Why Leading Scientists Underestimated How Quickly We're Scorching the Atmosphere
By Elizabeth Grossman, Earth Island Journal
March 9, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/environment/130855/why_leading_scientists_underestimated_how_quickly_we%27re_scorching_the_atmosphere/
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/130855
http://www.alternet.org/story/130855/
In its most recent official report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) significantly underestimated the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would occur during the last seven years, a miscalculation that has put the planet beyond the "range of possibilities" considered by some of the world's top climatologists. The overly optimistic predictions in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment, released in 2007, appear to have been driven, in part, by the political dynamics involved in the international effort. The underestimation means that government negotiators meeting in Copenhagen later this year to write a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol will have a tougher task than previously imagined.
"We're looking at future climate beyond anything we've considered," Chris Field, director of the global ecology department at the Carnegie Institution for Science, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Chicago last month. "Actual emissions are at or above the total range of possibilities considered in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment."
The underestimation of greenhouse emissions occurred, Field said, because the IPCC failed to include in its scenarios the rapid increase in carbon dioxide from Asia's coal-reliant industrial expansion between 2000 and 2007.
"We were too optimistic," Field said. "There was no decrease in emissions from developed countries and the sharpest increases and overall intensity came from China and India that rely heavily on coal."
"It was assumed that coal would become less important," says Ken Caldeira, also of the Carnegie Institution. What happened, however, is that China and India developed rapidly while rising oil prices pushed wealthy nations to use more coal, which is more CO2 intensive in its emissions. Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Science Institute concur that the past five years' sharp increase in atmospheric CO2 is attributable to the steep rise in global coal use, pushed upward by accelerated Asian economic and industrial development.
"IPCC scenarios assume an increase in energy efficiency during this period," Caldeira says. But that didn't happen. "Efficiency flattened out," he says.
Scientists involved in the IPCC process say that IPCC reports are designed to capture the long-term rather than short-term trends, and cannot incorporate data after a certain point, so the 2007 report relied on pre-2002 data. Nevertheless, widely available pre-2002 data would have suggested an upward trend in Asian emissions.
According to research by Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of the Energy Technology Innovation Project at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, China has been a net importer of oil since 1993. During the 1990s, writes Gallagher, Chinese car sales grew about 27 percent a year, doubling the number of cars on the road every 2.5 years. The US Energy Information Agency data shows coal consumption by China and India approximately tripling between 1980 and 2005.
Given the fact that the breakneck economic growth in India and China were well known phenomena, how could the Nobel prize-winning IPCC have omitted an increase in Asian carbon emissions from its scenarios? The short answer appears to be politics.
"Social and political dynamics are at work," in producing final IPCC reports, Fields said at the AAAS meeting.
Stanford University biology professor and climate scientist Stephen Schneider agrees. "The lead authors are constrained by government reviewers," Schneider says. "The political process cuts the edges and doesn't do a good job at the tails of the bell curve, which is where we are now.
"These reports are consensus documents and when it comes to politics, the interests of small island nations are different than those of the U.S., China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait."
There is a political and diplomatic incentive to low-ball emissions predictions becaue lower numbers make the task ahead appear less onerous.
"Overtly or covertly, if you have an optimistic baseline of what happens in the absence of policy, it makes what you need to do appear relatively modest," Caldeira says. "People who want to make the problem look more tractable have an incentive to make the baseline ore optimistic. If you have a more depressing picture, it's more difficult to make the transition."
For example, Caldeira says that if we're to stabilize atmospheric carbon at what's now considered tenable levels for the climate -- about 350 parts per million (we're now at about 385 ppm) -- the world's energy systems must be carbon neutral by mid-century. That's a daunting task that many governments appear hesitant to grapple with.
Not only has atmospheric carbon increased beyond the range of possibilities, but so too has effects of that increase on Earth's ecosystems. The retreat of Arctic Sea ice, the collapse of permafrost, ice sheet melt and that melting's contribution to sea level rise are occurring faster and with more intensity than expected. Atmospheric carbon dioxide, Field said, rose 3.5 percent annually between 2000 and 2007, compared with annual increases of 0.9 percent in the 1990s. Between 1993 and 2003, melting ice sheets accounted for 40 percent of sea level rise. That contribution is now estimated at 80 percent.
"The more we learn about the process [of climate change], the more severe the risk becomes," says Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. Oppenheimer and Schneider are among the co-authors of a paper just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that the impacts of a 1-2°C rise in global mean temperature are much greater and pose greater environmental risks than previously anticipated.
Whether or not the Asian carbon surge continues, its impacts will be with us for decades -- even centuries -- because of the length of time carbon lingers in the atmosphere. "Nothing we could do now to stabilize carbon could be too fast or fast enough," says Tom Athanasiou, director of the organization Eco-Equity, an Earth Island Insitute-sponsored project. "The storyline was wrong."
The underestimation of recent greenhouse emissions threatens to complicate the work of government officials who will meet in Copenhagen in December to hammer out an international climate agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. With climate change occurring faster than scientists have the ability to predict -- and the impacts greater than anticipated -- an international deadlock is unacceptable, Anthanasiou says.
"Maybe the most important thing is to communicate the severity of the situation in a way that gets through people's defenses," he says.
Elizabeth Grossman, the author of High Tech Trash, is a frequent contributor to Earth Island Journal.
Showing posts with label earth: glaciers melting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label earth: glaciers melting. Show all posts
Friday, March 13, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
How the Rich are Destroying the Earth
How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth
November 24, 2008
http://www.enn.com/lifestyle/commentary/38716
http://www.enn.com/lifestyle/commentary/38716/print
Environment: There is an emergency. In less than a decade we will have to change
course, but there are a few major obstacles blocking the way.
The following is reprinted from the new book How the Rich Are Destroying the
Earth by Herve Kempf and published by Chelsea Green.
There is an emergency. In less than a decade we will have to change course --
assuming the collapse of the U.S. economy or the explosion of the Middle East
does not impose a change through chaos. To confront the emergency, we must
understand the objective: to achieve a sober society; to plot out the way there;
to accomplish this transformation equitably, by first making those with the most
carry the burden within and between societies; to take inspiration from
collective values ascribed to here in France by our nation's motto: "Liberty,
ecology, fraternity."
What are the main obstacles that block the way?
ADVERTISEMENT
First of all, received wisdom -- prejudices really -- so loaded that they orient
collective action without anyone really thinking about them. The most powerful
of these preconceived ideas is the belief in growth as the sole means of
resolving social problems. That position is powerfully defended even as it is
contradicted by the facts. And it is always defended by putting ecology aside
because the zealots know that growth is incapable of responding to the
environmental issue.
The second of these ideas, less cocky although very broadly disseminated,
proclaims that technological progress will resolve environmental problems. This
idea is propagated because it allows people to hope we will be able to avoid any
serious changes in our collective behaviors thanks to technological progress.
The development of technology, or rather of certain technical channels to the
detriment of others, reinforces the system and fosters solid profits.
The third piece of received wisdom is the inevitability of unemployment. This
idea is closely linked to the two previous ideas. Unemployment has become a
given, largely manufactured by capitalism to assure the docility of the populace
and especially of the lowest level of workers. From a contrary position, the
transfer of the oligarchy's wealth for the purpose of public services, a system
of taxation that weighed more heavily on pollution and on capital than on
employment, sustainable agricultural policies in the countries of the South, and
research into energy efficiency are immense sources of employment.
A fourth commonly associates Europe and North America in a community of fortune.
But their paths have diverged. Europe is still a standard-bearer for an ideal of
universalism, the validity of which it demonstrates by its ability to unite --
despite problems -- very different states and cultures. Energy consumption,
cultural values -- for example, the critical significance of food -- the
rejection of the death penalty and torture, less pronounced inequality and the
maintenance of an ideal of social justice, respect for international law, and
support for the Kyoto Protocol on climate are some of the many traits that
distinguish Europe from the United States.
Europe must be separated from the obese power and draw closer to the South,
unless the United States shows it can really change.
The Oligarchy Could Be Divided
Then there are the forces at work.
The first, of course, is the power of the system itself. The failures that will
occur will not in themselves be sufficient to undo the system, since, as we have
seen, they could offer the pretext to promote an authoritarian system divested
of any show of democracy.
The social movement has woken up, however, and may continue to gain power. But
it alone will not be able to carry the day in the face of the rise of
repression: it will be necessary for the middle classes and part of the
oligarchy -- which is not monolithic -- to clearly take sides for public
freedoms and the common good. The mass media constitute a central challenge.
Today they support capitalism because of their own economic situation. They
depend, for the most part, on advertising. That makes it difficult for them to
plead for a reduction in consumption.
On top of that, the development of free papers that depend solely on advertising
further increases the pressure on widely distributed paid newspapers, many of
which have entered the stables of big industrial groups. It's not certain that
the information possibilities generated by the Internet, although immense -- and
for as long as these remain open -- will be adequate to counterbalance the
weight of the mass media should it wholly become the voice of the oligarchy.
Nevertheless, not all journalists are totally enthralled yet, and they could be
galvanized around the ideal of freedom.
The third, wobbly force is the left. Since its social-democratic component
became its center of gravity, it has abandoned any ambition of transforming the
world. The compromise with free-market liberalism has led the left to so totally
adopt the values of free-market liberalism that it no longer dares -- except in
the most cautious terms -- to deplore social inequality. On top of that, the
left displays an almost cartoonish refusal to truly engross itself in
environmental issues.
The left remains pickled in the idea of progress as it was conceived in the
nineteenth century, still believes that science is produced the same way it was
in the time of Albert Einstein, and intones the chant of economic growth without
the slightest trace of critical thinking. Moreover, "social capitalism" rather
than "social democracy" is undoubtedly the more apposite term.
Nonetheless, can the challenges of the twenty-first century be addressed by the
currents of tradition other than the one that identified inequality as its
primary motive for revolt?
This hiatus is at the heart of political life. The left will be reborn by
uniting the causes of inequality and the environment -- or, unfit, it will
disappear in the general disorder that will sweep it and everything else away.
And yet, let us be optimistic. Optimistic, because there are ever more of us who
understand -- unlike all the conservatives -- the historical novelty of the
situation: we are living out a new, never-seen-before phase of the human
species' history, the moment when, having conquered the Earth and reached its
limits, humanity must rethink its relationship to nature, to space, to its
destiny.
We are optimistic to the extent that awareness of the importance of the current
stakes becomes pervasive, to the extent that the spirit of freedom and of
solidarity is aroused. Since Seattle and the protests against the World Trade
Organization in 1999, the pendulum has begun to swing in the other direction,
toward a collective concern about the choices for the future, seeking
cooperation rather than competition.
The somewhat successful, although still incomplete, battle in Europe against
GMOs, the international community's continuance of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001
despite the United States' withdrawal, the refusal by the peoples of Europe to
participate in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the general recognition of the
urgency of climate-change challenge are signs that the wind of the future has
begun to blow. Despite the scale of the challenges that await us, solutions are
emerging and -- faced with the sinister prospects the oligarchs promote -- the
desire to remake the world is being reborn.
Herve Kempf is the environmental editor of Le Monde, France's most influential
newspaper and the author of the new book, How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth.
November 24, 2008
http://www.enn.com/lifestyle/commentary/38716
http://www.enn.com/lifestyle/commentary/38716/print
Environment: There is an emergency. In less than a decade we will have to change
course, but there are a few major obstacles blocking the way.
The following is reprinted from the new book How the Rich Are Destroying the
Earth by Herve Kempf and published by Chelsea Green.
There is an emergency. In less than a decade we will have to change course --
assuming the collapse of the U.S. economy or the explosion of the Middle East
does not impose a change through chaos. To confront the emergency, we must
understand the objective: to achieve a sober society; to plot out the way there;
to accomplish this transformation equitably, by first making those with the most
carry the burden within and between societies; to take inspiration from
collective values ascribed to here in France by our nation's motto: "Liberty,
ecology, fraternity."
What are the main obstacles that block the way?
ADVERTISEMENT
First of all, received wisdom -- prejudices really -- so loaded that they orient
collective action without anyone really thinking about them. The most powerful
of these preconceived ideas is the belief in growth as the sole means of
resolving social problems. That position is powerfully defended even as it is
contradicted by the facts. And it is always defended by putting ecology aside
because the zealots know that growth is incapable of responding to the
environmental issue.
The second of these ideas, less cocky although very broadly disseminated,
proclaims that technological progress will resolve environmental problems. This
idea is propagated because it allows people to hope we will be able to avoid any
serious changes in our collective behaviors thanks to technological progress.
The development of technology, or rather of certain technical channels to the
detriment of others, reinforces the system and fosters solid profits.
The third piece of received wisdom is the inevitability of unemployment. This
idea is closely linked to the two previous ideas. Unemployment has become a
given, largely manufactured by capitalism to assure the docility of the populace
and especially of the lowest level of workers. From a contrary position, the
transfer of the oligarchy's wealth for the purpose of public services, a system
of taxation that weighed more heavily on pollution and on capital than on
employment, sustainable agricultural policies in the countries of the South, and
research into energy efficiency are immense sources of employment.
A fourth commonly associates Europe and North America in a community of fortune.
But their paths have diverged. Europe is still a standard-bearer for an ideal of
universalism, the validity of which it demonstrates by its ability to unite --
despite problems -- very different states and cultures. Energy consumption,
cultural values -- for example, the critical significance of food -- the
rejection of the death penalty and torture, less pronounced inequality and the
maintenance of an ideal of social justice, respect for international law, and
support for the Kyoto Protocol on climate are some of the many traits that
distinguish Europe from the United States.
Europe must be separated from the obese power and draw closer to the South,
unless the United States shows it can really change.
The Oligarchy Could Be Divided
Then there are the forces at work.
The first, of course, is the power of the system itself. The failures that will
occur will not in themselves be sufficient to undo the system, since, as we have
seen, they could offer the pretext to promote an authoritarian system divested
of any show of democracy.
The social movement has woken up, however, and may continue to gain power. But
it alone will not be able to carry the day in the face of the rise of
repression: it will be necessary for the middle classes and part of the
oligarchy -- which is not monolithic -- to clearly take sides for public
freedoms and the common good. The mass media constitute a central challenge.
Today they support capitalism because of their own economic situation. They
depend, for the most part, on advertising. That makes it difficult for them to
plead for a reduction in consumption.
On top of that, the development of free papers that depend solely on advertising
further increases the pressure on widely distributed paid newspapers, many of
which have entered the stables of big industrial groups. It's not certain that
the information possibilities generated by the Internet, although immense -- and
for as long as these remain open -- will be adequate to counterbalance the
weight of the mass media should it wholly become the voice of the oligarchy.
Nevertheless, not all journalists are totally enthralled yet, and they could be
galvanized around the ideal of freedom.
The third, wobbly force is the left. Since its social-democratic component
became its center of gravity, it has abandoned any ambition of transforming the
world. The compromise with free-market liberalism has led the left to so totally
adopt the values of free-market liberalism that it no longer dares -- except in
the most cautious terms -- to deplore social inequality. On top of that, the
left displays an almost cartoonish refusal to truly engross itself in
environmental issues.
The left remains pickled in the idea of progress as it was conceived in the
nineteenth century, still believes that science is produced the same way it was
in the time of Albert Einstein, and intones the chant of economic growth without
the slightest trace of critical thinking. Moreover, "social capitalism" rather
than "social democracy" is undoubtedly the more apposite term.
Nonetheless, can the challenges of the twenty-first century be addressed by the
currents of tradition other than the one that identified inequality as its
primary motive for revolt?
This hiatus is at the heart of political life. The left will be reborn by
uniting the causes of inequality and the environment -- or, unfit, it will
disappear in the general disorder that will sweep it and everything else away.
And yet, let us be optimistic. Optimistic, because there are ever more of us who
understand -- unlike all the conservatives -- the historical novelty of the
situation: we are living out a new, never-seen-before phase of the human
species' history, the moment when, having conquered the Earth and reached its
limits, humanity must rethink its relationship to nature, to space, to its
destiny.
We are optimistic to the extent that awareness of the importance of the current
stakes becomes pervasive, to the extent that the spirit of freedom and of
solidarity is aroused. Since Seattle and the protests against the World Trade
Organization in 1999, the pendulum has begun to swing in the other direction,
toward a collective concern about the choices for the future, seeking
cooperation rather than competition.
The somewhat successful, although still incomplete, battle in Europe against
GMOs, the international community's continuance of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001
despite the United States' withdrawal, the refusal by the peoples of Europe to
participate in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the general recognition of the
urgency of climate-change challenge are signs that the wind of the future has
begun to blow. Despite the scale of the challenges that await us, solutions are
emerging and -- faced with the sinister prospects the oligarchs promote -- the
desire to remake the world is being reborn.
Herve Kempf is the environmental editor of Le Monde, France's most influential
newspaper and the author of the new book, How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Alaska: 99% of Glaciers are melting
In Alaska, 99% of Glaciers Are in Retreat
10.7.2008
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/alaska-glaciers-47100702?src=nl&mag=tdg&list=dgr&kw=ist
http://www.thedailygreen.com/print-this/environmental-news/latest/alaska-glaciers-47100702
[See photos:
http://www.thedailygreen.com/weird-weather/alaskan-glacier-photos-50080708 ]
Sarah Palin was right about one thing in her statements about global warming: The effects are being seen in her home state of Alaska like in no other U.S. state.
A new U.S. Geological Survey book details the dramatic changes in Alaskan glaciers.
More than 99% of glaciers — in other words, all but a handful of anomalies — are retreating.
While the melting began, in some cases, as far back as the mid-1800s, the rate of melting has accelerated in the last two decades, as the effects of global warming have been more acutely felt.
Besides being beautiful and adding that wild quality to Alaskan landscapes, glaciers provide drinking water, irrigation and base flow for rivers and streams that support wildlife like salmon.
The melting of Alaskan glaciers is only one sign of climate change in the Arctic, where the 2007 and 2008 summers saw far more sea ice melt than any previous year on record. Polar bears and other Arctic animals are endangered. The Bush Administration on Monday settled a dispute with environmental groups and agreed to designate protected habitat for the polar bear that will restrict some oil and gas development.
Palin, as governor of Alaska, had sued to stop the listing of the polar bear as threatened specifically because it would have a disproportionate effect on Alaska, specifically its oil and gas exploration. Before being named as John McCain's running mate, she said she doubted human pollution causes global warming, and has since emphasized the effects and the action needed to rein in climate change, but always emphasizes that climactic changes may be natural and cyclic, rather than man-made.
The polar bear is only one of several species being considered for listing as threatened because of global warming's effect on the Arctic.
10.7.2008
http://www.thedailygreen.com/
http://www.thedailygreen.com/
[See photos:
http://www.thedailygreen.com/
Sarah Palin was right about one thing in her statements about global warming: The effects are being seen in her home state of Alaska like in no other U.S. state.
A new U.S. Geological Survey book details the dramatic changes in Alaskan glaciers.
More than 99% of glaciers — in other words, all but a handful of anomalies — are retreating.
While the melting began, in some cases, as far back as the mid-1800s, the rate of melting has accelerated in the last two decades, as the effects of global warming have been more acutely felt.
Besides being beautiful and adding that wild quality to Alaskan landscapes, glaciers provide drinking water, irrigation and base flow for rivers and streams that support wildlife like salmon.
The melting of Alaskan glaciers is only one sign of climate change in the Arctic, where the 2007 and 2008 summers saw far more sea ice melt than any previous year on record. Polar bears and other Arctic animals are endangered. The Bush Administration on Monday settled a dispute with environmental groups and agreed to designate protected habitat for the polar bear that will restrict some oil and gas development.
Palin, as governor of Alaska, had sued to stop the listing of the polar bear as threatened specifically because it would have a disproportionate effect on Alaska, specifically its oil and gas exploration. Before being named as John McCain's running mate, she said she doubted human pollution causes global warming, and has since emphasized the effects and the action needed to rein in climate change, but always emphasizes that climactic changes may be natural and cyclic, rather than man-made.
The polar bear is only one of several species being considered for listing as threatened because of global warming's effect on the Arctic.
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