Science and Politics at the Two Degree Threshold

From the Guardian, 1st May 2007

The British government, the European Union and the United Nations all claim to be trying to prevent “dangerous” climate change. Any level of climate change is dangerous for someone, but there is a broad consensus about what this word means: two degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels. It is dangerous because of its direct impacts on people and places (it could, for example, trigger the irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet(1)and the collapse of the Amazon rainforest(2)) and because it is likely to stimulate further warming, as it encourages the world’s natural systems to start releasing greenhouse gases.

The aim of preventing more than 2°C of warming has been adopted overtly by the UN(3) and the European Union(4) and implicitly by the British, German and Swedish governments. All of them say they are hoping to confine the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to a level which would prevent 2°C from being reached. And all of them know that they have set the wrong targets, based on outdated science. Fearful of the political implications, they have failed to adjust to the levels the new research demands.

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Grim toll in doomsday forecast

February 11, 2007
From News.com.

HEATWAVES that kill thousands, gigantic bushfires and regular 100-year storms are part of a frightening new climate change forecast for Australia.

A leaked CSIRO report into the impact of global warming predicts a century of climatic horrors for the nation.

The doomsday scenario will form the basis of the Australian chapter in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the Federal Government's key stocktake on global warming due for release in April.

The United Nations' IPCC reports into climate change represent the world's most up-to-date assessment of how rising global temperatures will change our planet.

The CSIRO report found that extreme fire days will be more common across Australia.

The report predicts Tasmania and Victoria's east coast will be battered with massive 100-year storms, adding to beach erosion and the destruction of coastal properties.

Eucalypt forests will start to disappear, along with the delicate habitat necessary to sustain Australia's native animals.

Human lives in bigger cities will come under increasing threat, with the annual death toll from heatwaves expected to reach 1300.

And refugees from Pacific Islands submerged by water will flock into the country.

Without solid rain, Australia's crops will be affected, despite the higher temperatures helping increase the yield.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has forecast a rise in average global temperatures of between 1.1 per cent and 6.4 per cent by 2100.

The CSIRO report looked at the impact of a range of temperatures, from a small decline to a rise of more than 5 per cent.

It examined the impact of rising temperatures in five key areas: ecosystems; crops, forestry and livestock; water resources; public health; and human life.

A senior CSIRO scientist said: "For the higher levels of warming, it's pretty serious for Australia."

The CSIRO paper - based also on input from universities and private groups - is the Federal Government's most authoritative report into the local impact of climate change.

The report's findings were yesterday backed by predictions of worse droughts, bushfires, floods and less marine life for Tasmania.

At a Global Warming and Politics seminar in Hobart yesterday, scientific experts and politicians agreed the clock is ticking.

"Climate change is real, its effects are happening now in many forms," visiting expert Stuart Rosewarne, senior lecturer in economics at Sydney University, said yesterday.

Dr Rosewarne said many effects were already having an impact on Tasmania and yesterday's seminar heard the more populated areas and major agricultural and farming regions would be hardest hit.

"The drought that is being experienced in Tasmania at the moment is very much shaped by global warming," he said.

"The impact will vary across Tasmania significantly with agricultural areas to be hit the hardest.

"With declined rainfall and increased temperatures, some of the forests will be badly affected.

"Some of the plantations that are being developed at the moment are not growing as fast as anticipated which is directly related to climate change and rainfall patterns."

Dr Rosewarne said rainfall was expected to decrease 10 per cent in summer but in some areas it could fall a further 20 to 30 per cent.

"There has been a fairly significant decline in rainfall patterns in some areas of Tasmania in the past five years," he said. "Predictions indicate this will only get worse."

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Climate report spurs immediate action

Friday Feb 2nd 2007
From The Star (Malaysia).

PARIS (AP): The bleak outlook of a major new report on climate change shifted the onus onto governments, even mankind, to stop prevaricating and truly act, with warnings Friday from around the world that drastic, rapid change is needed _ not least from the United States.

"We are on the historic threshhold of the irreversible,'' warned French President Jacques Chirac. He called for an economic and political "revolution'' to save the planet.

Campaigners and governments pressed industrial nations, some specifically naming the United States, to significantly cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Others said the threat was not simply to the environment, but to international peace, prosperity and development. There were immediate calls for urgent talks to hammer out a new worldwide agreement to stop global warming.

South Africa's Environmental Affairs Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said failure to act would be "indefensible.'' His Indonesian counterpart said "drastic steps'' were needed to slow rising temperatures.

"We are now beyond a critical turning point in the debate: those who continue to ignore the threat and its causes, or invoke half-baked arguments to confuse and obstruct, will be doing the greatest disservice imaginable to current and future generations,'' van Schalkwyk said.

The long-awaited report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said global warming is "unequivocal,'' "very likely'' man-made and will "continue for centuries'' _ findings bleaker than its last report in 2001.

"If the last IPCC report was a wake up call, this one is a screaming siren,'' said Stephanie Tunmore, of Greenpeace.

"The good news is our understanding of the climate system and our impact on it has improved immensely. The bad news is that the more we know, the more precarious the future looks,'' Tunmore said. "There's a clear message to governments here, and the window for action is narrowing fast.''

The Indonesian minister, Rachmat Witoelar, has predicted that some 2,000 of Indonesia's estimated 18,000 islands would be swallowed by the sea within three decades because of man-made climate change.

"Developing countries must make binding commitments to cut emissions by 40 to 60 percent. And we in Indonesia must guard against the burning of our forests and better monitor our industries,'' he said in the capital, Jakarta, where days of torrential rain caused rivers to break their banks Friday, submerging streets in muddy water and inundating homes and businesses.

"We want to see our grandchildren enjoy the earth too, don't we?''

Campaigners said emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases must be reined in. Friends of the Earth said industrialized nations "must lead the way'' and help less-developed countries develop sustainable, low-carbon economies. The European Union's environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, said that by 2020, developing nations should cut their emissions to two-thirds of the level they were in 1990.

"Alarm bells are ringing. The world must wake up to the threat,'' said Catherine Pearce, of Friends of the Earth. "There is still time to act, but urgent action is required.''

The South African minister said the report "is a wake-up call to the world's largest emitter, the United States.''

"There are no more doubts on humanity's responsibilities and the conclusion is clear: man is the cause, and man is the solution,'' said Roberto Della Seta, president of Legambiente, Italy's main environmental group. "Only urgent, immediate government action on a vast scale can avert catastrophic consequences.''

Scientists hailed the report as a landmark. It makes clear that sea levels will rise inexorably over coming centuries. "It is a question of when and how much, and not if,'' World Meteorological Organization Secretary General Michel Jarraud said.

Failure to act in light of the "unequivocal'' new scientific evidence on global warming "will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible,'' U.N. Environment Program executive director Achim Steiner said.

"This new report should spur policymakers to get off the fence and put strong and effective policies in place to tackle greenhouse gas emissions,'' he said. "The implications of global warming over the coming decades for our industrial economy, water supplies, agriculture, biological diversity and even geopolitics are massive.''

Read the article.

Also see:

• Politics UK,
  
• CNW Group Canada,
  
• Toronto Daily News,
  
• Common Dreams,
  
• Hindustan Times (scroll down to header "Call to save Ganga"),
  
• Mirror (UK)
  

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UCS: Report Confirms Human Activity Driving Global Warming

February 2, 2007
From Union of Concerned Scientists.

Authoritative Report Confirms Human Activity Driving Global Warming

Strongest evidence yet that human activity is causing warming in atmosphere, land, and oceans.

WASHINGTON—After six years of assessing climate science research from around the world, the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has solidified the scientific understanding that key heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere "have increased markedly as a result of human activities," and the "net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming." The report states that evidence of the climate's warming "is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level."

"This report reaffirms that our emissions are the primary cause of global warming," said Peter Frumhoff, Director of Science and Policy at UCS. "The good news is that by taking action today to dramatically reduce our emissions, we can avoid much of the warming projected in this report."

The new IPCC Working Group I Summary for Policymakers synthesizes the current understanding of climate change and projects future climate change using the most comprehensive set of well-established global climate models. The report is the first of three major studies that comprise the IPCC Fourth Assessment, with input from more than 1,200 authors and 2,500 scientific expert reviewers from more than 130 countries. Subsequent reports will evaluate global warming consequences and options for reducing future warming.

The report confirms that the current level of carbon dioxide, a critical heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, "exceeds by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years." Since the dawn of the industrial era, carbon dioxide and other key heat-trapping gases have increased at a rate that is "very likely to have been unprecedented in more than 10,000 years."

This unprecedented increase has led to warming of the atmosphere, land, and ocean:

• Eleven of the last twelve years rank among the twelve hottest years on record.
  
• "The maximum area covered by seasonally frozen ground has decreased by about 7 percent in the Northern Hemisphere since 1900, with a decrease in spring of up to 15 percent."
  
• "More intense and longer droughts have been observed over wider areas since the 1970s, particularly in the tropics and subtropics." Droughts have been linked to changes in sea surface temperatures and wind patterns and decreased snowpack and snow cover.
  

"This evidence is a wake up call and we need to stop hitting the snooze button," said UCS climate scientist Brenda Ekwurzel. "Will we take sufficient action to avoid the worst effects of global warming or resign ourselves to the consequences of a very different climate?"

Even if we act today to reduce our emissions from cars, power plants, and other sources, past emissions will commit us to more warming since they stay in the atmosphere for decades. The report concludes that if we take no action to reduce emissions, there will be twice as much warming over the next two decades than if we had stabilized heat-trapping gases at 2000 levels. Among other changes, the models also:

• Find it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with higher peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with warmer tropical seas.
  
• Suggest that if global average temperatures were to exceed 1.9 to 4.6 degrees C (3.4 to 8.3 degrees F) compared to pre-industrial temperatures, the Greenland ice sheet would lose mass faster than it gains, producing a net contribution to sea level rise. If sustained, the loss of ice would eventually lead to complete elimination of the Greenland ice sheet and contribute an additional 23 feet to sea level rise.
  
• Project a greater than 90 percent likelihood that hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent.
  

"What we've observed and what we expect to see make it critical that we meaningfully reduce our emissions," said Ekwurzel. "We can still avoid catastrophic climate change, but only if we start today."



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TIME: (IPCC Report) Climate Change: Case Closed

I wanted to reference the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that I thought was released on the 2nd February 2007. I thought I couldn't find it but it was staring me in the face all along - The IPCC Working Group I Fourth Assessment Report Summary for Policymakers (SPM) is now available for download in PDF format. (Found on the page http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/).

During the search for it I came across these other links about the IPCC and the report:

• IPCC Fourth Assessment Report page on Wikipedia,
  
• IPCC activities page.
  

This report finally crosses the t's and dots the i's on the truth and reality of Climate Change. Before this though, I must say that from what I've been seeing over the last couple months, most articles support that Climate Change is happening and is not going to be very good for us and all flora and fauna on this planet. A few others, but very much the minority, don't support the position. These sites seem to be connected to the US Republican party, or to big oil and gas companies, so I dismiss them pretty quickly (see these George Monbiot/ The Guardian articles:

• The denial industry
  
• Another Species of Denial
  

).

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Friday, Feb. 02, 2007 By BRYAN WALSH
From Time Magazine.

The debate on global warming is over.

That's the ultimate message from the report released in Paris today by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N. body of leading researchers charged with analyzing climate science and producing the final word on what is happening — and will happen — to our planet. IPCC scientists now say that it is "very likely" that global warming is chiefly driven by the buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases caused by human activity, and that dangerous levels of warming and sea rise are on the way.

Those two words — the product of 2,500 scientists, 130 nations and 6 years of work — translates into a certainty of over 90%, up from the 66% to 90% chance the panel reported in its last major climate change assessment in 2001. That might not seem like a big difference, but in science, especially in a field as rapidly developing as climate studies, 90% is as good as it gets. The new report effectively completes a scientific revolution that began at the end of the 19th century, when a Swedish geochemist named Svante Arrhenius first proposed that CO2 released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels could change the planet's climate. "The message of this report is that the time for sitting on the fence is finished," says Robert Watson, chief scientist at the World Bank and a former chair of the IPCC. "Now is the time for action."

Action will need to be quick and substantial. The IPCC estimated that should the concentration of carbon dioxide reach twice the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million, temperatures could rise between 3.2 to 7.1 degrees (Fahrenheit) — with a more than 1 in 10 change of far greater warming. Sea levels could rise between 7 and 23 inches. Heat waves and droughts will become more intense and longer-lived. Though the new IPCC assessment doesn't go into the social impacts of climate change, past studies indicate that the changes predicted will have a profound effect on humanity. Even if we were somehow able to end all greenhouse gas emissions today the world would continue to warm, thanks to the gases we've already added to the atmosphere — which now has a higher level of carbon than at any time over the past 650,000 years. "We're already committed to future changes," said Susan Solomon, a U.S. climatologist and co-chair of the new IPCC assessment.

That means that we will have to learn to live with global warming; indeed, considering that British meteorologists say the world's 10 hottest years since 1850 have occurred over the past decade, we're already living with it. The IPCC report will likely continue to shift the focus to the need to adapt to climate change, coupled with further attempts to slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. Governments must prepare for a world very different from the one we live in today: one where current coastal settlements could be swamped, where refugee camps could be filled by people fleeing the effects of global warming. "We will have to adapt, and we have a long way to go," says Eileen Clausen, the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "I think the IPCC report might help push that."

Perhaps the scariest thing about the IPCC report is that it is, by the nature of its composition, probably conservative. The final review, which took place this week in Paris, is painstakingly bureaucratic; the IPCC received 30,000 comments from scientists around the world as the report evolved through numerous drafts. Only the most-solidly backed facts — and often the least controversial ones — survived the winnowing process. The report itself offers a range of different estimates for temperature change and sea level rise, corresponding to different "emissions scenarios" that map out possible human responses over the coming century. The 3.2 to 7.1 degree prediction is a relatively optimistic one, which assumes quick adoption of more energy efficient technologies and a global population that peaks at mid-century. If energy-hungry China and India continue to grow rapidly (China may supplant the U.S. as the world's biggest carbon emitter before 2010) there's no guarantee that will happen.

Many scientists are already criticizing the IPCC report for being too conservative, especially on the question of sea level rise. The new assessment actually predicts a lower rise than what was forecast in the 2001 report, though it doesn't take into account some of the most recent research on rapid glacier melting. (The IPCC set a December 2005 cutoff date for the submission of scientific research to the new assessment.) A paper published in Science yesterday argued that sea levels today are already rising faster than the 2001 IPCC assessment predicted. At the same time, the new report's conclusion that warming will more likely than not increase the intensity of tropical storms is considered too liberal by some climate scientists.

It should be no surprise that arguments and questions still remain — good luck getting 2,500 scientists to agree on what to order for dinner, let alone come to a single conclusion on massively complicated climate science. But it would be a mistake, as skeptics have done, to point to the remaining disputes as evidence that a broad consensus still hasn't been reached on the science behind climate change. The new IPCC assessment is that consensus; as United Nations Environment Programme head Achim Steiner pointed out, "attention now shifts from whether human activity is linked to climate, to what on earth we are going to do about it."

Science has answered the first question; the next will be left to us. At the Paris press conference held to mark the release of the IPCC assessment, one journalist tried to get Solomon to say what the world should do about global warming. She would not take the bait. "It is my personal scientific approach to say that it is not my role to communicate what should be done," she said. "I believe that is a societal choice." Whatever happens over the next century, we can't say we weren't warned.


Read the Time article.
Read the IPCC Report (2nd Feb 2007).

Also see Canada.com story.
And this from France 24.

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Flannery: UN report conservative

February 02, 2007 10:29am
From Courier Mail (QLD, AUS)



UN predictions of a rise in global temperatures would be a disaster for all life on earth, resulting in widespread extinction of many species, Australian of the Year Tim Flannery has said.

The respected scientist said the UN's prediction of a three degree Celsius temperature rise was conservative and in fact could be double that figure resulting in "truly catastrophic" conditions for all life on earth.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases its report in Paris tonight, with its strongest warning yet that human activities are causing global warming that may bring more drought, heatwaves and rising seas.

IPCC scientists agreed it was "very likely" human activities were the main cause of warming in the past 50 years, predicting temperatures would rise by three degrees Celsius and sea levels by as much as 43cm by the turn of the century.

Professor Flannery said the UN climate report's predictions on the consequences of global warming are "middle of the road" but will still provide a useful benchmark for the world to tackle climate change.

Prof Flannery, whose recent book The Weather Makers said climate change was the most serious issue confronting humanity, said although the estimates were conservative, they would provide greater certainty about the consequences of global warming.

"It lays out a sort of middle of the road trajectory, which is alarming enough I can tell you, for this century," he told ABC Radio National.

"I don't think this idea of calling it catastrophic or anything else has anything to do with science. We need to look at the data objectively."

Temperatures could rise by much more than the IPCC's prediction of three degrees, he said. "It could be worse than this - there's a 10 per cent chance of truly catastrophic rises in temperatures, so we're looking at six degrees or so," Prof Flannery said.

"That would be a disaster for all life on earth. Three degrees will be a disaster for all life on earth.

"We will lose somewhere between two out of every 10 and six out of every 10 species living on the planet at that level of warming.

"It will set in train a series of climate consequences that will run for a thousand years."

Prof Flannery said the clearest example of the IPCC's conservatism was its prediction the Arctic ice cap could disappear in summers by 2100.

"The actual trajectory we've seen in the Arctic over the last two years, if you follow that, that implies that the Arctic ice cap will be gone in the next five to 15 years. This is an ice cap that's been around for the last three million years," he said.

"Those predictions tell you a little bit about the conservatism of the IPCC, how rapidly the science is moving and how rapidly events in the real world are moving, far in advance I think of even the most sombre warnings by scientists working in this area."

He also brushed off the IPCC's use of the words "very likely" in relation to climate change having a human footprint.

"I don't think that that's an issue for debate any more," he said.

"It's our problem, we have to do something about it. We have the tools, we're so far we're lacking the will."

The IPCC report is due to be released at 7.30pm (AEDT).\

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