In the past couple months, the flurry of discussions around bold, visionary goals for global warming has gotten increasingly intense. We’ve been starting to realize that we have to be more ambitious if we’re going to make it. I think this is a key question for movement introspection that’s only the first stage in re-imagining a new society: what do we need to achieve?
We’ve been saying 80% by 2050 for over a year now. It sounds big, and significant, and is way beyond any of the 7% solutions Kyoto started with. But Kyoto phase 1 is over in 2012, after which we have to figure out the next step. I’ll be nearing retirement by the time 2050 rolls around. We call it a science-based goal, but we’re missing the risk assessment. Does the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) really hold the authority here? Before we go much farther, and define the post-Kyoto debate, we better take stock of the situation.
Here’s a central challenge – why are we stopping at trying to prevent only those catastrophes that we are nearly sure of? Wouldn’t it be prudent to avoid the risk of potential events, even if there’s only a 50/50 chance that they’ll happen. Considering that the things of which we’re sure our tame compared to those that are still uncertain, I at least don’t feel very comfortable taking our chance.
Let’s face it, even if we were to stop emitting all carbon tomorrow, we are still going to lose large parts of Bangladesh, a country the size of Wisconsin home to 135 million people, and we are still going to have increasingly freakish storms and increasingly severe droughts (right where I am in MN too – for the second year in a row). Agriculture will face minor declines in some areas (like sub-Saharan Africa where people are already starving), and Venice is already a sitting duck (the Dutch are getting good at floating houses). It feels brutal to be callous, and we should use the knowledge to be ready when we do need to bail out places that get hit, but honestly, we just have to get used to the fact that yes, some of that is coming. These gradual, obvious changes will get us to the point where global warming will just be a massive global headache for the rest of my lifetime. Yeah, it’s pretty annoying, but these types of things are not what we have to be worried about.
What we have to watch out for, are the really crazy changes that shake up everything.
We have to watch out for the tipping points. The really big, really bad changes that accelerate the problem, cause new positive reinforcement of climate change, and basically reshape the world.
There’s a number of them that have been theorized, and many scientists believe that there are least decent chances that one or more could happen. More worrying still is the fact that the slow changes preceding these events are already starting to happen. Let’s take a look at a few:
Die-back of Amazonia: the Amazon rainforest produces its own rainfall through the evapo-transpiration of the forest. As temperatures rise and we deforest the basin, less rain falls leading to drought. Since the soils hold very little water or nutrient reserves, just a few years of extreme drought could cause widespread die-back of forests. As the die-back accelerates, there are less trees to produce rain, less shade to cool the forest, and yet more drought and die-back. In addition to converting the Amazon into some combination of grassland and semi-desert conditions, this process would release massive amounts of carbon dioxide from decaying/ burning vegetation, turning one of the world’s largest vegetative carbon sinks into a carbon source, thus causing more warming. Scientists in Amazonia have estimated that this die-back could be triggered with as little as three continuous years of extreme drought – The Amazon is in drought year number 2.
Gulf Stream disruption: we all know about the polar ice shrinking, and that the albedo effect with darker water keeps polar areas warming faster and faster than the rest of the world. But then there’s the threat that collapse of large ice-masses like Greenland could send a massive rush of cold fresh water into the North Atlantic, threatening to cut off the Gulf Stream that keeps Europe warm (this is the disaster over-dramatized in The Day After Tomorrow). Scientists are now reducing the estimated risk of such on occurrence, but it should be noted that since the mid-1950s, the sinking of Gulf Stream water that drives the current has fallen by around 30% in response to colder fresher water. If you want a real shocker, go read The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery, where he discusses that fact that in past glacial periods, the Gulf Stream has collapsed in as little as a decade, throwing Europe and eastern North America into violent mini-ice ages even as main glacial periods were ebbing.
Or how about the problem in western Canada, where forest fires and bark beetles are ravaging the boreal forests, switching the nation from a net absorber of carbon to a net emitter in just a matter of years. Since the boreal forests are massive carbon sinks, this additional carbon is a huge loss, accelerating the feedback loops working against us.
How about a really freaky one: the melting of tundra permafrost in Alaska, Canada, and Russia. Permafrost holds massive quantities of carbon dioxide and methane that can be released only when the soil melts and begins to decay. With more carbon in these soils than the entire atmosphere, we could be looking at a nearly doubled potential for warming if this permafrost melts. While full release will almost certainly take over a century, it’s beginning now, as endless reports of newly-swampy foundations, drunken trees, and melting Siberian peat bogs attest. Again, once started, the added carbon makes warming accelerate, meaning more melting …
Shall I go on? Acidification of the world’s oceans from increased carbonic acid concentrations resulting in dissolving carbonate rocks and the inability of ocean life to build protective shells? Massive collapse of methane hydrates (weird blogs of frozen-pressurized methane) from warming arctic seas? A rapid disintegration of the West Antarctic ice shelf sending sea levels up 10-20 feet? Loss of ice in the Himalayas causing massive drought and famine in the key food-producing river basins of the Indian subcontinent, China, and Southeast Asia?
I think we can all safely agree that we have to avoid this type of situation. Then there’s a second key question: is any of this going to happen?
The answer is: we don’t know. I’ll be the first person to admit that any one of these ‘tipping points’ is uncertain: we know neither the timing of these tipping points, or even if they’ll happen at all. Tipping points are inherently uncertain since they depend on complex non-linear responses that have little historical precedent (although they appear surprisingly common throughout the earth’s history). But we should note that if one of them should occur, the result will both be disastrous, and will greatly increase the chances of others occurring. In other words, if we cross one of these thresholds, the world will never be the same again – and the chance of further drastic events will only increase. We have to dodge the tipping points.
We should note that complex civilization only emerged after a climatic tipping point, common over the past few million years of glacial-interglacial cycles, ended the last Ice Age and ushered in an era of warmth and prosperity. During that tipping point, atmospheric carbon concentrations rose from in the low 200s to near 280 parts per million (ppm). This change was typical of the periodic glacial-interglacial reversals of the past few million years, where carbon concentrations ranged from near 200 ppm (glacial) to near 300 ppm (interglacial). Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we’ve gone from 280 ppm to about 385 ppm, and we’re rising at a higher rate than any time in recent geological history. Yet our climate has so far only changed gradually, slowly shifting from the recent past. A tipping point will be like a sudden flip as dramatic as the changes between warm periods and Ice Ages. The difference is that Ice Age to non-Ice Age flips have been common over the past few million years. A flip from an interglacial period to a warmer era has not happened for many millions of years – since before humanity. And the rate of growth in global carbon concentrations is almost unprecedented.
Funny then, that IPCC reports don’t discuss tipping points very much. The reason is that they’re uncertain. Since tipping points are all about non-linear processes (which can accelerate dramatically when only minor changes are made to the climate system), and are inherently unpredictable, they are naturally unlikely to be confirmed by scientific studies in general, which require rigorous certainty (usually 95% confidence that a predicted event will occur). While some research has suggested that this level of confidence can be expected for certain tipping points if we do nothing to slow carbon emissions, other studies are less conclusive and thus do not agree that these events are certain. Because the IPCC produces consensus-based reports, where all scientists (and later diplomats arguing on scientific grounds) must come to agreement on the final publication of the report, and events that do not have near-complete agreement in the research are omitted. Another way of saying this is that the types of events the IPCC predicts are 95% certain, or that there’s only a 5% possibility of them not occurring. Given that the predictions of the IPCC are only those that are almost certain, we have to start wondering about what’s being left out.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the chances of dramatically accelerating permafrost crossing a tipping point and thus causing vastly accelerated warming over existing predictions are 50%. This figure is completely made up (I sure hope its lower, though unless we change our course, the risk keeps rising) and the calculation of such a risk is so complicated based on a vast array of other variables as to be basically impossible to pinpoint accurately. Risk could also describe only a portion of the carbon released or a rate of release which changes the nature of the tipping point (its not like all the permafrost will melt at once), so this is a really simplistic example. The IPCC reports don’t include this event because its not for sure, and thus can’t be reported as scientific fact. Tipping point events vanish off consensus-based reports, leaving decision makers with no ability to assess the threat of such scenarios – most of our leaders aren’t even aware of them. But would you like to base the future of the world on a coin flip?
Now let’s imagine that the risk of that same tipping point event is only 1%. Pretty low, right? Small enough to ignore, right? Wrong. Homeowners typically buy home insurance even when the risk of their home being destroyed is vanishingly small – just a tiny fraction of one percent. We make a real investment in the security of our personal homes to avoid the risk of cataclysmic events. Why aren’t we treating climate change the same way, and taking the problem seriously enough to avoid possible, though not certain, catastrophes? When the risks of all the possible tipping points are combined, they are far far higher than the risk of your individual home being destroyed by an accident. We can be sure that the risk is real, significant, and will only grow as we continue emitting more. The situation is also worse than on the personal level, since the effects shape our global home – the insurance industry can’t use the financial weight of a wealthy society to bail out the unlucky homeowner. The victim in this case is the wealthy society, and we only have one home. With recovery out of the question, we only have one way to invest in our security: avoiding the crisis in the first place. Time for some prevention?
We can debate whatever level of risk we find appropriate as long as we like, but centrally, until we start looking at the risks, we’re basing any policies we develop on the faulty assumption that the events we have to prevent are certain. And when you start looking at the risks for large scale impacts, the scale of the investment we have to make rises, the time-frame for doing so shrinks, and the cost of inaction soars sky-high. Taking a careful look at tipping points changes our frame – the 80% by 2050 reductions in the developed world that are necessary to prevent certain events become wholly inadequate in dealing with the risk of far worse ones.
For myself, I’ve decided I’m unwilling to accept any plan that will result in temperature rises that yield more than an estimated 1/3 chance of crossing a dangerous tipping point. A 2 out of 3 chance of making it through with only marginal impacts (like roughly a meter of sea level rise, temperatures a degree or so warmer, some amount of famine and a few more nasty hurricanes) that are for sure while avoiding real catastrophes seems the very maximum risk we can allow. I’d much prefer if the risk was 10% or 5%, 0r 1%, or even better 0.01%. We simply don’t want to mess with this stuff.
To get to that low a risk, we’re going to need to build a sustainable society, fast, collectively, and holistically. It will require everyone, which means it must also be done equitably, while taking into account the risks behind climate science. This is going to be intense.
I’ll be following this up: as a teaser for next time, check out Colin Forrest’s article about the degree of change that’s needed. He’s a layman analyzing a wide array of scientific documents. They’re not consensus, but they’ve got risk analysis all over them. Similar conclusions have been popping up everywhere, so we have a lot to discuss. Next question: given risk, what should we aim for?
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It sounds like the issue is one of perceived risk. As an engineer I have often seen that people will ignore numbers and go with what they believe a risk to be. Had there been several glacial transitions recorded in history, it would be easier to convince folks of its potential. Currently, most people likely believe that they are being asked to spend a lot of money to stop something that they don’t believe can exist.
Excellent post, Timothy! This is a discussion we need to be having more and more. People get that climate change is real these days. What they don’t seem to understand is either the scale of the problem (potential for worldwide devastation) or the immediate need for action (the consequences are decades away, but time to change course is running out and tipping points are approaching rapidly).
Do you mind if I cross-post this in part or in it’s entirety at WattHead?
To assess risk in an equation of unknowns, you should frame it with knowns:
1. Worldwide electricity demand is expected to double by 2030.
2. We are already burning all the oil and natural gas recovered.
3. Environmental degradation will continue as the population increases.
4. The ability of nature to remove CO2 from the air is expected to decline 30% by 2030.
5. There is no short term solution to our burning fossil fuel for energy, nor for doing so without releasing greenhouse gases into the air.
6. As the earth warms, carbon sinks will become carbon emitters (i.e. more mega forest and peat fires, more emissions from melting permafrost, warming soil, and melting oceanic methane hydrate).
7. Developing countries will continue to dramatically increase their emissions from very little.
8. Burning coal will continue to grow rapidly (it is a stable cheap domestic energy source).
9. We need to dramatically slow down CO2 levels rising in the air fast to avoid dangerous warming.
Here is the equation:
If we need to dramatically slow down CO2 levels in the air rising fast, but natural and mankind’s emission are expected to increase, how are we going to avoid dangerous warming?
Here is the assumed solution:
Mankind has to dramatically cut their emissions fast, so we aren’t overwhelming nature’s ability to remove the CO2.
Here is the flaw in the reasoning:
With electricity demand dramatically increasing, burning coal will increase. Furthermore, nature and developing nations will continue dramatically increasing emissions. Finally, nature will substancially decrease her ability to remove the CO2 from the air.
Here is my solution:
I suggest we improve nature’s ability to remove the CO2 from the air using genetic engineering-perhaps seeding a GMO into the oceans. Biosequestration is a low cost, highly scalable, and technically feasible way to reduce the CO2 level in the air. By the way, mechanically removing the CO2 from the air would need vast sums of energy, be very difficult to do on such a vast scale, and will cost tremendous amounts of money.
Here is the problem with the alternatives:
The great expense of reducing human emissions is creating political gridlock, delaying action. Furthermore, any reasonable cuts we in the developing world make in our emissions will be overwhelmed by developing nations and nature. Finally, cutting emissions is a weak mitigation strategy because it depends upon leaving the elevated CO2 in the air until nature slowly removes it. Besides, if the carrying capacity of the world declines, we will have much less resources to completely rebuild our energy infrastructure.
Conclusion: There is no feasible planetary rescue that doesn’t include removing the CO2 from the air. Biosequestration could save billions of lives, and trillions of dollars. Sole relience on the weak mitigation stategy of drastically cutting emissions fast will very likely fail.
I will leave the philosophical arguments to the climate youth leaders and focus on the technical…
For a GMO to remove billions of tons of CO2, that implies that you will be growing billions of tons of biomass in the oceans. The environmental impact of such an activity would need to be addressed. Also, I understand that there are many existing species of fast growing trees that would be easier to deploy than a GMO.
Finally, the same political gridlock blocking alternatives (even wind power has opposition) would certainly arise against the large-scale use of a GMO. The gridlock has to be addressed for any of the solutions. Perhaps the climate youth leaders can think about the gridlock issue as they move forward.
Timothy,
Excellent and too little discussed. I have been trying for a year to get the issue of tipping points and prevention into the discussion of climate change and catastropiIes. It is not only a technical and risk assessment issue, but also a major political challenge.
For most people to get seriously involved, they will need a clear idea of the deadlines to aovid these tipping points. Sort of like the movies of approaching asteroids. I think we need people pushing for leadership that will spell it out – even if the scientists continue debating, we need to get the insurance in place in time.
I will add some text from one of my proposals below.
Walter
————
“Y siento la obligación ?como debemos sentirlo todos? de hacer un especial esfuerzo para evitarle a la humanidad una catástrofe fatal”
“I feel the obligation – as we all should – to make a special effort to avert a fatal catastrophe for humanity.” Fidel Castro, October 30, 2006
Leadership needed to make prevention of coming climate change catastrophes a choice for the world.
Index:
1. Introduction
2. Summary
3. Current Situation
4. Proposal a. Summary b. Requirements c. Benefits and Costs i. Implementation ii. Dangers iii. Focus & Goals
5. Resources a. Definitions b. Tipping Points i. Tipping Points Summary Table
6. Citations
7. Links
Introduction: Return to Index
The purpose of this proposal is to address the serious omission of the idea or choice of prevention of catastrophic climate change as a goal in the discussions and responses to the threat of climate change. As recent as August 2006, the concept of prevention was almost entirely missing in the media and environmental discussions of so called “Global Warming.” In the face of overwhelming threats, we are all too familiar with the phenomena and danger of avoidance. In this most serious situation, even though the majority of the world’s scientists have been predicting the likelihood of irreversible and catastrophic climate changes, there has been little discussion or programmatic focus on how to actually prevent these predicted catastrophes. This proposal argues that our best response to climate change is not to avoid the difficult question of prevention, but is to organize for a conscious focus on and commitment to prevention of the coming catastrophes.
Then on October 30th 2006, President Fidel Castro became perhaps the first world leader to directly call for prevention of these catastrophes (see heading above). As usual, Fidel’s prescient call was ignored by the majority of the world’s media, which suggests that perhaps, if the need for prevention was instead presented by the non-aligned nations and other self-interested countries together, then such a call would be more difficult to ignore. Once the question of preventing these catastrophes was available to the public, the possibility of preventing climate change catastrophes could become a choice they could make and demand, hopefully while there is still time to succeed.
Yet, currently even the possibility of making prevention of climate change catastrophes a priority goal is still missing from most of the world’s public discussion and is still not a conscious and informed choice available for people to consider and respond to. The idea of actual prevention is still missing even though the immensity and irreversibility of the potential consequences of failure demand serious consideration of prevention as soon as possible to maximize the chances for success.
[See full proposal below.]
Current Situation: Return to Index
The current state of public response to environmental change is in flux. While the concept of prevention as a decision or strategy is still missing from most media and public awareness, the UN IPPC reports and findings are spurring more serious acceptance of the crises and the need for worldwide responses. While individual scientists and some organizations are now calling for major efforts to stop the process of “Global Warming” and increasingly accept the fragile nature of our ecosystem, comprehensive plans to prevent the catastrophic effects have yet to be presented to the public. This leaves the public in an increasing state of anxiety, without sufficient knowledge or leadership.
Signs that the environmental movement is getting closer to calling for serious prevention plans are evident for example in Al Gore’s more serious comments in his addendum to his film “An Inconvenient Truth” and in MoveOn.org’s call to launch a movement seeking action on climate change. “Climate change is a danger uniting all the people of the world, but global leaders are ignoring the crisis. MoveOn is helping launch a new worldwide action network—Avaaz.org—to give people across the planet a voice.”
Unfortunately, poor leadership in the face of these threats has fed the public’s reactions of avoidance, futility and even hopelessness. In the past, even some scientists shrugged off the call to seek to prevent the catastrophes with “it’s probably too late.”
Whereas in the past, scientists were careful to stress uncertainty and disagreements, now there is sufficient consensus to unite around the need to act. Crises, tipping points and looming catastrophes need to be further examined, but it is primarily leadership and concrete plans that address these issues that need to be developed. The past efforts at Kyoto, Kenya, and Rio etc. are clearly inadequate. The problem remains the built-in opposition of those who perceive the loss of their profits as paramount. A major recent example is the serious study by the U.S. Center for Naval Analyses17 which comes to the conclusion that the chaos and worldwide suffering that will result from climate change must be militarily defended against as threats to our national security and interests.
Compromise that is detached from the worldwide, human consequences remains our enemy.
So whatever catastrophes threaten and however much time we have, the only rational response is to attempt their prevention. Initially we must prevent the agenda being dictated by those who will again compromise the science and the outcomes in their interest and against the needs of the vast majority of humankind. To prevent a continuation of this current suicidal leadership, the many smaller and more vulnerable countries need to be in the forefront of what happens next.
[As examples of how the tipping points and consequences are not yet being sufficiently addressed, see the social, economic and political factors in the Tipping Points Summary table below.]
…….
Great post! For clarity, the risk-assessment article says that we must cut world emissions 60% by 2030; for the U.S., that is 95% by 2030, not 80% by 2050. In other words, if these risks become real, an 80% by 2050 goal will simply be a waste of money and resources because it will prevent absolutely nothing. Solving global warming requires getting it fully right or going into catastrophe. It’s one or the other, and unfortunately an 80% by 2050 goal does mean catastrophe.
As the above article makes abundantly clear, we either have to drastically (i.e. 60% by 2030, or 95% for the US?) cut our emissions rapidly (or somehow remove the CO2 from the air after it is emitted), or the result will be catastrophic.
Obviously, carbon biosequestration using a GMO has drawbacks including unintended consequences, and the necessary use of public space perhaps needing permission. Obious drawbacks of rapidly rebuilding our energy infrastructure are cost, and the possiblity that this mitigation strategy will be too little, too late.
Perhaps it would be prudent to utilize both strategies simultaneously-all I’m saying is depending solely on cutting our emissions both drastically and fast is a bankrupt stategy with little chance of success. With nature both emitting more and soaking up less, plus developing nations continuing their emission increases, our costly and politically doubtful cuts would be overwhelmed
“We now have evidence from the Earth’s history that a similar event happened fifty-five million years ago when a geological accident released into the air more than a terraton of gaseous carbon compounds. As a consequence the temperature in the arctic and temperate regions rose eight degree Celsius and in tropical regions about five degrees, and it took over one hundred thousand years before normality was restored. We have already put more than half this quantity of carbon gas into the air and now the Earth is weakened by the loss of land we took to feed and house ourselves. In addition, the sun is now warmer, and as a consequence the Earth is now returning to the hot state it was in before, millions of years ago, and as it warms, most living things will die.” (Revenge of Gaia)
Just to add further credence to Timothy’s warnings… check this out.