Note to media: The Ghost of Climate Yet to Come says, “It’s not too late!”
RealClimate makes a good point with the title of its post, “Irreversible Does Not Mean Unstoppable” about the recent NOAA led paper (see here):
We at Realclimate have been getting a lot of calls from journalists about this paper, and some of them seem to have gone all doomsday on us.
Indeed, this is the perfect paper for someone, like say, Lou Dobbs, who can go from hard-core doubt/denial to credulous hopelessness in one breath, as he did Friday (h/t ClimateScienceWatch):
Let’s assume, for right now, that there is such a thing as climate change, let’s assume it’s manmade. What indication-what evidence do we have, what reason do we have to believe that mankind can do anything significantly to reverse it because a number of people, as you know in the last two weeks, are reported that, that, this is a 1,000-year trend irrespective of what we do.
Yeah, let’s assume, for right now, there is climate change and let’s further assume it’s man-made since there’s like no factual basis for actually knowing those things. Then let’s tell the public the latest research means if there is man-made climate change, the situation is now hopeless —when in fact the latest research makes it all the more urgent to keep total emissions and concentrations as low as posisble
Seriously. This guy has his own hour TV show on a major cable network—albeit one that fired its staff covering science and environment and hired a psychic to cover climate change (OK, let’s assume, for right now, that I made up that last part).
The whole world has become Dickensian, which just happens to remind me of another Dickens story relevant to the theme that irreversible does not mean unstoppable:
“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”
Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.
“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me.”
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, EBENEZER SCROOGE.
“Am I that man who lay upon the bed?” he cried, upon his knees.
The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.
“No, Spirit! Oh no, no!”
The finger still was there.
“Spirit!” he cried, tight clutching at its robe, “hear me. I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?”
For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
“Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: “Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life.”
The kind hand trembled.
Or, as RealClimate put it less poetically:
But you have to remember that the climate changes so far, both observed and committed to, are minor compared with the business-as-usual forecast for the end of the century. It’s further emissions we need to worry about. Climate change is like a ratchet, which we wind up by releasing CO2. Once we turn the crank, there’s no easy turning back to the natural climate. But we can still decide to stop turning the crank, and the sooner the better.
Indeed, we are only committed to about 2°C total warming so far, which is a probably manageable—and even more probably, if we did keep CO2 concentrations from peaking below 450 ppm, the small amount of CO2 we are likely to be able to remove from the atmosphere this century could well take us below the danger zone.
But if we don’t reverse emissions trends soon, we will probably triple that temperature rise, most likely negating any practical strategy to undo the impacts for hundreds of years. Such is the climate change yet to come.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Make the kids pay: The economic effects of climate change on future generations
Feed the world sustainably by 2050? Yes, we can!
Comments
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Curtis Moore Posted 9:35 am
02 Feb 2009
Reducing these is doubly important because they have disproportionate impacts in the Arctic regions and the high latitudes. A whole bunch of positive feedbacks are located in those regions, and there's lots of evidence that they are close to being triggered.
We know how to reduce emissions of all these. To reduce methane, for examine, install digesters that convert animal (including that of humans)waste to methane, then put it to some use--running cars, generating electricity, etc. To reduce black carbon, retrofit diesel engines with trap oxidizers to capture and destroy the soot. To eliminate -134a, the gas refrigerant used for air conditioners in cars and trucks, ban it starting model year 2011, as the Europeans are doing and use, for example, carbon dioxide as the refrigerant.
But nowhere in the world is there a focused, concerted effort to reduce short-lived causes of global warming. Everybody is going CO2 crazy. But with an atmospheric lifetime of 50 to 3,000 years, CO2 is more akin to nuclear waste than smog or acid rain. Yes, CO2 emissions must be reduced, but we've also got to live long enough for the cuts to snap in. For that to happen, ozone and its precursors, black carbon, carbon monoxide, the F gases (e.g. CFCs, HFCs, HCFCs, etc.) must be eliminated. And that is not happening, to the best of my knowledge, anywhere in the world.
Unless there is some dramatic, unexpected shift in policy, short lived causes are not going to be reduced--it is simply not going to happen. Face the reality that in all likelihood our children--mine are 31 and 29--will not live out their natural lives. Instead of squarely confronting global warming and objectively determining what needs to be done, then doing it, the world is obsessed with persuading polluters to reduce CO2 emissions by allowing them to profit from cap and trade to solve a problem that they created.
Guys my age will make it to the finish line. But most of the people reading this will not. We are killing ourselves and our children.
For a much more detailed examination on these issues, check my book, found at http://www.saving-ourselves.com/, which also deals with the role of the Republican Party in transforming America and preventing action on global warming.
We can save ourselves. But we are not doing it. So, our kids will die.
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Pangolin Posted 10:10 am
02 Feb 2009
The only known method of removing atmospheric carbon and reducing soil methane emissions with a positive EROEI is charcoal amendment to soils. The data comes from a very few studies and hobbyists test plots. It's sketchy at best.
In order to remove sufficient carbon to offset methane emissions from the Siberian shield the majority of living humans would have to take an interest in collecting biomass to convert to stable black-carbon. Sort of a, collect every dry twig and leaf everywhere kind of thing. All while ongoing climate damage hammers at our social networks.
Then, we're going to find out that some crops don't like lots of biochar in the soil. Which crops we don't know because we don't have people doing the plot tests.
Doomers are optimists.
Put the Carbon Back
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randino Posted 10:28 am
02 Feb 2009
But you, Curtis, you make me look like Mary Poppins. No small accomplishment.
Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH
Randy Cunningham
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Pangolin Posted 10:51 am
02 Feb 2009
Laying down on the track doesn't help none either nor does hanging out at the local bar talking about switching the train to the siding; if there was a switch and a siding, which there isn't.
Somebody on the Titanic manned the pumps all the way to the bottom. It didn't help but it could have. No way of knowing unless you try.
Dude's an optimist.
Put the Carbon Back
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amazingdrx Posted 1:56 pm
02 Feb 2009
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell& ...
Notice the number one hit is a GristMill thread. No solid hits for Real climate on this topic.
This would be far less trivial a topic. Because it indicates we don't even know wether or not climate change is unstoppable or irreversible until these vital feedback issues like ice melt/solar absorption, drought/fire storm, ice melt methane release, ocean CO2 uptake rejection, and so forth are noticed by the scientific community and the media.
If even real climate is ducking the topic, that's trouble.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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christophersj Posted 5:49 pm
02 Feb 2009
The ocean scientists say that here to, because of the longevity of CO2 and the "clogged bathtub effect", it will be impossible for any sort of "healing" or "restoration" of either species or habitat, especially those comprised of calcium carbonates (shellfish and corals and pteropods).
Even with a complete cessation of our CO2 emissions, only a plateau of the acidity and damages is possible. Not a return to the way it was before. At least not for millennia. Sounds a lot like the NOAA report for the atmosphere and land.
Of course this is all the more reason to act quickly. Zero emissions ASAP. Copenhagen. Ect.
After both of these reports (the NOAA one and the Monaco one) an ocean and climate scientist I spoke to said, "I dont know why people are surprised, we've known about this for a while."
Well, I didn't, and I suspect most of you did not either. I naively imagined a century of zero emissions would start a reverse course for global warming or ocean acidification and their damages incurred.
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christophersj Posted 6:01 pm
02 Feb 2009
Here are two videos I collected: one from Christmas where Dobbs is featuring a Sunshine guy as a climate expert and tops it off with a very confusing weatherman. Its just awful, awful misleading stuff. The second is from 2007, upon the publishing of the IPCC report, where Dobbs is actually PROMOTING James Hansen and his warnings.
Someone please explain the paradox of Lou to me. This makes no sense at all.
http://web.me.com/cjohnsonla/Christopher_S._Johnson_Websp ...
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