climate code red

As emissions rise, we may be heading for an ice-free planet

2012-01-24T20:34:00.002+11:00

An ice-free world isn’t impossible – even though it seems the stuff of science fiction.— Alistair Knock

by Andrew Glikson

Last December’s meeting of the American Geophysical Union featured three of the world’s leading climate scientists: James Hansen (NASA’s chief climate scientist), Elco Rohling (National Oceanography Centre, Southampton) and Ken Caldeira (Stanford School of Earth Science). But it was Hansen who attracted the most attention when he stated:

If you doubled CO₂, which practically all governments assume we’re going to do, that would eventually get us to the ice-free state

and

We would be sending our climate back to a state we haven’t adjusted to as a species.

Reaching ice-free-Earth conditions due to the addition of a few hundred parts per million CO₂ may sound like a science fiction story. But Hansen’s statement is consistent with the natural laws of physics (the Planck, Stefan-Boltzmann and Krichhoff laws of black body radiation), with atmospheric science and with the geological record.

A planet’s surface temperature is determined by the infrared absorption/emission characteristics of its atmosphere, determined by greenhouse molecules (CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, O₃). Earth’s surface conditions (including the atmospheric pressure, temperature and gases in its atmosphere) occupy an intermediate position between those of Mars and Venus. Advanced life on Earth is controlled by the presence of water and by the carbon and oxygen cycles.

Figure 1: CO2 with time. Andrew Glikson (with thanks to D Royer)

Studies of the evolution of the terrestrial atmosphere based on multiple proxies (carbon isotopes in phytoplankton and in fossil soils, plant leaf stomata pores, boron isotopes, boron/calcium ratios) confirm the upper stability boundary of the Antarctic ice sheet at about 500+/-50 ppm CO₂. Other estimates suggest 615 ppm CO₂ or near-800 ppm CO₂.

The original decline in temperature from the end-Eocene (~34 million years ago) and the onset of the Antarctic ice sheet occurred when CO₂ levels declined to below ~600 ppm (as shown in Figure 1). Greenhouse gases have increased by near 40% since 1750 (from ~280 to 392 ppm CO₂, at a rate increasing to ~2.6 ppm/year by 2010). At the current rate of increase, the climate could return to greenhouse Earth conditions within 50 to 200 years.
With current emissions growing by 5.9% in 2010 (see Figure 2) and a corresponding rise of temperature by 6.2% during the last decade (see Figure 3), Earth may be committed to an ice-free state.

Figure 3: Percentage change in global average temperature since the 1860s by decade. World Meteorological Organization

Climate change projections are complicated by the extreme rates of these processes. There is no precedent for such rates in the geological record, bar major greenhouse gas release triggered by methane eruptions, volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts.

     Further warming of the Greenland ice sheet and of the west and east Antarctic ice sheets may lead to pulses of ice-melt water which will cool adjacent ocean basins. Such pulsations occurred repeatedly in the North Atlantic Ocean around 8.2 thousand years ago (the Holocene Optimum), 12.9-11.7 thousand years ago (the “Youngest dryas” cold phase), and cold phases associated with the peak of earlier interglacials.
     The bulk of the continents continue to heat, due to a rise in greenhouse gases, feedbacks from fires, methane release from permafrost and reduction of CO₂ intake by warming oceans.
     The resultant ocean-land temperature polarity generates storms, reflected in the title of James Hansen’s book, “Storms of my grandchildren”. Similar conditions developed in November 2010 as north Siberia and Canada warmed to above 4°C relative to 1951-1980 while snow storms occurred in the North Atlantic.

Figure 4: Surface temperature Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA

The current consequences of polar temperature rises by 4°C and higher (see Figure 4) for the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets are shown in Figure 5. Between 2002 and 2008 a total of near-2500 billion tons of ice was lost while the projected rate of mass loss near-doubled over the period.

Figure 5: Ice mass changes

As atmospheric CO₂ is reaching a level unknown for the last three million years, the disconnection between science and the human response is growing. Despite warnings over the last 30 years, we are still developing global infrastructures to extract every economically accessible ton of coal, barrel of conventional or shale/sand oil and cubic meter of natural gas and coal-seam gas.

Contrarian claims by sceptics, misrepresenting direct observations in nature and ignoring the laws of physics, have been adopted by neo-conservative political parties. A corporate media maintains a “balance” between facts and fiction. The best that governments seem able to do is devise cosmetic solutions, or promise further discussions, while time is running out.
Good planets are hard to come by.

Andrew Glikson is Honorary Professor at the Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence, The University of Queensland, and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.

Climate in the media to 22 January 2012

2012-01-22T17:37:00.000+11:00

PICKS OF THE WEEK---------------

McKibben's efforts pay off as Obama kills pipeline
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20120118/NEWS02/120118042/McKibben-s-efforts-pay-off-Obama-kills-pipeline
Nicole Gaudiano, BFP, 18 January 2012
Vermont climate activist Bill McKibben isn’t used to environmentalists scoring a win over the oil industry. But that’s what happened Wednesday when President Barack Obama rejected a permit for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline — a project McKibben has been fighting since August.

AND
America's energy subsidy myth
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Barack-Obama-Keyston-oil-pipeline-energy-US-policy-pd20120120-QNUUT
David Sirota, Cliamte Spectator, 20 January 2012
Barack Obama's Keystone XL Pipeline decision will help drive the belief that fossil fuels are being persecuted by the government. In fact, the opposite is true.

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Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies 'could provide half of global carbon target'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/19/fossil-fuel-subsidies-carbon-target
Duncan Clark, Guardian, 19 January 2012
Such a move could save the equivalent of Germany's annual emissions by 2015, says chief economist at the IEA
AND...
Fossil fuel subsidies: a tour of the data
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2012/jan/18/fossil-fuel-subsidy
Duncan Clark, Guardian, 19 January 2012
Fossil fuels are subsidised in much of the world, causing billions of tonnes of addition CO2 emissions. Fatih Birol says ending fossil fuel subsidies could provide half the answer to solving climate change

Strong support for wind farms obscured, says CSIRO report
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/strong-support-for-wind-farms-obscured-says-csiro-report-20120117-1q4pj.html
Kelsey Munro, Ben Cubby, SMH, January 18, 2012
There is much stronger public support for wind farms than media coverage of the issue would suggest, because a ''vocal minority'' who oppose wind farms secure the majority of media and political attention, according to new CSIRO research.
AND
There is “No Evidence” that Wind Turbine Syndrome Exists, Concludes Expert Panel
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/19/407012/there-is-no-evidence-that-wind-turbine-syndrome-exists-concludes-expert-panel
Zachary Rybarczyk and Stephen Lacey, Climate Progress, 19 January 2012
If we want wind to continue growing, more turbines will need to be placed in our communities and close to our backyards. And that will inevitably cause more social friction.
AND
The war against renewable energy
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3776760.html

Why emissions need to drop off a cliff
http://www.climatecodered.org/2012/01/why-emissions-need-to-drop-off-cliff.html
David Spratt, CCR, 17 January 2011
How quickly do global greenhouse gas emissions need to drop to get back to a safe climate? It’s a pertinent question when the Australian government is making great claims for its 2011 carbon legislation, but its aim is to reduce emissions by only five per cent by 2020.

Global Temperature in 2011, Trends, and Prospects
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120119_Temperature.pdf
James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato and Ken Lo, GISS NASA, 19 January 2012
2011 was only the ninth warmest year in the GISS analysis of global temperature change, yet nine of the ten warmest years in the instrumental record (since 1880) have occurred in the 21st century. The past year has been cooled by a moderately strong La Nina.
AND
NASA Sees Repeating La Niña Hitting Its Peak
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120119152001.htm

ENERGY&INNOVATION--------------

Fracking Would Emit Large Quantities of Greenhouse Gases
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fracking-would-emit-methane
Mark Fischetti, Scientific American, January 20, 2012
"Fugitive methane" released during shale gas drilling could accelerate climate change

Uncertainty over future of HRL plant
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-20/uncertainty-over-future-of-hrl-plant/3783866
Gus Goswell, ABC News, 20 January 2011
There is uncertainty over the Federal Government's commitment to a new power station planned for the Latrobe Valley.

Miner facing emissions charge
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/miner-facing-emissions-charge-20120116-1q22u.html
Leonie Lamont, SMH, January 16, 2012
in what is being described as a landmark decision, the Land and Environment Court has held that one of the state's coalmines should have to pay to offset some of its greenhouse gas emissions as a condition of operation.

“Water is much more important than oil”
http://www.rtcc.org/energy/water-is-much-more-important-than-oil/
Tierney Smith, RTCC, 20 January 2012
The door has closed on this year’s World Future Energy Summit (WFES).

Creating electricity at home: the cleanest and most sensible option under the sun
http://www.smh.com.au/business/creating-electricity-at-home-the-cleanest-and-most-sensible-option-under-the-sun-20120116-1q399.html
Matthew Wright, SMH, 17 January 2012
Solar energy benefits the state by providing electricity at much cheaper rates than those of traditional sources.

GM microbe breakthrough paves way for large-scale seaweed farming for biofuels
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/19/gm-microbe-seaweed-biofuels
Damian Carrington, Guardian, 19 January 2012
Scientists have created a genetically engineered microbe that turns the algae into low-carbon biofuel, but must make the technique commercially viable

Shale oil and gas will help make western hemisphere self-sufficient
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/18/shale-oil-gas-us-energy-self-sufficient
Richard Wachman, Guardian, 18 January 2012
BP forecasts that growth in fuel sources will make North and South America self-sufficient by 2030 – but UK will still need Gulf supplies

Scotland’s Ambitious 100% Clean Energy Target by 2020
http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/01/scotlands-ambitious-100-clean-energy-target-2020/
Akhila Vijayaraghavan, Triple Pundit, January 13, 2012
One country that is really galvanizing wind energy to increase its renewable energy profile is Scotland. 2011 was an epic year for Scottish energy companies.

Growing Doubts in Europe On Future of Carbon Storage
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/technology/17iht-rbog-ccs17.html
Andres Cala, NYT, January 16, 2012
The European Union’s long-term energy plans to abate global warming while still burning fossil fuels hinge on proposals to capture carbon dioxide emissions and store them in deep underground rock formations. Yet weak support for the untested technology is putting Europe in the rear ranks of its development.

Cheap Beads Offer Alternative Solar-Heating Storage
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111202155751.htm
ScienceDaily, Dec. 2, 2011
A cheap material that can store heat energy collected from the sun during the day that can be released slowly over night has been developed by researchers in the India.

POLITICS&POLICY--------------

Climate scientist disowned by Newt Gingrich speaks out over book spat
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/06/climate-scientist-newt-gingrich-book-chapter
Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian, 6 January 2012
Katharine Hayhoe says the dumping of her chapter from Gingrich's book following rightwing pressure came as a surprise

Worse off under the carbon tax? Hardly...
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3773412.html
Stephen Koukoulas, ABC Unleashed, 16 January 2012
It's less than six months until the carbon tax comes into effect. There already has been, and no doubt will be, a kerfuffle about the impact of pricing carbon on household budgets

SCIENCE&IMPACTS--------------

A Comprehensive Review of the Causes of Global Warming
http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-comprehensive-review-of-the-causes-of-global-warming.html
Dana Nuccitelli, Skeptical Science, 20 January 2012
At Skeptical Science, we have several recent studies which have used a number of diverse approaches to tease out the contributions of various natural and human effects to global warming.

Fears Islanders may soon be forced out of their homes
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3408747.htm
ABC The World Today, 16 January 2012
There are concerns residents of the outer islands in the Torres Strait will soon be forced to flee their homes by encroaching seas.

Arctic methane outgassing on the E Siberian Shelf part 2 - an interview with Dr Natalia Shakhova
http://www.skepticalscience.com/arctic-methane-outgassing-e-siberian-shelf-part2.htm
John Mason, Skeptical Science, 19 January 2012
In December 2011, following a fresh flurry of sometimes conflicting media reports about methane outgassing on the East Siberia Arctic Shelf (ESAS), we decided to go and talk to the people doing the work on the ground.

China report spells out "grim" climate change risks
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/18/us-china-climate-idUSTRE80H06J20120118
Chris Buckley, Reuters, 18 January 2012
Global warming threatens China's march to prosperity by cutting crops, shrinking rivers and unleashing more droughts and floods, says the government's latest assessment of climate change, projecting big shifts in how the nation feeds itself.

Amazon Basin shifting to carbon emitter: study
http://www.dawn.com/2012/01/19/amazon-basin-shifting-to-carbon-emitter-study.html
AFP, 19 January 2012
The Amazon Basin, traditionally considered a bulwark against global warming, may be becoming a net contributor of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a result of deforestation, researchers said on Wednesday.

Offsetting Global Warming: Molecule in Earth's Atmosphere Could 'Cool the Planet'
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120112142232.htm
ScienceDaily, Jan. 12, 2012
Scientists have shown that a newly discovered molecule in Earth's atmosphere has the potential to play a significant role in off-setting global warming by cooling the planet.

Mekong Delta reels under repeated disasters
http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/Sunday/Features/219830/mekong-delta-reels-under-repeated-disasters.html
Pham Hoang Nam, Vietnam News, 17 January 2012
Known as the nation's rice basket, blessed with fertile soil and favorable climatic conditions, the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta has been at the forefront of Viet Nam's amazing agricultural transformation in the Doi moi (renewal) period.

Black Carbon Deposits On Himalayan Ice Threaten Earth's 'Third Pole'
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091214173658.htm
ScienceDaily (Dec. 14, 2009) — Black soot deposited on Tibetan glaciers has contributed significantly to the retreat of the world's largest non-polar ice masses, according to new research by scientists from NASA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

How long do greenhouse gases stay in the air?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhouse-gases-remain-air
Carbon Brief and Duncan Clark, Guardian, 16 January 2012
This Q&A is part of the Guardian's ultimate climate change FAQ

What Can Be Done to Slow Climate Change?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120112193442.htm
ScienceDaily, Jan. 12, 2012
A new study led by a NASA scientist highlights 14 key air pollution control measures that, if implemented, could slow the pace of global warming, improve health and boost agricultural production.

Global Warming: ‘Revenge of the atmosphere’
http://summitcountyvoice.com/2012/01/14/global-warming-revenge-of-the-atmosphere
Bob Berwyn, SCCV, 14 January 2012
With Arctic sea ice shrinking fast — losing 40 percent of its mass between 1980 and 2007 — widespread effects on climate and weather are inevitable, according to Jennifer Francis, with Rutgers University Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences.

Implications of the Arctic permafrost thaw

2012-01-19T18:20:00.002+11:00

by Ian Dunlop, cross-post from Club of Rome News

Of the many “Elephants in the Room” in the climate change debate, none are larger than the potential release to atmosphere of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane contained in the Arctic permafrost. Preliminary findings from the latest research, discussed at the American Geophysical Union’s annual conference in San Francisco in December 2011, highlighted the extreme risks that humanity is now exposed to from global warming.
The Arctic has been warming 2-3 times faster than the global average, one consequence being that the volume of Arctic sea ice has reduced dramatically, by around 80% in summer since 1979, far faster than expected. If current trends continue, the Arctic may be sea-ice-free in summer by around 2015, and all year by around 2030. This would likely lead to further positive warming feedback as the ice albedo effect diminishes, accelerating melt of the Greenland ice sheet, ultimately contributing several metres of sea level rise.

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Such warming would also accelerate thawing of the Arctic permafrost, which contains twice as much carbon as the atmosphere. Releasing that carbon would accelerate global warming past tipping points which create a climate far less conducive to human evolution. The permafrost, along with clathrates on the seabed, contain large quantities of methane, with a warming potential twenty-five-times greater than CO2.
CO2 and methane release in the Arctic has been observed for some time, but the latest findings suggest this may be accelerating rapidly. The AGU discussion prompted a flurry of scientific commentary on the implications – whether the acceleration is real, whether the cause is anthropogenic or natural, whether the release mechanism might be abrupt or gradual. It is too early to understand the full implications. The complete scientific analysis of the latest evidence will be available later this year, but the preliminary findings should be a wake-up call to us all.

In risk management terms, these observations emphasise, as never before, the need for emergency action to reduce human carbon emissions. If permafrost thawing is allowed to accelerate, we may have little means of stopping it. Over time, this would be catastrophic, probably leading to global mean temperature increasing well over 4 degrees C compared to pre-industrial levels, with a global carrying capacity of 1 billion people rather than the current 7 billion.
Our inaction today may well be guaranteeing such an outcome, which is why emergency action is needed now. This highlights the total inadequacy and empty rhetoric of the so-called “ Platform for Enhanced Action” agreed at the Durban UNFCCC Climate Conference last December. Waiting to negotiate an agreement by 2015, for implementation from 2020, meaning it will have little effect for years afterwards, when human emissions are at an all-time high accelerating faster than ever, the permafrost thaw is most likely accelerating rapidly and none of the supposed technological fixes for human emissions, such as carbon capture and storage, are working, is nothing less than suicidal.

"Waiting to negotiate an agreement by 2015, for implementation from 2020, meaning it will have little effect for years afterwards, when human emissions are at an all-time high accelerating faster than ever, the permafrost thaw is most likely accelerating rapidly and none of the supposed technological fixes for human emissions, such as carbon capture and storage, are working, is nothing less than suicidal."

The critical flaw is our inability, or refusal, to address risk and uncertainty realistically. The scientific community gives increasingly urgent warnings on the mounting evidence of anthropogenic warming and the need for rapid emission reductions. At the same time they rightly set out the uncertainties involved, but those uncertainties relate less to the fundamentals, far more to the impact of the warming (for example, there is no doubt warming is occurring, the uncertainty is whether it will be a 4 degree C or a 7 degree C temperature increase). Officialdom chooses to ignore these warnings, preferring policy based on “political realism”, shorthand for hoping the problem will go away. Business, supposedly the experts on risk management, should take leadership, but have abrogated any responsibility, given that realistic action will require a fundamental redesign of the economic system, undermining established vested interests. The result is that nobody is seriously addressing the strategic risks to which we are exposed.
Conventional politics is incapable of handling this issue. Leadership is totally lacking within the political and corporate worlds; global and national institutions are failing here, as they are failing to address the financial crisis – on both counts economic growth is the problem, not the solution. The priority for 2012 must be to develop new mechanisms which, with community support, go around conventional politics and vested interests. Climate change is now a far bigger risk than any financial crisis and yet the real effort devoted to managing it is miniscule in comparison.

Ian Dunlop was formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive. He chaired the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88, chaired the Australian Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions Trading from 1998-2000 and was CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors from 1997-2001. He is Chairman of Safe Climate Australia, a Member of the Club of Rome and Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development.

Why emissions need to drop off a cliff

2012-01-17T19:15:00.005+11:00

How quickly do global greenhouse gas emissions need to drop to get back to a safe climate? It’s a pertinent question when the Australian government is making great claims for its 2011 carbon legislation, but its aim is to reduce emissions by only five per cent by 2020. And even that is an illusion, because a significant share will come from buying offsets in the international market.
And when proposed new and expanded coal mines in Australia are tallied up, they will add about 1.75 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually – about eleven times what the Australian government estimates will be saved by the carbon tax legislation. By 2020 or soon thereafter, Australia will be exporting nearly twice as much carbon dioxide as is Saudi Arabia today, as Guy Pearce explains.

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So what really needs to be done? The first consideration is when global emissions peak, and start to drop. At the moment, we are not close to peaking. The Global Carbon Project shows that global emissions are rising, faster and faster. Between 2000 and 2007, they rose at around 3.5 percent a year; by 2009 it was up to 5.6 percent. In 2010, we hit 5.9 percent growth, a record.

The second question is what is a safe temperature increase. Whilst the world has talked for decades about 2 degrees Celsius (or around 450 parts per million carbon of carbon dioxide*), scientists increasing recognise that it is far from safe. This was recognised in the landmark 2009 “Safe Boundaries” paper which essentially found that the boundary was no more than 350 parts per million, or around 1 degree of global warming. (* assumed at equilibrium, so that the short-lived greenhouse gases are not relevant).
But as James Hansen and his colleagues have established, it is hard to argue that anything above the Holocene maximum (of around 0.5 degrees above the pre-industrial temperature) can preserve a safe climate, and that we have already gone too far. The notion that 1.5 degrees C is a safe target is out the window, and even 1 degree looks like an unacceptably high risk. Our post on Hansen’s views has been the most visited post on this site.

Unfortunately little work is done on emission reduction scenarios for less than 2 degrees, but Hansen provides one in his paper “The Case for Young People and Nature: A Path to a Healthy, Natural, Prosperous Future”.

The left hand image (a) charts what happens to atmospheric CO2 if fossil fuel emissions are cut six per cent per year beginning in 2012, and 100 billion tonnes of carbon reforestation drawdown occurs in the 2031-2080 period. Chart (b) shows atmospheric CO2 with “business-as-usual” emission increases until 2020, 2030, 2045, and 2060, followed by five per cent per year emission reductions.
Hansen notes that:

Figure (a) shows that 100 GtC reforestation results in atmospheric CO2 declining to 350 ppm by the end of this century, provided that fossil fuel emissions decline by 6% per year beginning in 2013. Figure 5 (b) shows the effect of continued BAU fossil fuel emission (just over 2% per year) until 2020, 2030, 2045 and 2060 with 100 GtC reforestation in 2031-2080.
The scenario with emission cuts beginning in 2020 has atmospheric CO2 return to 350 ppm at about 2300. If the initiation of emissions reduction is delayed to 2030 or later, then atmospheric CO2 does not return to the 350 ppm level even by 2500.
The conclusion is that a major reforestation program does permit the possibility of returning CO2 to the 350 ppm level within this century, but only if fossil fuel emission reductions begin promptly.

What is significant here is that achieving a 350ppm target requires re-afforestation, or some similar means, of actively drawing down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

If the focus is on the (unsafe) 2-degree target, this chart (below) from a presentation made by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber to the 4 degrees or more: Australia in a hot world conference in Melbourne in 2011 shows that delay in reaching peak emissions makes the task more challenging. If emissions do not peak till 2020 (red line), then the maximum reduction rate is 9 per cent per year.

Most engaging of all is this chart (below) from Kevin Anderson's “Beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change“, which has been a very popular link from this site. It is drawn from a peer-reviewed paper by Anderson and Alice Bows, “Beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change: emission scenarios for a new world”.

In understanding the implications of this chart, I can’t go past this summary from David Roberts at Grist:

The longer we wait to start shrinking emissions, the faster we’ll have to shrink them to stay under budget. Here’s a visualization of what that means — some sample reduction curves with varying peak years (the four different lines are based on the four main IPCC scenarios). As you can see, if we delay the global emissions peak until 2025, we pretty much have to drop off a cliff afterwards to avoid 2 degrees C. Short of a meteor strike that shuts down industrial civilization, that’s unlikely.
     How about 2020? Of the available scenarios for peaking in 2020, says Anderson, 13 of 18 show hitting 2 degrees C to be technically impossible. (D’oh!) The others involve on the order of 10 percent reductions a year after 2020, leading to total decarbonization by 2035-45.
    Just to give you a sense of scale: The only thing that’s ever pushed emissions reductions above 1 percent a year is, in the words of the Stern Report, “recession or upheaval.” The total collapse of the USSR knocked 5 percent off its emissions. So 10 percent a year is like … well, it’s not like anything in the history of human civilization.
    This, then, is the brutal logic of climate change: With immediate, concerted action at global scale, we have a slim chance to halt climate change at the extremely dangerous level of 2 degrees C. If we delay even a decade — waiting for better technology or a more amenable political situation or whatever — we will have no chance.

Of course, as Hansen shows, with large-scale drawdown, we can do better than that. But the science behind these charts, and the political consequences, are not ones that we will likely hear from any of the major players in the climate policy debate.
Not from Australian Conservation Foundation CEO Don Henry, not from Mitch Hook of the Minerals Council, not from Climate Change minister Greg Combet, or his opposition shadow Greg Hunt. The truth is just too difficult. And if you don't have the capacity to define and explain a problem, your chances of articulating a solution are zero.
Perhaps its easier to give up on even 2 degrees and start talking about 3 degrees instead, as is the case with "reduction wedges" pioneer Robert Socolow. And that is really disturbing if you understand what 3 degrees means.

David Spratt

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Climate in the media to 15 January 2012

2012-01-15T17:11:00.001+11:00

PICKS OF THE WEEK---------------

Much ado about methane
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2012/01/opinion-methane-release
David Archer, Daily Climate, Jan. 9, 2012
The climate change story has many frightening pieces. Methane venting from oceans and the Arctic has grabbed the public's imagination lately, but it is not the scariest part of the tale.

Study: Simple measures could reduce global warming, save lives
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/study-simple-measures-could-reduce-global-warming-save-lives/2012/01/12/gIQAtcKztP_story.html
Brian Vastag and Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, January 13, 2012
Simple, inexpensive measures to cut emissions of two common pollutants will slow global warming, save millions of lives and boost crop production around the world, an international team of scientists reported Thursday.

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Health Promotion Journal of Australia Special Issue: Climate Change & Health Promotion
http://healthpromotion.org.au/journal/journal-downloads/article/1-hpja/443-h
As a commitment to building knowledge and promoting debate about the links between climate change and health promotion, the Australian Health Promotion Association has agreed to make this special issue freely available for the month of January 2012.

Resistance and Hope at a Time of Climate Emergency
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/13-6
Nick Buxton, Common Dreams, 13 January 2012
While there were no shortage of lofty announcements at the UN climate talks, it took the words of a 21 year-old student from Maine to speak the truth about the climate crisis and puncture the bubble of deceit and delusion in the latest gathering in Durban, South Africa in December 2011.

Boom And Doom: Revisiting Prophecies Of Collapse
http://www.4thmedia.org/2012/01/12/boom-and-doom-revisiting-prophecies-of-collapse/
Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist, 7 January 2012
At the beginning of the 1970s, a group of young scientists set out to explore our future. Their findings shook a generation and may be even more relevant than ever today.
AND NEW BOOK
Saving a Million Species: Extinction Risk from Climate Change
Edited by Lee Hannah, University of California;Island Press, USA
http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/18/pid/6906.htm
AND THE CLOCK TICKS...
Doomsday clock ticks closer to midnight
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-11/doomsday-clock-ticks-closer/3767426

Should We Work Towards A 3°C World, If A 2°C Target Is Really Out of Reach?
http://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/should-we-really-aim-3c-world-if-2c-out-reach.html
Matthew McDermott, Treehugger, January 9, 2012
It's only very slightly pessimistic to say that Durban threw hope of keeping temperature rise below the critical +2°C threshold, above which lots of natural systems are projected to become unhinged.
WARNING: The notion that 3 degrees is OK is seriously crazy... see
http://climatecodered.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-would-3-degrees-mean.html

Tourism relies on jet-setters, but travel is destroying attractions
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Tourism+relies+setters+travel+destroying+attractions/5994411/story.html
Joe Kelly, Vancouver Sun, 13 January 2012
Kitzbühel is an international ski resort in the Austrian Alps, renowned for hosting the Hahnenkamm downhill race, one of the most famous and most treacherous ski races on the World Cup circuit. As a major tourism destination, Kitzbühel draws people from all over the world who want to experience the mountain first-hand. The valuable tourism dollars fuel a vast economic engine for the surrounding region. Sadly, the resort is dying a slow death. Within two decades, there won’t be enough snow to support skiing on the legendary slope.

ENERGY&INNOVATION--------------

Biomass and Electricity (2-part series)
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/biomass-and-electricity-part-one/
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/biomass-and-electricity-part-2/
Matthew L. Wald, NYT blogs, 9-10 January 2012
Burning natural gas releases less heat-trapping carbon dioxide than burning coal does because it has only about half as much carbon per unit of energy.
AND
Biofuels Land Grab: Guatemala's Farmers Lose Plots and Prosperity to "Energy Independence"
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=biofuels-land-grab-guatemala

Green energy investment soars to $260bn
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/12/green-energy-investment-increases
Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian, 12 January 2012
New data shows worldwide funding of green energy projects rose by 5% last year

China Increases Target for Wind Power Capacity to 1,000 GW by 2050
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/01/china-increases-target-for-wind-power-capacity-to-1000-gw-by-2050
Liu Yuanyuan, RWW, January 5, 2012
The National Energy Administration of China has set a series of development goals for the country's renewable energy sector during the 12th Five-year Development Plan, which shows that by 2015 the country's wind power capacity will reach 100 GW, based on the current capacity of 40 GW.
BUT
China's renewables surge outweighed by growth in coal consumption
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/12/china-renewable-energy-coal-consumption
Jonathan Watts, Guardian, 12 January 2012
China sees major increases in solar, wind and hydropower, while officials struggle to cap growth in carbon emissions from coal

Energy Efficiency is for Real, Energy Rebound a Distraction
http://co2scorecard.org/home/researchitem/21
Shakeb Afsah, Kendyl Salcito and Chris Wielga, CO2 Scorecard, Jan 11, 2012
Energy efficiency is an over-rated policy tool when it comes to cutting energy use and CO2 emissions—that’s the basic message promoted by the US think tank the Breakthrough Institute (BTI), and amplified in major news outlets like the New Yorker and the New York Times. We refute this policy message and show that the BTI, as well as its champions in the media, have overplayed their hand, supporting their case with anecdotes and analysis that don’t measure up against theory and data.

Study finds coal plants generate nearly 3/4ths of US carbon emissions
http://www.manufacturing.net/news/2012/01/epa-power-plants-main-global-warming-culprits
Dina Cappiello, Associated Press, 12 January 2012
The most detailed data yet on emissions of heat-trapping gases show that U.S. power plants are responsible for the bulk of the pollution blamed for global warming

US Fracking Moratorium Urged as Doctors Call for Health Study
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/09/bloomberg_articlesLXJW7C0YHQ0X.DTL
Alex Wayne, Bloomberg News, January 12, 2012
The U.S. should declare a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in populated areas until the health effects are better understood, doctors said at a conference on the drilling process.

China's carbon price a worry
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/chinas-carbon-tax-price-a-worry/story-fn59niix-1226239371053
Sarah-Jane Tasker, The Australian, January 09, 2012
The Australian coal industry remains confident of continuing strong sales to China despite the world's biggest carbon pollution emitter planning a carbon tax from 2015.

We can’t win the clean energy race without government investments
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/10/401698/clean-energy-race-government-investments/
Richard W. Caperton, Climate Progress, Jan 10, 2012
Budget deficits drove the conversation in Washington in 2011 with the daily news dominated by government shutdown threats, the “super committee,” continuing resolutions, and arcane budgeting practices.

Inpex confirms $33bn Top End gas project
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-13/130112-inpex-announcement/3770578
ABC News, 13 January 2012
Japanese gas company Inpex and its French partner Total have confirmed they will proceed with their planned $33 billion Ichthys gas project in Darwin and off the coast of Western Australia.

POLITICS&POLICY--------------

Baillieu hides carbon tax documents
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/baillieu-hides-carbon-tax-documents-20120109-1prv0.html
Clay Lucas, The Age, January 10, 2012
The Baillieu government has been accused of using ''laughable'' excuses to block the release of economic modelling it used to attack the Gillard government's carbon tax.

It is the coal barons, not activists, who threaten society
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/it-is-the-coal-barons-not-activists-who-threaten-society-20120109-1pro1.html
Shaun Murray, The Age, January 10, 2012
Anti-coal activists pose a political threat. That's why we're being spied on.

Network News Coverage of Climate Change Collapsed in 2011
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/09/400795/network-news-coverage-of-climate-change-collapsed-in-2011
Joe Romm, Climate Progress, Jan 9, 2012
Last week Climate Progress reported on the loss of interest in the story of the century by the major print media.

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Makes Climate Change a Top Priority
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/11/402262/us-agency-for-international-development-usaid-makes-climate-change-a-top-
Zachary Rybarczyk, Climate Progress, Jan 11, 2012
Developing countries (including China) are expected to account for more than 90% of global energy growth in the next 30 years.

SCIENCE&IMPACTS--------------

Great charts of record-smashing U.S. extreme weather in 2011
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/11/402460/2011-unprecedented-rains-wet-dry-extremes-global-warming

Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast (good set of online resources)
http://forecast.uchicago.edu/

Glacier time-lapse images reveal 'epochal change'
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/01/13/pol-glaciers-time-lapse-environment.html
Max Paris, Environment Unit, CBC News, Jan 13, 2012
Nothing is quite as damning or convincing as photo evidence.

Climate Change and Sea Level Rise: “An Emerging Hockey Stick”
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/10/401186/climate-change-sea-level-rise-hockey-stick
Peter Sinclair, Climate Progress, 10 January 2012
Since we have such an active community of armchair oceanographers and spreadsheet Glaciologists here, I thought it would be useful to speak to the real thing, the people who actually spend time on the ocean, on the ice sheets, do the measurements, and come back to share that knowledge with us.
AND
Rising sea levels endanger the Delta
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/594181
Luoise Saramt, Egypt Independent, 10 January 2012
The Nile Delta region produces no less than 65 percent of the Egypt’s total agricultural production. It is also part of the country’s most densely populated regions; half of Egypt’s ever expending population lives in this triangle of fertile land, a zone identified as one of the world’s most vulnerable to climate change
AND
Document future history with the king tide
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/01/12/3407022.htm
Ross Kay, ABC News, 12 January, 2012
The history of the future will be documented next weekend as the summer king tide rolls onto Wide Bay shores.

12 Simple(ish) Ways To Quickly Reduce Global Warming Two-Thirds by 2050
http://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/12-simpleish-ways-quickly-reduce-global-warming-two-thirds-2050.html
Matther McDermott, Treehugger, January 13, 2012
Apologies for the green movement circa 2007 title, but this time it's actually apt—not like all those posts about how unplugging your phone charger will save the planet.

Global Warming Caused By Greenhouse Gases Delays Natural Patterns Of Glaciation
http://www.eurasiareview.com/08012012-global-warming-caused-by-greenhouse-gases-delays-natural-patterns-of-glaciation/
Eurasia Review, January 8, 2012
Unprecedented levels of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere are disrupting normal patterns of glaciation, according to a study co-authored by a University of Florida researcher and published online Jan. 8 in Nature Geoscience.

Arctic methane outgassing on the E Siberian Shelf part 1 - the background
http://www.skepticalscience.com/arctic-methane-outgassing-e-siberian-shelf-part1.html
John Mason, Skeptical Science, 15 January 2012
Reports of extensive areas of methane - a powerful greenhouse gas - bubbling up through the shallow waters of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) have been doing the rounds in the media recently, with some articles taking the apocalyptic approach and others the opposite. So what IS going on in the far North?

Global Warming May Trigger Winter Cooling
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/01/global-warming-may-trigger-winte.html
Sid Perkins, Science, 12 January 2012
It seems counter-intuitive, even ironic, that global warming could cause some regions to experience colder conditions. But a new study explains the Rube Goldberg-machine of climatic processes that can link warmer-than-average summers to harsh winter weather in some parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

Australian coal’s expansion plans make a mockery of government’s carbon tax claims

2012-01-09T13:31:00.000+11:00

David Spratt

The expansion of Australian coal mining will add about 1.75Gt (gigatonnes) of carbon dioxide annually to the atmosphere – about 11 times what the Australian government estimates will be saved by the carbon tax legislation that recently passed Parliament.

That’s Guy Pearse speaking at Woodford on 31 December. He says that even the emissions from smaller players have a staggering impact, for example:

the annual emissions from Aston/Whitehaven’s new mines, or of QCoal's mines will each be greater than all the CO2 saved by all the hybrid cars ever sold world-wide;
The new mines of the relatively small Jellinbah Coal add nearly 100 times as much CO2 as is saved by all he household solar panel installations in Australia.

As Padding Manning reported in the Fairfax business press on 21 November, the coal industry is hoping to double or triple export volumes in the next five to 10 years, to as much as 1 billion tonnes a year, up from about 300 million tonnes this year:

The accumulated emissions of those coal exports, over a mine life of 30 years, would be roughly 20 gigatonnes,assuming the carbon content of coal is 70 per cent.

Using the carbon budget approach advocated by our Climate Commission, says Climate Code Red co-author David Spratt, the world's total emissions must be no more than 175 billion tonnes between 2012 and 2050, if we are to keep warming to 2 degrees.

It is hard to imagine little Australia will get to chew up 11 per cent of the whole world's carbon budget for the next four decades, so it can increase coal exports. ''We have a choice between a billion tonnes of year of coal exports, or a climate with the food and water security fit for the worlds people,'' says Spratt. ''We can have one or the other, but not both.’’

Those were back of the envelope figures I did in hurry, and now Pearse has provided a lot more analysis, and included gas exports, to come up with a similar figure of 1/8th of the global carbon budget, of around 12%.

Pearse’s speech is available here. In a note to his e-list, Pearse says:

I gave a talk at Woodford last Saturday that may be of interest. It focussed on the ever increasing scale of the coal boom in Australia, the key players and the emissions implications.

I had not previously seen someone tally the mine production and life of mine data to enable an assessment of the cumulative Gt CO2 likely to come from Australia’s coal industry by 2050. Having done so, albeit a little roughly, I estimate that Australian coal exports will generate around 75Gt CO2 between now and 2050 – perhaps another 5Gt will come from domestic coal use, and 8-10 Gt from LNG if the expansion of coal seam gas proceeds. In rough terms, between now and 2050, Australian fossil fuel could account for about 1/8th of the remaining carbon budget for 2 degrees C. This highlights the global significance of the coal boom now unfolding in Australia. I have also tried to break the Australian coal rush down to explain the CO2 emissions company by company in terms more readily understandable for the general public. So, for example:

The proposed GVK/Hancock mines in the Galilee Basin are equivalent to a 6% increase in the global car fleet (another 63 million cars);
the Waratah mines (excluding Carmichael East -- yet to be quantified) are like increasing international aviation by 1/3rd;
the new Xstrata mines are like doubling Australia’s coal fired power stations;
the Adani mine (just one project) is like doubling Queensland’s emissions;
the proposed Mejin mine is like doubling the emissions of 60 small countries;
the new Peabody mines in Australia almost equate to adding the CO2 emissions of Pakistan,
the Bandanna mines are like doubling Australia’s agricultural emissions.
Even the emissions from smaller players have a staggering impactor example:
the annual emissions from Aston/Whitehaven’s new mines, or of QCoal's mines will each be greater than all the CO2 saved by all the hybrid cars ever sold world-wide;
The new mines of the relatively small Jellinbah Coal add nearly 100 times as much CO2 as is saved by all he household solar panel installations in Australia.

Tallied up, the new/expanded coal mines in Australia add about 1.75Gt of CO2 annually – about 11 times what the Australian government estimates will be saved by the carbon tax legislation that recently passed Parliament. By 2020 or soon thereafter, Australia is exporting nearly twice as much CO2 as is Saudi Arabia today. If these numbers are not already an underestimate, as I believe they probably are, they will soon be. New mines are being announced ever month or two—quickly rendering CO2 calculations redundant

Needless to say, it’s hard to see how this sort of expansion in coal production is consistent with any effective global climate change response.

That is a beautiful understatement. When the government's carbon tax draft legislation was released in mid-2100 we said that it was a compromise between players with different, and often opposing interests, and is far from being as ambitious and science-driven as the community climate action movement understands is necessary.

Statements from the prime minister that Australia's coal industry will continue to expand are frightening and suggest that some in the Labor government have chosen not to understand the depth and urgency of the climate change challenge. Real action on climate means winding down coal exports, and ensuring that no new coal mines are opened.

A large gap remains between political will and the scientific realities, and the scheme's targets must be lifted over time, together with an industry plan for skills, jobs and investment to build the clean, renewable energy economy. The national carbon reduction targets must rise rapidly, so as to respond appropriately and urgently to what the climate science is telling us.

Climate in the media to 8 January 2012

2012-01-08T11:55:00.000+11:00

PICKS OF THE WEEK---------------

Climate Cognitive Dissonance: The “Profound Contradiction” Between Science and Markets on the Road to 10°F Warming
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/21/393713/climate-cognitive-dissonance-science-markets
David Roberts, Grist, 21 December 2011
Earlier this month, Nicholas Stern — respected U.K. economist and author of the famed Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change — cast a spotlight on what he calls a “profound contradiction at the heart of climate change policy.”

Cherry-picking contrarian geologists tend to obscure scientific truth
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/cherry-picking-contrarian-geologists-tend-to-obscure-scientific-truth/story-e6frgd0x-1226233605954
Mike Sandiford, The Australian, December 31, 2011 12:00AM
Gina Rinehart notoriously claims she has never met a geologist who believes "adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will have any significant effect on climate".

Subscribe to email feed of this service (one email/week)
Back issues here
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Environment world review of the year: '2011 rewrote the record books'http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/22/environment-2011-year-review
John Vidal, Guardian, 22 December 2011
The ecologically tumultuous year saw record greenhouse gas emissions, melting Arctic sea ice, natural disasters and extreme weather – and the world's second worst nuclear disaster
AND
The Big Climate Stories of 2011
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2012/01/the-big-climate-stories-of-2011/
AND
2011: Year of Natural Disasters (Infographic)
http://www.livescience.com/17769-2011-record-natural-disasters-infographic.html

Why libertarians must deny climate change, in one short take
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2012/jan/06/why-libertarians-must-deny-climage-change
George Monbiot, Guardian, 6 January 2012
I must applaud Matt Bruenig's summing up of the inherent conflict between libertarianism and environmental issues

Carbon Time Bomb in the Arctic: New York Times Print Edition Gets the Story Right
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/19/392242/carbon-time-bomb-in-arctic-new-york-times-print-edition-gets-the-story-right/
Joe Romm, Climate Orogress, 19 December 2011
NY Times science reporter Justin Gillis has just published an excellent overview article, “As Permafrost Thaws, Scientists Study the Risks.”
AND
Leaders of Arctic Methane Project Clarify Climate Concerns
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/leaders-of-arctic-methane-project-clarify-climate-concerns

Australian coal’s expansion plans make a mockery of government’s carbon tax claims
http://www.climatecodered.blogspot.com/2012/01/australian-coals-expansion-plan-make.html
David Spratt, code red blog, 2 January 2012
The expansion of Australian coal mining will add about 1.75Gt (gigatonnes) of carbon dioxide annually to the atmosphere – about 11 times what the Australian government estimates will be saved by the carbon tax legislation that recently passed Parliament.

Murdoch Press Coverage of Aussie Carbon Price So Negative in 2011, “It’s Fair to Say They’ve Campaigned Against It”
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/05/398594/murdoch-press-carbon-price-negative-campaigned-against-it
Stephen Lacey, Climate Progress, Jan 5, 2012
I was struck by a recent analysis from Daily Climate showing a substantial drop in the number of stories covering climate change in 2011. In spite of the dramatic increase in extreme weather events and the white-knuckled political tension around government investments in energy, there was still a 20% drop in coverage of climate-related issues last year.
AND
Climate coverage down again in 2011
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2012/01/climate-coverage-2011

AFP spies targeting green activists
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/afp-spies-targeting-green-activists-20120106-1pogq.html
Philip Dorling,The Age, January 7, 2012
The Resources and Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson, has secretly pushed for increased surveillance by federal police intelligence officers of environmental activists who have been protesting peacefully at coal-fired power stations and coal export facilities.

Climate Change and the Trillion-Dollar Disruption
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevezwick/2012/01/05/climate-change-and-the-trillion-dollar-disruption/
Steve Zwick, Forbes, 5 January 2011
Fortunes are made and lost on “disruptive events” that seem to catch us off-guard. Deep down, however, we all know that most disruptive events aren’t so much unseen before the fact as they are ignored.

ENERGY&INNOVATION--------------

Top 10 Clean Energy Stories of 2011 (with Charts)
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/22/393201/top-10-clean-energy-stories-of-2011-with-charts
Stephen Lacey, Climate Progress, Dec 22, 2011
What an odd year. While businesses around the world were making record level investments in renewables and efficiency, a growing number of conservative politicians and members of the American media punditry — lead by the outrageously ignorant “reporting” by Fox News — have been foolishly projecting (even cheering on) the demise of the sector.

Lighting up on Solar Power
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106327
Naimul Haq, IPS, Dec 29, 2011
The sun never shone brighter on rural Bangladesh with low power solar systems transforming the lives of tens of millions of marginalised rural people who are unconnected to the national grid.

World's largest solar plant powers up
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/worlds-largest-solar-plant-powers-up-6283799.html
Alasdair Fotheringham, The Independent, 01 January 2012
Spanish venture is as big as 210 football pitches and has 600,000 mirrors. But there's a dark side

POLITICS&POLICY--------------

Study: Does enduring extreme weather make you vote liberal?
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2011/12/severe-weather-global-warming-environment-laws-vote-liberal/1
Doyle Rice, USA Today, 30 December 2011
On the heels of a disastrous weather year in the USA, and with the long presidential campaign season looming, a new study finds that people who have endured extreme weather events are more likely to support environmental legislation, even if it means restricting individual freedoms.

The Debunking Handbook Part 1
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Debunking-Handbook-Part-1-first-myth-about-debunking.html
The Debunking Handbook is a guide to debunking myths, by John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky. Although there is a great deal of psychological research on misinformation, unfortunately there is no summary of the literature that offers practical guidelines on the most effective ways of reducing the influence of misinformation. This Handbook boils down the research into a short, simple summary, intended as a guide for communicators in all areas (not just climate) who encounter misinformation. The Handbook will be available as a free, downloadable PDF at the end of this 6-part blog series

Big Environmental NGOs: The End of Incrementalism in 2012?
http://tobywebb.blogspot.com/2011/12/big-environmental-ngos-end-of.html
US environmental NGOs, along with other, more globally minded 'green' and conservation-minded NGOs, have been poorly led in recent years. They've blown a series of chances to help businesses change using a nuanced approach. Their approach been too cut and dried, too 'with you not against you' in ideology. It was never as simple as that.

Proposals for reducing carbon dioxide emissions must balance with development needs
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/plos-pfr121911.php
Eureka alert, 21 December 2011
Efforts to combat climate change should take into account the development levels of different countries when negotiating agreements, according to a study published in the Dec. 21 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE.

Why is it so easy to save the banks – but so hard to save the biosphere?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/dec/16/durban-banks-climate-change
George Monbiot, Guardian, 16 December 2011
Agreements to bail out banks happen in days – but despite some good progress at Durban, we still don't have a legally binding deal to bail out the planet

Developed world failing on climate funds pledge, says Bangladeshi minister
Fiona Harvey, Guardian, 2 January 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/02/climate-change-funds-bangladesh-moni
Dipu Moni criticises 'dismal' efforts to deliver billions of pounds in aid to help poorer countries cope with environmental change

Time to get corporate cash out of Congress
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/05/time-to-get-corporate-cash-out-of-congress
Bill McKibben, TomDispatch/Guardian, 5 January 2012
I've seen enough of how Big Oil operates in Washington to know that moneyed influence is poisoning American democracy

Preparing for apocalypse: 'It's a ton of fun'
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/0107/1224309929282.html
Sylvia Thompson, Irish Times, January 7, 2012
Most of us are a little worried about what lies ahead, but members of the Dark Mountain Project believe that civilisation is about to collapse, that the Green movement has failed, and that we should be preparing to live in a changed world In some places people will start to move back to agriculture and villages, and there'll be civil unrest

Another Year Goes By and We're No Closer to Solving Climate Change
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/12/01/another-year-goes-by-and-were-no-closer-to-solving-climate-change/250814/
Auden Schendler, the Atlantic, 3 January 2012
Events of 2011 show that no matter how solid the science, some people will never accept that humans are causing global warming.

SCIENCE&IMPACTS--------------

Acid test for 'evil twin' of climate change
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/acid-test-for-evil-twin-of-climate-change-20120107-1pp64.html
Lloyd Jones, The Age, January 7, 2012
They call themselves Team Acid and are trawling the Southern Ocean with fine nets to see if the shells of tiny marine snails are thinning because of ocean acidification.

"The world is perfectly on track to six degrees Celsius increasing the temperature" says IEA Fatih Birol
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/04/379694/iea-world-11-degree-warming-school-children-catastrophic
Joe Romm, Climate Progress, Jan 4, 2012
The International Energy Agency was once a staid and conservative organization that people ignored because it was staid and conservative.

Widespread beach erosion leaves surf clubs in deep water
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/widespread-beach-erosion-leaves-surf-clubs-in-deep-water-20120102-1pidz.html
Jonathan Swan, Brisbane Times, January 3, 2012
Lifesaver Andrew Jones has watched the ocean swallow his beach. During the past 18 months, from the porch of the Taree Old Bar Surf Club, he has seen about ''60 to 70 metres of beach frontage'' disappear.
AND
Environmentalists hope to turn the tide against use of sea walls
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-san-francisco-strand-20120102,0,1646485.story
Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times, January 2, 2012
The longtime practice of dumping huge rocks and chunks of concrete along the coastline to stop erosion is coming under fire from those who favor letting the shoreline retreat naturally. San Francisco's efforts to protect Ocean Beach is the latest battleground.
AND
Planned retreat: Getting out of the way of the sea
http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/item/32056
Denis Devine, Newsworks, January 2, 2012
In a region that loves its summers at the Shore, a lot of phrases become familiar: beach tag, salt-water taffy, tear down. Here's one you may not know, but may begin to hear as storms and rising ocean levels continue to batter the coast: "planned retreat." And its cousin: "rolling easements."
AND
20 inches to disaster: U.S. coasts unprepared for higher seas
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2012-01-03-are-u.s.-coasts-ready-for-sea-level-rise
AND
Belgium fears for its fragile coastline
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/03/belgium-fears-for-fragile-coastline
Jean-Pierre Stroobants, Guardian, 3 January 2012
Storms and rising sea levels could wreak havoc as defences that protect beaches and dykes are overwhelmed

'Dramatic' loss of harp seals amid warming: study
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hsCyhCVoTEZAyNZE73rWRGFpSGNw
AFP, 8 January 2012
Harp seal pups off the coast of eastern Canada are dying at alarming rates due to a loss of winter ice cover, according to US scientists who questioned on Wednesday if the population will be able to recover.

Perceptions of Climate Change: The New Climate Dice
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120105_PerceptionsAndDice.pdf
New draft paper by Hansen et al on the effect of global warming on the frequency of climate extremes.

The Ghost of Climate Yet to Come
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/24/394877/ghost-of-climate-yet-to-come
Joe Romm, Climate Progress, Dec 24, 2011
Irreversible does not mean unstoppable: “Why show me this, if I am past all hope?”

‘No, climate sensitivity is not smaller, it is higher than we thought’ – because organic aerosol feedbacks mask warming
http://www.bitsofscience.org/climate-sensitivity-organic-aerosol-feedbacks-warming-4479/
Rolf Schuttenhelm, Bits of Science, December 21, 201
It serves to show individual climate sensitivity studies are never conclusive but add up bits of fresh understanding to an already enormous pile of data and knowledge.

Could Public Health Benefits Make Combating Climate Change Free?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=could-public-health-benefits-make-combating-climate-change-free
David Biello, Scientific American, December 21, 2011
Climate change threatens human health, therefore reducing greenhouse gas emissions may help our medical well-being, too

Melting Glaciers Mean Double Trouble for Water Supplies
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/12/1112-melting-glaciers-mean-double-trouble-for-water-supplies/
Rick Lovett, National Geographic News, December 20, 2011
New research shows that as ice disappears, overall evaporation speeds up.

Professor Kevin Anderson - Climate Change: Going Beyond Dangerous

2011-12-22T20:13:00.000+11:00

This is the best presentation we have seen all year. It's a must watch!

Professor Kevin Anderson - Climate Change: Going Beyond Dangerous

View another webinar from DFID

Climate in the media 21 December 2011

2011-12-21T17:06:00.000+11:00

PICKS OF THE WEEK---------------

2011 Science News of the Year: Environment
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/336997/title/2011_Science_News_of_the_Year_Environment
Science News, 1 December 2011

Why big energy wants to kill the LRET
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/why-big-energy-wants-kill-lret
Giles Parkinson, Climate Spectator, 16 December 2011
Ever heard of the merit order effect? Readers of this column may be familiar with it, because it is emerging as a key issue in the Australian electricity sector, and a flashpoint between the established fossil fuel generators and the new wave of renewable energy technologies, and a conflict between short term profits and long term gains.

Twitter http://twitter.com/djspratt
Read the archive of weekly media summaries at http://lists.topica.com/lists/carbonequityproject/read

The brutal logic of climate change
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-12-05-the-brutal-logic-of-climate-change
David Roberts, Grist, 5 December 2011
The consensus in American politics today is that there's nothing to be gained from talking about climate change.
AND
The brutal logic of climate change mitigation
http://www.grist.org/climate-policy/2011-12-08-the-brutal-logic-of-climate-change-mitigation
David Roberts, Grist, 8 December 2011
Over the past five years a wealth of analyses have described very different responses to what, at first sight, appears to be the same question: What emission-reduction profiles are compatible with avoiding "dangerous" climate change?

Coalmine a 'threat to global warming target'
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/coalmine-a-threat-to-global-warming-target-20111218-1p0sv.html
David Wroe, SMH, December 19, 2011
The development of coal ''mega-mines'' in central Queensland such as the massive China First project will destroy the world's chance of keeping global warming to 2 degrees, Greenpeace says.

NASA: Climate Change May Bring Big Ecosystem Changes
http://steveothegreat7.blogspot.com/2011/12/nasa-climate-change-may-bring-big.html
JPL/NASA, 14 December 2011
By 2100, global climate change will modify plant communities covering almost half of Earth's land surface and will drive the conversion of nearly 40 percent of land-based ecosystems from one major ecological community type - such as forest, grassland or tundra - toward another, according to a new NASA and university computer modeling study.

ENERGY&INNOVATION--------------

Carbon tax puts heat on Loy Yang
http://www.theage.com.au/national/carbon-tax-puts-heat-on-loy-yang-20111219-1p2kf.html
Lenore Taylor, The Age, December 20, 2011
Loy Yang Power has been forced to ask the corporate regulator for special permission to continue trading in the face of financial strain due to debt refinancing and the carbon tax.

Renewables need not cost more: EU energy chief
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/12/15/eu-energy-idUKL6E7NE5RZ20111215
Barbara Lewis, Reuters, 15 December 2011
A shift to renewable energy would ultimately cost around the same as business as usual and the EU needs to make progress on setting a 2030 target for greener fuel soon, the bloc's energy commissioner said.

Closing brown coal plants would help meet target
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/energy-smart/closing-brown-coal-plants-would-help-meet-target-20111214-1outt.html
Tom Arup, The Age, December 15, 2011
Almost half of Victoria's 20 per cent emissions reduction target could be met through a federal government program paying to shut heavy-emitting power plants, think tank ClimateWorks says.

Where is the Coalition on clean energy?
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/where-coalition-clean-energy
Andrew Bray, Climate Spectator, 15 December 2011
The legislation of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation next year is looming as a test of how genuinely Tony Abbott and the Coalition support renewable energy.

Insight: Shale gas emissions similar to conventional gas
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/48054
ERW, 12 December 2012
Several recent studies suggest that the greenhouse gas impacts of shale gas are not substantially different from those of conventional gas. Nathan Hultman and colleagues, writing in Environmental Research Letters (ERL), examine how shale gas compares to conventional gas and coal when used for electricity generation. The researchers estimate that the extraction processes for shale gas do have a small but relatively important impact on the overall lifecycle of greenhouse gas emissions.

Breakthrough could double solar energy output
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/environment/la-me-gs-breakthrough-double-solar-energy-output-20111216,0,3897047.story
Dean Kuipers, LA Times, December 16, 2011
A new discovery from a chemist at the University of Texas at Austin may allow photovoltaic solar cells to double their efficiency, thus providing loads more electrical power from regular sunlight.

Value of CSP Increases Substantially at High Solar Penetration
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/19/391982/value-csp-high-solar-penetration-nrel
Stephen Lacey, Climate Progress, Dec 19, 2011
With the cost of solar photovoltaic projects declining steadily and cost reductions in concentrating solar power (CSP) projects falling at a slower pace, some are calling 2011 the year that PV killed CSP. In the last year and a half, roughly 3,000 MW of CSP projects in the U.S. have been converted to PV.

POLITICS&POLICY--------------

How Big Oil beat US carbon standards
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/how-big-oil-beat-us-carbon-standards
Geoff Dembicki, Salon/Climate Spectator, 19 December 2011
When President Barack Obama decided in early November to delay a decision on TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline until after the next election, America’s environmental movement celebrated one of its biggest victories in recent memory. And no doubt the news came as a blow to Alberta’s tar sands industry, and to Canada’s oft-stated dream of becoming the next global energy superpower.

Analysis: A world apart
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2011/12/science-analysis
Douglas Fischer, Daily Climate, Dec. 15, 2011
In San Francisco, a massive meeting discussed climate science while in Durban, another huge gathering debated climate politics. Two roads, on opposite sides of the Earth, diverge – and send progress along at very different speedsView Demo

Misinformer Of The Year: Rupert Murdoch And News Corp.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201112150002
Eric Boehlert & Jeremy Schulman, MMA, December 15, 2011
"This is the most humble day of my life." That's how Rupert Murdoch began his July 20 testimony to Parliament about the phone hacking and bribery scandal that had already resulted in the resignations and arrests of key News Corp. officials.

Wind farm opponents 'aided and abetted' by climate sceptic groups
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/wind-farm-opponents-aided-and-abetted-by-climate-sceptic-groups-20111219-1p2l6.html
Ben Cubby, Josephine Tovey, SMH, December 20, 2011
The anti-wind farm movement that is gaining influence in the NSW Parliament is being ''aided and abetted'' by climate sceptic groups and some mining figures.

Which Countries Fail the Most at Climate Leadership?
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/14/384955/which-countries-fail-the-most-at-climate-leadership
Arne Jungjohann, Grist/Climate Progress, 14 December 2012
Sweden, the U.K., and Germany: The European trio leads the world in fighting climate change. That’s the finding of the most recent Climate Change Performance Index [PDF], which was released this week at COP 17 in Durban. But Swedes, Brits, and Germans shouldn’t cheer just yet; even their countries are not contributing their fair share.

Plimer’s climate change book for kids underestimates science education
http://theconversation.edu.au/plimers-climate-change-book-for-kids-underestimates-science-education-4803
Ian Lowe, The Conversation, 20 December 2011
The forces of climate science denial have geared down a level. Having failed in their attempt to confuse adults and stop the parliament adopting a timid first step in response to climate change, they are now trying to get at schoolkids.

Climate sceptics might just be captive to basic emotions
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/climate-sceptics-might-just-be-captive-to-basic-emotions-20111219-1p2hl.html
Paul Biegler, The Age, December 20, 2011
Instant gratification is a powerful, but flawed, human motivator.

Australian Exceptionalism
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2011/12/08/australian-exceptionalism/
Possum Comitatus, Crikey blogs, December 8, 2011
“Australian Exceptionalism”…. let that phrase roll off your tongue. Now stop laughing for a moment if you can!

Durban climate summit was an almost total failure
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/durban-climate-summit-was-an-almost-total-failure/2395403.aspx
Gwynne Dyer, Canberra Times, 16 December 2011
The Durban climate summit that ended on Sunday has been proclaimed a great success. The chair, South Africa's International Relations Minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, told the delegates: ''We have concluded this meeting with [a plan] to save one planet for the future of our children and our grandchildren to come. We have made history.'' Don't be fooled. It was an almost total failure.

SCIENCE&IMPACTS--------------

New data on climate change in Himalayas: Earth’s ‘third pole’
http://www.ecosmagazine.com/?paper=EC11136
Ecos, 12 December 2011
The most comprehensive environmental assessment to date on the impact of climate change on snow and glacier melt in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region shows that rising temperatures are disturbing the balance of snow, ice and water, threatening biodiversity and the livelihoods of the 1.3 billion people living downstream in Asia’s major river basins.

Satellite climate data at 33 years: questioning shaky claims that downplay global warming
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/the-satellite-temperature-record-questioning-shaky-claims-after-33-years/2011/12/20/gIQAd8KE7O_blog.html
Andrew Freedman, WP blog, 20 December 2011
An interesting press release marking the 33rd anniversary of the satellite temperature record makes questionable claims dismissive of the human role in global warming. These claims are not supported by the scientific literature.

Carbon Time Bomb in the Arctic: New York Times Print Edition Gets the Story Right
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/19/392242/carbon-time-bomb-in-arctic-new-york-times-print-edition-gets-the-story-right
Joe Romm, Climate Progress, Dec 19, 2011
NY Times science reporter Justin Gillis has just published an excellent overview article, “As Permafrost Thaws, Scientists Study the Risks.” The piece makes clear we may be near a tipping point, citing University of Alaska scientist Vladimir Romanovsky.
ARTICLE
As Permafrost Thaws, Scientists Study the Risks
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/science/earth/warming-arctic-permafrost-fuels-climate-change-worries.html

Our Extreme Weather: Is Arctic Sea Ice Loss Partly to Blame?
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/17/391462/our-extreme-weather-arctic-changes-to-blame
Jeff Masters, Climate Progress, 17 December 2011
“The question is not whether sea ice loss is affecting the large-scale atmospheric circulation…. It’s how can it not?” That was the take-home message from Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, in her talk “Does Arctic Amplification Fuel Extreme Weather in Mid-Latitudes?”, presented at last week’s American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Texas drought takes cow numbers down by 600K
http://hosted2-2.ap.org/MOSTP/6c4f1c9b30804a70bc4ae998df74d877/Article_2011-12-16-Food%20and%20Farm-Texas%20Cattle/id-e002771b93d84d1e993fb374b838f7b2
Betsy Blaney, Associated Press, 16 December 2011
The worst drought in Texas' history has led to the largest-ever one-year decline in the leading cattle-state's cow herd, raising the likelihood of increased beef prices as the number of animals decline and demand remains strong.

Must-See Hansen and Caldeira on Sensitivity: Paleoclimate Record Points Toward Potential Rapid Climate Changes
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/12/14/386806/hansen-and-caldeira-on-sensitivity-paleoclimate-record-rapid-climate-changes
Joe Romm, Climate Progress, 14 December 2012
Amounts of warming previously thought to be safe may instead trigger widespread melting of the world’s ice sheets and other catastrophic impacts, scientists said…. “There’s evidence that climate sensitivity may be quite a bit higher than what the models are suggesting,” said Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at Stanford University’s Carnegie Institution for Science.

The next 10 years will be very unlike the last 10 years (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XQIxr4gRQM

The real climate message is in the shadows. It’s time to shine the light.

2011-08-30T18:24:00.000+10:00

by Daniel Voronoff

There was more than one kernel of truth in the speech made by the Shadow Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull at the Virginia Chadwick Foundation back in July. But the one I’d like to look at is the analogy about how not listening to the science on climate change:

…is like ignoring the advice of your doctor to give up smoking and lose 10 kilos on the basis that somebody down the pub told you their uncle Ernie ate three pies a day and smoked a packet of cigarettes and lived to 95.

Malcolm Turnbull was commenting on the perils of denialism and its toxic effect on public discourse, however, the comparison also holds a very literal and crueller truth – global warming is a threat to human health.

Just as galling as the deadly effect of denialism is the long-standing tendency of the environment movement to avoid spelling out the brutal impacts of global warming, especially its adverse health and wellbeing effects, a habit epitomised by the Australian Government’s “Clean Energy Future” campaign. For a while now we’ve been hearing that it is somehow poor, dumb and ineffective communication to discuss and elaborate the problem of global warming, its dangers and how threatening to our lives and livelihoods it is. We’re told that it’s disempowering, a turn-off, and that such ‘apocalyptic rhetoric’ is, in part, responsible for the public’s lowered inclination to consider global warming important. Sometimes we’re even told that to mention ‘carbon dioxide’ and ‘pollution’ in the same breath is a fatal cause of distraction from the one and true communication goal.

That goal, the message we ought to be on-about, is that renewable energy and energy-efficiency are new industries with immense investment and profit opportunities, which create jobs and, by default, makes our nation strong and competitive. When asked why we should put ourselves through all the trouble of rebuilding our energy system, and for that matter, the transport system, agricultural system, the built environment, etc, etc… this is the received answer. And remember: keep smiling and don’t mention the ‘nasty bits’. Although this message is clearly true, it’s painful to watch as opportunities to communicate the problem we face are lost, mainly because each moment is a rare and valuable opening to let people know, honestly, and in a way that connects with something that is precious and tangible and that everyone has, whether poor, fair or excellent: that is, their health.

A study cited in recent times in support of omitting the nasty bits is Apocalypse Soon? Dire messages reduce belief in global warming by contradicting Just-World beliefs. Its main finding, unsurprisingly, is that when you present a frightening message about global warming to people, without telling them how to address the threat, they tend to become sceptical about the threat. But it’s worth noting one of the study’s conclusions is that the “findings extend past research showing that fear-based appeals, especially those not coupled with a clear solution, can backfire and undermine the intended effects of the messages [emphasis added].”

A lot of research has gone into understanding the role of fear in motivating human behaviour, especially in the field of public health promotion (for example quit smoking campaigns), which can shed some light on this question of whether or not to address or omit the frightening truth. And, given that the Apocalypse Soon study tells us its findings are in broad agreement with the literature, I thought it might be useful to look over the finding of a meta-analysis of studies into the use of, what are known in the field as, ‘fear appeals’. In these analyses, the authors compile, compare and examine the findings of many similar studies and report on the results: the benefit being access to large sample sizes, lending strength to the evidence. But, before we go on, it’s useful to define a few terms used in the study that are common to the psychology literature.

Firstly is the understanding of ‘perceived threat,’ which is said to be made up of two facets: perceived susceptibility to the threat (how at risk you feel) and perceived severity of the threat (how harmful it’s thought to be). Secondly, fear, being an emotion, is distinct from perceived threat, a cognition, but the two are, naturally, related: the higher the threat, the greater the fear. Lastly there’s ‘perceived efficacy,’ which has two facets: self-efficacy, the belief about one’s ability to respond to a threat (yes I can do it); and response efficacy, one’s belief that the recommended response can avert the threat (it will work).

And the meta-study findings? “In sum, fear appeals appear to be effective when they depict a significant and relevant threat (to increase perceptions of severity and susceptibility) and when they outline effective responses that appear easy to accomplish (to increase perceptions of response efficacy and self-efficacy). Low-threat fear appeals appear to produce little, if any, persuasive effects… the advice to message designers is the same: A persuader should promote high levels of threat and high levels of efficacy to promote attitude, intention, and behaviour changes.”

Some other findings:

Increasing the focus on severity in fear appeals appears to produce the strongest effects on perceptions. Changes in the message variables of susceptibility, response efficacy, and self-efficacy all produce moderate effects.
Importantly, there was no support for any hypothesized negative effects from fear appeals.
Strong efficacy messages are needed to match the severity and susceptibility messages otherwise ‘fear controls’ and defensive responses kick in.

On this last point the researchers note the risk associated with messages that induce fear is that they may backfire if the audience don’t believe they’re able to effectively avert a threat. In applying these findings to climate change communications, to my mind, this risk should be evaluated in the context of other risks inherent in the current, pivotal, carbon tax pitch, and beyond. The risk we face with the present suite of messages is that without stating the problem – namely the severity of the threat and our susceptibility to it – there is no argument for change. Without stating the threat, the public mind is lead to question, why a tax for innovation and jobs when the mining industry makes jobs anyway? Imagine the anti-smoking advertisement that fails to mention mouth and lung cancer, telling the smoker they should give up a pleasurable habit of ten years because, well, they’re certain to feel better. The evidence shows this appeal just doesn’t work.

There should be no doubt about the applicability of health promotion to climate change, just go read the science. There isn’t much about global warming that doesn’t end in a fatal or morbid human consequence somewhere down the line, sooner or later. Indeed, sooner and later. And it’s precisely this point –the human health and wellbeing impacts – that should form the centre of our message. Let’s put aside the loss of the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu National Park for a while and talk instead about heat stress, asthma, dengue fever, salmonella, drowning and third degree burns. We should tell about the economic disruption and food insecurity, and the implications of all of these for the livelihoods of our children. This is the sage advice of U.S. communications experts who’ve taken the trouble to consult with health professionals and develop a timely primer on climate change communications centred on health.

To those who argue that recourse to ‘fear appeals’ is ‘manipulative’, my answer is: manipulation is when you lie, like saying climate change is crap, or omit the truth, like not mentioning that climate change is the problem and not spelling out its effects. By contrast, openly discussing the science – which is frightening – and broadcasting our common plight to our fellow Australians, is taking responsibility for the truth. So, there are three elements that should compose the shape the direction of communications about global warming – we must be honest and upfront about:

The severity of climate change impacts and our susceptibility to those impacts.
The real adverse human impacts: the loss of life and livelihood, compounding over the generations.
The action that we can take, that millions of Australians are taking, to stop this threat, and that we can win.

CSIRO recently published a study on public attitudes and feelings about climate change. The study surveyed about 5000 people and asked, among other things, what their feelings about climate change were. Significantly, fear was the most highly rated emotion felt by the 50.4% of respondents who believed that climate change was real and human-induced. This group was most likely to be “somewhat worried” and “very worried” about climate change and tended to perceive higher levels of personal harm from climate change than respondents who thought climate change was natural or wasn’t happening. To my mind this shows, from another angle, how perceptions of threat (susceptibility to and severity of climate change) and fear may shape an opinion about the issue.

Another large survey shows that fifty-nine percent of Australian respondents thought that the region where they lived was vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, with two thirds of these respondents indicating that their location was “very” or “reasonably” vulnerable[9]. This result contrasts with that of Britons, who ranked the vulnerability of their location much lower. The researchers note that this may be due to how Australians are switched on to our continent’s natural climatic variability, and that in the words of Professor David Karoly (via Dorthea Mackellar), climate change will mean a country of more droughts and worse flooding rains[10]. Again, these survey results show that in the public mind there is a well-founded perception of climate susceptibility and severity, indicating that an honest message on this theme would reinforce common understanding.

I look forward, then, to seeing a communications campaign that kicks off with an advertisement that goes something like this:

“Good Health, Safe Climate”

A General Practitioner’s office. The Doctor sits on her desk and addresses the camera.

“As a Doctor, and a mother, I’m concerned about the health and well-being of my community. In my work I get to see the hardship that poor health can cause for people – and I get the opportunity to help my patients achieve good health. That’s why I’d like to tell you about the dangers that global warming and climate change pose to your health, and what you can do to protect yourself and your family.”

Images of people caught up in drought, catastrophic flood, bushfire and heatwave. The image of a child struggling with asthma. Doctor’s voice over:

“Scientists agree that greenhouse pollution causes global warming, making our climate change. It means more droughts, more floods, and more intense bushfires. Heatwaves will last longer, and it increases the likelihood of asthma and the spread of diseases like salmonella and dengue fever.”

Back in the Doctor’s office:

“And we now know that climate change is very likely to cause significant economic disruption, which means that our lives, and the lives of our children are at risk. But it doesn’t have to be like this.”

The Doctor is in a park. She joins a group of people. As she speaks, the camera slowly pans back revealing more and more people.

“I’d like you to join with me and millions of Australians who are standing up for good health and a safe climate. We’re taking action to stop the big polluters, by coming together and making our voices heard: by voting, letter writing, signing petitions, and talking to our neighbours and friends about this threat.”

The camera pans upwards revealing, from overhead, a large crowd spelling out: Good Health Safe Climate.

“Join us: what you do now can make all the difference.”

This isn’t the last word; it’s just the beginning, an outline of elements that should compose a broader narrative that puts the health of families, children and the populace, at the centre of the message. Here I’ve emphasised civic participation activities in the call to action, rather than a tax or jobs and renewables. This is because without empowered participation, neither the tax, nor renewables and the jobs, would even be on the agenda – nor would there be any hope of avoiding dangerous climate change.

Carbon tax pitch misses the mark: it’s the climate, stupid!

2011-07-18T18:06:00.004+10:00

First published in Crikey, 18 July 2011

by David Spratt

Can you sell people an answer, when they’re not sure of the question?

The carbon tax TV campaign confirms the government’s strategy of framing the case largely in economic terms: a "clean energy future" for investment and jobs and innovation, building Australia for the 21st century. Long gone are the days of the "great moral challenge" of our time.

The "Say yes" campaign by civil society groups exhibits the same economism: "Saying yes to a price on pollution means saying yes to investment, innovation, and new jobs based on renewable energy ... Putting a price on pollution will ... protect jobs, drive innovation in adaptation and clean energy projects and technologies ..."

The problem is that barely half the population believes climate change is real and human caused; fewer support the tax. And much of that opinion is soft: it’s one of many concerns.

The sense of urgency was lost three years ago, according to Hugh Mackay, who says that the fall in public support is not due to Gillard’s failures or even Rudd’s backflip. Mackay says the trend was evident by mid-2008, when the sense of expectation accompanying the change of government was deflated by inaction and low targets in the first six months of Rudd’s term, creating "a very critical vacuum" in which "people kind of shrugged and said well, it is not that serious after all ... It was seen as much more about a talking game than an acting game ... When we were not called upon to act, the opportunity was lost."

Yet now the pitch is: "We have this important (tax) change that you should support, because it may not make you worse off." Great. And a "clean energy future", whose need is not well enough understood. It’s a big ask to sell a "big change" without a compelling narrative as to why, in language and with a detail that, anecdotally, many do not understand, from a Prime Minister most do not trust.

The government’s messaging, and that of many NGOs, fits with a trend in both sides of US politics in following the advice of Republican pollster Frank Lunz to stop talking about climate change and the implications of failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions because they are "negatives", and sell a positive "clean energy" economic story instead.

This suggests we can have answers without being sure of the question; that people will support change that leaves them "no worse off", without understanding why. The corollary of this "no negatives" is a happy-clappy strategy in which climate action is all win-win, no pain, no problems. Just say yes.

Yet the lesson from Mackay’s analysis is unambiguous: the scientific need for action now has to be re-established.

What is missing is a compelling heart narrative about the impacts of global warming. The story is not being told of families who will live in a hot world, with more dangerous climate extremes, heat stress and ill-health, with less secure food and water supplies, and of children and grandchildren who will live less well than their parents, and may struggle to survive, unless we act right now. Nor is a story being told about how we can all can play an active, empowering part part in creating a safe climate for future generations. Shying away from the dire picture of climate change impacts takes us away what the well-understood psychology of health promotion now tells us.

A meta-analysis of research on health promotion campaigns and their outcomes found that the most successful approach is to combine a striking honesty about the problem with a message of personal efficacy: it is about you, and you are part of the solution. The study found no negative effects of messages honest about the severity and likelihood of the health impact, provided there was a clear articulation about what can be done to stop the problem. In fact, the more detail about the severity of the impact, the more effective was the message.

Peter Lewis of Essential Media says if you wish to mobilise public opinion, then "focus on the science first, second and third -- and then start talking about the impact on our carbon-exposed economy if we wait for the rest of the world to act first".

US pollster Mark Mellman says suggestions that one shouldn’t talk about global warming are "politically naive, methodologically flawed and factually inaccurate". He finds that even dire science-based warnings are an essential part of good climate messaging -- along with a clear explanation of the myriad clean energy solutions available today and the multiple benefits of those solutions.

People’s well-founded fear has its role in political messaging, as the WorkChoices campaign showed. Modern environmentalism was born from the warnings of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

Asked recently about Lunz’s proposition to talk about clean, secure energy and not talk about climate change, Al Gore replied: "The scale and magnitude of the changes that are necessary to solve the climate crisis mean that all of the collateral reasons for taking these steps will not get us to where we need to go without a clear understanding of what we’re facing if we don’t act ... it’s a mistake to move that to the periphery of the conversation as so many have done ... it has to be the heart of the conversation."

The health promotion review reinforces the effectiveness of uncensored honesty about the problem combined with an empowering message about solutions and personal responsibility.

Carbon price a historic step forward, but political compromise triumphs over scientific necessity

2011-07-10T11:47:00.004+10:00

Check out: Carbon tax at a glance on Crikey

It is a historic step forward for Australia to be finally taking action to price carbon. The time for talking is over as the damaging impacts of global warming become ever more apparent. By acting to reduce emissions, the politics of delay and denial will become a historic relic.

The very existence of the legislation is due to the constant pressure and untiring work of thousands of individuals and groups in the climate movement across Australia. These people have kept the issue of climate change -- the greatest threat yet to our species -- alive in the face of powerful vested interests who deny both the science of climate change and the case for action. This is a very significant victory for Australian civil society.

However the long delay in acting makes our challenge today bigger and more urgent than ever. The aspirations of the carbon pricing scheme are low in comparison with what the science community tells us we need to do to avoid great damage to Australia's economy, our environment, and the way we live.

This legislation is a significant step forward by putting in place carbon measuring and accounting procedures across the economy. And it places new responsibilities on all those concerned about the human-induced climate disruption to ensure that the price of carbon steadily and rapidly rises so as to encourage renewable energy industries and to discourage an expansion of gas-fired power. This increasingly seems to be impossible under an ETS framework, if the European experience is any guide. A fixed and rising carbon price is the best policy.

The proposal is a compromise between players with different, and often opposing interests, and is far from being as ambitious and science-driven as the community climate action movement understands is necessary. We are concerned that too much compensation to big polluters can lock in aspects of the brown economy.

Statements from the prime minister that Australia's coal industry will continue to expand are frightening and suggest that some in the Labor government have chosen not to understand the depth and urgency of the climate change challenge. Real action on climate means winding down coal exports, and ensuring that no new coal mines are opened.

A large gap remains between political will and the scientific realities, and the scheme's targets must be lifted over time, together with an industry plan for skills, jobs and investment to build the clean, renewable energy economy. The national carbon reduction targets must rise rapidly, so as to respond appropriately and urgently to what the climate science is telling us.

Transparent governance, especially for the independent Climate Change Authority recommending future targets and carbon budgets, allows policy to be recalibrated to the science over time. An independent commission to regularly review the science, Australia's role and international developments in order to make yearly recommendations to government, provides an ongoing process of public, community engagement in climate policy.

The new independent statutory body, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), creating whole-of-government management of $3.2 billion of renewable energy funding at arm’s length from government, is a big step forward. It represents one of several instances where the role of the independents and the Greens in negotiations has improved the outcome. Its long-term worth can be guaranteed by locking in and expanding recurrent annual funding for at least the next decade, to provide certainty for the industry regardless of the complexion of government in Canberra.

We strongly support action to start closing Australia' dirtiest coal-fired power stations, but the intention must be matched by a plan to start now, not defer and delay. This must be reinforced by a ban on the construction of any new coal generators. A transition from coal to gas electricity generation is not a path to the zero-emissions economy which we need. The level of greenhouse gases and future warming is now greater than at any time since modern humans walked this planet, so thinking we can continue greenhouse gas emissions for many decades to come is a fatal mistake.

- David Spratt and John Rice

How not to engage the community: the politics of 5 June

2011-06-25T17:44:00.002+10:00

by David Spratt and John Rice

On Sunday 5 June, a set of coordinated public rallies in support of climate action, and particularly a carbon tax, under the banner “Say Yes....”, were held in capital cities around Australia.

For many people, including climate activists, they were a disconcerting experience, in which the community was effectively taken out of these events, reduced to little more than extras providing a staged backdrop for an inordinately expensive media stunt, led by GetUp.

The events may have been public, but they had nought to do with community organising and empowerment. In many ways, they were its negation.

The rallies were nominally organised by the “Say Yes” coalition (or POP11 - Price on Pollution 2011 group of NGOs, including ACF, Greenpeace, WWF, Climate Institute, AYCC, EV, GetUp, ACTU and CANA; at one stage also known as PACC11).

But in effect, the rallies were called by GetUp (and the proposal supported by the ACTU), without consultation with, or the prior knowledge of, most of the environment/climate NGOs in the POP11 group. Some environment NGOs were opposed to the idea in the way it was proposed and with timelines involved.

That Getup should act unilaterally is unsurprising. It is consistent with what Crikey’s Bernard Keane describes as the “remorseless self-promotion and self-congratulation of GetUp” that demands that GetUp be not just a partner in events, but the leading light that makes the big moves and claims the credit, whether justified in part or not.

[And here lies a bigger question: do the branding imperatives of large NGOs, financially reliant on e-list supporters, drive them to market themselves as separate and distinct from, and of higher standing, than other NGOs and the community groups with which they profess common purpose? Is this one reason why climate advocacy is so often chronically divided and ineffective? And a reason why as a national movement the climate issue has too rarely been able to engender a public sense of unity of purpose that other movements, such as for refugee rights and peace, have been able to do, with vastly fewer resources?]

In Canberra, an event on the same day was organised outside of the GetUp/POP11 frame by a coalition of 12 local climate and environment groups, with a message around “Real action on climate change” (rather than price on pollution). It was proportionately the largest of the rallies, and generated the only story of the day with new content, based on comments made by one of the speakers, John Hewson. In tone and content, with an emphasis on funding renewables, it seemed the most pertinent to the current deliberations of the multi-party committee.

In all the other mainland cities, the events were organised by GetUp, who seemed unprepared for the task and mildly surprised that environment NGOs who had nought to do with the decision were not prepared to bust their boilers to put the GetUp/ACTU decision into effect. The organisers made little or no attempt to work with climate activists and climate action groups, in some cases being positively hostile.

In South Australia, for example, the activist umbrella group CLEAN approached the rally organisers offering assistance, requesting one speaker on the platform and saying they would organise an information table on the day. A flat “no” was given to both the speaker and information table proposals. As CLEAN distributed a flyer at the rally, AYCC members and GetUp T-shirted organisers told CLEAN activists to desist, an outrageously undemocratic stance for a public event in a public place. In Melbourne, people wearing Greens T-shirts were approached and asked to remove them.

Oh, the irony: were it not for the Greens’ balance of power in the House of Representatives, and balance of power in the Senate after 1 July, there would not be a multi-party committee, any prospects of a carbon tax, or any likelihood of it passing the Senate!

With very little time, no activist base, and some mildly pissed-off environment NGOs, the rallies were bound to be small. Posters and leaflets were printed in token quantities, and marketing of the rallies barely extended beyond social media and the e-lists of the participating organisations, some of whom did their bit but hardly pressed all the buttons. Compared to significant climate mobilisations in the past, their was no buzz in the lead-up, no community radio, no stories in local papers, no outpouring of emails encouraging friends, little on twitter, no street presence by way of posters. Just a comms flurry the day before, and thousands of automated phone bots with a pre-recorded message from GetUp CEO Simon Sheik, which may have annoyed as many people as they encouraged.

Whilst POP11 had promoted their collective capacity to mobilise many of their three million members and supporters, the rallies did little to substantiate this assertion. Organisers claimed a total attendance of “up to 45,000”; reports compiled from activists suggest 30,000 was closer to the mark.

In Melbourne, the crowd was 10,000 at most. By Melbourne standards, this is a poor show. Organisers of Walk against Warming work on a minimum benchmark of 20,000, and 30,000 as a good day out. For a city that has put a quarter of a million on the streets against the Iraq war in 2003 and more than 150,000 for anti-Workchoices rallies, the “Say Yes..” rally was small. And flat.

And it had paid private security, in Melbourne and Adelaide at least! Several people commented that they were flabbergasted to see paid security guards at the event, suggesting either a budget that knew no bounds, or organisers who did not trust (or know?) a good old-fashioned set of marshals, who come free-of-charge and with a coloured band tied to one arm.

Nothing contributed more to a general sense of deflation at the rallys’ end that the decision taken in advance (at all the rallies, except Canberra where local activists were in charge) not to march.

In Melbourne, for example, instead of marching people were encouraged to pick up pre-prepared post-cards for their neighbours. This misread the crowd, which included many experienced climate and community activists who are already involved in work around transition towns, alternative energy programs, campaigns for adaptation funding in the Pacific, lobbying within their union, school or workplace or participating in their local climate action group. There were certainly some first-time ralliers on the day, but this was a small crowd of the core, many of whom have been door-knocking, setting up street stalls and handing out how to vote cards for some time, and for many causes. A desultory postcard was close to an insult.

A march was what people want and expect, it gets energy moving, and voices heard, provides colour and movement and pictures, and takes the message to the city. People were pissed off. As they milled around in confusion, perhaps they needed a tweet from the rally organisers telling them it was time to go home?

It’s hard not to conclude that marches were off the agenda because they provide moments of spontaneity, and cannot be 100% controlled. When the Melbourne MC, Corinne Grant, announced there would be no march, there was an audible groan – people suddenly realised that their role was just to provide the crowd picture for the photographers perched on a scissor-lift that towered over the rally.

One Sydney participant wrote: “Totally disappointed. Not long after we got there…it was over! Many stood around like us asking ‘what now?’ Only saw Channel 9 & Sky…no helicopters checking on numbers, no polar bears and other assorted costumed characters to liven things up. No march….just a couple of thousand standing in a park, talk about preaching to the converted. We went a couple of years ago to the rally in Martin Place and then the march – brilliant! Not sure if someone different was running it this year, perhaps a case of too many cooks spoil the broth! “

A set of large, coordinated community rallies perform a number of functions. They publicly demonstrate large and energetic national support from hundreds (not tens) of thousands of Australian for political action. They energise and build the movement, an opportunity to gather names, help the formation of new groups of local activists, kick things long, build momentum, inspire many more to become active. None of that could be said of 5 June.

They are also the culmination of work in the community over previous months, where local and sectoral activity -- letterboxing, street stall, public forums, local stunts, outreach -- all help build momentum for the big day. But this was never going to be a big day, having been called a few weeks, rather than a few months, in advance. And with a few exceptions, most of the POP11 alliance have no capacity, experience or interest in such large-scale community organising. Indeed, a number of them have, effectively, self-appointed boards without any democratic structure or membership, and a disenfranchised supporter base good for money and an email inbox. It is quaintly feudal in its way, in a world reputedly made “democratic” by social media.

So what were these rallies about? Clearly, despite the bold intent of the initial POP11 vision, this was not about community organising and empowerment. They were, in reality, a very expensive media stunt, and little more. No community involvement in organising the events, no local buildup, no local follow-up, no march, no energy.

Of the speakers at the rallies, about two-thirds came from the POP11 organisations or their affiliates. There were only three speakers at the Melbourne rally, hosted by comedienne Corinne Grant. Peter Marshall of the firefighters union was followed by Jenna, a “suburban mum”, then ACF CEO Don Henry. The presence of a “community person” on stage was undercut when Jenna read a prepared speech that simply echoed Get Up’s message, rather than speaking with passion or anger, for example, about a parent’s concern for their childrens’ future.

POP11 CEOs were spread around the country to get the TV grabs: John Connor (Climate Institute) in Adelaide, Don Henry (ACF) in Melbourne, Simon Sheik (GetUp) in Sydney and Linda Selvey (Greenpeace) in Brisbane.

It was another day at the office, another big NGO media stunt, this time in front of a “community” backdrop, rather than the parliament house lawns. The community participants were passive players, who were denied the right to either help organise the events or march. And in some cases, apparently to hand out a leaflet or wear the t-shirt of their choice.

In this theatre, the community were not actors and this stage was not for them. They were extras, those who mass in a crowd without any scripted lines, bar a muffled “Hoorah” for the King and his new clothes.

And the message? The government’s policy of just a 5% reduction in emissions by 2020 below the 1990 baseline, and a carbon tax for that purpose, are so grossly inadequate as to be little more than a suicide note. If a “price on pollution” descends into a scam carbon-trading scheme with unlimited offsets and so on, it may be next to useless. As grassroots activists we must demand the actions that fit the science for a safe climate.

But criticism of the government, in any form, and encouragement to do much, much more were clearly not the purpose of 5 June. The rally flyer’s message was “Say yes to action on climate change: Say yes to putting a price on pollution, because we can’t afford not to.” That was just about it. Labor was off the hook; the gross inadequacy of its 5% target didn’t rated a mention. Presumably that was the idea.

The 5 June rallies have left many people feeling very uneasy, including within some environment NGOs. Clearly POP11 did not succeed in the task that was set, and the process started too late. But many of us failed for different reasons.

For months Abbott raged, but his sham policy was not sufficiently the focus of attack from any part of the movement. He won the battle to make Labor’s policy the story, not his hopeless mess of a “direct action”policy.

Suggestions from some activists that a low/no carbon price was better than a higher price distracted sections of the grassroots movement, and was politically naive in assuming that a lower carbon price would make “complementary measures” easier to achieve politically. In reality, the short-to-medium term chances for renewable energy funding were pretty much dependent on the size of the tax (especially with the Treasury head and senior ministers committed to reducing “non-market” energy policy mechanisms once a carbon price was working).

In the absence of carbon price legislation or even a clear idea as to what it would look like, trying to sell it was a very big challenge, and perhaps the wrong tactic. In the last six months, Julia Gillard sounded credible on climate on the very few occasions when she talked about how climate change was, and would, impact on people’s lives. But telling the climate impacts stories -- making the climate connection to extreme events, the impending collapse of the Barrier Reef system and the job losses, the water and food insecurity of a rapidly-warming world, the health and family impacts, the coastal flooding and social dislocation -- were put aside by the government and most NGOs in favour of an economistic “price on pollution” win-win narrative. But if people don’t get the real urgency of the problem, why should they care about the answer, or support a level of action which is absolutely necessary but far beyond Labor’s aspiration?

The unity of POP11 did not last. Branding imperatives triumphed over good politics. Commitments to consultation with the movement were hollow; many of the smaller climate groups, for example, did not know what was being planned for months. GetUp’s unilateralism triumphed over real community organising. The timelines appear flawed. A political strategy based on research in a few marginal seats should have been applied in those seats, but not nationally.

Packing most of the bang into one “week of action” used too much precious ammunition. Poor judgement led to an expensive, but poorly-conceived, TV advertising campaign that was easily derailed. An impossible task was set in trying to sell a government policy before it existed, with a limp, focus-group-driven slogan -- “price on pollution” -- wrapped in a campaign called “Say yes”. Which, in bitter experience, is what you say when you don’t know what to say.

It’s time to draw some lessons from this disconcerting experience. If these words are pointed, it is because the experience has been deeply troubling, and 5 June is no model for the future. Large public rallies are an indispensable part of almost all social movements and can play a unique and irreplaceable role. How can diverse forces unite at crucial times, and provide a large, engaged, public community face to our deep concerns? In what we do next and how we do it, finding an answer to this question is crucial.

“Most of Australia” can expect extreme temperatures of more than 50 degrees by end of century

2011-06-14T13:53:00.000+10:00

Climate change is making our planet hotter and wetter on average, but also drier in some places including southern Australia, and with more extreme events as the total amount of energy in the climate system increases.

So how hot will hot be? One answer comes from Andreas Sterl and 10 colleagues from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research at Utrecht University. In “When can we expect extremely high surface temperatures?”, they ask how extreme would temperatures be at end of this century if the global average temperature were to increase by 3.5C by 2100 compared to 2000 (based on the IPCC scenario known as A1B).

And 3.5C is we are heading. If all the commitments made by governments around the world to reduce greenhouse gas were honoured, and nothing further done, then temperatures by 2100 would likely be about 4 degrees warmer than 1900, around 3.4C warmer than at the start of this century.

Sterl and his team project what the hottest that could be expected in a 100-in-a-hundred-year event, known at a T100 value. Or to be precise, “the annual-maximum 2m-temperature that on average occurs once in 100 years” (temperature 2 metres above the surface). Statistically, such an event may not happen in a 100 years, but it may also happen more than once, as we saw last summer in a series of “100-in-a-hundred-year” events in eastern Australia.

Sterl’s findings are displayed on the map. The deep red colouring most of Australia is the range between 48 and 52 degrees Celsius. The remainder in deep orange is 44-48C. By way of comparison, Australia highest recored temperature was 50.7C (123.3F) on 2 January 1960 at Oodnadatta, South Australia. Extreme heatwaves across southern Australia during late January/early February 2009 set a new Melbourne maximum temperature record of 46.4C, and a new State maximum temperature records for Victoria of 48.8C at Hopetoun.

As the authors note, “According to this figure, temperature extremes reach values around 50C in large parts of the area equatorward of 30 degrees. This includes heavily populated areas like India and the Middle East... projected T100 values far exceed 40C in Southern Europe, the US Mid-West by 2090-2100 and even reach 50C in north-eastern India and most of Australia. Such levels receive much too little attention in the current climate change discussion, given the potentially large implications.”

Little wonder that Prof David Karoly of Melbourne University, in addressing future fire risk in Australia at the Oxford's "4 Degrees and Beyond" conference in September 2009, concluded that “We are unleashing hell on Australia.”

Australian government deliberately underestimating risks from rising sea levels

2011-06-08T17:38:00.002+10:00

First published in Crikey, 8 June 2011

Last weekend, the Australian government released the latest in a series of reports documenting the possible impacts of climate-change-induced sea-level rises (SLRs) on Australia.

It found a "worst-case scenario sea level rise of 1.1 metres" within 90 years would have a devastating impact, with as much as $266 billion worth of potential damage and loss to buildings and infrastructure.

This upper bound of 1.1 metres is used consistently by government. Inundation maps use three simple sea-level rise scenarios for the period about the year 2100: low (0.5m), medium (0.8m) and high (1.1m).

The big problem is that 1.1 metres is the wrong figure by a wide margin, with serious implications for the efficacy of the risk management and planning such research should underpin.

In releasing an earlier report, Senator Penny Wong told ABC Insiders on November 19, 2009 that "1.1 metres … is about the upper end of the risk". But the report said:

"Recent research, presented at the Copenhagen climate congress in March 2009, projected sea-level rise from 0.75 to 1.9 metres relative to 1990, with 1.1–1.2 metres the mid-range of the projection. Based on this recent science 1.1 metres was selected as a plausible value for sea-level rise for this risk assessment".

So a mid-range projection from the government’s own report in 2009, based on the peer-reviewed science, transmuted into a peculiar creature, a "plausible value", and now two years later "is about the upper end of the risk", which the Department of Climate Change knows to be wrong, as the literature also demonstrates.

Pfeffer, et al. in Science conclude "an improved estimate of the range of SLR to 2100 including increased ice dynamics lies between 0.8 and 2 metres."
Vermeer & Rahmstorf in Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA estimated a sea-level rise of 0.75–1.9 metres by 2100.
A new report from Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program finds "Global sea level is projected to rise 0.9 to 1.6 metres (3.0 to 5.3 feet) by 2100."
A recent survey of sea-level-rise forecasts by Nicols et al. in "Philosophical Transactions of of the Royal Society A." summarises the findings in this graph:

As Ross Garnaut has noted, climate science projections have sometimes been reticent when compared to observations. The 2007 IPCC report excluded the impact of melting ice-caps from its now-obsolete sea-level figures, and recent satellite data shows Antarctica and Greenland losing ice mass at an increasing (and possibly exponential) rate.

Dr David Carlson, director of the International Polar Year Program, says a "very plausible outcome" is a metre or more of sea level rise in this century from Greenland alone. And the West Antarctic glaciers also appear particularly vulnerable.

So what difference would a metre make? A huge amount. The damage to buildings and infrastructure impacted by a 2-metre rise and associated storm surges is likely to be more than double the $266 billion figure established in the recent report, and it seems extremely foolish to neither recognise that possibility nor plan accordingly.

Sensible risk management requires an assessment of the full range of possible outcomes, their impacts and consequences; not the average. By not doing so, the government is failing in its fiduciary duty. Communities and business, infrastructure authorities and local government planners are relying on the government’s assessment of sea-level rise risk to plan their future and make contingency plans.

By simply ignoring the available science and failing to assess the risk associated with the full range of possibilities, the government may leave itself open to huge litigation should reality turn out to be closer to the scientists’ upper bound that the government’s "plausible value".

Or perhaps we can leave it all to Senator Ron Boswell, who told an estimates hearing in February: "Being someone who has spent his life in boats, since I was a kid, I haven't seen any sea level change."

'Direct Action' could reward polluters rather than discourage

2011-06-03T15:25:00.001+10:00

First published in Crikey, 3 June 2011

Without any mechanism to discourage additional carbon emissions, the Coalition’s "direct action" climate plan may perversely reward them.

The Coalition plan proposes cash rewards for actions to "support 140 million tonnes of abatement per annum by 2020 to meet our 5% target", at a cost to taxpayers said to be $3.2 billion over the first four years. (The government now assesses that abatement task at 160 metric tonnes, for the meagre 5% goal of both major parties -- which stands in sharp contrast to the carbon budget approach advocated in the recent Climate Commission report.)

The Coalition plan does not discourage additional pollution, whether from new industrial investment or increased energy use accompanying population growth and increased household consumption. At $25 a tonne, the plan’s budget for 2012-13 would buy 20 million tonnes of abatement. Economic growth of 4% would be enough to nullify most of that.
And the plan is predicated on a 2011-12 start, but the earliest the Coalition is likely to get near a federal budget is 2014-2015. With less time, and a higher abatement target than specified, the plan’s year-by-year costings are not credible.

"We are committed to incentives rather than penalties," says the Coalition, but proposes businesses that "undertake activity with an emissions level above their 'business as usual' levels will incur a financial penalty".

A "financial penalty"? In plain language, a carbon tax. So, carbon pollution for new activity above a company’s "business-as-usual" emission baseline at the start of the scheme would be taxed after all? No, says the Coalition: "Provision will be made to ensure penalties will not apply to new entrants or business expansion at 'best practice'."

So long as a new coal-fired power station or mine can be considered, by that most indefinite of terms, "best practice", additional emissions face no penalty.

And here the devil is in the detail: for a party that espouses minimising the role of government, it is ironic that every business investment which involves substantial emissions will need to be scrutinised in minute detail by government. Is it a routine plant upgrade? Or a new and genuine abatement project eligible for a Direct Action Plan handout? Is it world’s "best practice", or not, and so subject to "financial penalty"? If Hazelwood power station patches up an out-of-order generator, can it receive a handout by turning it off again, and claim abatement? Or not repair it, and claim abatement cash for keeping it offline? Take an old, polluting plant out of mothballs, and put your hand out?

These problems of "additionality" and genuine abatement have plagued and undermined the world’s first experiment in "direct action" -- the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism. In one spectacular instance, a US$5 million incinerator in China that was built to destroy hydroﬂuorocarbon gases earned European investors $500 million.

The Coalition has no mechanism to discourage new emissions. Some emissions may be poured out of the pollution bucket by their plan, but there will be a tap pouring in new emissions driven by the mining boom, by population and economic growth, and perverse incentives.

When you pay people to fill in holes, don’t be surprised if they try to make a living digging new ones.

Commission's call for carbon budget beyond political belief

2011-05-24T08:10:00.001+10:00

David Spratt

First published in Crikey, 23 May 2011

The Critical Decade report released today by the Climate Commission calls for a "fresh approach" to setting emission reduction targets, in particular by using a global "carbon budget".

But what does that mean for Australia? The answer, grounded in peer-reviewed science, is beyond political belief.

The "carbon budget" approach was first outlined in early 2009, and described in "Humanity's carbon budget set at one trillion tonnes" and "How The '2 Degrees Celsius Target' Can Be Reached".

Two peer-reviewed articles asked the question: how many more tonnes of carbon can humans pour into the air until 2050 before a 2-degree temperature increase is the result? A commentary by both sets of authors was published in "Nature" as "The exit strategy".

Now 2-degrees is not a good target. As Crikey outlined in January, NASA climate director James Hansen concludes that at the current temperature rise of just under 1°C, no "cushion" is left to avoid dangerous climate change, and that the Australian government target goals "… of limiting human-made warming to 2°C and carbon dioxide to 450 parts per million are prescriptions for disaster".

Indeed, Climate Commission member and author of the "Critical Decade" report, Will Steffen, is a co-author of perhaps the most significant climate science paper of 2009, "A safe operating space for humanity" which found a safe boundary for many of the earth’s key systems would be no more than 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide. But that is another story.

So what does a carbon budget approach mean for Australia? In short, we are in deep carbon deficit heading towards bankruptcy, and at the present rate of emissions, Australia would run out of its carbon budget to 2050 within 5 years. Here’s how it works:

The research found that to have a three in four chance of staying below 2 degrees of warming, the total emissions available between 2000 and 2050 would be about 250 billion tonnes of carbon. But in the first nine years, 60 billion tonnes had already been omitted, so from 2009 on the budget was 190 billion tonnes.
With a very conservative 7 billion people on the planet over that period, and starting with the proposition that each person has an equal right to carbon emissions, each person can emit about 27 tonnes each, over the period 2009-2050. (Or do we reckon that we have some inherent right to pour more carbon dioxide into the air that the billions in the developing world who lack the infrastructure and standard of living that our historically high emissions have bought us?)
But Australia’s annual emissions average more than six tonnes per head a year. Divide 27 by 6, and the answer is 4.5. Less than five years. That is how long a carbon budget would last for Australia at our current rates of greenhouse gas pollution. The results for a number of nations are shown in the graph, based on a presentation by Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute and climate advisor the EU and the German Chancellor.

At a global scale, a quick flick of the calculator will find that if global emissions keep growing at the present rate of 3.5% a year, then the global carbon budget for 2 degrees runs out in 2021. That is, after that time, emissions would need to drop to zero immediately to have a 75% chance of not passing 2 degrees. If global emissions reduce 2% a year from now (something not even vaguely on the table), the carbon budget to 2050 will still run out in 2030 for 2 degrees. This is the stark science with which the political elite wish to negotiate, at our collective peril.

The alternative is to head towards 3 or 4 degrees of warming, which is where present international commitments are taking us, and a planet fit to support less than a billion people by 2100.

The Climate Commission has bravely put the science of a global carbon budget on the table. It now needs to explain the implications for Australia. It is not a 5% reduction by 2020 as the major parties advocate. It is getting to zero emissions in 10 years. That’s the science.

It puts a lie to the view recently expressed by Climate Commission chair Tim Flannery that: "If all major emitters adopt a similar level of effort to our 5% reduction target in 2020 (or better) and continue to decarbonise thereafter, we’ll cap the temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees later this century ..."

The commission will easily be caught between the science and politics of climate change. It’s purpose can be best fulfilled by sticking to explaining the science, without political fear or favour.

Index

2011-04-14T11:06:00.000+10:00

Hot pink climate no laughing matter

2011-04-14T08:30:00.000+10:00

First published in Crikey on 13 April 2011

by David Spratt

Do climate scientists have a sense of humour? In the case of James Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Science (GISS) at NASA, and perhaps the world’s best known climate researcher, the answer appears to be yes.

Hansen’s team regularly publish global maps of temperature changes, and in the most recent the warming in the Arctic was sufficient to run off the existing colour-graded scale. Needing to add a tone, their choice of colour was hot pink.

Surface temperature anomalies in Northern Hemisphere winter 2010-2011 relative to 1951-1980 mean.

“Hot” pink indeed. That colour designated parts of northern Canada, Greenland and the surrounding ocean that this northern winter were more than 6 degrees Celsius warmer than the baseline temperature average for the period of 1951-1980, and 7 to 9 degrees Celsius above average over the Chukchi Sea. This is extraordinary, with consequences for our understanding of how fast the climate system is changing, and for climate mitigation policy.

The laws of physics determine that warming will be greater at the poles by a factor of two-to-three times the global average, but the impacts are far beyond those scientists anticipated only a decade ago. Much of the Arctic Ocean is cover by a thin layer of floating sea-ice, approximately the area of Australia, and reducing in summer. But in the northern summer of 2007 it dropped precipitously (as one leading glaciologist exclaimed that it was “melting a hundred years ahead of schedule”) and the pattern is heading downward.

There are a number of consequences:

Weather patterns across the northern hemisphere are being affected, with a likely long-term fall in rainfall across much of the western United States and, ironically, more bleak winters. This northern winter, the sea-ice extent was the equal lowest in the satellite record with more ocean than usual free of ice, and extreme weather consequences. Ice-free water warms the air above, creating energy that likely pushed Arctic cold air south to produce a bitter winter in much of north America and northern Europe and Asia. And that after a 2010 summer that was exceptionally warm in eastern Europe and large parts of Russia that caused adverse impacts exceeding the amplitude and spatial extent of the previous hottest summer of 2003. Welcome to a world of more weather extremes.
As the sea-ice diminishes, it is also becoming thinner and so more vulnerable to further loss. Whilst in previous times it was thought that summer sea-ice would survive to 2100, a new regional climate model just developed for the Arctic now suggests produces a "best guess" date of 2016 for the total loss of summer sea-ice. This work, led by Wieslaw Maslowski, is not be trifled with. As a researcher at the US Naval Postgraduate School, Maslowski had unparalleled access to decades of data on Arctic ice thickness accumulated by military submarines in their stealthy sub-surface mapping of the Arctic during the Cold War, and his expertise is second to none. As heat-reflecting ice is replaced by dark ocean, vast amounts of heat will be absorbed into the Arctic, with consequences for the large ice sheet that covers most of Greenland. With summer sea-ice gone and heat pouring in, many Arctic experts think that Greenland would certainly pass its tipping point for large ice mass loss, and the Greenland ice sheet contains enough water for a 6-7 metres sea-level rise.
There are also concerns that a large build-up of fresh water in the Arctic could spell trouble for northern Europe and Britain if it suddenly flowed into the north Atlantic and affected the warm Gulf Stream that keeps the region mild in winter and cool in summer.
Most worrying are the state of vast carbon stores, frozen in the northern permafrost. Containing about 1.5 trillion tonnes of carbon (twice that in the atmosphere), new predictions suggest that as soon as 2020 carbon emissions from melting permafrost could be close to a billion tonnes a year. They find that this positive permafrost carbon feedback will “will change the Arctic from a carbon sink to a source after the mid-2020s and is strong enough to cancel 42–88% of the total global land sink.” Research suggests that warming of 8-10 degrees in Siberia would be enough to trigger the unstoppable release of most of the region’s stored carbon in as little as a hundred years, which it was thought would not happen till global average warming hit 3 degrees or more. But Hansen’s small hot pink band is another sign that Arctic amplification may be at the high end of the possibilities, and that flash of pink may be a code red alert.

As Hansen found recently, at the current temperature there is no “cushion” left to avoid dangerous climate change, and that the Australian government target goals “… of limiting human-made warming to 2 degrees and carbon dioxide to 450 ppm are prescriptions for disaster”. New evidence from the Arctic only confirms that sobering conclusion.

Where are we headed?

2011-03-26T10:06:00.006+11:00

Climate Interactive Scoreboard

How much will our climate warm with the current levels of commitment to action by governments? The scoreboard from Climate Interactive tracks all the firm mitigation commitments from governments around the world, and then compares the result with both "business as usual" (no action) and a 1.5C goal.

The result - around 4 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100 - is:
* analysed in our post Where are we headed? and
* in more detail in the Climate Centre primer "4 degrees hotter".
Also check What would 3 degrees mean?

The Long View: communicating the science honestly

2011-03-13T12:23:00.001+11:00

First published in Crikey on 9 March 2011

It’s the Gillard versus Abbott drawcard event. The debate over carbon price legislation is a decisive battle in Australia’s climate policy war. Lines have been drawn; only one contestant will survive.

If Labor goes down, so do the prospects of further action. The Greens would be badly battered and Australia would remain a polluters’ paradise. But if legislation establishes an effective carbon price relatively free of rorts, all will be well. Or will it?

Given the centrality of scientific research to understanding the impacts of global warning, and Australians’ recent experience of extreme weather events, it is startling that this debate has been cast almost exclusively in economic terms.

For the major players, including environment NGOs, it’s about a big new tax or pricing pollution, utility prices and compensation, employment impacts and clean jobs, investment and business certainty. Reduced to a slanging match between Tea Party Tony fanning fear about power bills, and the government rationalising that a carbon price will bring investment certainty to the electricity sector and keep bills lower, Abbott will likely win. It suits a Coalition wanting to avoid focus on the science of global warming, on which there is sharp disagreement within both conservative parties.
The scientific understandings that should determine the speed and depth of our response are missing in action, as if policy makers assume they can negotiate with the laws of physics and chemistry, free of consequence. Whilst the Greens have always stressed the scientific and moral imperatives to act, Labor seems reluctant to do so. Climate safety, and the individual and social responsibility to protect and nurture current and future generations, and the world on which they depend, would seem to be values Labor could successfully communicate. But it has not done so.

Labor says it wants to promote community understanding about climate science and impacts and has established a group headed by Tim Flannery for that purpose. But will the message be politically mediated, a marketing tool for the government? The Flannery committee must confront the increasing dissonance between science and politics at the core of climate policy making. It is also a challenge for the Garnaut Review, with “The science of climate change” update to be released on Thursday in Hobart.

For two decades there has been a convenient consensus that global warming of up to 2 degrees would avoid dangerous climate change, without peered-review literature to support this assertion. Now that consensus has been broken, as events and new research identify a safe boundary of less than 1 degree, while global political inertia means we are heading towards 4 degrees.

Severe climate impacts are happening more rapidly and at lower temperatures than thought likely even a decade ago. Late last year, Joseph Romm of Climate Progress reviewed the year’s key research in climate science. It makes for disturbing reading, revealing:

A 40% decline in the ocean’s phytoplankton, blamed on global warming;
The destabilisation and venting of vast East Siberian Arctic Shelf methane stores;
The risk of multiple, devastating global droughts even on a moderate emissions path, just as persistent drought drives decade-long decline in plant growth and soils emit more carbon dioxide as the planet warms;
Oceans acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago, when a mass extinction of marine species occurred; whilst the Royal Society communicates “very strong indications that the current rate of species extinctions far exceeds anything in the fossil record”.
New analysis that sea levels may rise three times faster than IPCC estimated.

It is little wonder that research now identifies 2 degrees as “the threshold between dangerous and extremely dangerous climate change”, and a “safe boundary” as being under 1 degree of warming. At the current warming of 0.8 degrees above pre-industrial levels, NASA climate science chief James Hansen finds there is little or no “cushion” left to avoid tipping points in the climate system, and that Labor’s 2 degree target is a “recipe for disaster”.

Yet if all the current international commitments to reduce emissions are realised, global warming by 2100 will be around 4 degrees, but may be reached as early as 2060 if we stay on the current high-emissions path. The impacts of 4 degrees are almost unimaginable, with the earth’s population carrying capacity likely reduced to below 1 billion people. While Australia’s Office of National Assessment recognises the reality of 4 degrees, and some policy makers suffer the delusion of reasonable adaptation to a 4 degree-warmer world, neither the government nor the coalition acknowledge that 4 degrees is our current destination.

This is the dissonance that the Flannery committee faces. How can it communicate the science honestly, whilst not making the currently legislative proposal seem but a bucket in the ocean? The government’s (maximum) position of a reduction in emissions compared to 1990 levels of 25% isn’t in the ballpark. Indeed, if equal per-capita rights to emit carbon pollution were granted to all the world’s citizens, even a 2 degree target means that the carbon budget for high per-capita emitters of the developed would expire in less than a decade because “industrialised nations face CO2 insolvency”.

That analysis belongs to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, perhaps Europe’s most eminent climate researcher, who says that “political reality must be grounded in physical reality or it’s completely useless”. From that standpoint, Australia’s proposed carbon price, which aims for a 5% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, is pathetic.

Without underestimating the political consequences of a successful legislative effort, we face the possibility of winning the carbon price battle, but losing the war for a safe climate. Last week business commentator Alan Kohler declared climate change “a national emergency” but few people on the hill, or on Collins Street, appear to be listening.

David Spratt

4 degrees hotter: an adaptation trap?

2011-02-13T20:26:00.007+11:00

Download the Climate Action Centre primer "4 degrees hotter"

"Can, and how would, we live in a world 4 degrees Celsius warmer?" is no longer an abstract question, but one that has become the subject of debate in scientific circles, and now in the community.

Global political failure to reach agreement on greenhouse gas reduction measures in accord with the scientific imperatives will result in 4 degrees Celsius of global warming by 2100, if only the present levels of commitments by nations are achieved.

But is talk of, and planning for, adaptation to a 4-degree warmer world realistic, or delusional?

4 degrees became a sensitive issue in 2008 when an influential and controversial paper by Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows of the UK Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research concluded that:

…it is increasingly unlikely any global agreement will deliver the radical reversal in emission trends required for stabilization at 450 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalent (ppm CO2e). Similarly, the current framing of climate change cannot be reconciled with the rates of mitigation necessary to stabilize at 550 ppm CO2e and even an optimistic interpretation suggests stabilization much below 650 ppm CO2e is improbable.

In other words, adaptation would be much better guided by stabilization at 650 ppm, which is around a 4C warming. Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientific adviser to the UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, warned that the UK should take active steps to prepare for dangerous climate change. Whilst a much lower outcome was necessary, Watson argued that “we should be prepared to adapt to 4C” warmer.

As The Guardian reported, Watson’s plea to prepare for the worst was backed up by the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King. He said that even with a comprehensive global deal to keep carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere at below 450 ppm there is a 50% probability that temperatures would exceed 2C and a 20% probability they would exceed 3.5C:

So even if we get the best possible global agreement to reduce greenhouse gasses on any rational basis you should be preparing for a 20% risk so I think Bob Watson is quite right to put up the figure of 4C.

But Professor Neil Adger, a Tyndall Centre climate change adaptation expert thought:

…that is a dangerous mindset to be in. Thinking through the implications of 4C of warming shows that the impacts are so significant that the only real adaptation strategy is to avoid that at all cost because of the pain and suffering that is going to cost... There is no science on how we are going to adapt to 4C warming. It is actually pretty alarming.

So what does 4 degrees feel and look like? In a new primer, the Climate Action Centre has surveyed some of the literature. In a nutshell, it is one in which:

The world would be warmer than during any part of the period in which modern humans evolved, and the rate of climate change would be faster than any previously experienced by humans. The world's sixth mass extinction would be in full swing. In the oceans, acidification would have rendered many calcium-shelled organisms such as coral and many at the base of the ocean food chain artefacts of history. Ocean ecosystems and food chains would collapse.
Half of the world would be uninhabitable. Likely population capacity: under one billion people. Whilst the loss will be exponential and bunch towards the end of the century, on average that is a million human global warming deaths every week, every year for the next 90 years. The security implications need no discussion
Paleoclimatology tells us that the last time temperatures were 4C above pre-industrial (during the Oligocene 30 million years ago), there were no large ice-sheets on the planet and sea levels were 65–70 metres higher than today. Whilst ice sheets take time to lose mass, and the rise to 2100 may be only 1–2 metres (or possibly a couple more according to James Hansen), the world would be on the way to 65–70 metres.
3C may be the “tipping point” where global warming could be driven by positive feedbacks, leaving us powerless to intervene as planetary temperatures soared. James Hansen says warming has brought us to the "precipice of a great tipping point”. If we go over the edge, it will be a transition to “a different planet”, an environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity. There will be "no return within the lifetime of any generation that can be imagined, and the trip will exterminate a large fraction of species on the planet".

And we are talking about how we might adapt to a 4-degree warmer world? Have we gone mad?

In part, there is ignorance, real or feigned. Former prime minister John Howard told Tony Jones on ABC’s “Lateline” in 2007 that an increase of 4–6 degrees would be “less comfortable for some than it is now”. But there is also a pervasive assumption that our species can adapt to whatever is thrown at us by climate change. After all, we are the masters of the planet whose industrial revolution gave us the tools to conquer distance, hold back the elements and tame nature.

In his 2010 book, “Requiem for a Species”, Clive Hamilton lays bare the trap of the “adaptation myth”:

The new understanding of the climate system and the likely influences of tipping points induced by human intervention also forces us to reconsider one of the other foundations of international negotiations and national climate strategies, the belief in the ability to adapt. From the outset of the global warming debate some have argued that as much emphasis should be placed on adapting to climate change as on mitigating it. As the setting and meeting of targets appears more difficult, more people began talking about the need to adapt.

Underlying the discussion is an unspoken belief that one way or another we (in rich countries) will be able to adapt in a way that broadly preserves our way of life because global warming will change things slowly, predictably and manageably. Wealthy countries can easily afford to build flood defences to shield roads and shopping centres from storm surges, and we can ‘climate proof’ homes against the effects of frequent heatwaves. Yet if our belief in our ability to stabilise the Earth’s climate is misconceived then so is our belief in our ability to adapt easily to climate change. If instead of a smooth transition to a new, albeit less pleasant, climate warming sets off a runaway process, adaptation will be a never-ending labour.

The adaptation trap finds voice in those sceptics and delayers such as Roger Pielke Jr and Bjorn Lomborg, who insist that it is cheaper and more effective to adapt to global warming than to fight it. Pielke calls for “rejecting bad policy arguments when offered in the way of substitutes for adaptation, like the tired old view that today’s disaster losses are somehow a justification for changes to energy policies”.

Events such as New Orleans after cyclone Katrina should disavow the notion that adaptation (rebuilding the city) is more economical that mitigation (strengthening the storm defences before the event). And it won’t take too long to figure out that building a new energy system is cheaper than constantly rebuilding lives and buildings and infrastructure and agriculture when “1-in-a-100 year” extreme heatwaves, droughts, fires, floods and cyclones become regular events on the hotter planet calendar.

It is clear that our collective survival depends on the most radical mitigation effort we can imagine. Climate change is already dangerous, it is no longer a future-tense proposition. The hour is late. James Hansen, in a new paper, says that “...goals of limiting human-made warming to 2C and CO2 to 450 ppm are prescriptions for disaster.” At just 0.8C warming so far, he says we have little or no “cushion” left to avoid dangerous climate change.

Restoring a safe climate means the world very quickly building a zero-emissions economy without fossil fuels, and reducing the current level of greenhouse gases. It is a vast undertaking akin to a post-war reconstruction, but we have the technologies and the economic capacity. What we presently lack is an honest conversation about where we are headed, and the political will to build the solutions that are already available to us.

Our time is better spent working out how to make the impossible happen, rather than living the delusion that reasonable adaptation is possible to a 4-degree warmer world.

David Spratt

Commentary

2011-02-01T10:32:00.000+11:00

Carbon tax pitch misses the mark: it’s the climate, stupid, Crikey 18 July 2011
‘Most of Australia’ can expect more than 50 degrees by end of century, Crikey 15 July 2011
Risky business in planning for rising sea levels Crikey, 8 June 2011
'Direct Action' could reward polluters rather than discourage Crikey, 3 June 2011
Commission's call for carbon budget beyond political belief Crikey, 23 May 2011
Hot pink no laughing matter Crikey, 13 April 2011
The Long View: communicating the science honestly Crikey, 9 March 2011
NASA climate chief: Labor’s targets a ‘recipe for disaster’ Crikey, 27 January 2011
Emergency response needed for more than floods Crikey, 19 January 2011
The Long Road To Copenhagen New Matilda, 26 November 2009
Copenhagen reality check #1: 25% by 2020 isn’t in the ball park Crikey, 9 November 2009
Please Adjust Your Expectations New Matilda, 3 November 2009
Illusions on the edge of a precipice The Age, 19 October 2009
Punting on coal is a loser, but try telling the government The Age, 10 September 2009
Why the climate catastrophe leaves no room for pragmatism Overland Winter 2009

Plan B: Ditch carbon trading and get ready to spend The National Interest, 8 May 2009
Suicidal Sweethearts New Matilda 5 May 2009
Warming gets cold shoulder from Canberra The Age, 29 January 2009
Bubbling our way to the apocalypse Rolling Stone (Aust), November 2008

This is an emergency! Speech to Adelaide public meeting, 10 October 2008
Middle of the road ... towards a cliff The Age, 8 August 2008
In the end, climate is not an economic question On Line Opinion, 8 July 2008
The perils of playing nice New Matilda, 4 July 2008
Not enough time to turn back the climate clock Adelaide Advertiser, 3 July 2008
After Garnaut, the big questions will remain unanswered ABC Opinion, 2 July 2008
Coming clean on ‘nice’ coal Crikey, 16 April 2008
Courting Tiger, like air travel itself, is unsustainable The Age, 17 March 2007

Rethinking a "safe climate": have we already gone too far?

2011-01-23T18:10:00.016+11:00

It is hard to argue that anything above the Holocene maximum (of around 0.5 degrees above the pre-industrial temperature) can preserve a safe climate, and that we have already gone too far. The notion that 1.5C is a safe target is out the window, and even 1 degree looks like an unacceptably high risk.

NASA climate chief James Hansen says:
At current temperatures, no "cushion" left to avoid dangerous climate change
"... even small global warming above the level of the Holocene begins to generate a disproportionate warming on the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets."

by David Spratt, 23 January 2011

As global temperatures rise to be 0.8 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial level, is the planet already entering a zone of dangerous climate change?

With Arctic sea-ice in a "death spiral", Greenland in 2010 melting at an unprecedented rate, a seemingly extraordinary number of extreme climate events in the last year from the Russian fires to the Pakistan floods, and 18 countries setting new temperature records, have we already gone too far for a safe climate?

In a draft of a new research paper, NASA climate chief James Hansen and his collaborator Makiko Sato has opened a new debate about what might be the conditions for a safe climate; that is, one in which people and nations can continue to live where and as they have been, with secure food production, and in a bio-diverse environment.

Temperature stability during the Holocene

The period of human settlement over the past 10,000 years is known as the Holocene, during which time temperatures and hence sea levels (the two having a close correspondence) have been remarkable stable. Temperatures over the period have not been more than 0.5C warmer or cooler than the mid-line (see chart). The warmest part of the Holocene (the "Holocene maximum") was about 8,000 years ago, and according to Hansen, today's temperature is about, or slightly above, the Holocene maximum:

"... we conclude that, with the global surface warming of 0.7C between 1880 and 2000, global temperature in year 2000 had returned, at least, to approximately the Holocene maximum."

Note, this is to the year 2000, and temperatures have increased ~0.15C in the last decade, so:

"Global temperature increased 0.5C in the past three decades to a level comparable to the prior Holocene maximum, or a few tenths of a degree higher."

That is, we are already a little above the Holocene Maximum. This matters because Hansen's and Sato's look at climate history (paleoclimatology) in this new research finds that it is around this temperature level that the large polar ice sheets start to behave differently. During the Holocene the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been relative stable, as reflected in the stability of the sea level (see chart). But once substantial melting starts, the loss of heat-reflecting white sea-ice which is replaced by heat-absorbing dark ocean water produces an "albedo flip":

"Summer melting on lower reaches of the ice sheets and on ice shelves introduces the "albedo flip" mechanism. This phase change of water causes a powerful local feedback, which, together with moderate global warming, can substantially increase the length of the melt season. Such increased summer melting has an immediate local temperature effect, and it also will affect sea level."

Their conclusion is that:

"... the stability of sea level during the Holocene is a consequence of the fact that global temperature remained just below the level required to initiate the "albedo flip" mechanism on Greenland and West Antarctica.

The implication is clear that "just above" the Holocene Maximum lurks real danger. As Hansen and Sato say:

"...the world today is on the verge of a level of global warming for which the equilibrium surface air temperature response on the ice sheets will exceed the global mean temperature increase by much more than a factor of two."

That is, warming at the poles will become more rapid and exceed the ratio so far, of being twice then global average. This change, they say, can be found in past warming events such as the Pliocene around 3 million years ago, so that:

"... even small global warming above the level of the Holocene begins to generate a disproportionate warming on the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. "

To put it bluntly, we are on the edge of a precipice in terms of large ice sheet losses and sea-level rises, and there is little "cushion" left:

"Polar warmth in prior inter-glacials and the Pliocene does not imply that a significant cushion remains between today's climate and dangerous warming, rather that Earth today is poised to experience strong amplifying polar feedbacks in response to moderate additional warming."

Sea-levels are one devastating metric of "dangerous climate change":

"Sea level rise potentially sets a low limit on the dangerous level of global warming. Civilization developed during a time of unusual sea level stability. Much of the world's population and infrastructure is located near current sea level."

Whilst some suggest a linear (or flat line) increase in sea-levels this century, Hansen and Sato argue forcefully that:

"... the fundamental issue is linearity versus non-linearity. Hansen argues that amplifying feedbacks make ice sheet disintegration necessarily highly non-linear. In a non-linear problem, the most relevant number for projecting sea level rise is the doubling time for the rate of mass loss. Hansen suggested that a 10-year doubling time was plausible, pointing out that such a doubling time from a base of 1 mm per year ice sheet contribution to sea level in the decade 2005-2015 would lead to a cumulative 5 metre sea level rise by 2095. "

Here Hansen repeats his view, first published in 2007 but widely ignored, that a 5-metre sea-level rise is possible. In fact, recent research by Blancon et. al published in Nature in 2009, examining the paleoclimate record, shows sea-level rises of 3 metres in 50 years due to the rapid melting of ice sheets 123,000 years ago in the Eemian, when the energy imbalance in the climate system was less than that to which we are now subjecting the planet.

So what evidence do we have of Hansen's and Sato view that sea-level rises will be non-linear?

"The most reliable indication of the imminence of multi-meter sea level rise may be provided by empirical evaluation of the doubling time for ice sheet mass loss. "

Looking at recent research on mass loss in Greenland and Antarctica:

"These data records are too short to provide a reliable evaluation of the doubling time, but, such as they are, they yield a best fit doubling time for annual mass loss of 5-6 years for both Greenland and Antarctica, consistent with the approximate doubling of annual mass loss in the period 2003-2008. There is substantial variation among alternative analyses of the gravity field data, but all analyses have an increasing mass loss with time, providing at least a tentative indication that long-term ice loss mass will be non-linear.... We conclude that available data for the ice sheet mass change are consistent with our expectation of a non-linear response, but the data record is too short and uncertain to allow quantitative assessment. The opportunity for assessment will rapidly improve in coming years if high-precision gravity measurements are continued.

Further evidence of our lack of "cushion" can be found by looking at the warm Eemian inter-glacial peak 125,000 years ago, when it is generally understood that:

"... temperatures in the Eemian... were less than 1C warmer than peak Holocene global temperature"

In fact, Hansen and Sato conclude that:

"... global temperature was only slightly higher in the Eemian and Holsteinian interglacial periods than in the Holocene, at most by about 1°C, but probably by only several tenths of a degree Celsius.

Yet at these times:

".. some paleodata suggest rates of sea-level rise perhaps as high as 1.6 ± 0.8 metres per century and sea level about 4-6 metres above present-day values."

A look at the Pliocene, three-to-five million years ago, leads to the conclusion that:

"...in the early Pliocene, when sea level was about 25 metre higher than today, was only about 1C warmer than peak Holocene temperature."

Whilst atmospheric CO2 amount in the Pliocene is poorly known, a typical assumption, based on a variety of imprecise proxies, is 380 ppm, or less than today's level!!

So at today's level of carbon dioxide, and not much above the current temperature, the world has experienced sea-levels five to 25 metres higher than at present! From that, it is not hard to understand why Hansen and Sato conclude that:

"...goals of limiting human-made warming to 2C and CO2 to 450 ppm are prescriptions for disaster."

Summing up:

"Earth at peak Holocene temperature is poised such that additional warming instigates large amplifying high-latitude feedbacks. Mechanisms on the verge of being instigated include loss of Arctic sea ice, shrinkage of the Greenland ice sheet, loss of Antarctic ice shelves, and shrinkage of the Antarctic ice sheets. These are not runaway feedbacks, but together they strongly amplify the impacts in polar regions of a positive (warming) climate forcing... Augmentation of peak Holocene temperature by even 1C would be sufficient to trigger powerful amplifying polar feedbacks, leading to a planet at least as warm as in the Eemian and Holsteinian periods, making ice sheet disintegration and large sea level rise inevitable."

In a line:

"Earth today is poised to experience strong amplifying polar feedbacks in response to moderate additional warming."

We are perhaps already a few tenths of a degree above the Holocene maximum, and the system seems to be in the early stages of rapid change. It is widely expected Arctic sea-ice will be totally lost in summer with a few years to a decade or so, perhaps at less than 1C or warming. Very few scientists think Greenland would be stable in an Arctic with little or no summer sea-ice, and opinion is split as to whether it is past its tipping point already.

It is hard to argue that anything above the Holocene maximum (of around 0.5 degrees above the pre-industrial temperature) can preserve a safe climate, and that we have already gone too far. The notion that 1.5C is a safe target is out the window, and even 1 degree looks like an unacceptably high risk.

Emergency response needed for more than floods

2011-01-19T17:38:00.002+11:00

First published in Crikey on 19 January 2011.

With the military on the job and perhaps the post-1945 Marshall Plan on her mind, Queensland premier Anna Bligh has designated recovery from the floods “a reconstruction task of postwar proportions.”

The words are deliberate: ‘”I want people to understand how big it is, and how long it might take,” because the machinery of government needs to be reshaped. The premier goes on to “hope and pray that mother nature is leaving us alone to get on with the job of cleaning up and recovering from this event”.

Yes, but … we also need to leave Mother Nature alone, and stop loading the atmosphere with carbon emissions, so that more extreme climate events which are part-and-parcel of a warming planet do not tumble down upon us with increasing frequency, as they have around the globe in the last year.

That will require action and a commitment of resources at a scale far beyond the failures that have so far constituted Australia’s climate policy.

On Sunday, The Age editorialised that: “We respond well to an emergency, but global warming is an emergency too.” Is it too dramatic to apply the same language and level of action to climate as to flood recovery, in order to prevent an emergency that will make the recent floods look like an early skirmish in a much large historical event?

Cables released by WikiLeaks in December report a confidential discussion with US embassy officials in Canberra, in which Australia’s Office of National Assessments deputy director Heather Smith warned that decreased water flows from Himalayan glaciers will trigger a ”cascade of economic, social and political consequences” in south-east Asia by 2030.

According to the cables, ONA also “… predicts global temperatures to rise 2 degrees by 2050 and 4 degrees by 2100.” This is not idle speculation. Queensland’s flood planning also uses a factor of 4 degrees by 2100.

Analysis by leading European research institutes show that if even if all of the promises made by all nations so far to reduce their carbon emissions were fully implemented, the world by the end of this century would be 3.5 to 4 degrees warmer. And promises are not outcomes.
So we really are heading towards a world warmer by 4 degrees or more. The last time it was four degrees hotter, there was no ice at either pole and sea levels were 70 metres higher. An average 4 degrees across the world mean temperatures about 6 degrees higher on land not adjacent to the ocean. In Australia, it is hard to imagine that people or agriculture would survive anywhere but close to the eastern and southern coast, and in Tasmania.

In September 2009 a conference at Oxford examined a 4-degree world, and many of the findings have just been published by the Royal Society. Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the UK Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, warns that only about 10% of the planet’s population — about half a billion people — would survive if global temperatures rise by 4 degrees. Others concur. And research suggests that rainforests will disappear, and climate feedbacks in a rapidly warming Arctic region could trigger the release of vast methane deposits in a nightmare scenario.

Ninety per cent of the world’s population unable to survive? This seems unbelievable, a scare campaign, not possible. If only. As threats increase, so too can denial because the necessary response is a game-changer that unsettles comfortable habits and intellectual predispositions. A climate emergency can now be seen clearly on the horizon, unless we take emergency action, because even the current level of greenhouse gases is enough far beyond a safe boundary for the planet.

In an emergency, partisan politics and the culture of compromise are cast aside. The threat is our highest priority and we allocate resources sufficient to solve the problem. It requires community mobilisation and a rapid scaling up of capacity. Critical targets are not compromised. This is what Anna Bligh is talking about in Queensland, it is what happened after Cyclone Tracey, and in the many cases where we perceive a future threat and act to prevent or prepare for it, in war and in peace.

Our society not only responds to emergencies, but works hard to prevent them. We have a culture of safety and standards for buildings, machines and infrastructure that encourage safe use to reduce accidents and emergencies. In the home, at work and at school, we learn and reinforce safe practices. Where the threat of fire, flood or cyclone are high, we aim to build to standards that will allow infrastructure and people to survive and be safe till the emergency is over.

Work-safe, child safety, road safety, swimming and pool safety … What is missing is climate safety: acting to build a world in which we and future generations can live safely in a biologically diverse natural world.

Yet climate change is already dangerous, and the hour is late. Restoring a safe climate means the world very quickly building a zero-emissions economy without fossil fuels, and reducing the current level of greenhouse gases. It is a vast undertaking akin to a post-war reconstruction, but we have the technologies and the economic capacity. What we presently lack is an honest conversation about where we are headed, and the political will to build the solutions that are already available to us.

*David Spratt is co-author of the book Climate Code Red.

Climate in the media

2011-01-01T17:08:00.000+11:00

2012
22 January
15 January
8 January

2011
21 December

Read the archive of weekly media summaries at http://lists.topica.com/lists/carbonequityproject/read

Resources

2011-01-01T12:47:00.000+11:00

Our climate: past and future Illustrated in 11 easy slides Download PDF Download Powerpoint	4 degrees hotter: A primer Download	Climate policy dissonance Download
A Rough Guide to Door-Knocking on Climate Download	A carbon tax... and then? Download	High Stakes: Climate Change, the Himalayas, Asia and Australia Download
A collection of provocative ideas and proposals for the 2010 Australian Climate Action Summit Download	The permafrost: Bubbling our way to the apocalypse Download	A collection of articles and ideas for the 2009 Australian Climate Action Summit Download
The October 2007 look at the Arctic story, which triggered the writing of "Climate Code Red". Download	"Climate Code Red" Find out more	A primer on sea-level rise Download

Putting politics before science is a dumb strategy

2010-11-10T17:29:00.008+11:00

David Spratt

On the "Rooted" blog today, Tim Hollo asked: Is an ETS automatically more ambitious than a tax?

This debate is urgent, as a grouping of large NGOs enters the public arena to advocate for politically-based climate targets. It's disturbing to see that the Climate Institute and the Southern Cross Climate Coalition (SCCC) are it again, pitching for climate policy targets that fall well short of what the climate science requires.

[It is interesting that the SCCC sees the ACTU still linking with the Climate Institute, which was founded with philanthropic support, but is now financially dependent on big business, including GE, Westpac, KPMG, OgilvyEarth, PacHydro, AGL and Jemena! This seems an usual relationship for the ACTU to be engaged in.]

The SCCC says a policy foundation is that "Australia’s domestic pollution levels are declining by 2013 and are able to be reduced by at least 25 percent by 2020 (from 1990 levels) as our contribution to an ambitious international climate agreement."

This blog has previously looked at how a number of large environment and NGOs went minesweeping for Labor's crook emissions trading scheme, and what's up with emisions reductions of 25-40% by 2020.

I thought getting beaten to a pulp in the 2008-2009 CPRS debate would have taught these groups something. Back then, they tied the success of Labor's climate policy to a process that was obviously failing long before it died at the December 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, in what Sweden's Environment Minister, Andreas Carlgren, called a ''great failure''.

While much of the world recognised that commitments under Kyoto were a disaster, in Australia Kyoto was used in 2006 and 2007 as a stick with which to beat the Howard government. That suited Labor and the big environment NGOs, but this strategy reinforced a public view that the international process on which Kyoto was built could save us.

How else to explain groups such as the Australian Conservation Foundation, Climate Institute and Worldwide Wildlife Fund supporting Labor's decision to make the polluter-friendly trading scheme dependent on the outcome of the Copenhagen summit? Before the doors had closed on Copenhagen, this strategy was in tatters, and Rudd's credibility. From there it was a short skip to the climate backflip and his loss of the PM's job. And a 5% by 2020 target which both major parties took to the election.

How can we start this discussion anew, other than by arguing for what the science demands? The strategy for acceptable increments assumes we have got decades to slowly build on a series of increments - we don't.

The climate system is already passed significant tipping points, including the total loss of Arctic sea-ice as we head towards a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean. The most detailed satellite information available shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica are shrinking faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode. Even if greenhouse gas levels were to stabilise at today's level, "then our natural relationship suggests that the sea level would continue to rise to about 25 metres above the present”.

It's not hard to demonstrate that even for a 2-degree target (which would not avoid the impacts just listed) and an equitable reduction in emissions, Australian's carbon budget runs out in under a decade! Surely this must be the starting point?

Most in the community climate action sector are extremely wary of the conversation being pushed back into an ETS with poor outcomes, in a tragic repeat of history. A test for Labor will be its willingness to bury the CPRS remains.

The CPRS was a policy race-to-the-bottom, locking in a brown economy by failing to cut emissions below the baseline till 2035, in the vain hope that clean coal would then kick in, and relying on importing permits as a substitute for emissions reduction. Rudd ignored Garnaut's warnings and caved into the big polluters with obscene levels of compensation. The Labor-oriented think tank, the Grattan Institute, found industry assistance "a $20 billion waste of taxpayers’ money... many of the proposed free permits would delay structural reform that will ultimately improve Australian living standards. Where businesses are unsustainable, government support should be directed to assisting individuals and communities to adjust, not propping up profits. In the few industries where some assistance is justified – particularly steel and cement – assistance could be delivered better, at lower cost to taxpayers, through border tax adjustments".

Andrew Macintosh, associate director of the ANU Centre for Climate Law and Policy, describes the CPRS as "a spectacular screw-up from a policy and political perspective". He says the first version had a modicum of policy credibility but, by the time it got to version four in late 2009, it was farcical: "The mitigation targets were weak and the government caved in to every half-baked plea for special assistance from industry, thereby stripping the scheme of economic credibility. Coal generators were offered $9 billion-$12.5 billion worth of free permits over 10 years... emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries would get $48 billion-$83 billion over 10 years... the list of handouts was never-ending."

If a new carbon pricing mechanism is re-built from the CPRS, its hard to see in not falling victim to the same special interests and gang of rent-seekers, and the lure of offshore permits. The very structure of emissions trading builds a market in carbon pollution permits that can become detached from the goal of emissions reduction. Cap or trap?, a recent study of the European Union's emissions-trading scheme for 2008-2012, found it will reduce emissions by only 32 million tonnes despite covering annual emissions of 1.9 billion tonnes.

It also found that says the availability of cheap offsets could allow Europe's domestic emissions to grow a staggering 34 per cent from current levels by 2016. And those offsets have been systematically rorted. Firms participating in the Kyoto Protocol Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) carbon scheme are abusing it by artificially inflating their greenhouse gas emissions, thereby allowing rich nations' emissions to rise significantly, according to CDM Watch.

This is not to say that the mechanism debate is more important the the outcomes we aspire to, but once bitten...

Testing Victorian Labor's climate credentials

2010-09-29T20:40:00.010+10:00

Having watched federal Labor take a battering at the polls over its climate backflips, the Victorian Labor Government has learned some lessons in preparing for the state poll of 27 November.

Labor is working hard to get on the front foot on climate, especially in preparing to defend a number of northern inner-city seats which on the results from relevant booths at the federal poll would either fall to the Greens (Melbourne, Richmond) or are line-ball (Northcote, Brunswick). Whilst the Greens as yet do not appear to have released an election-ready climate and energy policy, Labor is promoting its recent climate initiatives, exemplified by this current local newspaper advertisement, on-the-ground campaign material, and social media.

But how well does Labor stack up? Premier Brumby has made much of the government's climate bill, but the Victorian Government has also promised a $50 million subsidy for a new coal power station in Victoria, to be built by the company HRL-Dual Gas. The project is currently seeking EPA approval. It will increase Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions by up to 4.2 million tonnes each year.

That's the same amount that emissions will be cut with Premier Brumby's plan to close one-quarter of Hazelwood power station. That's a dirty trick, saying you will close a small part of one coal power station because you care about the climate, then handing over taxpayers' money to build a new one!

Hazelwood was due to close in 2009, but instead the state Labor government extended its life past 2030. It is an industrial dinosaur and the dirtiest coal-fired power station in Australia.

Victoria’s brown-coal emissions have increased 10% in the last 10 years, and new, dirty brown coal reserves have been handed over to industry. Deals have been signed to dig up and export more brown coal.

And in the post below, Climate Action Moreland looks back at past promies by the Victorian government in climate, and finds them wanting. This post first published here.

Taking action one report at a time

The Brumby government recently released its Climate Change White Paper, The Action Plan, to much fanfare and praise. Media outlets lauded the plan with headlines like “Brumby lays down gauntlet on carbon” and “Premier’s bold plan on climate takes lead”. Yet those with long memories may well remember another Victorian labor climate announcement that was also the toast of the town.

Back in June 2002 the Bracks government unveiled its Victorian Greenhouse Strategy (VGS). Media releases of the time promised that the strategy would “reduce Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions by five to eight million tonnes by 2010”. It would “position Victoria to prosper in a future carbon constrained economy” and “a number of drivers are now in place that will lead to an increased take-up… in the renewable energy sector over the next decade”.

In 2002 our total emissions were 120.5 million tonnes (Mt). The most recent data from the government shows in 2008 that the State’s emissions were 119 Mt and in 2006 were at an all time high of 126 Mt. That’s a long way from the promises laid down in the VGS. To be fair to the government there has been a reduction of 1.4 Mt when comparing the years 2002 and 2008 (if you include the government’s dubious accounting of reforestation i.e. Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry, LULUCF). But when you compare our most recent emissions with the base year for Kyoto’s figures, 1990, our emissions have actually increased 12.4 Mt even when you account for LULUCF.

Furthermore, since Kyoto our emissions have been below the base year level of 106.7 Mt only six times. The twelve years where Victoria’s emissions have been above 106.7 Mt were the last twelve. It’s clear that our emissions are heading in the wrong direction.

Where are the emissions coming from?

While emissions from industry, waste and agriculture have pretty much remained steady over the past two decades – emissions from the energy sector have been rampant. Fuel combustion (mainly Public Electricity and Heat Production) rose from 77 Mt in 1990 to 100.8 Mt in 2008. An increase of 24 Mt in a sector that now makes up 82% of Victoria’s emissions

It’s Deja Vu all over again

The white paper was the precursor to the Brumby government’s Climate Change Bill. Passing a climate bill, especially the first of its kind in Australia, is a significant moment and the importance of it should not be underplayed. It’s just a shame that there is so little in the Bill that will actually see emissions reduced. A large portion of it is dedicated to ‘Forestry Rights’ and ‘Carbon Sequestration Agreements’.
It appears that the government is planning to continue business as usual and continue to hide the State’s emissions in dodgy carbon accounting. There was little in the Bill that will pave the way for green jobs required for the transition to the zero carbon economy that is required. It said nothing about assisting inefficient power stations close and nothing about helping communities, like those in the Latrobe Valley, move to those green jobs that our governments so love to tell us about.

Being unsure what my eyes were not showing me I emailed Gavin Jennings, the State Environment Minister for clarification on his government’s non-plan to reduce emissions. Three weeks later I am still waiting for a reply.

The future is now

It’s now 2010 and Victoria’s emissions have not been reduced by five million tonnes annually. There has not been the government backed boom in renewables. This is despite the obvious demand in government environment programs like greenloans, insulation and solar rebates. They all took the Federal government by surprise. The public’s desire to take action out stripped the budget allocation in every case.

If you compare Victoria’s past policies with a country that has been at the forefront of the environmental movement it is easy to see where Labor has gone wrong. Germany has reduced it’s emissions by 23.3%, which is the lowest they have been since 1990. How did they do it, Prof Dr Andreas Troge, President of the Federal Environment Agency says “The main reason for lower CO2 emissions was decreasing demand for hard coal and lignite [Brown Coal]. At the same time, there was a rise in the use of lower-emission energy sources.”

As Germany reduced it’s carbon dioxide emissions by 9.4 million tonnes (mainly from coal) Victoria’s emissions from coal increase by 10%. If the Premier is truly turning over a new-green-leaf, then there’s no place in Victoria for a new Brown-coal power station. There’s no room for sacrificing the green-wedges and valuable farmland to housing developers (epically when we have the largest homes in the world). There’s no room for building the endless freeway and there’s no room for selling brown-coal to Thailand.

Key themes of Climate Code Red

2010-09-13T21:03:00.001+10:00

On the publication of "Climate Code Red" in mid-2008, I tried to elaborate some of the key themes in the book. They haven't aged too badly...

1. Our goal is a safe-climate future – we have no right to bargain away species or human lives

No species has the right to consciously determine what proportion of all other species on earth should become extinct — as the compromise 2 and 3-degree temperature rise targets do. Lacking the collective will to act in a sustainable manner is no excuse.
Humans have created the looming catastrophe of global warming and we have the capacity and duty to undo the damage and act in a sustainable manner, to cool the earth back to the safe-climate zone.

2. We are facing rapid warming impacts: the danger is immediate, not just in the future

Serious climate-change impacts are already happening, both more rapidly and at lower global temperature increases than projected. As the USA's most eminent climate scientist, James Hansen, told 15,000 of his colleagues at a conference in December 2007, significant "climate tipping" points have already been passed (note 1 below). These include large ice sheet disintegration, significant sea level rises of up to 5 metres this century and devastating species loss. The Arctic will soon be free of summer sea-ice and the Greenland ice sheet is in imminent danger.
Temperature increases of 2 degrees are effectively already in the system, unless we act dramatically to cut emissions towards zero as quickly as humanly possible. Humanity will no longer have the power to reverse the processes we have set in motion if we pass the "point of no return".
The IPCC reports are dangerously conservative. A temperature cap of 2–2.4°C, as proposed within the United Nations framework, would take the planet’s climate beyond the temperature range of the last million years and into catastrophe.

3. For a safe climate future, we must take action now to stop emissions and to cool the earth

The tipping points for large ice sheet and species loss were crossed when we exceeded 300-350 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a point passed decades ago.
It is no longer a case of how much more we can "safely" emit, but whether we can quickly enough stop emissions and produce a cooling before we hit tipping points and positive feedbacks — such as carbon sink failure and permafrost loss — that will take the trajectory of the earth’s climate system beyond any hope of human restoration.
Hansen notes that we either begin to roll back not only the carbon emissions but also the absolute amount in the atmosphere, or else we're going to get big impacts (note 1).

4. Plan a large-scale transition to a post-carbon economy and society

We face a multi-factor sustainability crisis and systemic breakdown.
The obstacles to implementing climate solutions are political and social in character, not technological or economic.
Speed is of the essence in constructing a post-carbon economy as quickly as humanly possible.
An imaginative, large-scale programme comparable in scope to the "war economy" or the transformation of the Asian "tiger" economies is required.

5. Recognise a climate and sustainability emergency, because we need to move at a pace far beyond business and politics as usual

These imperatives are incompatible with the “realities” of “politics as usual” and “business as usual”. Our conventional mode of politics is short-term, adversarial and incremental, fearful of deep, quick change and simply incapable of managing the transition at the necessary speed. The climate crisis will not respond to incremental modification of the business-as-usual model. Climate policy is characterised by the habituation of low expectations and a culture of failure.
There is an urgent need to reconceive the issue we face as a sustainability emergency, that takes us beyond the politics of failure-inducing compromise.
Even moderate goals (25-40% below 1990 by 2020) now require immoderate rates of change only achievable by shifting to an emergency footing.
As Ian Dunlop, the former fossil fuel industry executive and CEO of the Institute of Directors writes: "The stark fact is that we face a global sustainability emergency. But it is impossible to design realistic solutions unless we first understand and accept the size of the problem. “Climate Code Red” is a sober, balanced analysis of this challenge, unadorned by political spin, proposing a realistic framework to tackle the emergency. It should be essential reading for all political and corporate leaders, but particularly for the community. If we are to have a reasonable chance of maintaining a habitable planet, placing our efforts on an emergency footing is long overdue. We only play this game once; a trial run is not an option.'

Note 1: For a survey of James Hansen's recent comments, see:
Beck, A. (2007) “Carbon cuts a must to halt warming — US scientists”, Reuters, 13 December 2007, www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN13267425
Borenstein, S. (2007) “Arctic sea ice gone in summer within five years?”, Associated Press, 12 December 2007, news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/33860636.html
Inman, M. (2007) “Global warming “tipping points” reached, scientist says”, National Geographic News, 14 December 2007, news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071214-tipping-points.html

Climate Code Red

The book in a nutshell...

Climate policy is characterised by the habituation of low expectations and a culture of failure. There is an urgent need to understand global warming and the tipping points for dangerous impacts that we have already crossed as a sustainability emergency, that takes us beyond the politics of failure-inducing compromise. We are now in a race between climate tipping points and political tipping points.

What people are saying...

"Having read this book ...there is no doubt in my mind that this is the greatest problem confronting mankind at this time and that it has reached the level of a state of emergency. ... [E]ducation of the public is critical to ensure that they understand the dimensions of the tasks and the consequences of failure. This book helps in that educative process. Please read it. "
Professor David de Kretser, Governor of Victoria
Download Professor David de Kretser speech launching the book

'Perhaps the two most outstanding books on global warming to have been published lately are The Hot Topic .. and Climate Code Red. Were I a philanthropist, I would purchase several hundred copies of both and send them to our politicians and policy-makers.'
Robert Manne, The Monthly, August 2008

"The stark fact is that we face a global sustainability emergency. But it is impossible to design realistic solutions unless we first understand and accept the size of the problem. Climate Code Red is a sober, balanced analysis of this challenge, unadorned by political spin, proposing a realistic framework to tackle the emergency."
Ian Dunlop, former international oil, gas, and coal industry executive

"Read Climate Code Red. I wish I had read it sooner; it’s high-calibre work, the best I’ve seen, and I agree completely."
Ken Ward, former deputy director, Greenpeace USA

"Climate Code Red applies an uncommon degree of common-sense to the latest climate science, and is a well- researched basis for building a truly meaningful response. It makes it abundantly clear that greenhouse-gas emissions have to stop entirely, and that even this must sit in a larger plan to manage our destabilised earth-atmosphere system."
Tim Helweg-Larsen, Director, Public Interest Research Centre, UK

"David Spratt and Philip Sutton have provided a valuable and sobering contribution to the policy challenge of climate change at a pivotal moment, with their key insight that the expectation of failure has become the norm in climate policy. Climate Code Red is a signifi cant contribution which should be read by anyone seriously contemplating how to set greenhouse emission-reduction targets.’
Senator Christine Milne, Australian Greens Party

"Having been involved with global warming climate change as a researcher in environmental health for 25 years, I can say that this is without question by far the best book to date on this issue — the first book to have the integrity to say how the situation really is."
Dr Peter Carter, Canada

‘Recent greenhouse gas emissions place the Earth perilously close to dramatic climate change that could run out of our control, with great dangers for humans and other creatures. There is already enough carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere for massive ice sheets such as West Antarctica to eventually melt away, and ensure that sea levels will rise metres in coming decades. Climate zones such as the tropics and temperate regions will continue to shift, and the oceans will become more acidic, endangering much marine life. We must begin to move rapidly to the post-fossil fuel clean energy system. Moreover, we must remove some carbon that has collected in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. This is the story that Climate Code Red tells with conviction. It is a compelling case for recognising, as the UN secretary-general has said, that we face a climate emergency.’
James Hansen, director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies

‘This is a frightening but clear-eyed, well-informed, and sober consideration of the weight of evidence and argument on the imminent and quite possibly cataclysmic
impacts of climate change. It is a wake-up call and antidote to the sanitised reporting on the state of the planet and global warming. As a social and environmental psychologist reader, this critical overview is impressive, comprehensive, and convincing.’
Dr Joseph Retter, Queensland

Bubbling our way to the apocalypse

2010-09-04T13:29:00.003+10:00

Here's an article published in Rolling Stone in November 2008, which while focused on the permafrost issue, made some comments about the trajectory of the Rudd Labor government on climate. They turned out even worse that expected.

Bubbling our way to the apocalypse

Despite some public stunts that suggest concern about carbon, the Rudd Government's global warming plan just doesn't add up

by David Spratt and Damien Lawson

Kevin Rudd should send his climate change minister, Penny Wong, to Siberia.

Not as punishment, but because our future may depend on Penny Wong and climate policy-makers around the world understanding what’s going on there. For beneath its frozen landscape a catastrophe is lurking, and Siberia may about to become the scene of global retribution for our extravagant consumption of fossil fuels.

"Siberia" has become a metaphor for exile and deprivation. In the nineteenth century more than a million prisoners were deported there. Last century at last 18 million people were banished to the Soviet Union's labour camps for political and other prisoners, known as the Gulag, scattered across north-east Siberia.

The land is cold, its average temperature zero. It holds the world record for the lowest surface temperature of -71.2°C in the eastern town of Oymyakon. For scientist Sergei Zimov, this forbidding landscape holds the key to our planet’s future. Zimov is Director of the Northeast Science Station in Cherskii, inside the Arctic Circle and just 150 km south of the Arctic Ocean. He is consumed by a deep concern that global warming will literally melt the world beneath his feet, with apocalyptic consequences.

Twenty per cent of the world’s land mass (half of it in Siberia) is covered by permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, rich in organic carbon and tens of metres in depth. As the ground thaws methane and carbon dioxide — the two principal greenhouse gases — are released into the atmosphere.

While carbon is frozen, it is safe; if permafrost melts in large quantities, hell may break loose. Zimov says the situation is grave: “Permafrost areas [in Siberia] hold 500 billion tonnes of carbon, which can fast turn into greenhouse gases. The deposits of organic matter in these soils are so gigantic that they dwarf global oil reserves … If you don’t stop emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, this will lead to a type of global warming which will be impossible to stop [and it will make] the Kyoto Protocol seem like childish prattle… “

Zimov is not alone. The National Centre for Atmospheric Research in the United States predicts that half of the permafrost in the Arctic north will thaw to a depth of 3 metres by 2050. Glaciologist Ted Scambos says: “That’s a serious runaway … a catastrophe lies buried under the permafrost”.

Permafrost melts at the edges of lakes that previously were iced all year-round, according to Katey Walter of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. She says organic material, the remains of rotted plants and long-dead animals which has been “locked up in permafrost since the end of the last ice age“, then subsides into the lake from the soil and “is being released into the bottom of lakes, providing microbes a banquet from which they burp out methane as a byproduct of decomposition“. In dry conditions, the warming soil releases carbon dioxide.

The western Siberian peat bog is amongst the fastest-warming places on the planet, and Sergei Kirpotin of Tomsk State University calls the melting of frozen bogs an “ecological landslide that is probably irreversible”. In August 2008, Örjan Gustafsson, the Swedish leader of the International Siberian Shelf Study confirmed that methane was now also bubbling through seawater from permafrost on the seabed.

So the question is no longer whether the permafrost will start to melt, but if and when the time-bomb will go off. When it does, it will sweep the climate system away from our capacity to stop further dramatic "tipping points" being passed. All the carbon in the permafrost is equivalent to twice the total amount of all carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so losing even a significant portion of it will create a very different planet from the one we know.

Scientists are warning that the temperature at which it will be triggered is closer that we think. Research published in mid-2008 by Dmitry Khvorostyanov shows the trigger is warming in the Arctic of around 9ºC, and that once initiated it will maintain itself, leading to three-quarters of the carbon being released within a century.

If time-bomb is ticking, we need to know how much time do we have to defuse it. There are two factors. The first is that warming is greatest at the poles. Global average temperatures have warmed just less than 1ºC since the Industrial Revolution, but average temperatures in Siberia, Alaska and western Canada are now 3ºC to 4ºC warmer than 50 years ago. So by mid-century the increase could easily be 4ºC to 6ºC.

The second factor is the rapid loss of eight million square kilometres of thin sea-ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean. Each summer it is melting fast, with a current loss by volume of 80 per cent, and it is likely to be entirely gone each summer within five years. With the heat-reflecting ice lost and replaced by dark, heat-absorbing seas, it is expected that regional temperatures in the Arctic will increase by around 5ºC. “The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming… and now …the canary has died,” says NASA glaciologist Jay Zwally.

These dramatic changes in the Arctic have shocked the scientific community and called into question the adequacy of some of the projections of the United Nations’ panel of climate scientists, known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They had said the Arctic sea-ice would likely last to the end of this century.

Put these factors together, and add in human greenhouse gas emissions that are still increasingly rapidly, and the result is spine-chilling as the clock ticks down. The "tipping point" for unstoppable permafrost melting could be reached as early as the middle of this century, and very likely by the end of this century, unless the world acts dramatically to stop carbon pollution.

The USA’s most eminent climate scientist, James Hansen, says: "Recent greenhouse gas emissions place the Earth perilously close to dramatic climate change that could run out of our control, with great dangers for humans and other creatures. There is already enough carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere for massive ice sheets such as West Antarctica to eventually melt away, and ensure that sea levels will rise metres in coming decades. Climate zones such as the tropics and temperate regions will continue to shift, and the oceans will become more acidic, endangering much marine life. We must begin to move rapidly to the post-fossil fuel clean-energy system. Moreover, we must remove some carbon that has collected in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution."

In other words, we need build a zero-emissions economy quickly. Unfortunately this enormous task is not enough; we will also need to cool the planet so we can restore the Arctic sea-ice and stop the whole catastrophe unfurling. This means ending logging of tropical and temperate forests, and taking carbon out of atmosphere by planting more trees and storing it in the soil as agricultural charcoal.

So how much does Penny Wong understand about the real permafrost story and the recent science? Very little, it seems. In a mid-year meeting with a number of environment organisations, she was asked whether recent developments in climate science since the last IPCC report (such as the rapid loss of the Arctic sea-ice) meant the government needed to rethink its approach. Her answer was that she did not understand the question.

No wonder the Rudd government’s climate policies are delusional, and those of the conservative opposition worse. The government is gambling with our future with its policy of allowing a 3ºC rise, which would destroy the Great Barrier reef, the tropical rainforests, cause widespread desertification, a mass extinction and a sea-level rise of perhaps 25 metres. At 3ºC the climate will kick into a new state and run away from the human capacity to live with it. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of people will not survive.

Our political leaders are not taking the actions that the science demands, because the conventional mode of politics is short-term, pragmatic, incremental and fearful of fundamental change. Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong have adopted a traditional Labor approach to the climate problem: something for the environment lobby and something for business. But the problem is that solving the climate crisis cannot be treated like a wage deal, with the demands of each side balanced somewhere in the middle. It is not possible to negotiate with the laws of physics and chemistry. The planet cannot be bought off. There are absolute limits that should not be crossed, and doing something, but not enough, will still lead to disaster.

Since signing the Kyoto protocol in December 2007, the Rudd government has continued its rhetoric on the threat of climate change. But instead of declaring a war on carbon polluters, the government has adopted a policy of appeasement of the fossil fuel industry.

There can be no solution to the climate problem without confronting the problem of coal. Half of the greenhouse pollution from fossil fuels has come from coal. Yet as the oil runs out burning of coal is set to grow. Coal is Australia's biggest export, generating 13 per cent of export revenue. We are the world's biggest exporter of coal and our feeding of the world's addiction doubles our carbon footprint. Most of our electricity is generated through burning coal, which is why we have one of the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world.

As during the Howard years, the coal industry mafia seems again to be writing the script. The Rudd and Victorian Labor governments have committed to funding a new coal-fired power station in Victoria's La Trobe Valley. And while Environment Minister Peter Garrett has stopped coal developments in Queensland's Shoalwater Bay wilderness, many other coal infrastructure projects have been given the green light.

Over $9 billion in subsidies go the fossil fuel industry each year, much of it to coal. The coal industry received as much for research and development in the last budget as the whole of the renewable energy sector.

The power of the coal industry comes from its corporate and financial muscle. While many of the coal companies are foreign owned, they generate big revenues, particularly for State Labor governments. It would take Churchillian courage to stand up to the coal industry, but that is what is needed in the middle of this climate crisis.

Instead, the Australian government is punting on two main policies to reduce our carbon emissions, neither of which pose much threat to the coal industry.

The first, promised during the 2007 election, is a target of 20 per cent of all electricity generated by 2020 to come from renewable sources, known as the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET). With increasing emissions from economic growth and a rising population, this policy would likely do little more than hold emissions from generating electricity at their current level. Even this is under threat from a government review of climate change policies by finance bureaucrat Roger Wilkins, who says the MRET is “distortionary” of the market.

A large MRET set at a level in accordance with scientific advice could drive investment in solar, wind and geothermal energy, but the government’s current effort falls a long way short of the mark.

The second main policy is a carbon trading scheme, which aims to put a total limit (or cap) on emissions which is reduced over time, so that carbon polluters must buy permits which will rise in cost as less emissions are allowed. Like a carbon tax, it will mean polluters pay and pass on the cost to consumers.

The reports outlining carbon trading by the Labor-appointed Garnaut Review and the government’s own “green paper” are gloomy reading. The proposed target reduction is way too small (Europe’s target is a reduction of 30 per cent by 2020 compared to Garnaut's recommendation for Australia of only 5–10 per cent). Many emissions will not be accounted for, and free permits will be given away to the biggest corporate polluters. Many polluters will be able to avoid their responsibility by buying dubious carbon credits from the developing world. In the end the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will do little to reduce emissions, as the fossil fuel mafia is rending it piece by piece and the loopholes and exceptions seem set to grow.

The more serious consequence is that it will delay the serious action that needs to be taken right now. In his report released last month (Sept 2008), economist Ross Garnaut dropped the ball, and we are now being positioned by him and the federal government to accept slow suicide.

The only effective alternative is to break out of this politics-of-failure and campaign with all our heart and strength across the country for an emergency response, where we set out to fully solve the problem, whatever it takes. There is no other choice.

The climate emergency requires leadership and courage, and an imaginative capacity almost completely lacking in Australian politics today. We need to inspire people with the idea of transformative action, the willingness to promote a new vision of the future and make it the number one goal of our society and economy. It requires governments to put much of the enormous wealth generated by our economy into the solving the climate crisis.

So how much economic capacity should be devoted to making the necessary rapid transition to a post-carbon society? The only realistic answer is that we must devote as many resources as are necessary, and as quickly as possible, to the climate emergency. During the last global mobilisation, World War II, more than 30 per cent, and in some cases more than half, of the economy was devoted to military expenditure.

We need to be prepared for that level of commitment again if we are to save most humans and species from a global warming apocalyse. Shifting to a war-type economy will require us to live better by consuming less as we rebuild a sustainable society.

In July this year, former US Vice-President Al Gore challenged America's leaders to commit his nation “to producing 100 per cent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years…This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. To those who argue that we do not yet have the technology … I've seen what they [entrepreneurs who will drive this revolution] are doing and I have no doubt that we can meet this challenge.” With over a million supporters and plenty of money it is possible his campaign will succeed in pushing America in a new direction.

Climate change was a major reason for Labor’s election victory last year. Al Gore opened Kevin Rudd's post-election Climate Summit in Canberra, but he is unlikely to be invited back to talk about his new, bold plan. But he should be, if only to tell Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong about the extraordinary scene Alex Rodriguez of the "Chicago Tribune" witnessed in Siberia earlier this year:

"Sergei Zimov waded through knee-deep snow to reach a frozen lake where so much methane belches out of the melting permafrost that it spews from the ice like small geysers… the Russian scientist struck a match to make a jet of the greenhouse gas visible. The sudden plume of fire threw him backward. … 'Sometimes a big explosion happens, because the gas comes out like a bomb,' Zimov said. 'There are a million lakes like this in northern Siberia'."

Keeping the Arctic permafrost largely intact is non-negotiable if we want to preserve the diversity of life on this planet, including our own. Australia’s climate policy must be based on this understanding. As oceanographer Richard Spinrad says, “What happens in the Arctic… does not stay in the Arctic.”

David Spratt is the co-author of “Climate Code Red: the case for emergency action” (Scribe, 2008). Damien Lawson is National Climate Justice Coordinator for Friends of the Earth Australia

What would 3 degrees mean?

2010-09-01T19:58:00.003+10:00

David Spratt

The failure of international climate negotiations means that if all countries acted on ALL their commitments, the world would still warm by more than 3 degrees, according to Climate Tracker.

So what would a world 3 degrees warmer llok and feel like? Scientists draw on a number of disciplines and methods to answer the question, including paleo-climatology (study of past climate history), complex mathematical models of the world's climate system tested and refined against past climate data, observation of current events and specific research testing hypotheses. Mark Lynas surveyed much of this research for his book "Six degrees: our place on a hotter planet" (Harper Collins, 2007). Drawing from his work and other sources, the following is an overview of some of the scientific projections as the world warms. These are not all certain events, but they are what scientific research thinks is likely. A full set of references on pp. 301-327 of "Six Degrees".

Three degrees of warming

Three degrees may be the “tipping point” where global warming could run out of control, leaving us powerless to intervene as planetary temperatures soar. America's most eminent climate scientist, James Hansen says warming has brought us to the "precipice of a great “tipping point”. If we go over the edge, it will be a transition to “a different planet”, an environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity. There will be no return within the lifetime of any generation that can be imagined, and the trip will exterminate a large fraction of species on the planet" ["Wild" magazine, April 2007].

In the Pliocene, three million years, temperatures were 3 degrees higher than our pre-industrial levels, so it gives us an insight into the three-degree world. The northern hemisphere was free of glaciers and icesheets, beech trees grew in the Transantarctic mountains, sea levels were 25 metres higher [Climate Dynamics, 26, 249-365], and atmospherc carbon dioxide levels were 360-400 ppm, very similar to today. There are also strong indications that during the Pliocene, permanent El Nino conditions prevailed. Hansen says that rapid warming today is already heating up the western Pacific Ocean, a basis for a coming period of 'super El Ninos' [Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 103, 39, 14288-93].

Between two and three degrees the Amazon rainforest, whose plants produce 10 per cent of the world's photosynthesis and have no evolved resistance to fire, may turn to savannah, as drought and mega-fires first destroy the rainforest, turning trees back into carbon dioxide as they burn or rot and decompose [Theor. App. Climatology, 78, 137-56]. The carbon released by the forests destruction will be joined by still more from the world’s soils (see below), together boosting global temperatures by a further 1.5ºC [Nature, 408, 184-7]. It is suggested than in human terms the effect on the planet will be like cutting off oxygen during an asthma attack. A March 2007 conference at Oxford talked about ‘corridors of probability’ with models predicting the risk of the Amazon passing a "tipping point" at between 10 to 40 per cent over the next few decades. The UK's Hadley Centre climate change model, best known for warning of catastrophic losses of Amazon forest, predicts that, under current levels of greenhouse gas emissions, the chances of such a drought would rise from 5% now (one every 20 years) to 50% by 2030, and to 90% by 2100.

The collapse of the Amazon is part of the reversal of the carbon cycle projected to happen around 3 degrees, a view confirmed by a range of researchers using carbon coupled climate models. Vast amounts of dead vegetation stored in the soil – more than double the entire carbon content of the atmosphere – will be broken down by bacteria as soil warms. The generally accepted estimate is that the soil carbon reservoir contains some 1600 gigatonnes, more than double the entire carbon content of the atmosphere. The conversion will begin of the terestrial carbon sink to a carbon source due to temperature-enhanced soil and plant respiration overcoming CO2-enhanced photosynthesis, resulting in widespread desertification and enhanced feedback [Physics Today, www.aip.org/pt/vol-55/iss-8/p30.html].

And it's already happening. A recent study found that the calculated increase in carbon lost by UK soil each year since 1978 is more than the entire reduction in emissions the UK has achieved between 1990 and 2002 as part of its commitment to Kyoto. As well, some recent studies suggest that the earth's carbon sinks are smaller than expected and climate by century's end could be on average up to 1.5 degrees hotter than current "business as usual" projections suggest [http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0503/p01s02-wogi.html]. New research published in "Science" in May 2007 suggests that the earth's ability to soak up the gases causing global warming is beginning to fail because of rising temperatures, in a long-feared sign of "positive feedback" (Michael McCarthy, The Independent, 18 May 2007).

Three degrees would likely see increasing areas of the planet being rendered essentially uninhabitable by drought and heat. Rainfall in Mexico and central America is projected to fall 50 per central. Southern Africa would be exposed to perennial drought, a huge expanse centred on Botswana could see a remobilisation of old sand dunes [Nature, 435, 1218-21], much as is projected to happen earlier in the US west. The Rockies would be snowless and the Colorado river will fail half the time. Drought intensity in Australia could triple, according to the CSIRO, which also predicts days in NSW above 35 degrees will increase 2 to 7 times.

With extreme weather continuing to bite – hurricanes may increase in power by half a category above today’s top-level Category Five – world food supplies will be critically endangered. This could mean hundreds of millions – or even billions – of refugees moving out from areas of famine and drought in the sub-tropics towards the mid-latitudes. As the Himalayan ice sheet relentlessly melts with rising temperatures, the long-term water flows into Asia's great rivers and breadbasket valleys -- the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra, the Mekong, Yangtse and Yellow rivers -- will fall dramatically. If global temperatures rise by three degrees, and that's becoming the un-official target for western governments, water flow in the Indus is predicted to drop by 90 per cent by 2100. The lives of two billion people are at stake.

As the Arctic continue to warm, melting permafrost in the boreal forests and further north in the Arctic tundra is now starting to melt, triggering the release of methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times more powerful than CO2, from thick layers of thawing peat. The West Siberian bog is estimated to contain 70 billion tonnes of CO2. Prof. Sergei Kirpotin, a botanist at Russia's Tomsk State University, says: "There's a critical barrier... Once global warming pushes the melting process past that line, it begins to perpetuate itself." The West Antarctic ice sheet would likely to irreversibly melting

Two degrees of warming

With two degrees of warming, the summer monsoons in northern China will likely fail, and agricultural production will fall in India's north as forest die back and national production falls. Flooding in Bangladesh will worsen as its monsoons strengthen [Climate Dynamics, 22, 183-204] and sea levels rise. But in the Andes, glacial loss will reach 40-60% by 2050 [Journal of Hydrology, 282, 1, 130-44], reducing summer run-off and subsequent water shortages will be devastating for nations such as Peru. At two degrees, snowpack decline in California will be one-third to three-quarters [Proc. Nat. Academy Sciences, 101, 34, 12422-7] and in the Northern Rockies from 20-70% [Climatic Change, 62, 75-113] , devastating agriculture as the water run-off declines. Changing climate will have a severe impact on world food supplies. While the Great Plains turn to dust, winter wheat will be able to to grow in central-north USA, but soybean and sorghum production in the south-east USA will halve. In central and south America maize losses are projected for all nations but two [Global Env. Change, 13, 51-9]. In 29 African countries, including Mali, Botswana and Congo, crop failure and hunger are likely to increase.

With two degrees of warming, seas will be on their way to rising 5 to 7 metres; the irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet will be underway [Climatic Change, 64, 61-75]. Greenland's critical melt threshold is regional temperature rise of 2.7 degrees [Nature, 428, 616], but with its temperatures at least 2.2 times the global average [Geophysical Research Letters, 32, L14705], that point will have been triggered at just over a one degree global rise. Rising Arctic temperatures flowing from floating ice loss are already at the threshold beyond which glaciologists think the Greenland ice sheet may be doomed; this accelerated melting is caused by meltwater penetrating crevasses and lubricating the glaciers' flow. The ice is in effect sliding into the ocean on rivers of water, an effect not included in models of the effect of global warming on the Arctic (New Scientist 25 February 2006]. Greenland's ice loss rate increased 250% between 2002-04 and 2004-06 [Nature, 443, 330-1], suggesting it may already be too late with a global warming of 0.8 degrees to 2006. The polar bear would be all but extinct; walruses not far behind. The tundra would be almost gone, replaced by forests as the permaforst boundary retreats hundreds of kilometres north. With a five-metre sea level rise, Miami would disappear, as would most of Manhattan. Central London would be flooded, and Bangkok, Bombay and Shanghai would lose most of their area.

With two degrees of warming, Europe likely will be hit every second year by heatwaves like the one in 2003 which killed 22-35,000 people, caused $12b of crop losses, reduced glacier mass by 10%, and resulted in a 30% drop in plant growth dropped, adding half a billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere [Geophysical Research Letters, 32, L22709]. April 2007 was UK's warmest April since records began in 1659 [The Guardian, 2 May 2007]. Concurrently Italy's government was facing power cuts following the mildest winter since records began, with rivers and lakes in the worst-affected north of the country have never been drier. It is being taken as the latest sign that Italy could find itself on the frontline of the global warming war [BBC News, 26 April 2007]. The Mediteranean will be subject to drought as rainfall drops 20%, and wildfires.

As more carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater to form carbonic acid, the acidity of the ocean increases. With two degrees of warming, increasing uptake of CO2 by large areas of the southern oceans and parts of the Pacific will have increased their acidity by 2050 such that the seas become toxic to organisms with calcium carbonate shells, for the simple reason that the acidic seawater will dissolve them. Many species of plankton – the basis of the marine food chain and essential for the sustenance of higher creatures, from mackerel to baleen whales – will be wiped out. Pteropods, as important as krill in some areas of the oceans, will lose their soft shells and die en masse, as will urchins and coral [Nature, 437, 681-6]. CO2 emissions, if unabated, could cause a mass extinction of marine life (NASA 20 February 2006) similar to one that occurred 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared: CO2 levels are going up extremely rapidly, overwhelming our marine systems (Washington Post, July 5, 2006)

One degree of warming

With one degree of warming, the Amazon will likely be affected by regular drought: in 2005 such an event meant some tributaries ran dry [Reuters, 11 Oct 2005] and in 1989 forest fires in a drying Amazon poured 0.4 billion tonnes of carbon into the air, more than five per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions for the year. The Amazon is near critical threshold [Phil Trans Royal Soc London B, 359, 539-47].

With one degree of warming, California and the Great Plains states of Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, northern Texas and Oklamhoma will be subject to mega-droughts and desertification, a new and permanent "dust bowl". During the 1000-1300 AD "Medieval Warm Period" devastating epic droughts [Nature, 384, 552-4] hit the Great Plains, whole native American populations collapsed; in the Holocene maximum 6000 years ago, when temperatures were similar to today, heatwaves seared the western half on continent with 40 per cent less rain than today, sustained over decades [Climatic Change, 63, 49-90].

With one degree of warming, the north Queensland rainforest, very sensitive to temperature rises, will be an "environmental catastrophe" waiting to happen [Proc Royal Soc London B, 270, 1887-92]. Just one degree is likely to reduce Queensland highland rainforest by half [Austral Ecology, 26, 590-603]. The Barrier Reef is already subject to regular bleaching; in 2002, 60-95 per cent of reefs surveyed were bleached, and the reef is now doomed [Age, 30 January 2007]. Bleaching will become more severe and coral reefs will be close to extinction at 2 degrees [Jones & Preston, Climate change impacts, risk and the benefits of mitigation, CSIRO 2006].

With one degree of warming, world cyclones will likely be more severe; small islands states will be abandoned as seas rise (it's already happening). Ice sheets around the world be suffering severe losses: landslides in the European Alps are already serious as permafrost melts and retreats upwards; the Kilamanjoro ice sheet which has been intact for at least 11,000 years is on the way to disappearing. 80 per cent has been lost in the last 100 years [Science, 298. 589-93] and the rest will be gone by 2015-2020, bringing forest loss to the surrounding area.

With less than one degree of warming, Arctic ground frozen by permafrost for 3000 years is melting [Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L02503], and the floating ice that covers the north pole is disappearing fast, likely to be gone within three decades; it has passed a crucial tipping point of irreversible climate change [Science, 310, 627-8]. Winter sea ice in the Arctic has failed to reform fully for the third year in a row, and the Arctic's ice cover is retreating more rapidly than estimated by any of the 18 computer models used by the 2007 IPCC assessments; the shrinking of summertime ice is about 30 years ahead of the climate model projections [Geophysical Research Letters online edition 1 May 2007]. The Arctic may be free of all summer ice as early as 2030, a positive feedback loop with dramatic implications for the entire Arctic region [BBC News, 12 Dec 2006]. With no ice, the Arctic region will rapidly begin heating, by as much as 12 degrees, putting further pressure on the Greenland icecap [Age, 28 October 2006]. Greenland's irreversible melting will result in a sea rise of five to seven metres, in as little as a hundred years [Environ. Res. Lett., 2, 024002,]. 125,000 years ago during the Eemian period, seas were 5-6 metres higher than today, at temperatures 1-2 higher than pre-industrial levels [Science, 311, 1747-50].

British researchers calculated that an increase of just one degree of warming would eliminate fresh water from a third of the world's land surface by 2100. 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. 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 and rising water usage by the world's growing and increasingly urbanised population [New Scientist 16 April 2006].

Four + degrees of warming

Four degrees
• Hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon locked up in Arctic permafrost – particularly in Siberia – enter the melt zone, releasing globally warming methane and carbon dioxide in immense quantities.
• The West Antarctic ice sheet may lift loose from its bedrock and collapse as warming ocean waters nibble away at its base, much of which is anchored below current sea levels.
• In Europe, new deserts will be spreading in Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey: the Sahara will have effectively leapt the Straits of Gibraltar. In Switzerland, summer temperatures may hit 48C, more reminiscent of Baghdad than Basel. The Alps will be so denuded of snow and ice that they resemble the rocky moonscapes of today’s High Atlas – glaciers will only persist on the highest peaks such as Mont Blanc. The sort of climate experienced today in Marrakech will be experienced in southern England, with summer temperatures in the home counties reaching a searing 45C. Europe’s population may be forced into a “great trek” north.

Five degrees
• Five degrees of warming occured during the Eocene, 55 million years ago: breadfruit trees grew on the coast of Greenland, while the Arctic Ocean saw water temperatures of 20C within 200km of the North Pole itself. There was no ice at either pole; forests were probably growing in central Antarctica.
• The Eocene greenhouse event was likely caused by methane hydrates (an ice-like combination of methane and water) bursting into the atmosphere from the seabed in an immense “ocean burp”, sparking a surge in global temperatures. Today vast amounts of these same methane hydrates still sit on subsea continental shelves.
• The early Eocene greenhouse took at least 10,000 years to come about. Today we could accomplish the same feat in less than a century.

Six degrees
• At the end of the Permian period, 251 million years ago, up to 95% of species were extinct as a result of a super-greenhouse event, resulting in a temperatures rise by six degrees, perhaps because of an even bigger methane belch than happened 200 million years later in the Eocene.
• One scientific paper investigating “kill mechanisms” during the end-Permian suggests that methane hydrate explosions “could destroy terrestrial life almost entirely”. Acting much like today’s fuel-air explosives (or “vacuum bombs”), major oceanic methane eruptions could release energy equivalent to 10,000 times the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Liberals would cut $1.5 billion in climate funding

2010-05-19T19:08:00.002+10:00

A detailed statement outlining the savings measures or cuts that would be made by the Coalition has been released by the opposition's finance spokesman Andrew Robb.

Based on the content of the statement it seems the Coalition would cut over $1.5 billion in climate related funding set out in the Budget over the forward estimates (next four years). This includes the $653 million renewable energy and energy efficiency fund announced in the Federal Budget.

In addition they would also reduce funding to the Carbon Capture and Storage Flagships Program by $200 million.

Further evidence that the Coalition like Labor don't have a real plan to tackle climate change.

Door knocking in Coburg

2010-05-02T22:27:00.002+10:00

Climate Action Moreland and the Climate Action Centre held our second day of door knocking in Coburg today.

Hundreds of residents of the city of Moreland found out about the campaign to Replace Hazelwood with Clean Energy and signed our petition.

Many commited to asking the local Labor candidate where she stood on the Hazelwood election test.

More door knock days are planned for inner city electorates to find our more sign up for email updates and keep an eye on the Replace Hazelwood page of the Climate Action website.

10 lessons for the climate movement

2010-05-02T11:42:00.001+10:00

Damien Lawson

[First published for the second Australian climate action summit, Canberra, March 2010]

For the 2009 climate summit, I wrote a short article titled “Looking back - moving forward: ten lessons for the climate movement”. It attempted to articulate some of the challenges and opportunities for the community climate movement after two years of rapid growth in scope and capacity.

A lot has happened since the last summit: the dominance of the debate on the government’s carbon-trading plan, the failed Copenhagen conference, the division over climate in the Liberal Party and the emergence of the climate denier Tony Abbot as leader. In many ways the harsh reality of the terrain in which we are working is even more stark than it was a year ago, and requires us to face up to the enormous challenge we face.

Much of the discussion in the 2009 article remains important. In particular, the emphasis on deep mobilisation of society as the key to achieving the transformation we are seeking. If we have learned nothing else in the last twelve months, it should be that there are no short cuts. Only by building our political power through  community organising, real alliance building and splitting of the political and business elite will we have a hope of achieving our goals.
So here is an attempt to articulate some of the  challenges and further lessons we might draw from the last year.

1 The need for  common goals

Diversity is crucial and inherent to successful movements, but movements that are divided generally fail.  We need to wrestle with this paradox if we are to achieve our aims.
Last year we got comprehensively rolled. While it  was important and correct that we opposed the polluter-friendly carbon trading scheme, we failed to successfully communicate why we opposed something that most people didn’t understand in the first place. Barnaby Joyce had no such trouble, and in the US James Hansen gained public traction by posing one simple, positive alternative to cap-and-trade.

We should not be blind to the fact that our lack of unity as a climate movement (with the Southern Cross Climate Coalition minesweeping for Labor) meant that  the polluters gained the upper hand and used the failed trading scheme as a springboard to push back against the case for urgent action.

This was made worse when the CPRS opponents failed to consistently articulate opposition to the scheme. The positive moments – the release by the environment NGOs of an alternative Plan B and the coordinated actions at MP’s offices by community climate groups — were not backed up with a strategy or ongoing  coordination.

This experience should highlight the importance of developing a common set of concrete goals for the climate movement and a positive, united agenda. This platform cannot simply be set in the abstract, or necessarily a long period in advance, but must be developed dynamically in the “real world” with consideration to the evolving nature, politics and capabilities of the various forces in the movement.

The carbon tax debate kicked off by The Greens is an opportunity to develop a strand of that common agenda. We should use this opportunity to form a common goal across the whole climate movement of supporting a good carbon tax plan.

2 Transitional  thinking

The idea of transition is increasingly popular, but transformations will not happen just because we wish, hope or even pray for them. A transition will need to be built and often this will involve small and painful steps. That does not mean we should lose sight of our big goal or end aim, but only that successful movements are built through mobilising support for specific concrete actions and wins that intersect with the existing political terrain and exploit its contradictions and weaknesses, not through abstractions. So let’s “demand the impossible”, like closing Hazelwood power station or building a new smart grid, but let’s make the impossible capable of being both imagined and politically relevant in the here and now so it helps build the movement. This is what old socialists used to call a “transitional program”, linking the current possibilities and realizable practical gains to the desired future.

3 Climate change  is THE issue

Across the country every weekend thousands of people are engaged in local sustainability projects, such as bush regeneration. Thousands more are mobilised and supportive of a range of other conservation issues such as opposing whaling or campaigning for new national parks. Many others are engaged in social or human rights issues of one kind or another. All these issues and problems have an inherent worth and value.

But are they more important than climate change?

Local habitats are rapidly moving towards the poles and up mountains, stranding many species. (Eventually many of the local weekend conservation projects will be for nought if there isn’t radical emissions mitigation.) This is the underpinning of what may be the mass destruction of ecologies, another Great Extinction. Whales, for example, face the likely collapse of the food chain that underpins their survival if temperatures rise by 4 degrees, the Copenhagen outcome. Humanity itself, as a species, is also at threat. At the very least, billions are at a high risk of death and great misery.

Given this reality, is it time to be making the case that climate change is THE issue and that those who do not place it at the top of their list have their priorities wrong? Should we, perhaps gently at first, be pointing this out to those who would rather save a whale than save the planet?

4 Harming  the poor?

There is a strange dichotomy in the climate debate. On the one hand, international aid agencies such as Oxfam and World Vision increasingly seem to understand the  disastrous consequences of climate change for the world’s poor. They have engaged with the danger of sea-level rises for the delta regions of the world, and the threat to water security from melting glaciers. They have pushed hard for stronger pollution-reduction targets. And although at times still locked into the incremental paradigm that grips most NGOs, they have, more than most, looked catastrophe in the face and been willing to articulate its consequences.

On other hand, the welfare lobby that claims to advocate on behalf of Australia’s poor has not, for the most part, seen climate change as a threat to those in poverty. Rather it views climate change mitigation as the danger, judging from where their resources and advocacy have been directed. For them, carbon taxes, clean energy pricing and renewable energy targets mean increased prices, and increased prices must be opposed at all cost.

I am amazed that, with some notable exceptions, the welfare sector has been blind to what the realities of climate change will mean for their constituencies. The ravages of super-droughts and heat waves, bush fires and floods, sea level rises and other extreme weather and economic dislocation will fall disproportionately on Australia’s poor. But where are the welfare sector conferences and publications, media releases and submissions on the impact of climate change on the poor, and calling for stronger action? Instead, we have had campaigns to derail feed-in-tariffs and a singular focus on the quarantining of carbon trading revenue for compensation.

Of course mitigation options have equity implications that need to be factored into the policy design, but in the absence of strong advocacy for action on climate change, the welfare sector ends up becoming a tool in the  campaign of the delayers and deniers.

5 Warming  to labour

Very few profound policy changes have been won by social movements in Australia without the involvement of organised labour. So far we have failed to significantly involve trade unions in our movement, and particular unions have been a barrier to action by opposing any attempts to  curtail the coal industry.

The ACTU’s approach has been, at best, reduced to cheer-leading for the Rudd government. This is the danger of box-ticking alliances that have no little depth or broad engagement. When, in the end, the ACF was finally turning against the government’s carbon trading plan, its ACTU ally in the Union Connectors campaign was enlisting its climate delegates to lobby in favour of the Senate passage of the polluter-friendly CPRS!

The union movement’s peak bodies will not play a more transformative role unless until a block of unions is built that “get the problem” and the scale of the required solutions. To do this, we need to work first with those  unions that have no interest in blocking change. White collar and service unions, emergency and health workers, and building unions all could be part of this block. And many have a material interest in mitigation actions, such as improving building and industrial energy efficiency. We have already seen the NTEU and the ETU endorse a more realistic approach, the LHMU and the ASU engage with the climate movement, and fire fighters really take a lead.

We need to seek tactical alliances around particular events and actions, as we have with the fire fighters. This builds relationships and confidence.

And we need to confront the green jobs paradigm. Unions have approached the climate problem like other industry-restructuring challenges by seeking to protect jobs and identify opportunities for new employment. The climate movement’s response has been to spruik the green jobs message, while defensively talking about just transitions.

But climate change cannot and must be reduced to just an issue of job security. If we allow this to happen, we will lose the argument. For most unions, climate change and mitigation policies will have little direct, immediate effect on job levels, so “green jobs” are irrelevant to them.
Nor should climate change be sold as just another moral community issue for unions, like the Iraq war or refugees. We have to communicate that climate change is an existential problem for all of us, including all workers, a threat so great that for unions also it is THE issue of our time.

And when we do talk about jobs, at the very least we should be talking about clean energy jobs, not “green jobs” which is bad messaging (reducing climate to an “environmental” concern) and has a partisan flavour (vote for The Greens).

6 International  rabbit hole

The Copenhagen conference has finally confirmed once and for all the bankruptcy of a strategy built around outcomes from international negotiations.

The Australian climate movement has sought to leap-frog community mobilisation by appealing to international responsibility. So while much of the world recognised that commitments under Kyoto were a disaster, in Australia Kyoto was used as a stick with which to beat the Howard government. But this strategy reinforced a public view (and perhaps deluded ourselves) that the international process on which Kyoto was built could save us.
How else do we explain the decision of the ACF, Climate Institute and WWF to make their targets for the government’s polluter-friendly trading scheme dependent on the outcome of the Copenhagen summit? This strategy is now in tatters.

International negotiations can and should be used by the movement to speak with one voice  globally, and they can also be an opportunity to message the problem back into Australia, but they cannot be a substitute for mobilisation here.

We will never get a worthwhile international agreement until we deepen support for action within the nations that are party to an agreement. Even something that looks good on paper will have to be implemented, and that will need a climate movement capable of pushing for that change in every big-polluting country.

We should never again allow our positions to be shackled to the success or otherwise of international  negotiations; we have to build support for a solution on the power of community concern in Australia.

7 Living with  denial

We will never get rid of climate deniers, at least not before it is too late, and psychological denial deepens as the moment of truth nears. In one sense deniers and “climategate” have failed because, as Paul Gilding noted recently, over 160 leaders – even the Saudis – attended an international conference on climate change in December and accepted that global warming is a real problem.

However, in another sense, the deniers are gaining ground and we can no longer continue the defacto strategy of ignoring them.

This is not just about a  rational, fact-based debate, and we cannot win with “the facts” alone. The deniers will twist and turn and throw bombs – like the glacier story – and then go on to something else. They are havoc-makers and work on an emotional level based on paranoia and fear of the unknown (and the state, and the elite), so our response needs to be based on emotion and values too, and on their  credibility. Monbiot’s repeated assertion that “you are a fraud”, backed by just two examples, was telling in his ‘Lateline’ debate with Plimer because it turn the debate about credibility back onto the denier.

We need to tag the deniers for what they are: deniers not sceptics. Deniers come in many forms, including  serial contrarians, blogging conspiracy theorists, delusional crackpots, amateurs and grumpy old men (there are few women!), particularly from geology and meteorology, who cannot deal with the fact that the body of professional knowledge that constituted their identity and their fading careers has been overturned by new understandings. And we should say so, and explain to the audience what is really going on, rather than pretending it’s just a rational debate about facts.
And often we also need to respond immediately in the news cycle to the substance of their claims and use them — as Obama would say — as a “teaching moment”. For example, the attack on the IPCC claim about glaciers was an opportunity to tell the full story, but too few in the climate movement took it up.

8 “Armed with peer- reviewed science” *

(* UK climate camp banner)

The return and return of the climate deniers highlights the importance of us all being willing to educate and constantly update ourselves about the climate science. It is and was wrong to ever think that the debate/denial about the science is over. Part of the reason the community is susceptible to climate deniers is that we have left it to scientists to communicate the climate science, and they are not trained communicators, and vary widely in their capacity to do so. We have a role to play, and people who are engaged and come to forums genuinely want to know more about the science and the detail. By increasing the depth of community understanding of the threat of climate change, the sway of the deniers and delayers will wane
Yes, it is frightening and often boring to read about the science of global warming and teach ourselves to communicate it, but necessary. As Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci said, we need “pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.”

9 Are they  listening?

There is now a vast array of communications, messages and stories being told about climate change, often in contradictory and complicated ways. But the history of social movements, advertising and modern political communications teaches us that what gets through to the population at large is much more limited.

We need some simple messages that correspond with our goals, and that we repeat ad nauseam, if we are to have an effect on public opinion.

To paraphrase Frank Luntz, the conservative pollster who coined the phrase “climate change” as a way of countering the frame of “global warming”, it is about repetition, repetition, repetition.

As a movement we are yet to agree on a common language that can win over the public, but we do know some of things that work and that could be adopted. So let’s start a conversation about how to have the climate conversation. We should listen to the eNGOs, Get Up and others that have done focus-group work and we should try and agree on some things to repeat over and over.

My favourite mantra is “We can Repower Australia with clean, safe and reliable energy”. We know this language works because the polling and focus groups say so, and this is why the government uses some of the language.

But we need to do more than just reinforce this framing by connecting it to messages/actions that bite the government and forces them to do more. For example, “We can Repower Australia with clean, safe and reliable energy… That’s why the federal and State government should commit to replacing Hazelwood power station by 2012”.

Regardless of the specific message, the point is we should agree on some language and try and repeat it movement-wide.

One of our biggest communication and strategic failures as a movement has been to allow climate change to be seen as an environment issue. This has been reinforced by messages about saving beautiful places like the Great Barrier Reef. We need to change our communication strategy. The key is to talk about real, concrete impacts on people in Australia, like the Black Saturday bush fires. Sea level rises, floods and the drought are all key areas to explore because of their social and economic impacts and their tangible effects now and in the near future.

10 Vote ‘em where  it hurts

It is easy to have an aversion to elections. They are stage managed, dominated by the big parties and often bring out the worst in our leaders and community. But they are also an opportunity to be heard, because peoples’ eyes and ears are more open in an election year. More importantly, they are an opportunity to exert our power as a movement by causing the government pain, especially if we are able to make climate the issue in knife-edge seats such that a Minister or backbencher could be turfed out because they failed to listen to what the climate movement was advocating. This would create a large number of parliamentarians very quickly becoming advocates for movement policies inside the government, because they fear this would happen to them.

Doing this is not easy, but it is possible. It requires organisation, a commitment to prioritising certain seats, and identifying one or two election messages on which to campaign in the community.

And it requires door-knocking. There is now a lot of discussion about community organising in the movement and this is a good thing. We have even started to do  door-knocking in some of our communities. We need to grow this commitment, learn from each other and implement it in the election lead-up. We also need to commit to continuing it well past the election year. Let’s starting planning next year’s national climate door-knock day now.

Taking "Replace Hazelwood" to the streets

2010-04-26T17:45:00.006+10:00

The Labor member for Northcote, Fiona Richardson, is greeted by members of Darebin Climate Action Now, Fairfield shops, Saturday 24 April 2010.
More on the campaign...
and help door-knock in Moreland

A climate of can-do

2010-04-26T14:55:00.007+10:00

by David Spratt

[First published in Earth Song Journal (Perspectives in Ecology, Spirituality and Education), Autumn 2010]

In an Australia Day speech this year, prime minister Rudd evoked the "two great spirits, that of the can-do, that of the fair go, (which) essentially hold together the narrative of our nation" and "this great... ennobling attitude of Australians where we have the sense and the spirit of the fair go etched deeply into the Australian soul".

But are those attitudes simply to be lauded in others when the nationalist "spirit" peaks on ceremonial occasions, or they should they inform our national leadership in facing global warming, the great challenge of our time?

The question is urgent, given the terrible failure of the climate summit in Copenhagen in December to commit to decisive action. The meeting finished in disarray without agreement to extend the Kyoto protocol or any process to set the world on a safe-climate path. Instead it noted a short, hurriedly-drafted statement lacking legally-binding commitments. This was the great spirit of cannot-do in action.

Climate politics has become a game of chicken, a planet-crippling procrastination driven by short-term concerns and a striving for partisan advantage. Last year, Ross Garnaut wondered if ''this issue is too hard for rational policy making … the issues are too complex, the vested interests surrounding it too numerous and intense, the relevant time-frames too long''. Copenhagen confirmed this dark assessment.

The consequence is that an aggregation of the "best" emissions reduction promises put on the table at Copenhagen would likely result in global warming of 3.5–3.9 degrees Celsius (above the pre-industrial temperature) by 2100. The British MET office says if we keep on the present carbon-pollution path, a 4-degree rise could happen early in the second half of this century.

So what would a 4-degree world look like? Much of the tropical and sub-tropical land area would be desertified. In Europe, new deserts will be spreading in Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey: the Sahara will have effectively leapt the Straits of Gibraltar. Sea levels will eventually rise by 70 metres, initiating a global flight from coastal zones. Ocean acidification and a surface warm layer will initiate the destruction of the base of the ocean’s food chain. Extinction rates are estimated at 10 per cent for each one-degree rise.

Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change in the UK, says: "If you have got a population of nine billion by 2050 and you hit 4, 5 or 6 degrees, you might have half a billion people surviving."

Well before 4 degrees, hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon locked up in Arctic permafrost – particularly in Siberia – will be releasing methane and carbon dioxide in immense quantities, a positive feedback loop whereby global warming initiates processes that magnify or accelerate the warning. In a recent report for the Australian Government, Professor Will Steffen of the ANU warned that:

Long‑term feedbacks in the climate system may be starting to develop now; the most important of these include dynamical processes in the large polar ice sheets, and the behaviour of natural carbon sinks and potential new natural sources of carbon, such as the carbon stored in the permafrost of the northern high latitudes. Once thresholds in ice sheet and carbon cycle dynamics are crossed, such processes cannot be stopped or reversed by human intervention, and will lead to more severe and ultimately irreversible climate change from the perspective of human timeframes.

These feedbacks will push a 4-degree rise to perhaps 5.5 degrees. Five degrees of warming occurred during the Eocene, 55 million years ago: breadfruit trees grew on the coast of Greenland; there was no ice at either pole; and forests were probably growing in central Antarctica. The Eocene greenhouse event was likely caused by methane hydrates (an ice-like combination of methane and water) bursting into the atmosphere from the seabed, sparking a temperature spike. Today vast amounts of methane hydrates sit on subsea continental shelves. The early Eocene greenhouse took at least 10,000 years to come about. Today we could accomplish the same feat in less than a century.

So a 4-degree rise doesn’t look too flash. How about limiting global warming to 2 degrees? Today's levels of greenhouse gases are enough, in the long-run, to produce a 2-degree warming, and even this will take the Earth past significant tipping points. Professor Eelco Rohling, University of Southampton recently noted that: "Even if we would curb all carbon dioxide emissions today, and stabilise at the modern level (of greenhouse gases), then our natural relationship suggests that sea level would continue to rise to about 25 metres above the present.”

So in the spirit of the fair-go-can-do, what do we really need to do to turn round global warming and return to a safe-climate, which essentially means aiming to return to near-pre-industrial levels of greenhouse gases? What would a fair-go deal amongst nations mean? Nations such as India, Indonesia, Vietnam have per capita emissions of greenhouse gases of less than two tonnes a year. China is around five tonnes, and the European Union and Japanese rate is about ten tonnes. But for Australia and the United States, the pollution is more than 20 tonnes per person per year.

A "fair go" principle may be that we, in Australia, as an advanced capitalist nation with a modern economy built on a historic legacy of carbon emissions, could not in conscience claim a greater right to continue polluting the atmosphere than those developing nations who wish to industrialise and lift their people out of poverty. The historic carbon debt we owe the developing world suggests that they have a right to higher per capita emissions that we do.

But let us assume that one basis for an international agreement would be equal per capita emission rights, plus the large-scale transfer of resources and clean-energy techological know-how from the developed to the developing world as a practical recognition of the historic carbon debt owed.

From there, the maths is simple. For a two-in-three chance of keeping temperature increases below 2 degrees (and that is not a happy target!), we can altogether only emit about 750 billion tonnes (the “carbon budget”) of carbon dioxide between now and 2050, and after that time emissions will have to quickly fall towards zero, if they have not already done so. 750 billion tonnes distributed amongst the current world population of 6.7 billion means about 110 tonnes per person between now and mid-century. If likely population increases are factored in, the figure falls to around 85 tonnes.

For Australia, with our profligate 20 plus tonnes a year per person, our carbon budget to 2050 runs out in four or five years! Put another way, we would need to get to zero emissions in a decade. Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute in Germany and the author of this analysis, says high-polluting nations such as Australia are "carbon insolvent".

Our prime minister's concern for a fair go would surely suggest that until we reduce our emissions from twenty tonnes a head each year to below two tonnes a head, then there is no moral obligation on India, Indonesia, Vietnam and the like to do anything. Why should they act if we are so addicted to our gross, high-carbon consumption binge that we claim a national incapacity to reduce emissions in accord with the trajectories the science and equity principles demands?

Yet that is precisely the response from our government, which now belligerently proclaims that Australia will do "no more and no less" than other nations to fight climate change. This is dark politics, a climate colonialism, which denies our responsibilities as a nation with the largest per capita emissions in the world. Of course we must "do more" than most other nations; we could hardly "do less". To aspire to do "no more and no less" than others is a race to the bottom, the attitude that killed Copenhagen, and a principle which if adopted by the global community will produce a suicide note for the planet, not a safe climate.

We have the technological know-how and we have the economic capacity to engage in the transformative action necessary to build a post-carbon, sustainable economy at the great speed that is now necessary. What we lack is leadership and political courage, for the major parties overflow with Chamberlains, and not a Churchill in sight. A moral stance starts with the recognition that climate is not just another issue, in reality it is the only issue because, if we fail, there will be few of us left to contemplate right action.

We need to live better by consuming less as we rebuild a sustainable society. We can't drill and burn our way out of the current crisis. But, working together, we can invest and invent our way out if we make a commitment to a global "fair go" and start here and now, in Australia.

The greens’ proposal for a carbon tax

2010-04-14T07:39:00.007+10:00

by David Spratt
[First published for the second Australian Climate Action Summit, 12 March 2010]

On 21 January, The Greens proposed a “levy on polluters” or carbon price/tax to break the Senate deadlock on climate change. The Greens are currently negotiating with the government on the plan.

Over 30 local community climate groups have thrown their support behind the Greens’ plan, in a statement released in February:

Neither Kevin Rudd nor Tony Abbott’s policy can deliver a safe climate.
It is time for Plan B, starting with the Greens fixed carbon price.
Australia needs a new direction if we are to urgently tackle the climate crisis.
Labor’s Carbon Pollution Reduction scheme is failed policy, it gives too much compensation to the big polluters and relies on overseas credits on the international carbon market to produce a reduction in emissions. It would lock in a high polluting economy.
The Coalition’s policy is no better, it also hands out money to the big polluters and relies on techniques to increase soil carbon to produce most of its claimed carbon dioxide reductions. We need to increase the planet’s capacity to absorb carbon and keep coal in the ground, not one or the other.
While a carbon price is only a small part of driving the necessary transformation to a zero-carbon economy, the Greens plan to set a two year carbon price could get the ball rolling on real carbon reductions in Australia.
We call on all parties in the Parliament to back the Greens proposal and get moving on a transition to a safe climate.
[See www.climateactioncentre.org/climategroups%20carbon%20price%20statement for list of signatories.]

National and State wide environment groups – including Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, Environment Victoria, Nature Conservation Council of NSW and Friends of the Earth – have also welcomed the plan. GetUp is looking at a campaign for a carbon levy also.

What is the Greens proposal? It is for a standalone carbon levy of $23 a tonne commencing 1 July 2011, increasing to $24 from 1 July 2012, and after that escalating at CPI plus 4 per cent a year. It would be reviewed after two years but the proposed legislation would be ongoing (no sunset clause), so the levy would continue unless revoked or amended (as is the case with
all legislation).

Greens Senator Christine Milne said that once the interim scheme was implemented: “We can then discuss the longer term solutions Australia will need over the coming two years, secure in the knowledge that a carbon price is already in place, helping to unleash innovative and job-creating climate solutions”. [It seems The Green’s position, as reflected in their Safe Climate
bills, is that a “good” emission trading scheme is better than a carbon tax, but a carbon tax is better than a “bad” ETS, such as Labor’s proposed CPRS.]

The Greens say their plan would generate $5 billion to compensate households, with the same amount for renewable energy and energy efficiency. There would be no compensation for domestically-consumed production and limited exemptions (20% of emissions) for emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries.

Is a price on carbon effective in cutting emissions? A carbon price seems necessary, but not suffficient. It’s of limited use for liquid fuels/transport because there are at present few technological alternatives, and petrol prices are “inelastic”. This means a large increase in price produces only a small drop in demand. [It would require a carbon tax of around $500/tonne to double the price of petrol!]

But for electricity generation, a price of $23 a tonne ramping up towards $40 in a decade is enough to make renewables (especially wind) more than competitive now, and more so with innovation. As energy consultants keep on saying, a price in this range will kill off investment in coal-fired power stations now, and drive investment instead towards renewable energy. This change will start as soon as it is understood that the price is coming: even the possibility of the CPRS with a low price held back NSW from announcing new coal-fired power stations.

As well, a carbon tax now can help undermine the push for carbon capture and storage, because as well as the additional 40-50% cost of this technology, CCS would not scrub all carbon dioxide from emissions, so it would be hit by a carbon tax as well.

A carbon tax is not the full answer, but it doesn’t preclude the many other things that need to be done and it raises revenue that makes some other actions (direct investment, feed-in tariffs, energy efficiency) easier to fund.

Aren’t we just responding to someone’s else’s agenda? Yes, the nature of politics at the moment is that we don’t set the agenda as much as we would wish (looking back at 2009, did we really set the agenda at all?), and so our attention is often drawn to organising in response to those issues that are already in the public light and being talked about regularly in parliament, the media and the community. We are more likely to be heard when we participate in a conversation that has already started.

The problem comes if we simply respond on “their” terms, rather than also pushing the terms of the debate towards our territory. And there are other, less publicly recognised, but strategically important, issues which we seek to move to the top of the public agenda by mobilising broad support for them.

The recent public agenda on climate has been dominated by Labor’s CPRS (dying, if not dead in its present form), the Nationals opposition to it and Abbot’s alternative “plan” (which will result in increased emissions), and the “circuitbreaker” proposed by The Greens of a carbon tax.

Recently, climate denial, stuff-ups on green loans, energy efficiency (for the wrong reasons, thanks to Garrett), and Wong’s massacre of the RET have also gained public attention, unfortunately more so than renewables and replacing coal. But the big three — Abbott’s plan versus the CPRS, or a carbon tax — will likely be prominent in the next few months’ debate, with the parties and lobbies also launching new proposals as the election approaches.

Should we intervene in this current public debate by actively supporting a carbon tax? There are three possible reasons: it’s a good idea; it is a platform to push stronger proposals; and/or building support for good Greens’ policies so that they start to win lower house seats is strategically important, because until Labor materially fears The Greens and others with stronger climate action policies, their agenda of appeasing the big polluters will not change.

Won’t the tax be bastardised in negotations and end up being a dud? Of course that possibility is an occupational hazard with everything in politics, and support for a carbon tax should be premised on sound foundations, which should not be compromised.

But if you only support something when you are 100 per cent satisfied that you are going to get exactly the result you want before you start, you may end up doing a lot of sitting around.

The effectiveness of any policy depends on the intent and motivations of the government implementing it, and that depends on the broader balances of forces in the society and how keenly governments feel the pressure and/or reflect the views of the climate movement and lobby. Ditto whether the “polluter pays” or not.

Isn’t this still creating a carbon market? A carbon tax/price in not an ETS and it is not the CPRS. With a proper carbon tax, there is no market in pollution rights, no financial speculation on permit prices, no purchase of scam offsets (through the CDM, rainforest credits and other mechanisms) as an excuse not to cut domestic emissions, banks cannot trade in permits, there is not the disincentive to voluntary action, and it does not create a “floor” on emissions.

Won’t a carbon tax increase energy prices for poorer people? Yes, but some of the revenue can be used for compensation, as is the case in The Greens’ proposal. Energy efficiency programmes can also help reduce energy costs. However we also need to recognise that coal and gas-fired electricity is cheap because its price fails to account for its pollution that is killing the planet. [Not that the pollution can simply be reduced to a monetary price!] There is a question of equity, but keeping the price abnormally low for coal-fired power is also an inter-generational equity question.

Isn’t the price too low to be effective? It needs in the end to be much higher, but $23 a tonne and rising would straight away change a lot of investment decisions, especially once it was understood the price was there to stay for the long term. Under The Greens proposal, it would get to around $40 in a decade. In 1991, Sweden imposed the world’s first carbon tax at $US100 a tonne and today is one of the four most competitive economies.

Aren’t there better ways to cut emissions? When all is said and done, there are only a limited number of ways to reduce emissions, principally:

pricing mechanisms, which can be a tax on carbon pollution so that these technologies become more expensive than the low-pollution alternatives; and/or subsidies (negative taxes) such as feed-in tariffs and direct subsidies for investment;
regulations which outlaw certain emissions, technologies or processes;
investing in innovation and scaling up alternative technologies so they they become price competitive with fossil fuels; and direct government investment in the safe, clean-energy technologies; and
encouraging behavioural change.

A carbon tax does not preclude any of the other actions, and can generate revenue to support them.

What about feed-in tariffs or paying people to store carbon in soils? These mechanisms also involve carbon pricing. Instead of taxing the carbon pollution, they provide a subsidy to engage in actions that reduce carbon dioxide levels (storing carbon in soil) or a subsidy to produce clean energy (feed-in tariff). Thus they are a negative carbon tax which subsidies the pollution not emitted, rather than putting a price on pollution which is emitted.

But aren’t carbon markets bad? A carbon market (trading in the commodity known as carbon pollution rights or permits, such as the CPRS) is very different from putting a carbon tax. A carbon tax does not create tradeable emission permits at all, it simply prices pollution at a point in the production process.

But isn’t a price on carbon a market mechanism? Yes, and a few people say they are opposed to market mechanisms (and hence using taxes to change market prices) in principle. Sure, the world would be a different place without commodity and capital markets, but that’s not the reality within which we must make big changes now. The climate system will be longpast big tipping points if we simply wait to abolish the “free market” before acting decisively.

If you really thought all carbon prices were bad, then the first thing you would need to do to be consistent would be to argue that the current excise on petrol should be removed, because for all practical purposes, it is a carbon tax too. A feed-in tariff is also a market (negative mechanism, and judging from the experience in Europe, it works. Corporate tax is also a market mechanism (it changes the rate of return in capital markets), but few beyond big business think it should be cut or abolished.

Can’t we just regulate emissions out of existence? Some people say “there should not be a price on carbon and it should be regulated out of existence”. But you can only progressively regulate certain technologies out of existence once there are replacement technologies and sources of energy. So how do you get the new technologies built, when their current cost is greater that the current fossil fuel systems? At the moment, the options are through price mechanisms (RETs/RECs which have prices) and using subsidies such as feed-in tariffs and/or tax concessions (also price mechanisms). If these are also out because one is opposed to pricing mechanisms, what you left with is the state directly investing and building the whole system.

That’s one proposition, but in the current political climate, what’s the chances of that alone (as opposed to a suite of measures?) actually being realised in the near term? In an economy with markets and prices, the simple reality is that by making something scarce (prohibition/ regulation/rationing) tends to increase its price, whether on the black market or a legal market for the rationed good (as the experience of war rationing shows). We can’t easily get away from a relationship between the supply and demand for carbon pollution and the price on it. For example, if you use administrative measure to ration everyone to fewer litres of petrol that they presently on average use, what would happen to the black market price? It goes up!

Why not campaign for total, direct government investment in renewables instead? Yes we need that as well, at a scale that isn’t on the political radar yet, but it is silly to counterpose one to the other. Saying we need an action that is off the mainstream agenda and is unlikely to be implemented at scale in the near term (massive state investment in the tens of billions of dollars annually) is no reason not to support a proposal for a carbon tax that can drive down emissions, and is on the political radar, and has a chance of being implemented
relatively soon.

In the end, the question is whether a carbon price helps the transition to the new economy and the new energy system, or not, and whether we can develop the political power to drive a broader agenda.

Pine Island glacier loss must force another look at sea-level forecasts

2010-01-24T10:57:00.016+11:00

Update 28 June 2011: Columbia University researchers have just reported that "Ocean Currents Speed Melting of Antarctic Ice". They find that "Stronger ocean currents beneath West Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf are eroding the ice from below, speeding the melting of the glacier as a whole, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience. A growing cavity beneath the ice shelf has allowed more warm water to melt the ice, the researchers say—a process that feeds back into the ongoing rise in global sea levels. The glacier is currently sliding into the sea at a clip of four kilometers (2.5 miles) a year, while its ice shelf is melting at about 80 cubic kilometers a year - 50 percent faster than it was in the early 1990s - the paper estimates."

For discussion of map/image, see here.

New research suggest that just two collapsing West Antarctic glaciers could add another half a metre to sea levels this century

The Victorian and Queensland governments decisions to stick to an "upper boundary" sea-level rise estimate of 0.8 metres by 2100 (and NSW at 0.9 metre) for planning purposes needs urgent revision, with new modelling showing two West Antarctic glaciers are past their tipping points.

The 0.8 metre estimate for sea-level rises to 2100 is already obsolete:

The Copenhagen climate science congress of March 2009 estimated a sea-level rise of 0.75–1.9 metres by 2100
The federal Department of Climate Change's November 2009 climate update reports estimates of a 0.5–2 metre rise by 2100
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in December found that global average sea levels are likely to rise by between 75cm and190cm by the end of the century.

So how far could we reasonably expect sea levels to rise by 2100? As the world's oceans warm, they expand and sea-levels rise, but how quickly the loss of polar ice sheets will add to the rise is difficult to estimate, principally because ice-sheet and sea-ice dynamics are not sufficiently well understood, and they are subject to non-linear (rapid and unexpected) changes, such as is occurring with sea-ice in the Arctic. The question is no longer whether the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass (they are!) but if and when they pass tipping points for large, irreversible ice mass loss, and how fast that will occur.

Recent research by Blancon et. al published in Nature in 2009 examining the paleoclimate record shows sea level rises of 3 metres in 50 years due to the rapid melting of ice sheets 120,000 years ago. Mike Kearney, of the University of Maryland, said it's "within the realm of possibility" that global warming will trigger a sudden collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which could lead to a rapid increase in sea levels like that predicted by the study.

Given the catastrophic failure to date of global climate policy-making (Copenhagen outcome =4-degree rise by 2100), big sea level rises are on the way for the sort of temperature increases now on the table. NASA climate science chief James Hansen wrote in New Scientist that:

Oxygen isotopes in the deep-ocean fossil plankton known as foraminifera reveal that the Earth was last 2°C to 3°C warmer around 3 million years ago, with carbon dioxide levels of perhaps 350 to 450 parts per million. It was a dramatically different planet then, with no Arctic sea-ice in the warm seasons and sea level about 25 meters higher, give or take 10 meters.

Even more compelling, Professor Eelco Rohling of University of Southampton says:

Even if we would curb all CO2 emissions today, and stabilise at the modern level (387 parts per million by volume), then our natural relationship suggests that sea level would continue to rise to about 25 metres above the present.

Then on 13 January this year, New Scientist published this story showing calculations that the Pine Island glacier in the West Antarctic has likely passed its tipping point, with researchers estimating that this one glacier alone could add a quarter of a metre to sea levels by 2100:

Major Antarctic glacier is 'past its tipping point'

A major Antarctic glacier has passed its tipping point, according to a new modelling study. After losing increasing amounts of ice over the past decades, it is poised to collapse in a catastrophe that could raise global sea levels by 24 centimetres.
Pine Island glacier (PIG) is one of many at the fringes of the West Antarctic ice sheet. In 2004, satellite observations showed that it had started to thin, and that ice was flowing into the Amundsen Sea 25 per cent faster than it had 30 years before.
Now, the first study to model changes in an ice sheet in three dimensions shows that PIG has probably passed a critical "tipping point" and is irreversibly on track to lose 50 per cent of its ice in as little as 100 years, significantly raising global sea levels.
The team that carried out the study admits their model can represent only a simplified version of the physics that govern changes in glaciers, but say that if anything, the model is optimistic and PIG will disappear faster than it projects.
Richard Katz of the University of Oxford and colleagues developed the model to explore whether the retreat of the "grounding line" – the undersea junction at which a floating ice shelf becomes an ice sheet grounded on the sea bed – could cause ice sheets to collapse.
....
The model suggests that within 100 years, PIG's grounding line could have retreated over 200 kilometres. "Before the retreating grounding line comes to a rest at some unknown point on the inner slope, PIG will have lost 50 per cent of its ice, contributing 24 centimetres to global sea levels," says Richard Hindmarsh of the British Antarctic Survey, who did not participate in the study.
This assumes that the grounding line does eventually stabilise, after much of PIG is gone. In reality, PIG could disappear entirely, says Hindmarsh. "If Thwaite's glacier, which sits alongside PIG, also retreats, PIG's grounding line could retreat even further back to a second crest, causing sea levels to rise by 52 centimetres." The model suggests Thwaite's glacier has also passed its tipping point.

.... and now comes a new report in Science that an undersea ridge that may have once helped slow the loss of the Pine Island glacier is no longer doing so...

Antarctic Glacier Off Its Leash

An unmanned autonomous submarine has discovered a sea-floor ridge that may have been the last hope for stopping the now-accelerating retreat of the Pine Island Glacier, a crumbling keystone of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, researchers announced at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
An unmanned autonomous submarine has discovered a sea-floor ridge that may have been the last hope for stopping the now-accelerating retreat of the Pine Island Glacier, a crumbling keystone of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ridge appears to have once protected the glacier, but no more. The submarine found the glacier floating well off the ridge and warmer, ice-melting water passing over the ridge and farther under the ice. And no survey, underwater or airborne, has found another such glacier-preserving obstacle for the next 250 kilometers landward.
The Pine Island and adjacent Thwaites glaciers are key to the fate of West Antarctic ice, says glaciologist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, in an e-mail. And West Antarctica is key to how fast and far sea level will rise in a warming world. "To a policymaker, I suspect that the continuing list of [such] ice-sheet surprises is not reassuring," he writes.
At the meeting, glaciologist Adrian Jenkins of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge and colleagues described how the instrument-laden Autosub3 cruised for 94 hours along 510 kilometers of track beneath the floating portion of the Pine Island Glacier in January 2009. The sub found a 300-meter-high ridge across the ocean cavity formed by the floating end of the glacier. Deep, warmer water was overtopping the ridge and passing through the gap between floating ice and the ridge top on its way to melting back more of the glacier. That gap has been growing, Jenkins said, perhaps since the 1970s. An aerial photograph from 1973 shows a bump in the ice where the ridge is now known to be, suggesting that the ice was then resting on the ridge and no warmer water could have been getting through.
Although the last physical obstacle to continued melting and retreat of the Pine Island Glacier has been breached, the ice's fate remains murky, says glaciologist David Holland of New York University in New York City. That's because glaciologists aren't sure what got the glacial retreat started in the first place, he notes. It wasn't the greenhouse simply warming the ocean, researchers agree. Instead, shifting winds around Antarctica in recent decades may have driven warmer waters up to the ice and dislodged it from its perch on the ridge. But what caused the winds to shift? Global warming? The ozone hole? Random variability? Glaciologists—and policymakers—would like to know.

... which makes Fred Pearce's prediction (which we quoted in Climate Code Red two years ago, page 47) look spot on....

Another vulnerable place on the West Antarctic ice sheet is Pine Island Bay, where two large glaciers, Pine Island and Thwaites, drain about 40 per cent of the ice sheet into the sea. The glaciers are responding to rapid melting of their ice shelves and their rate of ﬂ ow has doubled, whilst the rate of mass loss of ice from their catchment has now tripled. NASA glaciologist Eric Rignot has studied the Pine Island glacier, and his work has led climate writer Fred Pearce to conclude that ‘the glacier is primed for runaway destruction’. Pearce also notes the work of Terry Hughes of the University of Maine, who says that the collapse of the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers — already the biggest causes of global sea-level rises — could destabilise the whole of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Pearce is also swayed by geologist Richard Alley, who says there is ‘a possibility that the West Antarctic ice sheet could collapse and raise sea levels by 6 yards [5.5 metres]’, this century.

So much for 0.8 metres being a risk-averse foundation for sea-level rise planning and policy-making.

And for a fuller discussion on the current research on PIG and recent observations, there is a great overview, "Is Pine Island Glacier the Weak Underbelly of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet?" at RealClimate, from November 2009.

David Spratt
24 January 2010

How the Murdoch press got it wrong on the Himalayan big melt

2010-01-20T14:49:00.003+11:00

Published in Crikey, 20 January 2010

by Damien Lawson and David Spratt

Drawing on a January 13 New Scientist story by Fred Pearce reporting on a debate among glaciologists about the IPCC's claim, The Times (UK) and subsequently The Australian and other Murdoch papers have tried to shift from a debate about timing to a questioning of global warming.

Opposition leader Tony Abbot has now used the reporting to attack Labor's climate policies and again questioned the need for climate action.

While there is unequivocal peer-reviewed science on global warming and its impact on the glacial melt in the Himalayan region, the IPCC left itself open to attack by basing its time-frame for a major loss of the glacial ice sheets on a previous New Scientist reporting of "speculative" statements by an Indian scientist.

There is much to criticise in the IPCC's 2007 report, in particular its low predictions of sea level rise this century, for example, for the report is based on old science (pre-2005) and is too conservative in its predictions of the timing and extent of many climate impacts. Hence the need for updates such as the Copenhagen climate science congress in March 2009.

But instead of examining these problems, The Australian and The Times have chosen to focus on one unsubstantiated prediction contained in the report to throw into question concerns about the Himalayan big melt and climate change more generally. This is despite the unequivocal evidence of substantial glacial loss and warming in the Himalayan-Tibetan region.

Glacial retreat on the Himalayas/Tibetan Plateau is well documented from satellite observations and aerial photography. Glaciers around the world are melting and thinning at an increasing rate, according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service. Himalayan glaciers have been retreating more rapidly than glaciers elsewhere and has intensified in the past 10 years.

For example, the Imja glacier retreated at an average rate of 42 metres per year from 1962–2000, but 74 metres per year 2001–2006. A study of 612 glaciers in China between 1950 and 1970 found that 53% were retreating. After 1990, 95% of these glaciers were measured to be retreating.

Last year, we compiled a report for Friends of the Earth Australia, which reviewed the climate impacts in the Hmalayas. While it included a reference to the IPCC claim, it also outlined a substantial body of evidence on warming and glacial melt that is still valid. It also examined the catastrophic impact on the Asian region of substantial glacial melt, in particular the threat to the water security of over a billion people. You can download the report: Highstakes: climate change, the Himalayas, Asia and Australia.

As climate policy analyst Joseph Romm said this week: "Good news: The Himalayan glaciers will probably endure past 2035. Bad news: If we don't reverse our emissions trend soon, their disappearance is likely to become irreversible before then." His blog entry is worth reading in full.

The "best" promises put on the table (but not legislated) at Copenhagen last December would produce a 3.9 degree Celsius global average warming by 2100. Over the Himalayas, that is likely to be amplified to a range of 8–12 degrees of warming. In mountain areas, the snow line on average retreats 160 metres for each 1 degree rise.

That means by the end of the century the snow/ice/glacier line will have retreated two kilometres up the mountains. Two kilometres!! And that is a catastrophe beyond words for the more than a billion people in Asia who rely on meltwater from the Himalayas in the dry season.

Predictions about the timing of climate-change impacts are the most imprecise of the many aspects of climate science. Ice sheet dynamics are particularly difficult. The loss of the Arctic sea ice, for example, is occurring 70 years earlier than IPCC predictions.

So while there is no doubt the IPCC got it wrong when it gave so much weight to this reference, we should not let a debate about timing undermine our acceptance of the fundamental threat of the loss of the Asian glaciers.

A climate con: Analysis of the "Copenhagen Accord"

2009-12-21T16:53:00.009+11:00

By David Spratt and Damien Lawson
21 December 2009
Climate Action Centre Briefing Note

''In biblical terms it looks like we are being offered 30 pieces of silver to betray our future and our people … our future is not for sale.'' Ian Fry, Tuvalu negotiator

"This is a declaration that small and poor countries don't matter, that international civil society doesn't matter, and that serious limits on carbon don't matter. The president has wrecked the UN and he's wrecked the possibility of a tough plan to control global warming. It may get Obama a reputation as a tough American leader, but it's at the expense of everything progressives have held dear. 189 countries have been left powerless, and the foxes now guard the carbon henhouse without any oversight." Bill McKibben, 350.org

"The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport. There are no targets for carbon cuts and no agreement on a legally binding treaty. It is now evident that beating global warming will require a radically different model of politics than the one on display here in Copenhagen." John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK

"So that's it. The world's worst polluters – the people who are drastically altering the climate – gathered here in Copenhagen to announce they were going to carry on cooking, in defiance of all the scientific warnings. They didn't seal the deal; they sealed the coffin for the world's low-lying islands, its glaciers, its North Pole, and millions of lives. Those of us who watched this conference with open eyes aren't surprised. Every day, practical, intelligent solutions that would cut our emissions of warming gases have been offered by scientists, developing countries and protesters – and they have been systematically vetoed by the governments of North America and Europe." Johann Hari, The Independent, 19 December 2009

"I think that our prime minister has played an outstanding role ... He's been working very hard for the last few months... and he's just been fantastic all the way, he just shines at it... he's been really important through these meetings". Tim Flannery, ABC News, 19 December 2009

WHAT IS IN THE ACCORD

The Copenhagen Accord could not be further from what civil society, along with most developing countries sought to achieve at this conference. There is no Fair, Ambitious and legally-Binding deal.

Instead it is a non-legally-binding three page document, drafted by United States, China, India, Brazil, Ethiopia and South Africa that says little beyond what had been discussed at previous international meetings.

Yet US President Obama and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd both held press conferences announcing the accord before it had been completed and attempted to spin the document as a historic achievement.

But the Conference of the Parties [COP15] at Copenhagen decided only to "take note" of its existence and some countries including Tuvalu strongly repudiated the document. The COP15 agreed to continue negotiating on an extension to the Kyoto Protocol and a new agreement on "long-term cooperative action." The next full meeting is scheduled for late November in Mexico.

The specifics of the accord include:

Dangerous support for two degrees: "We agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required according to science, and ... with a view to reduce global emissions so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius, and take action to meet this objective consistent with science and on the basis of equity." It entrenches further the dangerous goal of two degrees, with the goal of 1.5 degrees, now supported by over 100 countries, only given lip service in the final paragraph which discusses a review of the accord.

No peak emissions target: just says emissions should "peak as soon as possible".

No 2020 targets: the accord will just list voluntary targets by developed and developing countries, in Annexes to the accord. Countries are asked to provide their target by February 1. So there are no binding targets, just a totting up up of country promises and not even a target or goal for 2050. Based on current assessments of country promises the 2020 targets will head us towards 3.5-4 degrees, which would be a catastrophe.

No 2050 targets: there is no reference to any 2050 targets

Markets: statement supports using a variety of methods for pollution cuts, "including opportunities to use markets"

Adaptation and deforestation: General statements about need for adaptation, development and end to deforestation. There is no concrete deal on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, although this may be a good thing as the direction was towards offset loopholes.

Financing for Developing world: "commitment by developed countries is to provide new and additional resources, including forestry and investments through international institutions, approaching US $30 billion for the period 2010 – 2012." "A goal of mobilizing jointly US $100 billion dollars a year by 2020", "Funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance." Statements by US negotiators including Hillary Clinton implied that you needed to "associate" yourself with the accord to be eligible for funds. The funds could also explain why many countries subsequently and prior to the accord very critical have acquiesced in its creation.

The promises of finances are woefully small, much lower than the demands of developing countries and civil society groups. For example, the African countries had sought sought $400 billion in short term financing, with an immediate amount of $150 billion. In the longer term they say 5% of developed country GNP is needed (approx. $2 trillion)

Governance of finance: Creation of a Copenhagen Green Climate Fund. The accord also suggests funding can be delivered through "international institutions" possibly code for the World Bank and IMF and the promise of a new fund. Civil society had campaigned for funds to be administered by the UN.

Technology: decided to create a Technology Mechanism to accelerate technology development, but with no further details.

1.5 degrees delayed: assessment of accord by 2015 including scientific need for 1.5 degrees.

The only possible concrete achievement of the whole conference was the refusal to include carbon, capture and storage within the Clean Development Mechanism, staving off another loophole for rich countries to keep on polluting.

ANALYSIS

The United States won. Killing the Kyoto Protocol (KP) as the primary international climate policy instrument has been their intent for years, so the impasse which flared at COP15 has deep roots on the long road to Copenhagen.

In early October, US climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing announced: “We are not going to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. That is out”. The USA set out to destroy it at COP15, actively supported by the Annex 1 bloc, with Australia in the lead behind close doors. Obama’s climate position was described by Bill McKibben of 350.org as a "A lie inside a fib coated with spin".

Developing nations accused Australia of "trying to kill Kyoto". Australia appeared to be saying one thing in public and another privately, with the chief negotiator for China and the small African nations accusing Rudd of lying to the Australian people about his position on climate change.

Months ago the G-77, a loose coalition of 130 developing nations, accused the US and other developed countries of trying to "fundamentally sabotage" the Kyoto Protocol (KP). They were right in their fears. Instead of enforceable targets in an updated KP, the Copenhagen Accord (CA) contains only voluntary, non-binding, self-assessing targets which amount to "pick a figure, any figure, and do what you like with it" because you will face no penalty for blowing it.

COP15 failed because the US and the major economic powers did not want the KP renewed and the climate action movements within those nations did not have the power to stop them behaving this way. China appeared not to care too much what happened one way or the other. With central planning of their booming green/climate sector, they have no need of global agreements or carbon prices to drive their industry policy; they may even have a competitive advantage in seeing the process fail.

Climate multilateralism may already be dead. It is reported that US officials were boasting privately that they are "controlling the lane". Most developing nations are deeply unhappy that the CA is outside the climate convention framework, but they were bribed to sign on by the USA with threats that poor nations who refused would loose their share of the $100 billion that rich countries have (theoretically) pledged to compensate for climate impacts the rich countries themselves have caused. Unless every country agrees to the US terms, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton explained, "there will not be that kind of a [financial] commitment, at least from the United States."

The majority COP participants -- the world's small and poor nations -- were well supported by the activist movement in making heard their views about historic responsibility and the scientific imperative for deep emissions cuts, undertaken first and foremost by the developed world. At COP15, those poor nations embarrassed the rich, who have a powerful interest in a new voluntary international climate agreement without the need of the formal support of the developing nations, who will not accede to a suicide pact.

So the big polluters have reason to move the real decision-making out of the UN forums, and with the CA having exactly that status, the major emitters have an opportunity to keep it there (while leaning on the UNFCCC Secretariat to do the office work).

What happened at Copenhagen is probably the start of a process where the real politics of international climate policy-making becomes the perogative of the G20, and similar forums, where the big developed and emerging polluters can pretend to save the world (by talking 2-degree targets) while acting for 3-to-4-degree targets, and selling that as a success at home without those pesky developing nations causing trouble.

The suicidal assumption of the rich nations is that those with money can adapt to 3 degrees or more. This delusion is strongly built into the current debate at every level, from government and business to many of the NGOs in their advocacy and support for actions that are a long way short of what is required for 2 degrees, let alone a safe climate.

What has happened exposes the smouldering contradiction at heart of the international process: while the science leads to 0-to-1-degree targets, the large emitters refuse to commit to actions that will leads to less than 3-to-4 degrees because it challenges their "business-as-usual", corporate-dominated approach. The best commitments on the table at COP15 would produce a 3.9-degree rise by 2100.

For years, the "2-degree fudge" has been developing: countries could (and continue to) talk 2 degrees so long as they don't have to commit to enforceable actions consistent with a 2-degree target (and they haven't had to do that since 1997!). This contradiction has been obvious for years: from Stern to Garnaut, who were both explicit in saying that 3 degrees was the best that could be achieved politically, because doing more would be too economically disruptive. Even at Bali two years ago, the supposed 2 degree emissions reduction range for Annex 1 nations of 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 was relegated to a footnote.

Even as they propose actions which will lead to 4 degrees, they still talk 2 degrees. That is Rudd's strategy.

And we know that 2 degrees is not a safe target, but a catastrophe. The research tells us that a 2-degree warming will initiate large climate feedbacks on land and in the oceans, on sea-ice and mountain glaciers and on the tundra, taking the Earth well past signiﬁcant tipping points. Likely impacts include large-scale disintegration of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice-sheets; sea-level rises; the extinction of an estimated 15 to 40 per cent of plant and animal species; dangerous ocean acidiﬁcation and widespread drought, desertiﬁcation and malnutrition in Africa, Australia, Mediterranean Europe, and the western USA.

As Postdam Institute Director Schellnhuber, who is a scientific advisor to the EU and to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, points out, on sea levels alone, a 2 degree rise in temperature will be catastrophic: "Two degrees ... means sea level rise of 30 to 40 meters over maybe a thousand years. Draw a line around your coast — probably not a lot would be left." Recently-published research on climate history shows that three million years ago — in the last period when carbon dioxide levels were sustained at levels close to where they are today — "there was no icecap on Antarctica and sea levels were 25 to 40 metres higher," features associated with temperatures about 3 to 6 degrees higher than today.

COP15 shows that international processes cannot produce outcomes substantially better than the sum of the national commitments of major players, and in the present case a lot worse. On the latest science and carbon budgets to 2050, none of the Annex 1 countries have committed themselves to actions consistent with even a 2-degree target, so it is unrealistic to think/hope they would do so collectively in the short term, and until the domestic balances of forces change.

It is a challenge to see how they could come back in a year and make serious, legally-binding 2-degree commitments at COP16 in November in Mexico, since on equal per capita emission rights to 2050, the carbon budget for 2 degrees demands Australia and USA go to zero emissions by 2020, Europe before 2030. By dumping the multilateral approach, they have a way of avoiding that embarrassment.

We cannot blame the COP15 process for this disaster. Australia did not go to COP15 with even a 2-degree commitment on the table, for which we share responsibility. Those NGOs who tied Australian action (and the CPRS) to a successful COP15 outcome have shot themselves (and us) in the foot. The struggle now returns to the national stage.

There are disturbing parallels in the approaches some advocacy groups took to both the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) and Australia's role at COP15: deliberately and systematically avoiding the conclusions from the most recent science and instead advocating a soft, incremental, 'business-as-usual" approach to policy-making. And that's what we got from Obama. By continuing to play the game of the 2-degree fudge, the talks were structured to fail, even with a "good outcome".

Urging world leaders to get together again ASAP is pointless at present with the current framing of the debate and the balance of forces, because we will only get more of the same. The dilemma is as gross as it is simple: the G77 will never accept a 3-degree deal, Annex 1 won't commit to actions consistent with a 2-degree enforceable target, and only a a safe climate target of close to a zero-degree increase will keep the planet liveable for all people and all nations.

Here in Australia, the problem we face is obvious. In 2010, much of debate is likely to be framed between no action (federal opposition/deniers) and incremental action (Labor/some eNGOs), and it is murky because both the CPRS and the Copenhagen Accord which are indefensible will be used by the opposition to whack Labor, while the Climate Institute and its NGO associates will dutifully spend the year mine-sweeping for Rudd.

How do we define and move the debate to occupy the space between incrementalism and the large, urgent, economy-wide transformations that the science demands? We can only start by putting the science first and not negotiating with planet, recognising that politics-as-usual solutions are now dead and that only heroic, emergency action has a chance of succeeding. The time for dinky, incremental policy steps has run out: it's now all or nothing, and we must be saying so loud and clear at every opportunity and organising and gathering popular support around the only strategy that can actually succeed.

It's the 1938 moment in Britain: appeasement or urgent mobilisation, Chamberlain or Churchill.

Oil: enough energy to melt glaciers!

2009-11-21T10:27:00.003+11:00

Thanks to Gristmill for pointing to this amazing advertisment from a 1962 issue of Life Magazine. Humble Oil later merged with Standard to become Exxon.

And it's all true!

Reporting in the journal Nature in September, researchers from British Antarctic Survey and the University of Bristol describe how analysis of millions of NASA satellite measurements from both vast, polar ice sheets shows that the most profound ice loss is a result of glaciers speeding up where they flow into the sea.

The authors conclude that this ‘dynamic thinning’ of glaciers now reaches all latitudes in Greenland, has intensified on key Antarctic coastlines, is penetrating far into the ice sheets’ interior and is spreading as ice shelves thin by ocean-driven melt. Ice shelf collapse has triggered particularly strong thinning that has endured for decades.

For an overview of the Arctic, check out the Arctic Report Card, released earlier this month.

Copenhagen reality check: 25% by 2020 isn't in the ball park

2009-11-04T16:47:00.003+11:00

First published in Crikey, 4 November 2009

Climate policy analyst David Spratt writes:

Columnist David Roberts sees the Copenhagen climate change conference negotiating process so far as akin to "an aquarium full of hamsters connected to rudimentary motors. There's a lot of frantic running, a lot of sweat and heat, but in the end, very little light".

The dim light that does exists flickers on a target for Australia and the developed economies of reducing emissions by 2020 to 25% below the level of 1990.

In Bali two years ago, the European Union proposed a framework that included global emissions peaking in 10–15 years and for developed countries to achieve emissions levels 20–40% below 1990 levels by 2020. The United States, supported by Australia and others, strongly opposed this.

In a flood of tears and acrimony, the final Bali session sat through the night to produce a compromise that mandates "deep cuts in global emissions", with footnote references to the 2007 IPCC report which talks about the developed economies needing to reduce emissions 25 to 40% below 1990 levels to have a reasonable chance of holding warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

The Garnaut report quietly dropped the 40% end of the range and mischievously took 25% by 2020 as being a 2-degree target. The Rudd government followed in these footsteps and went for a 25% target, with highly conditional qualifications, in the revised CPRS in May, abetted by the ACTU-led Southern Cross Climate Coalition.

Now 2 degrees isn't the sort of target anyone with grandkids should aspire to. The research tells us that a 2-degree warming will initiate large climate feedbacks on land and in the oceans, on sea-ice and mountain glaciers and on the tundra, taking the Earth well past signiﬁcant tipping points.

Likely impacts include large-scale disintegration of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice-sheets; sea- level rises; the extinction of an estimated 15 to 40 per cent of plant and animal species; dangerous ocean acidiﬁcation and widespread drought, desertiﬁcation and malnutrition in Africa, Australia, Mediterranean Europe, and the western USA.

You can bet your house that Copenhagen will not conclude with a 25% mandatory target for all the developed economies, but is it what we need to do, or is the whole of the Copenhagen process wrapped in an enormous delusion?

In September, researchers from Oxford and Germany's Potsdam Institute, produced figures on a carbon budget to 2050. In essence, they estimated how much carbon in total can be put in the air to 2050 if the aim is to not exceed 2 degrees.

From there it's not too hard to work out what each country needs to do, and that what's the Potsdam Institute Director Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber did in his recent presentation to the "4 Degrees and Beyond" conference in Oxford.

Assume the present population, and divide it into the total carbon budget and you get a budget per person to 2050. [This is based in the assumption that each citizen of the planet has an equal right to the budget, a proposition disputed by many in the developing world who rightly point to the historic carbon debt on which the developed world built their economies].

Nevertheless, by taking the per capita allocation to 2050 and comparing it to a nation's current annual emissions per person, you get a clear picture of national responsibilities, and that's what Schellnhuber did in a single chart.

Australia, like the USA, is top of the pops for per capita emissions.

If we maintain that rate, our carbon budget to 2050 runs out in five years. Five years!! Or put in another way, as the chart illustrates, Australia and the USA would need to be at zero emissions by 2020. Just follow the black line.

Not 25% by 2020, but 100% by 2020 for Australia. That's the science, unadorned. God forbid the politics.

A 4 degree world

2009-10-01T08:34:00.007+10:00

A recent conference in Oxford attended by the best and brightest of the climate science academy examined the prospects and impacts of 4 degrees of global warming. The prognosis is not good. New Scientist have done a good summary with a Google Earth interactive guide (download .kmz file), but if you have a spare hour listen to some of the presentations available on the conference website; Prof. Schellenhuber's and Richard Betts' from the Met Office are a must.

Copenhagen in a Nutshell

2009-09-30T15:12:00.005+10:00

This figure from the Washington Post and statement by Jose Barroso sums up what we can expect from the current Copenhagen process.

As Prof. Prof Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change, said this week the chances of the getting a deal that could keep warming below two degrees was "pie in the sky".