recognising reality

[emordnilap]

This is a link to a very short and disturbing article on our very own Chris Vernon's blog, for those who don't already read it.

The time for hope is over; it is simply illogical to continue believing that dangerous future climate projections can be mitigated through national and international agreements, or through pro-active action. We now have to consider life in a 4 °C warmer world, described here in a report for the World Bank.

[biffvernon]

Indeed. It might be useful to focus our discussions on how we might adapt to a 4 degree world - at least for anybody slightly younger than me or with an interest in children and grandchildren or with an interest in the future of humanity.

[kenneal - lagger]

It would be useful to "focus our discussions on how we might adapt to a 4 degree world" if we knew what that world would be like. It was thought that it would be hotter for us in the UK but it is looking increasing likely that we could be very much hotter one week and then very much colder the following week. We just don't know what the future will bring.

Apart, that is, from higher sea levels. Any one living within 5 metres of sea level or on soft ground anywhere near five metres above sea level should move, forthwith, to higher ground. The longer you leave it to move the more difficult it will be to sell that house or get a safer one. The same goes for anyone living on a flood plain. It might be too late there though as this last couple of years has already shown the perils of that situation.

With regard to food production, we have the dilemma of whether to grow plants suitable for a water stressed or water stressed situation: too much or too little? That is the question. Or even too much and too little in the same year! Wheat or oats? Aubergines or savoys? Do we need large areas of polytunnel or solar shade netting. At least we know that we will need the frames: what to put on top?

[UndercoverElephant]

Indeed. It might be useful to focus our discussions on how we might adapt to a 4 degree world - at least for anybody slightly younger than me or with an interest in children and grandchildren or with an interest in the future of humanity.

Or perhaps we could re-arrange the question to ram home the reality even harder. How much difference would a 4 degree rise make? Clearly it would cause total chaos from our point of view at this point in time, but it probably wouldn't be enough to cut down human industial activity to the point where no further damage was being caused. It won't stop at 4 degrees. Once the antarctic ice sheets start to go, I can't see what's going to stop the process and reverse it apart from the removal of 5 or 6 billion humans from the equation.

Perhaps we should ask how high the temperature is going to have to go before the consequences for humanity entail the effective ending of our industrialised way of life, or at least its reduction to proportions that are not longer capable of further screwing up the climate. How hard does nature have to hit us before we stop provoking her?

[biffvernon]

Apart, that is, from higher sea levels. Any one living within 5 metres of sea level or on soft ground anywhere near five metres above sea level should move, forthwith, to higher ground. The longer you leave it to move the more difficult it will be to sell that house or get a safer one.

I live below sea level at high tide. I don't worry about it and I don't think it will be a problem for my house for the rest of this century. There are substantial sea defences and they are constantly being improved. Building sea banks is a low technology affair and, in relation to the value of the land protected, not an expensive task. The Environment Agency have a pretty good handle on it. Much of the Netherlands has managed for a long time.

[UndercoverElephant]

Apart, that is, from higher sea levels. Any one living within 5 metres of sea level or on soft ground anywhere near five metres above sea level should move, forthwith, to higher ground. The longer you leave it to move the more difficult it will be to sell that house or get a safer one.

I live below sea level at high tide. I don't worry about it and I don't think it will be a problem for my house for the rest of this century. There are substantial sea defences and they are constantly being improved. Building sea banks is a low technology affair and, in relation to the value of the land protected, not an expensive task. The Environment Agency have a pretty good handle on it. Much of the Netherlands has managed for a long time.

I think you're wrong. I think sea levels are going to rise faster than you think they will, and that eventually the defences will fail. We can't build a wall around the British Isles.

[clv101]

Apart, that is, from higher sea levels. Any one living within 5 metres of sea level or on soft ground anywhere near five metres above sea level should move, forthwith, to higher ground. The longer you leave it to move the more difficult it will be to sell that house or get a safer one.

I live below sea level at high tide. I don't worry about it and I don't think it will be a problem for my house for the rest of this century. There are substantial sea defences and they are constantly being improved. Building sea banks is a low technology affair and, in relation to the value of the land protected, not an expensive task. The Environment Agency have a pretty good handle on it. Much of the Netherlands has managed for a long time.

I think you're wrong. I think sea levels are going to rise faster than you think they will, and that eventually the defences will fail. We can't build a wall around the British Isles.

Anyone talking about the UK experiencing significantly more than 1m sea level rise by 2100 is basing their views on poor science at best. It depends on your time horizon obviously, very few people alive today will see 2100. Ken's 5m threshold for selling/moving seems arbitrary. There's a huge difference between 2m and 4m of sea level rise, a few generations at least. The situation is dire but sea level rise is not an 'urgent' problem. Whilst I wouldn't buy a house below average sea level, I would consider one at 2m and at 4m sea level rise wouldn't even be a consideration.

Thanks for the link emordnilap!

[UndercoverElephant]

I live below sea level at high tide. I don't worry about it and I don't think it will be a problem for my house for the rest of this century. There are substantial sea defences and they are constantly being improved. Building sea banks is a low technology affair and, in relation to the value of the land protected, not an expensive task. The Environment Agency have a pretty good handle on it. Much of the Netherlands has managed for a long time.

I think you're wrong. I think sea levels are going to rise faster than you think they will, and that eventually the defences will fail. We can't build a wall around the British Isles.

Anyone talking about the UK experiencing significantly more than 1m sea level rise by 2100 is basing their views on poor science at best.

A one metre rise is pretty bad news on a rural coast when you're already below high tide without a storm surge.

[emordnilap]

Chris, there are probably quite a few on here who already read your blog but I felt that what you were pointing out needed bumping. It might get you a few more readers, hopefully. Keep up the eye-opening.

[clv101]

A one metre rise is pretty bad news on a rural coast when you're already below high tide without a storm surge.

60 years ago this month, there was a high spring tide and exceptional storm surge hitting the Lincolnshire coast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953

biffvernon's house, below sea level at high tide stayed dry. Sea levels are today around 10-15cm higher than they were then, but defences are dramatically better, being built to accommodate 1.2m sea level rise. It's a much safer location today than it was 60 years ago, and I expect it will remain so at least until the end of the century.

[RenewableCandy]

I don't know so shall ask: how "active"/"passive" are these defences? That is, would they remain useful if unstaffed (including monitoring, maintenance, etc)? Obviously in this context, "passive" is better.

[biffvernon]

The sea defences round us are passive (not like the Thames Barrier). They are mostly banks of earth many meters wide and several high. Where there's not sufficient convenient space they are made of concrete.

The active parts are the pumps that lift rain water up off the land and into the sea. If they fail then there will be a problem developing slowly in some areas but hardly life threatening.

[RenewableCandy]

Ta.

[Billhook]

For over a fortnight I’ve refrained from responding to Chris’s article, "Recognizing Reality," which is essentially mistaken in my view, since I didn’t want to risk causing offence to someone I respect. (My version of self-censorship I suppose). Yet it is plain that this discussion must be engaged if what amounts to an unintentional but serious encouragement of defeatism is to be remedied.
So, with all due respect, here goes.

The article is certainly well informed regarding the scale of threat now posed by climate destabilization, though in being so brief it lacks detail in some regards and thus the conclusions such detail could impose. Two such aspects that seem notable to me are:
1/. The observed ongoing acceleration of at least six out of seven major interactive feedbacks (assuming the arctic clathrates’ accelerating collapse has yet to be confirmed) – with the most advanced being cryosphere decline and consequent albedo loss, which was reported in 2010 as already imposing a forcing equivalent to about 30% of anthro-CO2 output.
2/. The finding by Hansen & Sato that ending our fossil fuel output and so ending our maintenance of the cooling ‘sulphate parasol’ will unveil an additional 110% (+/-30%) of realized warming. I’ve yet to read any published refutation of their finding and, given Hansen’s record, until a refutation is provided it is logical to include this finding in scenarios of future warming.

Taking a ‘best case’ of Emissions Control as being near-zero CO2e output by 2050, we’d then face 0.8C of realized warming, plus 0.7C timelagged ‘in the pipeline’, plus 0.6C of warming from phase out-emissions, giving 2.1C committed by 2050. Adding the mean 110% unveiling to this gives 4.4C (+/-0.6C) after the timelag by around 2080. This would allow 68 years of continuous warming to over five times its present level for the interactions of the major feedbacks to take off. After 2080 warming would then continue to accelerate at a pace dictated by the feedbacks, several of which each have the potential to dwarf anthro-emissions.

From this ‘best case’ perspective the statement “We now have to consider life in a 4 °C warmer world,” is without foundation. Even with a best case Emissions Control we should certainly pass through 4.0C, but only as part of a trajectory to far higher warming. Thus there is no rational prospect of adaption as we would face intensifying destabilization both of the climate and via its economic, social and political consequences.

In reality we wouldn’t get anywhere near such an SAT as 4.0C of warming before agriculture collapses. We are already seeing major impacts worldwide at just 0.8C realized, with a recent study by Leeds Uni researchers asserting the probability of crop failures and general food shortages across Asia within 10 to 15 years. Given many nations’ dependence on food imports even before current climate impacts, plus nations’ propensity to halt exports and hoard supplies in times of global shortages, I’d suggest that we face widespread intensifying food shortages and regional-scale famines within 10 to 20 years, long before we reach 2.0C realized. Thus any thought of “grandchildren adapting” to far higher warming is actually just another level of denial of the gravity of our predicament.

Yet while the article understates the existential hazard we face, it also excludes the critical fraction of our potential mitigation capacity, namely geo-engineering in both its Carbon Recovery and Albedo Restoration modes. While these are essentially pointless without a global regime of Emissions Control, even the best case of that regime is plainly not sufficient by itself even to limit the problem. All three are inevitably required as part of an equitable and efficient global climate treaty that allocates declining national emission rights and mandates the stringent scientific supervision of the objectives, research and trials of both modes of geo-e, with the decision to deploy techniques taken collectively by the UN member nations.

Such a treaty is a real potential for the resolution of AGW, and while that remains the case (up to the point of the geo-political destabilization due to global famines) the article’s statement “The time for hope is over; it is simply illogical to continue believing that dangerous future climate projections can be mitigated through national and international agreements” is without foundation. Moreover it is directly (if unintentionally) promoting apathy and defeatism, which are to my mind among the most dangerous of creeds in our present circs.

Perhaps the critical line of the article is the statement “The lack of action is not for lack of knowledge." The data and scientific understanding have been clear for a long time and yet over the last decade carbon emissions have increased by a greater amount than in any previous decade” This is entirely accurate but it leaves unasked the question of just why this should be so. The received wisdom is that the fossil lobby prevents action, but I've seen no proper evaluation of that widely held belief. So, consider:

- Are we to accept that the fossil lobby controls all other industrial and financial sectors’ corporations, who are doubtless well aware of intensifying damage trends and who have no inherent loyalty to fossil energy ?
- Given the number of EU corporations that have been pointedly promoting commensurate global collective action, are we to believe that the above control holds true in the US but not Europe, and if so, why is that ?
- Given that Shell, BP and other EU energy corporations have been supportive of action, why are they out of line with their US counterparts who fund the circus of denial ?
- If US energy corporations are sufficiently powerful to dictate to all US corporations and the US government that it will pursue a nationally suicidal course, why have they not been able to easily control both the EU and the many small nations that are taking action ?
- And finally, Cui Bono ? Who benefits from the apparently suicidal fixation with avoiding action on climate ?

The hints giving the answer to “who benefits” are found in just who switched US policy from the constructive negotiation of Kyoto to outright obstruction (namely Cheyney + puppet) and just whose conduct has been simply bizarre given both his adamant support of action (even in November 2008 after being elected) and given around 80% US popular support for action, and given both the climate damages now matching most of 2012 US GDP and the projections of their major intensification – namely Obama.

The ‘why’ in my view lies not in the fantasy of an all-powerful US fossil lobby but in the fact that America’s paramount policy priority since WW2 has been the maintenance of US global economic dominance, on which the profits of all US corporations and the whole American 'way of life' depends. While previous generations in Washington saw the USSR’s bid for dominance as fully justifying the vast costs and existential risks of a cold war nuclear arms race, Cheyney + puppet disdained that approach. Instead, a Brinkmanship of Inaction on climate was launched against China that would, given time, cause food shortages that could be expected to break the regime and end its bid for dominance. Obama signalled his adoption of the extant US policy in March 2009, when he adopted Bush’s unilateral 2005 emissions baseline and reneged on the UNFCCC 1990 baseline.

The relevance of just why the US has chosen to prevent action on climate is that it transforms the prospects for achieving a commensurate global climate treaty. Unlike the fantasy of an all-powerful US fossil lobby, the US government is amenable to reason, and it now faces cogent reasons to doubt the efficacy of its stance. The bipartisan policy of a Brinkmanship of Inaction was based on flawed assumptions that were received wisdom in 2000: that developing nations like China would face far worse climate impacts than America; and that America would be far better able to afford the damage and rebuilding costs, and food price rises, than China.

In reality, climate impacts have evidently been rising much faster in the US than in any comparable region (says Munich Re), and not only has the US crashed its economy but also China responded to Cheyney’s brinkmanship with an all-out coal-fired growth program, meaning that its economy is on track to exceed America’s in 2016. Thus both assumptions of relative advantage were 180 degrees wrong, and it has to be increasingly obvious within the US establishment that its amoral policy has proven counterproductive and is essentially unsustainable.

No doubt the bipartisan policy won’t fall overnight, but there are already straws in the wind – such as Bloomberg’s forthright response to Superstorm Sandy ending the consensus of silence from US corporations, and the US chief climate negotiator’s shift from denying the need of a treaty in Durban in 2011 to acknowledging the right of ‘compensation’ at Doha in 2012. The obvious embarrassment of problems over raising borrowing to pay for the damages of Sandy, let alone for those of the ongoing US drought, also have to be focussing legislators' attention as well as the White House.

From this perspective it seems rather clear that far from facing the impossibility of effective mitigation, we are approaching a denouement in the coming years where, with sufficient well-informed pressure, a commensurate treaty could be agreed. There is no certainty that it will be, but there is a good possibility that it can be.

I’d therefore call on Chris to again candidly review his past proposals and, along with others reading this, to consider these ideas on their merits. If there are lacunae (that no one previously has pointed out) then please point them out – Indulging the tempting glamours of ‘fin de siecle’ when evidence to the contrary is available is not only beneath any serious student of the climate issue, it is also potentially self-fulfilling via its promotion of a disabling defeatism.

Finally I would repeat that I hope this overlong post does not cause any personal offence – my intended targets are deficient ideas, not well-intentioned people.

Regards,

Lewis

[emordnilap]

Fascinating. More please.