Krugman’s writing on climate has gotten increasingly blunt (see Nobelist Krugman takes on the “fantasists” of the “burn-baby-burn crowd” for opposing climate action that costs Americans 18 cents a day.  And his blog, “The Conscience of a Liberal,” is becoming a must-read for those interested in seeing the record set straight on climate economics.

As an aside, the times this blog gets bluntest are when I think about how future generations will speak about us if we fail to spend the tiny amount of our vast wealth needed to prevent their decades and centuries of incalculable misery — see “Intro to climate economics: Why even strong climate action has such a low total cost — one tenth of a penny on the dollar.”  They won’t be calling us “The Greatest Generation.”  They will be cursing our name as “The Greediest Generation,” as the Bernie Madoffs of the global Ponzi scheme we created to enrich ourselves unsustainably at their expense.

Today’s column by Krugman takes that perspective, and I’m reprinting it below, with annotation:

So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement.

But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

To fully appreciate the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial, you need to know about the grim turn taken by the latest climate research.

The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course.

Thus researchers at M.I.T., who were previously predicting a temperature rise of a little more than 4 degrees by the end of this century, are now predicting a rise of more than 9 degrees. Why? Global greenhouse gas emissions are rising faster than expected; some mitigating factors, like absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans, are turning out to be weaker than hoped; and there’s growing evidence that climate change is self-reinforcing — that, for example, rising temperatures will cause some arctic tundra to defrost, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Perhaps Krugman reads this blog, as I have written at length about the important study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change — when it first was published on MIT’s website (see “M.I.T. joins climate realists, doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°C“) and almost entirely ignored by the media — and again when it was published in a peer-reviewed journal and got (a little) more attention (see “M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F“).

I would add that MIT is hardly alone in upwardly revising their projections of planetary warming on our current path of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions (see “Hadley Center: “Catastrophic” 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path” and 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).

Temperature increases on the scale predicted by the M.I.T. researchers and others would create huge disruptions in our lives and our economy. As a recent authoritative U.S. government report points out, by the end of this century New Hampshire may well have the climate of North Carolina today, Illinois may have the climate of East Texas, and across the country extreme, deadly heat waves — the kind that traditionally occur only once in a generation — may become annual or biannual events.

This is, of course, the recent multi-agency report, Global Climate Change Impacts in United States (see “Our hellish future: Definitive NOAA-led report on U.S. climate impacts warns of scorching 9 to 11°F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90°F some 120 days a year — and that isn’t the worst case, it’s business as usual!” and Lubchenco says, “This report is a game changer”).

In other words, we’re facing a clear and present danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself. How can anyone justify failing to act?

Well, sometimes even the most authoritative analyses get things wrong. And if dissenting opinion-makers and politicians based their dissent on hard work and hard thinking — if they had carefully studied the issue, consulted with experts and concluded that the overwhelming scientific consensus was misguided — they could at least claim to be acting responsibly.

But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn’t see people who’ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it — and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.

Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday’s debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community.” I’d call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists — a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.

Yet Mr. Broun’s declaration was met with applause.

For the YouTube clipe, see “Rep. Broun receives applause on the House floor for calling global warming a ‘hoax’.”

Given this contempt for hard science, I’m almost reluctant to mention the deniers’ dishonesty on matters economic. But in addition to rejecting climate science, the opponents of the climate bill made a point of misrepresenting the results of studies of the bill’s economic impact, which all suggest that the cost will be relatively low.

Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual?

Yes, it is — and that’s why it’s unforgivable.

Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.

For a full discussion of that threat, see “An introduction to global warming impacts: Hell and High Water.”

Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.

Hear! Hear!

[Note:  I am putting this into the "Uncharacteristically blunt scientists" category knowing full well that Krugman is not scientist.  I just can't see starting a category "Uncharacteristically blunt economists" since it would be so damn tiny! (see Voodoo economics reporting, 7: Failing to report the consensus that action is cheaper than inaction).]

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:

Imagine a world in which cities are abandoned and our population has dropped by 90 percent. A world in which we have wreaked havoc on our delicate ecosystems and nature has begun to reclaim Earth. Once-bustling cities have fallen silent except for the rustle of the wind through the grass and trees that have cracked through the collapsing pavement. Humans have not walked these urban streets for years.

And some people say I’m an alarmist!

Does it seem like the stuff of science fiction? According to the world’s top scientists, it could very well be the legacy we leave our children and grandchildren. They say we are at a turning point, that the choices we make today will determine if the human race, as we know it, will survive.

Imagine our future as two doors. Door No. 1 is our current path, or as the scientists put it, business as usual. If we continue on this trajectory, experts say, over the next 100 years the “perfect storm” of population growth, resource depletion and climate change will converge with catastrophic results. In this scenario the combination of war, famine and disease has the potential to “decimate” the world in less than a hundred years.

Note to ABC:  “Decimate” technically means kill every 10th person, but that has changed with popular usage.  That said, the ABC scenario is much harsher than mine.  Climate change killing every 10th person by 2100 — one billion people — would be a staggering outcome.  I personally cannot even conceive of what losing 90% would mean.

“Earth 2100″ takes viewers through door No.1, with the help of a fictional character, Lucy. Born in the year 2009, Lucy guides us through the next century as it may well unfold, if we don’t take drastic measures. With the assistance of some of the world’s foremost scientific experts, she gives us a detailed decade-by-decade countdown to the collapse of society.

But it does not have to be. “Earth 2100″ will conclude by traveling through door No. 2. The clock resets to 2009, and using the same chronology and the same scientists, we leave the viewer with the inspiring story of an alternate future. The experts tell us what actions we must take to survive and describe the world we can create. In this version, Earth in 2100 will be one we would be proud to imagine.

It does not have to be!

UPDATE:  This was certainly the best done worst-case scenario mainstream media has ever put in front of the American public.  I have a bunch of little quibbles — no one’s going to be abandoning the American suburbs just because gasoline hits $5.50 a gallon, as the show depicts — see “Why I don’t agree with James Kunstler about peak oil and the “end of suburbia.“  Heck, Great Britain has had gasoline costs above seven dollars a gallon for many years and the life goes on.  But ABC deserves a lot of kudos for laying out so many realistic threats that humanity faces on the business as usual path.

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:

And the odds indicated by this modeling may actually understate the problem, because the model does not fully incorporate other positive feedbacks that can occur, for example, if increased temperatures caused a large-scale melting of permafrost in arctic regions and subsequent release of large quantities of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. Including that feedback “is just going to make it worse,” Prinn says.

Speaking of feedbacks, the model shows staggering warming near the poles (see “What exactly is polar amplification and why does it matter?“):

Figure 9:  Latitudinal distribution of changes in SAT in the last decade of 21st century relative to 1981-2000. Red solid lines are median, 5% and 95% percentiles for present study: dashed blue line the same from Webster et al., (2003).

Median arctic warming — north of 70° latitude — (from 1981-2000 levels) is 20°F!  How could Greenland’s ice sheet possibly survive that?

Why the change in the 2009 modeling, compared to 2003? The Program’s website explains:

There is no single revision that is responsible for this change. In our more recent global model simulatations, the ocean heat-uptake is slower than previously estimated, the ocean uptake of carbon is weaker, feedbacks from the land system as temperature rises are stronger, cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases over the century are higher, and offsetting cooling from aerosol emissions is lower. No one of these effects is very strong on its own, and even adding each separately together would not fully explain the higher temperatures. Rather than interacting additively, these different affects appear to interact multiplicatively, with feedbacks among the contributing factors, leading to the surprisingly large increase in the chance of much higher temperatures.

The carbon sinks are saturating, and the amplifying feedbacks are worse than previously thought — that, of course, is a central understanding of all climate realists (see Study: Water-vapor feedback is “strong and positive,” so we face “warming of several degrees Celsius” for links to the various feedbacks that have been ignored by most climate models).

Andrew Freedman at washingtonpost.com had one of the very few stories on this important study back in February and reprints this useful figure from MIT:

He explains:

Results of the studies are depicted online in MIT’s “Greenhouse Gamble” exercise that conveys the “range of probability of potential global warming” via roulette wheel graphics (shown above). The modeling output showed that under both a “no policy” scenario and one in which nations took action beginning in the next few years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the odds have shifted in favor of larger temperature increases.

For the no policy scenario, the researchers concluded that there is now a nine percent chance (about one in 11 odds) that the global average surface temperature would increase by more than 7°C (12.6°F) by the end of this century, compared with only a less than one percent chance (one in 100 odds) that warming would be limited to below 3°C (5.4°F).

To repeat, on our current emissions path, we have a 9% chance of an incomprehensibly catastrophic warming of 7°C by century’s end, but less than a 1% chance of under 3°C warming.

“The take home message from the new greenhouse gamble wheels is that if we do little or nothing about lowering greenhouse gas emissions that the dangers are much greater than we thought three or four years ago,” said Ronald G. Prinn, professor of atmospheric chemistry at MIT. “It is making the impetus for serious policy much more urgent than we previously thought.”

The time to act is now.

Related Posts:

• Stabilize at 350 ppm or risk ice-free planet, warn NASA, Yale, Sheffield, Versailles, Boston et al
• Must-read IEA report explains what must be done to avoid 6°C warming
• Nobel laureate Rowland agrees we are headed to 1000 ppm
• AAAS: Climate change is coming much harder, much faster than predicted

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.

Senate energy bill may include broad OCS assessment

Senate energy legislation may require a major new assessment of offshore energy resources that would encompass fossil fuels and potential for alternative energy such as wind and wave power, sources on and off Capitol Hill say.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee tentatively plans to mark up oil and gas provisions of a major energy bill the week of May 18.

The oil and gas section of the bill has received less attention to date compared to provisions on renewable electricity, transmission, clean energy financing and other issues. Committee leaders have not yet unveiled a draft of the oil and gas section.

But Robert Dillon, a spokesman for ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), said lawmakers are eyeing ways to update assessments of energy potential on the outer continental shelf (OCS). “It is renewables too,” he said.

An environmental lobbyist tracking the bill also said the committee plans to seek an OCS assessment that would explore energy, and a range of other issues, such as coastal economies and recreation.

A spokesman for Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said oil and gas provisions are under development but declined comment when asked about inclusion of an inventory provision.

Bingaman has previously said that a better assessment of offshore oil and gas potential should occur in order to make informed decisions about future leasing policy (Greenwire, Nov. 17, 2008).

Report backs targets in House climate bill

The Southeast has enough renewable resources to meet the 25 percent renewable-power mandate proposed by draft House energy and climate legislation, according to a new assessment by environmental groups.

The report was released today as lawmakers negotiate over whether to scale back the renewable electricity standard in the bill sponsored by Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

A dozen or so moderate and conservative committee Democrats want to lower the target. Southeastern lawmakers, who say their states could not meet the targets, say their districts would face higher costs because utilities would be forced to buy credits or make other payments.

But the World Resources Institute paper argues the target is more than achievable, finding that renewable energy could supply as much as 30 percent of the region’s power needs within 15 years.

Chu Promises Speedier Funding for Renewable Energy Projects

Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu announced $93 million in funding for American wind energy research and development on Wednesday, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“The goal is to set America on a course for a secure and sustainable energy future,” Mr. Chu said to a crowd assembled at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. The secretary restated President Obama’s target of generating 10 percent (PDF) of the nation’s electricity from renewables by 2012.

According to energy department statistics, in 2008, wind energy accounted for 42 percent of all new energy generation capacity in the United States.

Of nearly $100 billion in stimulus funds for energy, $26 billion have been authorized for clean energy projects since mid-February, Mr. Chu said. The Department of Energy’s goal is to award 70 percent of this total by Labor Day.

Gov. Palin on Energy Money: No, Thanks

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska has decided to accept all federal stimulus money her state is eligible for, with one exception: the nearly $29 million for the state energy office.

Ms. Palin has rejected the state energy office funds out of concern that it would obligate Alaska to enact more stringent building codes. “Alaska’s vast expanse and differing conditions are not conducive to a federally mandated, universal energy code,” she said in a statement.

First Solar’s profit triples in 1Q

First Solar’s first-quarter profits more than tripled as the result of signing several new power project deals and cutting its production costs, the nation’s largest solar panel maker reported.

The company earned $164.6 million, or $1.99 per share, in the first quarter, up from $46.6 million, or 57 cents per share, for the same period last year.

The company said it reached two key production milestones this year: It built a total of 1 gigawatt of photovoltaic modules, and its manufacturing costs dropped below $1 per watt.

Compiled by Max Luken and Carlin Rosengarten

We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for our lasting prosperity.

It is Obama’s final point — “lasting prosperity” — that is the focus of this post. Obama is hinting at a point I tried to make explicit with last week in my interview with NYT’s Tom Friedman and subsequent post (see “Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme“):

“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children,” said Joe Romm.

To perpetuate the high returns the rich countries in particular have been achieving in recent decades, we have been taking an ever greater fraction of nonrenewable energy resources (especially hydrocarbons) and natural capital (fresh water, arable land, forests, fisheries), and, the most important nonrenewable natural capital of all — a livable climate.

In short, we have failed to designed a system capable of lasting prosperity. Quite the reverse.

Like all Ponzi schemes, the system must collapse. When it does, the only jobs left standing will be those that are “green” — which can be defined as those jobs that do not plunder nonrenewable energy resources and natural capital and/or do not to destroy a livable climate.

Strong climate legislation and a strong clean energy bill are not the only measures needed to avert the collapse, but they are an essential first start. Absent such action, the collapse is inevitable.

When will be collapse begin and what will it look like? I expect most opinion makers and the majority of the public to get desperate about reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the 2020s. But desperation is not collapse. I have tended to think that the inflection point is around 2030.

Now it just so happens that the UK government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, laid out something very close to the collapse scenario in his speech yesterday to the government’s Sustainable Development UK conference in Westminster. He warned that by 2030, “A ‘perfect storm’ of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions,” as the UK’s Guardian put it.

You can see a five-minute BBC interview with Beddington here. The speech is now online, so I will excerpt it at length (sorry I don’t have the graphs):

… last year is the lowest level of reserves that we have had as a proportion of our consumption in years, since 1970 and actually since records were taken of this sort.That means that we’ve got somewhere like reserves of around 14% of our consumption, that implies, give or take, 38 or 39 days of food reserves if we don’t grow any more.

As you can see, it’s the lowest level that we’ve actually had. Is that a problem? Well the answer is yes it is going to be a problem. We saw the food spike last year; prices going up by something in the order of 300%, rice went up by 400%, we saw food riots, we saw major issues for the poorest in the world, in the sense that the organisations like the World Food Programme did not have sufficient money to buy food on the open market and actually use it to feed the poorest of the poor.

So this is a major problem. You can see the catastrophic decline in those reserves, over the last five years or so, indicates that we actually have a problem; we’re not growing enough food, we’re not able to put stuff into the reserves….

So, what are the drivers? I am going to go through them now very briefly.

First of all, population growth. World population grows by six million every month — greater than the size of the UK population every year. Between now and… I am going to focus on the year 2030 and the reason I am going to focus on 2030 is that I feel that some of the climate change discussions focusing on 2100 don’t actually grip…. I am going to look at 2030 because that’s when a whole series of events come together.

By 2030, looking at population terms, you are looking at the global population increasing from a little over six billion at the moment to about eight billion. What is actually happening to that extra population?

First of all, there is a second trend which is to do with population, which is urbanisation. Now as you can see (*refers to slideshow*) the crossover, for the first time in 2009, the urban population exceeded the rural population. And by 2030 again, looking at this graph, you can see that round about by 2030, the urban population is going to be substantially greater than the rural population: major issues for land use, major issues for providing that large urban population with food, with water and with energy. But the population will be distributed very differently to anything we’ve seen before. So, urbanisation is the second trend.

Now, the other trend which is actually good and which I spoke about last year and which is still there, is that, despite global recession, significant proportions of the developing world are actually moving out of what would be abject poverty and we are seeing a creation of what you might think of as middle class, particularly in India and China. Now that lifting from poverty is part of the Millennium Development Goals, we wish to see the world out of poverty, but as the world moves out of poverty, consumption patterns change.

I am going to deal with some of those in a little while, but in particular, we are going to see an increase in the demand for food. Looking at the demand for food, you are going to see major changes but particularly in the demand for livestock — meat and dairy. Now, this is not the West that is doing this. This is largely coming from the developing world as they move from very, very simple diets based on very simple agricultural products to more complex agricultural products, including livestock. [These are] perfectly reasonable and legitimate aims for countries moving out of abject poverty.

Quite clearly, there are issues to the individual, within the UK, about to what extent one eats high production diets, for example like large steaks. Someone gave me an indication that a steak meal has used as much carbon as actually driving a large Range Rover from London to Birmingham, so the next time you’re sitting down to your steak and chips, ponder that!

By 2030, the demand for food is going to be increased by about 50%. Can we do it? One of the questions. There is a major food security issue by 2030. We’ve got to somehow produce 50% more by that time.

The second issue I want to focus on is the availability of fresh water. If you’re looking at this slightly complicated graph, we are looking at the top left for the moment, which is showing that the fresh water available per head of the world population is around 25% of what it was in 1960. To give you some idea of this; there are enormous potential shortages in certain parts of the world… China has something like 23% of the world’s population and 11% of the world’s water.

Looking at the right-hand side of the graph, you can see that the massive use of water is in agriculture and particularly in developing world agriculture. Something of the order of 70% of that. One in three people are already facing water shortages and the total world demand for water is predicted to increase by 30% by 2030.

So, we’ve got food — expectation of demand increase of 50% by 2030, we’ve got water — expectation of demand increase of 30% by 2030. And in terms of what it looks like, we have real issues of global water security.

If you look at the graph, the red figures are where there is genuine water stress (this is a prediction of stress in 2025, a little before 2030), so we’re seeing it. Look at some of the places you would expect it, I have mentioned China and also parts of India, but look at parts of southern Europe where by 2025 we are looking at serious issues of water stress….

So, water is really enormously important. I am going to get onto the climate change interactions with it a little bit later but water is the one area that I feel is seriously threatening. It is so important because a shortage of water obviously interacts with a shortage of food, there are real potentials for driving significant international problems — what do you do if you have no water and you have no food? You migrate. So one can have a reasonable expectation that international migration will occur as these shortages come in.

Now, the third one I want to focus on is energy and, driven by the population increase that I talked about, the urbanisation I talked about and indeed the movement out of poverty, the expectation is that primary energy demand is going to increase. This graph shows that last year, for the first time, the demand of the rest of the world exceeded the demand of energy of the OECD. The shading of green is the rest of the non-OECD and the orange shading is China and India, so you can see the enormous effect that’s actually having and you can see the way in which energy demand is actually increasing and going to hit something of the order of a 50% increase, again by 2030.

Now, if that were not enough… those are three things that are coming together. What will the world be like when that happens? But we also have, of course, the issue of climate change. Now, this is a very familiar slide to you all but we are shooting for a target of two degrees centigrade, a perfectly sensible target. There is enormous uncertainty in the climate change models about that particular target. It is perfectly reasonable to say ’shouldn’t we be shooting for one degrees centigrade or, oddly enough, it is perfectly reasonable to say ’shouldn’t we be shooting for three degrees centigrade’, the only information we have is really enormously uncertain in terms of the climate change model.

Shooting for two seems a perfectly sensible and legitimate objective but there are enormous problems. You are talking about serious problems in tropical glaciers — the Chinese government has recognised this and has actually announced about 10 days ago that it is going to build 59 new reservoirs to take the glacial melt in the Xinjiang province. 59 reservoirs. It is actually contemplating putting many of them underground. This is a recognition that water, which has hitherto been stored in glaciers, is going to be very scarce. We have to think about water in a major way.

But the climate change agenda is there and we have to think about it, but this is looking to me like it is getting worse….

I was at a conference yesterday on Arctic ice at the Royal Society. There was a paper presented there by Wang and Overland which indicated that by 2030, they were predicting, the Arctic was likely to be ice-free in the summer. This would have the most enormous impact on the climate change system, big, big serious issues there.

The other area that really worries me in terms of climate change and the potential for positive feedbacks and also for interactions with food is ocean acidification….

As I say, it’s as acid today as it has been for 25 million years. When this occurred some 25 million years ago, this level of acidification in the ocean, you had major problems with it, problems of extinctions of large numbers of species in the ocean community. The areas which are going to be hit most severely by this are the coral reefs of the world and that is already starting to show. Coral reefs provide significant protein supplies to about a billion people. So it is not just that you can’t go snorkelling and see lots of pretty fish, it is that there are a billion people dependent on coral reefs for a very substantial portion of their high protein diet.

So, this is cheerful stuff, isn’t it? What I have said, which I guess is why I have been talking to the media a bit, is I have coined the point that we have got to deal with increased demand for energy, increased demand for food, increased demand for water, and we’ve got to do that while mitigating and adapting to climate change. And we have but 21 years to do it….

I will leave you with some key questions. Can nine billion people be fed? Can we cope with the demands in the future on water? Can we provide enough energy? Can we do it, all that, while mitigating and adapting to climate change? And can we do all that in 21 years time? That’s when these things are going to start hitting in a really big way. We need to act now. We need investment in science and technology, and all the other ways of treating very seriously these major problems. 2030 is not very far away.

Some of this can be avoid or minimized if we act now. Some of it can’t. But if we don’t act strongly now, then by 2030 we will be in the midst of this “perfect storm” of catastrophes — and everyone in the world will know we face much, much worse probably for hundreds and hundreds of years to come.

That is the inflection point, “Planetary Purgatory” — and you’ll want to make sure you and your children have a sustainable job by then. What that might be will be the subject of any later post.

Why? Because the U.S. media is largely ignoring the story. Case in point: Where was the coverage of the Copenhagen Climate Science Congress, attended by 2000 scientists, which concluded with this Key Message #1:

Recent observations confirm that, given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realized. For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived. These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts.

What is the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectory? That would be A1F1 (the red dotted line in the figure below from figure SPM-3 of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Synthesis Report):

The A1F1 scenario takes us to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide of 1000 ppm in 2100 — otherwise known as the end of human civilization as we have known it. Actually it’s worse than that. The 2001 IPCC report largely failed to model amplifying carbon cycle feedbacks. The 2007 IPCC report, which began to consider such feedbacks, warns that even averaging 11 GtC (billion metric tons of carbon) a year this century could take us to 1000 ppm (see “Nature publishes my climate analysis and solution“). The A1F1 scenario averages well above 15 GtC a year through 2100 as you can see from the figure on the left.

Energy Daily (subs. req’d) notes of the U.S. media non-coverage of Copenhagen:

Ironically–given the Gallup finding that two in five Americans think the press is exaggerating climate change concerns–only a few of the major U.S. news outlets published accounts of the Copenhagen gathering, which received heavy coverage by news outlets in Europe and Asia.

Great point — though “ironically” isn’t the right word. There is nothing ironic about this. It is cause and effect. The right word is “tragically.”

Exceeding A1F1 probably means total planetary warming by 2100 compared to preindustrial levels of 5°C or more. I discuss the harsh impacts of such warming here.

West Coast Climate Equity notes:

Last time mean global temperatures reached 2 to 3 degrees Celsius above present levels, in the mid-Pliocene (3 million years ago), an event associated with CO2 levels of about 400 parts per million, polar regions were heated by near-8 degrees C and sea levels have risen by 25+/-12 meters relative to the present. This represents near-total melting of Greenland and west Antarctica ice sheets (Robinson et al., 2008: “Pliocene role in assessing future climate impacts” (http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/ abstracts/ 2008/ Robinson_etal.html).

A rise of mean global temperatures above 4 or 5 degrees Celsius would shift the atmosphere to pre-glacial/interglacial conditions, which dominated the Earth from about 34 million years ago (end-Eocene) (Zachos et al., 2008) http://www.nature.com/ nature/ journal/ v451/ n7176/ full/ nature06588.html

That means ultimate sea level rise of 250 feet, with the best current projection being 5 feet by 2100 (see “Startling new sea level rise research: “Most likely” 0.8 to 2.0 meters by 2100“), rising thereafter 10 to 20 inches a decade (or more) for centuries. Good luck adapting to that, next 50 generations.

Key Message #5 from the Congress is:

Key Message 5: Inaction is Inexcusable

There is no excuse for inaction. We already have many tools and approaches — economic, technological, behavioural, management — to deal effectively with the climate change challenge. But they must be vigorously and widely implemented to achieve the societal transformation required to decarbonise economies. A wide range of benefits will flow from a concerted effort to alter our energy economy now, including sustainable energy job growth, reductions in the health and economic costs of climate change, and the restoration of ecosystems and revitalisation of ecosystem services.

What is inexcusable is US media coverage and the blinkered conservative strategy of scientific denial — what can only be described as a murder-suicide pact with the human race (see “Hill conservatives reject all 3 climate strategies and embrace Rush Limbaugh — what does that radicalism mean for Obama, progressives, and humanity?“).

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:

This raises a critical set of issues, with many important implications potentially able to speed up melting of the Greenland ice sheet, accelerating the rise in sea levels and slowing down the world ocean conveyor belt (THC). That would also have a lot of consequences on the ocean carbon sink (Bates et al. 2006) and ocean acidification. Permafrost melting could also accelerate during rapid Arctic sea-ice loss due to an amplification of Arctic land warming 3.5 times greater than secular 21st century climate trends, as pointed out recently by Lawrence et al. (2008). This permafrost evolution would have important consequences and strong impacts on large carbon reservoirs and methane releases, either in the ocean and/or on land.

This isn’t news to CP readers (see “Tundra 4: Permafrost loss linked to Arctic sea ice loss“).

The whole IPY post has an excellent discussion of some of the underlying research and science. The International Polar Year deserves kudos for this and other blunt statements, all available here.

h/t Michael Tobis

The Program issued a remarkable, though little-remarked-on, report in January, “Probabilistic Forecast for 21st Century Climate Based on Uncertainties in Emissions (without Policy) and Climate Parameters,” by over a dozen leading experts. They reanalyzed their model’s 2003 projections model using the latest data, and concluded:

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 5.1°C compared to 2.4°C in the earlier study.

[Note:  That rise is compared to 1990 levels.  So you can add at least 0.5 °C and 1.0 °F for comparison with pre-industrial temperatures.]

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.

Why the change? The Program’s website explains:

There is no single revision that is responsible for this change. In our more recent global model simulatations, the ocean heat-uptake is slower than previously estimated, the ocean uptake of carbon is weaker, feedbacks from the land system as temperature rises are stronger, cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases over the century are higher, and offsetting cooling from aerosol emissions is lower. No one of these effects is very strong on its own, and even adding each separately together would not fully explain the higher temperatures. Rather than interacting additively, these different affects appear to interact multiplicatively, with feedbacks among the contributing factors, leading to the surprisingly large increase in the chance of much higher temperatures.

The carbon sinks are saturating, and the amplifying feedbacks are worse than previously thought — that, of course, is a central understanding of all climate realists (see Study: Water-vapor feedback is “strong and positive,” so we face “warming of several degrees Celsius” for links to the various feedbacks that have been ignored by most climate models).
Andrew Freedman at washingtonpost.com has one of the very few stories on this important study and reprints this useful figure from MIT:

He explains:

Results of the studies are depicted online in MIT’s “Greenhouse Gamble” exercise that conveys the “range of probability of potential global warming” via roulette wheel graphics (shown above). The modeling output showed that under both a “no policy” scenario and one in which nations took action beginning in the next few years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the odds have shifted in favor of larger temperature increases.

For the no policy scenario, the researchers concluded that there is now a nine percent chance (about one in 11 odds) that the global average surface temperature would increase by more than 7°C (12.6°F) by the end of this century, compared with only a less than one percent chance (one in 100 odds) that warming would be limited to below 3°C (5.4°F).

To repeat, on our current emissions path, we have a 9% chance of an incomprehensibly catastrophic warming of 7°C by century’s end, but less than a 1% chance of under 3°C warming.

“The take home message from the new greenhouse gamble wheels is that if we do little or nothing about lowering greenhouse gas emissions that the dangers are much greater than we thought three or four years ago,” said Ronald G. Prinn, professor of atmospheric chemistry at MIT. “It is making the impetus for serious policy much more urgent than we previously thought.”

The time to act is now.

Related Posts:

• Stabilize at 350 ppm or risk ice-free planet, warn NASA, Yale, Sheffield, Versailles, Boston et al
• Must-read IEA report explains what must be done to avoid 6°C warming
• Nobel laureate Rowland agrees we are headed to 1000 ppm
• AAAS: Climate change is coming much harder, much faster than predicted

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)"].

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):

Over a year ago I wrote to Prime Minister Brown asking him to place a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants in Britain. I have asked the same of Angela Merkel, Barak Obama, Kevin Rudd and other world leaders. The reason is this — coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet.

Our global climate is nearing tipping points. Changes are beginning to appear, and there is a potential for explosive changes with effects that would be irreversible — if we do not rapidly slow fossil fuel emissions over the next few decades.

Tipping points are fed by amplifying feedbacks. As Arctic sea ice melts, the darker ocean absorbs more sunlight and speeds melting. As tundra melts, methane a strong greenhouse gas, is released, causing more warming. As species are pressured and exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.

The public, buffeted by day-to-day weather fluctuations and economic turmoil, has little time or training to analyze decadal changes. How can they be expected to evaluate and filter out advice emanating from special economic interests? How can they distinguish top-notch science and pseudoscience – the words sound the same?

Leaders have no excuse — they are elected to lead and to protect the public and its best interests. Leaders have at their disposal the best scientific organizations in the world, such as the United Kingdom’s Royal Society and the United States National Academy of Sciences.

Only in the past few years did the science crystallize, revealing the urgency — our planet really is in peril. If we do not change course soon, we will hand our children a situation that is out of their control, as amplifying feedbacks drive the dynamics of the global system.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air has already risen to a dangerous level. The preindustrial carbon dioxide amount was 280 parts per million (ppm). Humans, by burning coal, oil and gas have increased carbon dioxide to 385 ppm, and it continues to grow by about 2 ppm per year.

Earth, with its four kilometer deep ocean, responds only slowly to changes of carbon dioxide. So more climate change will occur, even if we make maximum effort to slow carbon dioxide growth. Arctic sea ice will disappear in the summer season within the next few decades.

Mountain glaciers, providing fresh water for rivers that supply hundreds of millions of people, will disappear — practically all of the glaciers could be gone within 50 years, if carbon dioxide continues to increase at current rates. Coral reefs, harboring a quarter of ocean species, are threatened, if carbon dioxide continues to rise.

The greatest threats, hanging like the sword of Damocles over our children and grandchildren, are those that are irreversible on any time scale that humans can imagine. If coastal ice shelves buttressing the West Antarctic ice sheet continue to disintegrate, the ice sheet could disgorge into the ocean, raising sea level by several meters in a century. Such rates of sea level change have occurred many times in Earth’s history in response to global warming rates no higher than that of the past thirty years. Almost half of the world’s great cities, and many historical sites, are located on coast lines.

The most threatening change, from my perspective, is extermination of species. Several times in Earth’s long history rapid global warming of several degrees occurred, apparently spurred by amplifying feedbacks. In each case more than half of plant and animal species went extinct. New species came into being over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. But these are time scales and generations that we cannot imagine.

If we drive our fellow species to extinction we will leave a far more desolate planet for our descendants than the world that we inherited from our elders. We will leave a world haunted by the memories of what was.

Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. Carbon dioxide would increase to 500 ppm or more. We would set the planet on a course to the ice-free state, with sea level 75 meters higher. Coastal disasters would occur continually. The only uncertainty is the time it would take for complete ice sheet disintegration.

The tragedy of the situation, if we do not wake up in time, is that the changes that must be made to stabilize the atmosphere and climate make sense for other reasons. The changes would produce a healthier atmosphere, improved agricultural productivity, clean water, and an ocean providing fish that are safe to eat.

Actions required to solve the problem are dictated by physical facts, especially fossil fuel reservoir sizes. About half of readily extracted oil has been burned already. Oil is used in vehicles, where it is impractical to capture the carbon dioxide. Oil and gas will drive carbon dioxide to at least 400 ppm. But if we cut off the largest source of carbon dioxide, coal, it will be practical to bring carbon dioxide back to 350 ppm and still lower through improved agricultural and forestry practices that increase carbon storage in trees and soil.

Coal is not only the largest fossil fuel reservoir of carbon dioxide, it is the dirtiest fuel. Coal is polluting the world’s oceans and streams with mercury, arsenic and other dangerous chemicals. 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 trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death. When I testified against the proposed Kingsnorth power plant, I estimated that in its lifetime it would be responsible for extermination of about 400 species — its proportionate contribution to the number that would be committed to extinction if carbon dioxide rose another 100 ppm. Of course, we cannot say which specific species should be blamed on Kingsnorth, but who are we to say that any species are worthless?

The German and Australian governments pretend to be green. When I show German officials that fossil fuel reservoir sizes imply that the coal source must be cut off, they say they will tighten the “carbon cap”. But a cap only slows the use of a fuel, it does not leave it in the ground. When I point out that their new coal plants require that they convince Russia to leave its oil in the ground, they are silent. The Australian government was elected on a platform of solving the climate problem, but then, with the help of industry, they set emission targets so high as to guarantee untold disasters for the young and the unborn. These governments are not green. They are black — coal black.

On a per capita basis, the three countries most responsible for fossil fuel carbon dioxide in the air today are the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany, in that order. Politicians in Britain have asked me: why am I speaking to them — the United States must lead? But coal interests have great power in the United States — the essential moratorium and phase-out of coal likely requires a growing public demand and a political will yet to be demonstrated.

The Prime Minister should not underestimate his potential to initiate a transformative change of direction. And he must not pretend to be ignorant of the consequences of continuing coal emission, or take refuge in a “carbon cap” or some “target” for future emission reductions. Young people are beginning to understand the situation. They want to know: will you join their side? Remember that history, and your children, will judge you.

Okay, Hansen is characteristically blunt, not uncharacteristically blunt, but I’m still putting it in my new category.

Related Posts:

• Hansen: “Tell Barack Obama About Coal River Mountain”
• Hansen (at AGU) to Obama: “We could solve this problem if we would just tell the truth”
• Stabilize at 350 ppm or risk ice-free planet, warn NASA, Yale, Sheffield, Versailles, Boston et al
• Drilling off-shore is a “crazy thing” says Hansen on 20th anniversary of his famous testimony
• ‘Tipping Point’ — A non-technical Hansen piece
• Hansen’s plea for leadership to Nevada Gov.
• Hansen (et al) must read: Get back to 350 ppm or risk an ice-free planetHansen’s op-ed advice to Massachusetts
• Hansen stands by coal train/death train analogy
• Hansen’s final Iowa testimony
• Another “Must Read” from Hansen: ‘Long-term’ climate sensitivity of 6°C for doubled CO2
• A Must Read: “Global Temperature Change,” by James Hansen et al.
• Hansen 1: Sea Level Rise
• Hansen 2: Iowa Edition of Declaration of Stewardship
• Hansen on “civil disobedience”