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Posts Tagged emissions

Symptoms too serious to ignore: a call to face up to NZ’s critical risks Gareth Renowden Feb 25

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A loose affiliation of New Zealand’s great and good will launch an appeal to parliament next week, asking for a dispassionate and non-partisan risk assessment of the “unprecedented threats to our collective security” facing the country as a result of climate change, fossil fuel extraction and economic uncertainty. The Wise Response group features poets, writers, All Blacks, academics, surgeons and scientists amongst its first 100 supporters1, and will launch its appeal at a public meeting in Dunedin on March 8th.

In its appeal the group identifies critical risks in five areas:

1. Economic security: the risk of a sudden, deepening, or prolonged financial crisis. Such a crisis could adversely impact upon our society’s ability to provide for the essentials, including local access to resources, reliable supply chains, and a resilient infrastructure.

2. Energy and climate security: the risk of continuing our heavy dependence on fossil fuels. Progressively restricting their extraction, importation and use could promote a switch to genuine renewables and encourage smarter use of existing energy and energy systems while creating better public transportation. Such responses would simultaneously lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

3. Business continuity: the risk exposure of all New Zealand business, including farming, to a lower carbon economy. To mitigate this risk, all businesses could explore both market and job opportunities in reducing the human ecological footprint, finding substitutes for petroleum-based goods and services, increasing efficiencies and reducing waste in food and resources. This would position New Zealand as a market leader in low-carbon technologies and living arrangements.

4. Ecological security: the risks associated with failing to genuinely protect both land-based and marine ecosystems and their natural processes. We believe that such protection is essential for both the maintenance of indigenous biodiversity and ultimately, all human welfare.

5. Genuine well-being: the risk of persisting with a subsidised, debt-based economy, preoccupied with maximising consumption and GDP. An alternative is to measure progress by means of indicators of community sustainability, human well-being, more equitable wealth-sharing and environmental resilience, and to incorporate full-cost pricing of harmful environmental impacts.

The group is looking to build support both inside and outside parliament for a detailed risk assessment of how these issues might impact New Zealand, and is hoping this will lead to:

…robust cross-party strategies and policies to avert these risks and give future generations the very best chance of security, peace, social justice and opportunity for all.

There’s much to like in the group’s appeal statement, but what I find most encouraging is that a diverse group of prominent New Zealanders is looking to make our politicians face up to the harsh realities of the modern world. I don’t imagine that John Key and his government will pay much attention — they’re too wedded to the all growth, all the time dogma for that — but with luck and persistence, the group may be able to start building a consensus around the things that we really need to do as a nation. That’s something I’m only too happy to support.

  1. The Otago Daily Times lists Brian Turner, Wayne Smith, Fiona Kidman, Glenn Turner, David Thom, Philip Temple, Anne Salmond, Julian Dean, Owen Marshall, Morgan Williams, Chris Trotter, Bruce Burns, Richard Langston and Anton Oliver amongst others.

Symptoms too serious to ignore: a call to face up to NZ’s critical risks Gareth Renowden Feb 25

Join the conversation at Hot Topic

A loose affiliation of New Zealand’s great and good will launch an appeal to parliament next week, asking for a dispassionate and non-partisan risk assessment of the “unprecedented threats to our collective security” facing the country as a result of climate change, fossil fuel extraction and economic uncertainty. The Wise Response group features poets, writers, All Blacks, academics, surgeons and scientists amongst its first 100 supporters1, and will launch its appeal at a public meeting in Dunedin on March 8th.

In its appeal the group identifies critical risks in five areas:

1. Economic security: the risk of a sudden, deepening, or prolonged financial crisis. Such a crisis could adversely impact upon our society’s ability to provide for the essentials, including local access to resources, reliable supply chains, and a resilient infrastructure.

2. Energy and climate security: the risk of continuing our heavy dependence on fossil fuels. Progressively restricting their extraction, importation and use could promote a switch to genuine renewables and encourage smarter use of existing energy and energy systems while creating better public transportation. Such responses would simultaneously lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

3. Business continuity: the risk exposure of all New Zealand business, including farming, to a lower carbon economy. To mitigate this risk, all businesses could explore both market and job opportunities in reducing the human ecological footprint, finding substitutes for petroleum-based goods and services, increasing efficiencies and reducing waste in food and resources. This would position New Zealand as a market leader in low-carbon technologies and living arrangements.

4. Ecological security: the risks associated with failing to genuinely protect both land-based and marine ecosystems and their natural processes. We believe that such protection is essential for both the maintenance of indigenous biodiversity and ultimately, all human welfare.

5. Genuine well-being: the risk of persisting with a subsidised, debt-based economy, preoccupied with maximising consumption and GDP. An alternative is to measure progress by means of indicators of community sustainability, human well-being, more equitable wealth-sharing and environmental resilience, and to incorporate full-cost pricing of harmful environmental impacts.

The group is looking to build support both inside and outside parliament for a detailed risk assessment of how these issues might impact New Zealand, and is hoping this will lead to:

…robust cross-party strategies and policies to avert these risks and give future generations the very best chance of security, peace, social justice and opportunity for all.

There’s much to like in the group’s appeal statement, but what I find most encouraging is that a diverse group of prominent New Zealanders is looking to make our politicians face up to the harsh realities of the modern world. I don’t imagine that John Key and his government will pay much attention — they’re too wedded to the all growth, all the time dogma for that — but with luck and persistence, the group may be able to start building a consensus around the things that we really need to do as a nation. That’s something I’m only too happy to support.

  1. The Otago Daily Times lists Brian Turner, Wayne Smith, Fiona Kidman, Glenn Turner, David Thom, Philip Temple, Anne Salmond, Julian Dean, Owen Marshall, Morgan Williams, Chris Trotter, Bruce Burns, Richard Langston and Anton Oliver amongst others.

Carbon budgets begin to bite: unburnable carbon not an asset, HSBC reports Gareth Renowden Feb 05

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The world’s big oil and gas companies could face cuts in market valuation of up to 60% if the world acts to cut carbon emissions, a report by bankers HSBC warned last week. Business Green summarises the report’s findings:

A new report from the banking giant finds that 17 per cent of Norwegian company Statoil’s reserves would become “unburnable” in a world where oil and gas use falls as countries seek to keep carbon concentrations in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million (ppm), the level the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates is necessary to deliver a 50 per cent chance of limiting long-term temperature rises to 2°C.

HSBC estimates that as much as 6% of BP’s reserves could be at risk, 5% of Total’s, and 2% of Shell’s. But the biggest risk to oil company values could come from reduced demand for oil and gas leading to a fall in prices. Business Green notes:

…the potential value at risk for leading fossil fuel firms could rise to between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of current market capitalisation. BP’s market capitalisation currently stands at around £90bn, compared to Shell’s £147bn, Statoil’s £53bn and BG Group’s £39bn.

The HSBC report is the first acknowledgement by a mainstream financial institution that fossil fuel companies may be over valued in a world where steep cuts in carbon emissions are (one hopes) inevitable. The idea was first mooted in 2011 by the Carbon Tracker Initiative, whose Unburnable Carbon report estimated that as much as 80% of proven fossil fuel reserves would have to remain in the ground. That idea fuelled 350.org’s latest campaign, as Bill McKibben explained in an influential Rolling Stone article last year:

We have five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn. We’d have to keep 80 percent of those reserves locked away underground to avoid that fate. Before we knew those numbers, our fate had been likely. Now, barring some massive intervention, it seems certain.

Yes, this coal and gas and oil is still technically in the soil. But it’s already economically aboveground – it’s figured into share prices, companies are borrowing money against it, nations are basing their budgets on the presumed returns from their patrimony. It explains why the big fossil-fuel companies have fought so hard to prevent the regulation of carbon dioxide – those reserves are their primary asset, the holding that gives their companies their value.

Stockmarket prices are supposed to factor in — or take into account — all of the assets and risk a company faces, but to date there has been little sign that markets have seriously considered “unburnable carbon” as a liability. The HSBC report may be the first sign of a shift in financial markets, but I suspect it will take clear evidence of concerted global action to cut emissions before markets will run scared of carbon. However, when it happens, the change could be swift. There could be carbon carnage on the trading floors as financial markets ditch fossil fuels for renewables.

There’s a stark lesson there for government and business leadership in Australia and New Zealand — and everywhere else where public money is subsidising the production and use of fossil fuels. Today’s investments in extracting fossil carbon only make sense if you are blind to the climate consequences. Those are now inevitable, and so oil and gas reserves — and especially coal fields — will inevitably become stranded assets, a millstone round the neck of the national and global economy.

Tackling agricultural emissions: the NZ story Gareth Renowden Jan 29

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In this guest post, Josh Pemberton, an intern at Motu Economic and Public Policy Research, describes the Ag Dialogue exercise Motu ran last year. This interesting and thought-provoking short film exploring what reducing emissions really means for New Zealand’s farming communities was one result.

New Zealand is, in many ways, an unusual country. We pride ourselves on punching above our weight in international relations and sport; but we cherish the fact that we are a small and uncrowded nation, happily occupying our own little corner of the earth. We admire our rugby and Olympic heroes yet our national symbols are relatively innocuous: an upside down fern frond (the upper side of a silver fern is, of course, green) and a flightless, nocturnal bird. It must say something about our mentality that in recent years we treated an unshorn sheep like a national celebrity, and that a shortage of our favourite spread triggered panic-buying and created ongoing headlines.

Something else which is unusual about New Zealand — considering that we’re a developed nation — is that agriculture is responsible for almost half of our greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture is, of course, vitally important to our economy – providing jobs and crucial export dollars. These two factors together give rise to a tension which can inhibit conversation about the effect of agriculture on the environment. It’s easy to end up with “naïve greenies” and “conservative farmers” (as they may perceive each other to be) talking past one another, and missing an opportunity to make real progress.

In the past two years, Motu Research has sought to increase the quality of the conversations that people are having on this topic. Motu set up and ran the Ag Dialogue group, bringing together farmers, scientists, iwi, government representatives and other experts to talk through issues around greenhouse gas emissions. There was no specific output in mind, although the Dialogue did catalyse a significant amount of research by Motu economists. The Dialogue also led Motu to release The New Zealand Farming Story: Tackling Agricultural Emissions, the short film embedded above.

Motu have also launched a blog focusing on agricultural emission issues, and released a set of teaching resources to accompany the film. One idea which came through in the Dialogue was that regulation of environmental problems is most effective when it is preceded by awareness building and capacity-raising (see this blog post for an explanation). The film, teaching materials and blog are a recognition of this, and an attempt to build the profile of the issue of agricultural emissions.

What do you think? Are agricultural emissions something that we should focus on tackling? And if so, how can we get broad buy-in? Some argue that New Zealand’s contribution to global warming is too small in global terms to make a difference. Those people forget the traditional role played by silver ferns, that unusual national symbol. The colour of the fern meant that it reflected moon and star light, making it perfect for marking walking tracks in dark night-time forests. If New Zealand can make meaningful progress on the issue of agricultural emissions, we can serve a silver fern-like purpose in setting a path for the world to follow.

In worldwide terms, agriculture is responsible for around 10-12% of all human-caused emissions – which isn’t so insignificant. If we develop new ways of thinking and doing things that the rest of the world can adopt, we can lead the way in making a real difference. I think that something about that is quite fitting, for a far-flung and small country that likes to punch above its weight.

The Gore synthesis: where we are now, where we are heading, and what we need to do Gareth Renowden Jan 22

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This is the five minute condensed version of the talk I gave in Gore at the Coal Action Network Aotearoa Summerfest (a somewhat optimistic title, given the chilly and wet weather last weekend).

It’s too late to avoid damaging climate change, because it’s already happening. Weather extremes — floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and storms — are on the increase, dramatic melting of Arctic sea ice is affecting northern hemisphere weather patterns, and accelerating ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica points towards a rapid increase in sea level. And the climate commitment, the 30 years it will take the planet to get back into energy balance once atmospheric CO2 is stabilised, guarantees that we will see much worse long before we see any benefit from action we take today.

Everything we do now to cut emissions will help us to avoid the very worst impacts — the almost unimaginable stuff that will be happening by the middle of this century — so it’s really worth doing.

To avoid future damage being catastrophic, we need emissions cuts to be made as if this were wartime. The global economy has to be switched from fossil fuel burning to clean energy as fast as possible — as if our very civilisation depended on it, because it does. Every year of delay now is a year more in the 2040s and 2050s of the very worst the climate system will throw at us. Every year of delay will make the job harder.

We need to go beyond stabilising atmospheric CO2 levels, and remove much of carbon emitted since the industrial revolution if we are to avoid losing much of the low lying land to long term sea level rise.

We need to be working now to futureproof New Zealand (and everywhere else) as much as possible. We must not lock our economies into high emissions pathways by investing in fossil fuel extraction or emissions-intensive agriculture. We must put in place policies to deal with sea level rise as it happens, but they will have to focus on managed retreat — at least until atmospheric CO2 is on a downwards trend. We need to focus on developing economic and social resilience, to enable us to recover from the inevitable shocks caused by rapid climate change.

This has to be the reality that our governments confront. Getting them to face up to the full seriousness of climate change is not going to be easy, but it’s going to have to be done.

*****

I often find that preparing a talk crystallises my thinking around an issue, and that was certainly the case here. Reviewing the climate events of the last year, looking forward to the near future, and considering our options as climate change begins to really bite left me feeling rather gloomy — but the energy and enthusiasm of the CANA crowd, committed to preventing lignite mining in Southland and to phasing out coal mining throughout New Zealand, did a lot to put a smile back on my face.

Below the fold is an expanded version of the notes I prepared for my talk, with links to supporting material (as I promised to the audiences in Gore)…

Where we are now

Every year since 1976 has been above 20th century average [NOAA National Climate Data Centre]

2012 9th/10th warmest year (see link above)

  • Warmest La Niña year
  • 9 out 10 warmest years this century
  • UKMO forecast new record in 2013 [Hot Topic]

Arctic sea ice rapid decline continues — new record minimum [National Snow and Ice Data Centre]

Greenland ice sheet record melt [Arctic Report Card]

NH weird weather linked to Arctic ice decline: In this section I described how the summer sea ice decline leads to a warm Arctic ocean in autumn and early winter, and the effect this has on jetstream behaviour (with much waving of arms). [Good overview at Climate Central]

Extreme weather is where climate bites

  • Aussie heatwave + fires
  • US warmest ever year
  • US drought
  • Floods & intense rainfall: – Pakistan, Nigeria, England’s wettest year
  • Sandy
  • The new normal

CO2 = 394 ppm – emissions still growing 2.5ppm per year [CO2Now]

Weak emissions policies: In this section, I described how the persistent framing of environmental protection as having to be balanced against economic activity, coupled with industry lobbying to reduce environmental protections and limit the costs of action to reduce emissions combine to create a lack of political will to address climate change. As a result national and international policies have been weakened or left becalmed.

Where we are heading

4ºC of warming is looking more and more likely… [World Bank report: Climate Progress, Hot Topic]

2ºC in rear view mirror: there’s still a chance, but it’s getting slimmer by the day

Sea level likely to rise 24 metres if atmospheric COs stabilises at 400 – 450 ppm [Science Daily]: the only question is how long it will take.

Scary stuff

Realities

Damaging climate change is unavoidable: climate commitment – 30 years warming in the pipeline

We have to cut net emissions to zero, then we have to take carbon out of the atmosphere

  • 350.org (but 300 would be better)
  • Oceans will work against us
  • Technology not ready (yet)

Need “wartime” emissions cuts

  • The longer you leave it, the harder it gets to cut
  • The longer you leave it, the worse the unavoidable damage
  • Geoengineering seems almost inevitable

Futureproofing NZ

  • Resilience
  • Self-sufficiency
  • Coastal retreat – Christchurch!
  • Do not lock economy into high emissions
  • Coal, lignite
  • Emissions intensive agriculture (dairy)

Coal deposits are not assets, they’re liabilities!

Messages from a sizzling continent: Salinger on the Aussie heatwave Gareth Renowden Jan 20

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This op-ed by climate scientist Jim Salinger first appeared in print editions of the New Zealand Herald last Tuesday.

Global warming is not a phenomenon for future generations to deal with: it has arrived. And more frequent heat waves and climate extremes are part of this phenomenon. As I watch from my summer roost in northern New South Wales, the somewhat unprecedented heat is searing the Australian continent making it tinder dry with fires springing up everywhere. These raise some pertinent lessons on climate and risk management for New Zealand.

Firstly let’s look at some figures and ask the question of what are the climate mechanisms behind the heat waves.

Incessant heat has struck the interior with daytime highs soaring to the high forties. As I pen this on Saturday 12 January the mercury rose to 49.6ºC at Moomba, just shy of the all-time Australia record of 50.7ºC recorded at Oodnadatta in 1972. The national average maximum temperature (the average daytime maximum temperature for the entire Australian continent); which in this case is gauging the areal extent of the heat, jumped back up to 39.2ºC on Friday  — making 8 days above 39ºC this year and 11 days straight above 38ºC. The temperatures since 2 January are 39.21, 39.55, 39.31, 39.71, 40.33, 40.11, 38.36, 38.65, and 39.20ºC.

There have been locations in Australia (not the same location, somewhere over an area of thousands of square kms) that posted a temperature in excess of 47.7ºC since the 2nd of Jan. A temperature in excess of 48ºC was posted on 7 of those days. As a comparison the highest global temperature recorded is 56.7 C recorded in Death Valley, California in 1932. During that event dead birds rained out of the sky at Furnace Creek.

For New Zealand, the messages from the climate system of global warming are far more subtle. This is because we are immersed in an oceanic environment. Our clearest signal is seen in night time temperatures. Over the period 1941 – 2011 the number of days with temperatures less than 0 deg C has decreased from 11 to 4 per annum at measured North Island locations, and 35 to 23 days a year in the South Island. And the lowest night temperature in any one year has increased from -2 to -1ºC in the North Island and -4.8 to -4.3ºC in the South Island over this 70 year period.

More tellingly has been the fate of the permanent ice that makes Aotearoa ‘The land of the long white cloud’. This has shrunk dramatically from over 100 cubic kilometres (km3) clothing our Southern Alps around 1900 to 45 km3 in 2008. Allowing for the 3 deg C warming projection (Dr James Renwick, New Zealand Herald, 10 January) this ice mantle would diminish to a mere 15 km3 if its former glory!

New Zealand is now lagging well behind our Pacific neighbours in taking action to diminish carbon emissions to the atmosphere. On 1 July 2012 Australia took a very bold step and introduced a A$23-a-tonne price on carbon emissions which directly affects 294 electricity generators and other companies. The federal Government is aiming to cut carbon emissions by 5 per cent by 2020, with the carbon tax shifting to an emissions trading scheme in 2015.

And on 24 November 2012 California issued the USA’s first broad-based cap-and-trade blueprint to reduce greenhouse emissions. The pioneering effort caps greenhouse gases emitted by more than 600 power plants, refineries, cement plants and other big factories at 15 percent below today’s levels by 2020. And although the Obama administration may not be able to ratify Kyoto through Congress, carbon dioxide has now been ruled a pollutant by the U.S Supreme Court. As such carbon dioxide emissions can be regulated by executive order of the president.

The current National Government has been rapidly back pedalling from the robust emissions trading scheme (ETS) introduced by the former government. It has progressively gutted the ETS to what Herald columnist Brian Farrow described as an already pretty aqueous ETS. It has also opted out of the 2nd Kyoto Protocol period committing to legally binding emissions reduction target until 2020. This earned New Zealand several “Fossil of the Day” awards at the international climate talks in Doha, Qatar, December 2012.

The climate system is now speaking louder. Global warming is now becoming very serious and is already impacting on life and property. It is here, now and not a phenomenon for future generations to deal with. New Zealand must step up to the plate and embark on a course of emissions reductions targets as soon as possible, to claw back rapidly rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. If we do not act now the severity of such heat waves, other climate extremes and sea level rise impacts and the subsequent damage to life and property will increase. There is no time like the present to invest in our future wellbeing.

Things we could only have dreamed of – and all that sand cindy Nov 26

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Flying into Doha yesterday for the next round of international climate negotiations, landing in what seems to be a pile of white sand in the middle of nowhere, with high rise buildings sticking out of it. Is this where we’re going to stop climate change? In a word, no.  Not by a long shot.  These [...]

Kevin Anderson and the emperor’s underpants: beyond two degrees now inevitable Gareth Renowden Nov 24

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If you have a spare hour, this lecture is something not to miss. Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester gives this year’s University of Bristol Cabot Institute Annual Lecture, and rips into the comfortable assumption that limiting warming to two degrees is still possible. Can we stay within the “guardrail”? Only if you make a series of heroically unlikely assumptions, Anderson suggests. As we head into the Doha COP18 negotiations, this lecture provides a valuable antidote to the rose-tinted spectacles habitually worn by politicians — and, as Anderson points out — many scientists.

The Climate Show #30: Obama, Sandy and the rabbit Gareth Renowden Nov 09

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Another news special on this week’s Climate Show. With Barack Obama winning “four more years“, and the biggest Atlantic storm ever seen slamming into New Jersey, New York, and most of the northeastern USA, Glenn and Gareth chew over the details and consider the implications. With a side order of accountants PwC being gloomy, agricultural emissions, and a rabbit. (Not you, Eli).

Watch The Climate Show on our Youtube channel, subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, listen to us via Stitcher on your smartphone or listen direct/download from the link below the fold.

Follow The Climate Show at The Climate Show web site, and on Facebook and Twitter.

The Climate Show

Story references

US Election:

6 hours of televised debate and no talk on Climate Change: http://climatesilence.org/

President Obama addresses climate change in his acceptance speech:

“We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt, that isn’t weakened by inequality, that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.”

Damian Carrington in the Guardian:

What does a second term for Barack Obama as US president mean for action on climate change? The short answer is that some action is now at least conceivable. It would not have been under Mitt Romney, whose statement that the president’s job was not to stop the sea rising was hideously exposed by the inundation of New York and New Jersey by the surge of superstorm Sandy.

Sandy:

Sandy by the numbers: trying to comprehend a stunning disaster: Jeff Masters

George Lakoff, professor of linguistics, Berkeley:

Yes, global warming systemically caused Hurricane Sandy — and the Midwest droughts and the fires in Colorado and Texas, as well as other extreme weather disasters around the world. Let’s say it out loud, it was causation, systemic causation.

There is a difference between systemic and direct causation. Punching someone in the nose is direct causation. Throwing a rock through a window is direct causation.

A systemic cause may be one of a number of multiple causes. It may require some special conditions. It may be indirect, working through a network of more direct causes. It may be probabilistic, occurring with a significantly high probability. It may require a feedback mechanism. In general, causation in ecosystems, biological systems, economic systems, and social systems tends not to be direct, but is no less causal.

US Election/Sandy:

Mayor’s endorsement could turn climate change into a serious election issue – and it might even embolden Republicans – it didn’t – or did it? Guardian.

The best conservative tweet of election night may belong to David Frum, former speechwriter for George W. Bush:

Horrible possibility: if the geeks are right about Ohio, might they also be right about climate?

Nice Real Climate post by Gavin Schmidt, riffing on how wishful thinking about polling came crashing down on election night…

And now it snows:

A winter storm bearing down on the East Coast “First Hurricane Sandy, now Winter Storm Athena for the Eastern U.S.”
Jeff Masters, Climate Central.

Not just the USA

Heatwave in Brazil, typhoons in Asia… Weather Extremes at Weather Underground.

PricewaterhouseCoopers report – heading for 6C

“PricewaterhouseCoopers, the world’s largest professional services firm, is not known for scaremongering. So it is worth paying particular attention to its latest annual low carbon economy index.
Behind the understated language, it points to a catastrophic future unless radical action is taken now to combat climate change.
“Business leaders have been asking for clarity in political ambition on climate change,” says partner Leo Johnson. “Now one thing is clear: businesses, governments and communities across the world need to plan for a warming world – not just 2C, but 4C or even 6C.”

Guardian
Common Dreams
Climate Spectator
PricewaterhouseCoopers press release

One-third of our greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture

Nature News:

The global food system, from fertilizer manufacture to food storage and packaging, is responsible for up to one-third of all human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the latest figures from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a partnership of 15 research centres around the world.

Great picture from Pine Island Bay. Via @NASA_ICE at Twitter.

Thanks to our media partners: Idealog Sustain, Sciblogs, and Scoop .

Theme music: A Drop In The Ocean by The Bads.

Jim Renwick on the state of climate science Bryan Walker Jul 24

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I have been listening to a lecture by Victoria University climate scientist, James Renwick, who has recently moved to the university from his post as principal climate scientist at NIWA.  In the seminar he sets out in broad terms some of the latest developments in the science. It’s a very clear summation, with some recent interesting graphs and charts, showing the direction which in which climate change is continuing to move. Needless to say there’s no change in direction apparent. I recommend the lecture as well worth listening to. I’ll only touch lightly in this post on the scientific content of the lecture; my main purpose is to highlight comments Renwick made along the way indicating the concern he feels about where we are headed.

I was particularly struck by an early statement made after he had remarked on the 2011 emissions reaching a record level of 31.6Gt and pointed to the graph of steadily increasing concentration of CO2 measured at Mauna Loa. I’ve transcribed it:

I feel a kind of morbid fascination with this stuff. It’s a really fascinating science issue – and I’m really  interested to  find out what’s going to happen to the climate and how much ice is going to melt and what’s the temperature in 2020 going to be and all the rest of it.  It’s intriguing, it’s my bread and butter but you know what I feel is – I look at this and say jeez we’re really doing this, we’re doing this experiment, we’re really playing this game with the Earth, we’re gambling with millions of lives and I sort of feel disgusted with myself that I find it interesting from a scientific point of view   It’s certainly interesting, but it’s more than interesting — it’s a very dangerous game we’re playing.

Just how dangerous becomes all too apparent as he proceeds. Global temperatures are continuing their steady increase from since around 1970. Sea levels are steadily rising, with the NZ rise similar to the current global mean of 3 mm per annum, roughly double that of the early 20 century. There’s an interesting comment on the temporary drop in sea level rise in 2010 and 2011 considered due partly to the La Niña event but also probably partly to the transfer of water in heavy rains, which he identifies as one of the new things around understanding sea level rise.

Ice is continuing to melt both in glaciers and in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Information about the ice sheets is improving considerably, including the mapping of ice movement. We don’t know enough yet to understand all the implications for sea level rise, but we’re getting there. He refers to a recent paper suggesting that we may be only a degree or so away from the temperature rise which could get the Greenland ice sheet moving irreversibly. The decline in Arctic sea ice in both the extent and the age of ice he describes as “fascinating in a bad kind of way”.

Renwick points to research suggesting that if we can halve emissions by 2050 then there’s more than a 50% chance of “staying below that 2 degree warming line which everyone appears to think, at a policy level at least, is a good thing to do”. He doesn’t explicitly say so but that two degree boundary is hardly established as safe by any science I have seen, and perhaps the terms in which he characterises the warming line are indicative of that. In any case as the lecture proceeds he recognises the possibility that we might be looking at a 4 degree rather than a 2 degree rise.

On rainfall attribution Renwick notes that model trends in all latitude bands are proving much weaker than observed trends. So things are changing in the direction we might expect but they’re actually changing faster than the models might tell us.

After covering such matters as the widening of the tropical belt by about 3 degrees latitude since 1980, the contraction of the Southern Annular Mode (the westerlies) toward the pole and the likelihood that 1 in 20-year warm periods are likely to become 1 in 2 years, Renwick moves to the implications for political action in the light of the fact that 2 degrees of warming is now virtually certain and that in fact we might be looking at more like 4 degrees:

“…which is extremely risky – large changes to the climate system, large changes to where the rain falls and how much, and food production and sea level rise.  Big stakes I must say, but some massive opportunities to do something good and to even make money if you can come up with some clean and green ideas that will sell.  But to me there still isn’t really the political leadership there to actually make things happen, which is quite concerning… We don’t have a conception of intergenerational debt, stewardship and all that kind of thing …We’re borrowing the earth against future generations and the earth is staring to bite back.”

I listened to the lecture mainly for its interesting presentation of the advances in the scientific understanding of climate change in the years since the last IPCC report, but the two extracts I’ve transcribed are also valuable for the way they communicate the human concern that accompanies the science. It’s not delivered in ringing tones, but it’s recognisable and surely appropriate. Moreover Renwick is voicing a level of disquiet widespread among climate scientists.

What is unfolding is deeply threatening to human life and the failure to address it adequately at the political level raises disturbing questions about our capacity to act ethically as societies. For climate change is at base now an ethical question. It is to do with the way our actions impact on the lives of others both now and in generations to come. And remedial action is not beyond our control. The ball is in the policy makers’ court. We should keep insisting that they address the issue adequately and with full seriousness.

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