Climate change: what is at stake?

The more I talk with people about their attitudes towards and feelings about climate change, the more I have discovered that many (perhaps most) well-educated and socially-engaged people have only a somewhat vague idea of the nature, scale and likely timing of the various kinds of dangers we face on our current path. And so, when I came across this summary from Joe Romm, I immediately thought that many of my readers might find it a useful resource to peruse, bookmark, reflect upon and share with others. If you are not really sure what impacts mainstream scientific research currently considers likely from a middle of the road business as usual scenario (i.e. not worst case), then this post lays out many of the key issues in an accessible way.

The figure included above is from MIT research from 2009 and shows the likelihood of different temperature outcomes based on two broad scenarios. On the left is business as usual. This is not the worst case and does not include slow feedbacks. On the right is a world where we take aggressive global action to reduce carbon emissions. The temperatures are the average global difference between the world in 1990 and in 2100. Since most other discussions used pre-industrial temperatures as a baseline and the world had already warmed by about 0.5ºC by 1990, then this needs to be added to the numbers to compare with other publications. My main criticism of the image is in the choice of colour. A rise of 3.5-4.5ºC above pre-industrial temperatures can in no sense be understood as reassuringly green. Such a change in the space of a century would be unlikely to be compatible with industrial civilisation as we know it or the possibility of feeding anything like the 9-10 billion people projected to be around by then.

Dying birds

Some people have been getting excited about some unexplained mass avian deaths recently. Thousands of birds apparently dropped dead out of the sky. Could it signal the end of the world? Perhaps not. The likely explanation is much more prosaic: new years fireworks startling sleeping birds into flight leading to disorientation and a fatal collision in the dark.

It may turn out to be something more disturbing and newsworthy than this, but such events need to be kept in context. Human actions kill billions of birds each year, primarily through domestic cats, collisions with buildings and habitat destruction. Our collective activity represents the largest threat to other living things on the planet for millions of years.

Sometimes, we are so keen to find things that are new that we get used to living with ongoing catastrophe.

In other news, six more Australian bird species were recently declared extinct.

Top ten climate science stories of the year

Well, actually nine climate stories and one biodiversity story with a climate link.

How many of these did you hear about? If you heard about them, how many did you hear through mainstream media sources? How can the mainstream media spend so long on trivia and fail to mention some of the most significant risks facing our society identified over the last twelve months? Is it because we don't want to know? Insert head (A) into sand (B). Repeat.

Insert head (A) into sand (B)

CP: Amazonian drought, another climate wildcard. This is a lengthy post, but worth a read for its significance.

BBC: Mining tax should be higher says OECD.

TPM: Insert head (A) into sand (B).

Running out of places to fish.

Alaskan wildfires getting more intense, and now Alaskan forests and soils are releasing more carbon than they are storing.

The places where fish choke.

Hot Topic: The rainforests of the sea are burning.

Mongabay: Climate change likely to kill five million annually by 2020, mainly children.

And then there were 306...

NOAA: “August 2010 was the 306th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last month with below average temperatures was February 1985.” Any day the temperatures for September will be in. It's a safe bet to expect they will make it 307.

The most commonly cited target in international climate negotiations is that we ought to limit warming to an average of 2°C. However, that may already be too high.

How to shrink a city: this will become an increasing issue in many parts of the world due to likely demographic and economic changes of the next few decades.

Peak oil and healthcare, a UK perspective.

Terminological clarification: irreversible vs unstoppable.

Hot Topic: On giving up non-essential flying.

The health benefit of more ambitious emissions targets. If Europe raised its sights from 20% to 30% emissions cuts by 2020, then it could be saving an extra €30 billion per year in health costs. This saving alone would account for a significant portion of the estimated €46 billion p.a. the higher target would require.

Twenty-two percent of the world's plant species are threatened with extinction and another thirty-three percent have an unknown status. The main culprit? Land use changes associated with agriculture.

Rivers in peril worldwide: study in Nature claims that eighty percent of the world's population (nearly 5.5 billion people) lives in an area where rivers are seriously threatened. "[S]ome of the highest threat levels in the world are in the United States and Europe." See also here a graphic of the threat distribution.

Oceans acidifying much faster than ever before in Earth's history.

Soil degradation, erosion and desertification continues in many places around the world, reducing the amount of arable land.

On average, every single man, woman and child on the planet is US$28,000 in debt.

Speaking of money, a new study has estimated that the cost of vanishing rainforest each year is approximately US$5 trillion (with a "t". i.e. US$5,000,000,000,000).

However, the real issue is that each of these crises are not isolated, but are all converging on similar time scales.

Why does the media do so poorly covering climate disruption?

So, in order to sell and appeal, whether public service or commercial, journalism needs events. We need clear causes, agents and forces to be visibly responsible. We need (not that we put it like this) a narrative of baddies and goodies. Where the climate is concerned, things are slow-moving, complex, and what’s more, we ourselves are the baddies. That’s not something listeners and viewers want or wanted to be told.

- Mark Brayne, former BBC correspondent and editor.

The full discussion is here.

This is what balancing the US budget without raising taxes would look like

The US has a huge budget deficit (about US$255 billion). This is (more) understandable during a recession, but has been growing in size for the last ten years during the boom years, and is a serious threat to US economic (and political) health. Either taxes need to rise or spending to fall, or (most likely) both. For those who go into anaphylactic shock over tax increases, the Centre for American Progress has put out an interesting report that shows how the budget could be balanced without raising taxes. However, it is not a pretty sight. Cuts include: three quarters of agricultural subsidies; ninety-five billion from defence (including significant reductions for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and reductions in standing nuclear capacity; in all almost a 15% reduction); reductions to social security payments; no new highways; subsidies for fossil fuel and nuclear research reduced by 90%; significant reductions to international aid, correctional services, customs and border enforcement, health research, NASA, National Parks, FEMA, agricultural research, EPA and much, much more.

The report conclusion is worth posting:

"Well, that was miserable.

"Perhaps there were moments of joy for you when some particular cut struck a chord, or dealt with a long-disliked program. Maybe you’re a pacifist and reducing the number of men and women in arms and cutting down weapon systems is deeply satisfying. Or perhaps you think that highways ought to be paid for by local governments that put tolls on them or that we spend too much on health research.

"But it’s evident that cuts of the scope and magnitude we have laid out really will do harm to the country, especially for the plans that cut the most. They are cuts that we’ll end up paying for one way or another. We may pay for them in delays at the airport or in the emergence of a new disease without a cure. It may cost us in traffic jams and rough roads or in unsafe food. It may mean lower economic growth as the infrastructure crumbles, education suffers, and investments in research and the technologies of the future languish. Or our armed services may be late-arriving at an international hotspot. Whatever the consequences, and you can go through the list and imagine them, there will be some. And as bad as the consequences might be from what we’ve outlined here, the consequences from the alternatives we considered were, in our view, worse.

"But these are, in fact, the kinds of choices we’re going to have to make. Are we
going to cut or are we going to raise taxes? What cuts? What taxes?"

They challenge anyone who disagrees with what they suggest cutting to come up with equally detailed suggestions. The point is, even the rosiest expectations about growth over the next few years still leaves the US in deep financial trouble. It could well be much worse. It's all very well criticising big government, but if you want it to shrink, you have to be willing to point out precisely where.
H/T Joe.

A taste of the menu

Global warming turns 35: both the term itself and the experience of rising temperatures have lasted a little longer than my lifespan. Predictions made back in the mid-70s were in the right ballpark.

Ben discovers the law of ice cream (well, gelato actually).

Phytoplankton, the base of the ocean's food chain, are in serious decline, according to a new global study in Nature.

Alison points out what has largely been missing from the Australian election campaign.

The Automatic Earth: why deflation matters more than inflation.

Dominic Knight: How to make the election more interesting.

SMH/Crikey: Gillard's cash for clunkers is a lemon costing almost twenty times as much to reduce a tonne of carbon as an ETS. And that is with some generous assumptions. And the claims of money for R&D when looked at carefully also fare poorly. Neither the emperor nor the would-be emperor are wearing any climate clothes.

Gravity, it's only a theory. The hoax unmasked.

John Cook: Ten ways we know the earth is warming and ten reasons we know that the primary driver is human activities enhancing the natural greenhouse effect.

Popular author Anne Rice has "quit being a Christian" (but still follows Christ).

Joe Romm: US EPA gives ruling on ten different petitions submitted by climate change deniers: "These petitions - based as they are on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy - provide no evidence to undermine our determination."

Wynne Parry asks whether the oceans primed for mass extinction in an article that starts to join the dots between pollution, overfishing, nutrient run-off, dead zones, ocean warming and acidification from carbon dioxide.