions. For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It's clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa.• It's also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature - by eliminating private ownership and similar things - much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago.• That's why I ask: how can you pronounce the sentence you said? Perhaps if you're unconscious? Or did you mean it as a provocation only? And maybe I am just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to give you all these answers, am I not? It is more likely that you actually believe what you say.

[English translation from Harvard Professor Lubos Motl]

What are Vaclav Klaus' qualifications? Any scientific, climate research related qualifications?

Another redneck politician denies climate change? Oh gee, there's a shock! Hold the front page!

Nope, no sex with trees or baby seals for us rational and logical folk who don't believe in UFO's and Bigfoot and Al Gore's latest idiocy.

As someone else said, "lack of control groups leaves open the possibility of placebo effects". Sounds like a description of Unbathed mental cripples who will fall for anything, don't it?

I'm not in denial of a widely accepted *theory*, but that doesn't mean it's not true, and if you don't believe me, then you're not who I'm talking to.

So it's not really an argument that you are constructing is it?

It's more of an inarticulate, incoherent, grab bag of labels and abuse.

I'm gonna have to say it...it's a load of drivel. Mindless bombastic bullshit that means bugger all. Maybe one day you'll write something that I can comprehend. That's a big maybe though.