Climate Progress: An insider's view of climate science, politics, and solutions

The 2007 IPCC Assessment, the most comprehensive and respected analysis of climate change to date, states clearly that without substantial global reductions of greenhouse gas emissions we can likely expect a world of increasing droughts, floods and species loss, of rising seas and displaced human populations. However even since the 2007 IPCC Assessment the evidence for dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change has strengthened. The scientific evidence which underpins calls for action at Copenhagen is very strong. Without co-ordinated international action on greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts on climate and civilisation could be severe.

That is the “Summary” of the just-released statement by the Met Office (the UK’s National Weather Service, within the Ministry of Defence), the Natural Environment Research Council, and the UK’s Royal Society (the UK’s national academy of science, “the world’s oldest scientific academy in continuous existence,” founded in 1660).

The Royal Society’s motto is apt:  Nullius in verba — Latin for “On the words of no one” or “take nobody’s word for it.”  It is “an expression of its enduring commitment to empirical evidence as the basis of knowledge about the natural world.”

Our U.S. National Academy of Science should release something like this.

Below is the full must-read statement:

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You would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels on Earth as high as they are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues report Oct. 8 in the online edition of the journal Science.

“The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland,” said the paper’s lead author, Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

“Carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas, and geological observations that we now have for the last 20 million years lend strong support to the idea that carbon dioxide is an important agent for driving climate change throughout Earth’s history,” she said.

Yes, pumping more and more CO2 into the air is a very bad idea, as this news release from UCLA on a major new study makes clear.  The study itself, “Coupling of CO2 and Ice Sheet Stability Over Major Climate Transitions of the Last 20 Million Years,” (subs. req’d) was released by Science earlier this month.

The study notes importantly, “This work may support a relatively high climate sensitivity to pCO2” [the partial pressure of CO2], which is the same conclusion that a number of major studies looking at paleoclimate data have come to:
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Tonight at 9 pm on ABC, “Bob Woodruff explores what might be the worst case scenario for civilization.”

Hurray for the mainstream media exploring the worst-case scenario aka Hell and High Water!  I am very interested in your thoughts on this show — before and after.  One of the most commented on posts of this year was “How likely is it that Global Warming will destroy human civilization within the next century?”

You can see video excerpts and viewer submissions on what looks to be an excellent website:

Experts say over the next hundred years the “perfect storm” of population growth, resource depletion and climate change could converge with catastrophic results….

“If we continue on the business as usual trajectory, there will be a tipping point that we cannot avert,” says John P. Holdren, science advisor to President Obama. “We will indeed drive the car over the cliff“….

“A few hundred years down the line, they’ll look back and say the dark ages began with the twenty-first century,” says E. O. Wilson, an award-winning evolutionary biologist and professor at Harvard University.

Here’s more on the two scenarios the show lays out for humanity’s future:

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Today’s question:  How the heck does the Greenland ice sheet survive accelerated disintegration from projected 20°F warming by the 2090s?

I previously blogged on how the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change has joined the climate realists — the growing group of scientists who understand that the business as usual emissions path leads to unmitigated catastrophe (see “Hadley Center: “Catastrophic” 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path” and below).

Back in January, the Program issued a remarkable report in January, by over a dozen leading experts, doubling their 2095 warming projection to 5.2°C. The media mostly ignored it, which is no surprise, since the media generally ignores the realists in general (see U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: “Recent observations confirm … the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised” — 1000 ppm).

Now, the MIT study has been published in a peer-reviewed journal — The American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate (subs. req’d) — which obviously it makes it much more credible and high-profile.  Reuters has a good story on it, “Global warming could be twice as bad as forecast.”  The study concludes:

The MIT Integrated Global System Model is used to make probabilistic projections of climate change from 1861 to 2100. Since the model’s first projections were published in 2003 substantial improvements have been made to the model and improved estimates of the probability distributions of uncertain input parameters have become available. The new projections are considerably warmer than the 2003 projections, e.g., the median surface warming in 2091 to 2100 is 5.2°C compared to 2.4°C in the earlier study. Many changes contribute to the stronger warming; among the more important ones are taking into account the cooling in the second half of the 20^th century due to volcanic eruptions for input parameter estimation and a more sophisticated method for projecting GDP growth which eliminated many low emission scenarios.

[Note:  That rise is compared to 1981-2000 temperature levels.  So you can add at least 0.5 °C and 1.0 °F for comparison with pre-industrial temperatures, which I did in the headline -- see "A (Hopefully) Clarifying Note on Temperature."]

The MIT press release calls for “rapid and massive” action to avoid this.  Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, says, it is important “to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science….  There’s no way the world can or should take these risks.”   Duh!

Their median projection for the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide in 2095 is a jaw-dropping 866 ppm.

Projected decadal mean concentrations of CO2. Red solid lines are median, 5% and 95% percentiles for present study: dashed blue line the same from their 2003 projection.

As grim as this prediction is, it is still almost certainly an underestimate of what will happen on our current path of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions, as Prinn explains:

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Top Story

Dear coal plants, you’re doomed

In Australia, desperate times call for hard truths. The island nation is experiencing the most severe effects of global warming of any inhabited region on earth today (see “Global Boiling: Australia’s Hellish Black Saturday Of Extreme Fire“).  Most scientists believe the continent’s extreme heat and water shortages mark only the beginning of what will be a rapid deterioration in conditions needed to sustain life (see “Australia today offers horrific glimpse of U.S. Southwest, much of planet, post-2040, if we don’t slash emissions soon“).

A group of climate scientists with intimate knowledge of these dire circumstances have written a refreshingly blunt letter to the heads of Australia’s coal industry:

Evidence is mounting that climate change is occurring faster than previously predicted and we are perilously close to a number of tipping points which, if passed, would amplify the effects of climate change and make it much more difficult to bring further warming under control. We cannot emphasize enough just how serious the situation has become.

Their bottom line:

Unfortunately, the development of carbon capture and storage technology is not sufficiently advanced and is unlikely to be deployable within the timeframe necessary to cut emissions in order to avoid unacceptable levels of greenhouse gas concentrations and associated warming.

It is our considered view that no new coal-fired power stations, except ones that have ZERO emissions, should be allowed to be commissioned in Australia. Furthermore, we need an urgent program to replace existing coal plants with zero-carbon energy sources and energy efficiency programs as soon as possible….

Genuine action on climate change will mean that coal-fired power stations cease to operate in the near future.”

Amen. How serious will the situation have to get before leaders in the big polluting nations, such as ours, come to the same conclusion.

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Some of the top polar scientists in the world have concluded (boldface in original):

Our main conclusions so far indicate that there is a very low probability that Arctic sea ice will ever recover. As predicted by all IPCC models, Arctic sea ice is more likely to disappear in summer in the near future. However it seems like this is going to happen much sooner than models predicted, as pointed out by recent observations and data reanalysis undertaken during IPY and the Damocles Integrated Project. The entire Arctic system is evolving to a new super interglacial stage seasonally ice free, and this will have profound consequences for all the elements of the Arctic cryosphere, marine and terrestrial ecosystems and human activities. Both the atmosphere and the ocean circulation and stratification (ventilation) will also be affected.

This is what U.S. experts have been saying for a while (see NSIDC: Arctic melt passes the point of no return, “We hate to say we told you so, but we did”). Though not every scientist got the memo (see here). And this is just one in a long line of climate impacts coming up faster than the models projected (see here for a list).

But what I think is quite interesting is that this is the first time I’ve seen such leading polar scientists elaborate so bluntly the potentially dire consequences of an ice-free arctic:

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In a story headlined ” ‘Blame global warming’ for higher temps,” China Daily (!) reports:

Global warming is to blame for the recent temperature rises across China, an expert from the National Meteorological Center (NMC) said on Friday.

“Spring has come early in some areas of East and Central China this year, and it’s because of global warming,” Yang Guiming, the center’s chief forecaster, told China Daily.

If only U.S. meteorologists were so … science-based [see "Diagnosing a victim of anti-science syndrome (ASS)"].

Our nation’s top climate scientist, NASA’s James Hansen, has submitted a blunt op-ed, “The Sword of Damocles,” to The Observer. He makes many points worth underscoring, such as:

How can [the public] distinguish top-notch science and pseudoscience — the words sound the same? Leaders have no excuse….

The dirtiest trick that governments play on their citizens is the pretense that they are working on “clean coal” or that they will build power plants that are “capture ready” in case technology is ever developed to capture all pollutants….

The German and Australian governments pretend to be green….

The full piece is below. Remember, it is aimed at the UK. He has issued many similar challenges to this country’s leaders (see links at end):

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[Please Digg this by clicking here.]

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is holding its annual meeting, so you can expect a flurry of climate announcements — though not as much as at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (see here and here). The Washington Post and AFP are reporting:

It seems the dire warnings about the oncoming devastation wrought by global warming were not dire enough, a top climate scientist warned Saturday.

Okay, this is what I’ve been saying for a few years now, but it’s good to hear more and more leading climate scientists besides James Hansen and John Holdren being blunt with the public on this (see links below for others who are now telling it like it is). In this case, it’s Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, who said

“We are basically looking now at a future climate that’s beyond anything we’ve considered seriously in climate model simulations.”

The source of Field’s concern — what else could it be but our old nemesis, amplifying carbon cycle feedbacks:

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I have been saying for quite some time that if we don’t act immediately to make deep cuts in CO2 emissions then we are headed towards the unmitigated catastrophe of 1000 ppm (see my August 2007 post, “Are Scientists Overestimating — or Underestimating — Climate Change“). Turns out that’s what Nobel laureate F. Sherwood Rowland believes.

Rowland is one of the world’s foremost authorities on atmospheric chemisty “who shared a Nobel Prize for his work revealing the threat to the ozone layer from CFC’s and similar synthetic chemicals,” as NYT’s Andy Revkin explained (here). Wednesday, Revkin

asked Dr. Rowland two quick questions. The first: Given the nature of the climate and energy challenges, what is his best guess for the peak concentration of carbon dioxide?

His answer? “1,000 parts per million.”

My second question was, what will that look like?

“I have no idea,” Dr. Rowland said. He was not smiling.

Readers of Climate Progress have an idea, since I have done my best to describe this grim future that scientists rarely model because they can’t believe humanity would be so self-destructive as to let it happen:

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