The Targets Are Wrong

First, there was an article about the warming of the Arctic “Study finds more evidence rapid Arctic warming isn't natural”. The article says the Arctic would be continuing to slowly cool if it weren’t for human activity.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/environment/story/74861.html

We already knew the warming of the past few decades was man-made, but that is more evidence to support it.

This article, “Not Even Wrong” has some new information that shows the targets the governments are using are not nearly enough to keep warming below 2 degrees C.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/08/31/not-even-wrong/

One nice thing about the above article is that it has footnotes with sources, so you can check them out if you want. I only checked out the summaries of two papers, but I didn’t see anything that would contradict the article.) I said in a recent post that the Waxman Markey bill disregards what the IPCC indicates is the minimum emissions reduction necessary to prevent more than 2 degrees of warming, and I also said the IPCC is usually too cautious in its conclusions, so the situation was probably worse. These newer studies are one more indication that is indeed true. Here are some highlights and my comments:

“In other words, governments’ hopes about the trajectory of temperature change are ill-founded. Most, including the UK’s, are working on the assumption that we can overshoot the desired targets for temperature and atmospheric concentrations of CO2, then watch them settle back later. What this paper shows is that wherever temperatures peak, that is more or less where they will stay. There is no going back.”

This quote references the same study as another article I talked about in my post “What Could Happen?” That study shows CO2 levels will go down so slowly that 40% will still remain 1000 years after we stop emitting greenhouse gases. And temperatures will stay at the peak for about 1000 years too. (And don’t forget they won’t return completely to normal for hundreds of thousands of years.) The quote above makes a good point that governments of the world fail to acknowledge. They all seem to be assuming that CO2 levels will fall as quickly as they are rising, but scientists have known for a long time that is not true. This is one of the ways the global warming problem is so different from conventional pollution and most other problems. It seems to be very difficult for most people to grasp.

The absolute minimum goal should be to minimize chances of global warming going out of control from feedback effects. If that happens, there will ONLY be going forward to hotter and hotter temperatures, and to more death, destruction, and suffering, until some new equilibrium point is reached. Most governments seem to have now agreed on 2 degrees C above preindustrial levels as the point at which the risks of feedback would be unacceptable. In my opinion, the effects from 2 degrees warming are so bad that we should never let it go that high even if feedback was not a danger, especially if those bad effects will last for a thousand years. But if feedback doesn’t take over at that point, we can probably survive, and biodiversity may not be so decimated that the world becomes a completely different place. Horrible things will happen, and we should all be pushing our governments to do everything they can to avoid those horrible things. But preventing feedback from taking over is the minimum goal anybody who places any value on life should demand, and there can be no compromise on this.

Keeping temperature rise to 2 degrees or less is what the next section of the article addresses, talking about a couple of studies that looked at the total emissions we can get by with and still keep warming to 2 degrees. I will focus on the conclusions:

“Writing elsewhere, the two teams gave us an idea of what this means. At current rates of use, we will burn the ration that Allen set aside for the next 500 years in four decades(4). Meinshausen’s carbon budget between now and 2050 will have been exhausted before 2030(5).”

Now, remember, this is talking about current rates of fossil fuel use, meaning the entire world would have to stop the current trends of using more and more every year. So the current reality is even worse than this indicates. But the crucial point is that waiting until 2050 to make significant reductions in emissions, as the U.S. government is planning as of now, is guaranteed to bring us past the 2 degree temperature rise. And this next quote amplifies this message:

“There are some obvious conclusions from these three papers. The trajectory of cuts is more important than the final destination. An 80% cut by 2050, for example, could produce very different outcomes. If most of the cut were made towards the beginning of the period, the total emissions entering the atmosphere would be much smaller than if most of the cut were made at the end of the period. The measure that counts is the peak atmospheric concentration. This must be as low as possible and come as soon as possible, which means making most of the reductions right now.”

This is what I mean when I say global warming is the most urgent problem we face, more urgent than the economy, healthcare, wars, human rights, or any other that I can think of. But I get the impression that the number of people who truly realize this and realize what it means are miniscule. I don’t think a single person in our government really gets it. As the next paragraph in the article said, referring to making big reductions soon, “None of this is currently on the table.” I discuss these things with very intelligent friends of mine, and I don’t think any of them fully grasp this point. I probably don’t fully grasp it, but I grasp it enough to be extremely worried. It is so unreal to think about what it means. It makes me feel like I’m living in a science fiction novel, but it’s really happening.

We have to reach the people in power, and we have to do it very, very quickly. We would truly have an almost impossible task before us even if our leaders knew the real situation and knew what we needed to do. It would be that difficult to make the changes quickly enough. But they don’t know, and we can never make the huge changes that are imperative unless our leaders encourage us, by changing the very system we exist in. How can those of us who understand the threat reach them? That is the question I keep asking, and I can’t find an answer, and neither can anyone I ask this question.

Addendum 9/13/09: The articles above accepted the 2 degree maximum temperature rise as a good target, but James Hansen thinks even that is too high. In his 2008 address to Congress, he stated, “The disturbing conclusion, documented in a paper I have written with several of the world’s leading climate experts, is that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) and it may be less. Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year. Stunning corollary: the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation.” If he is right, then we need to make even bigger reductions sooner than the above article indicates. Unfortunately, Hansen usually is right, and when he has been wrong in the past, his predictions were usually more optimistic than what happened later.